Crazy ones
Friend day
Come for friend day at the park. Its going to be partly cloudy and 85 degrees. Thats nice.
It is also the Vision Olympics, so I just wanted you to know about it. It will be a good day for a picnic and fun.
RIght after church. Hope to see you there.
Killing Sin
If you are alive, this is applicable to you. I just wish we were more concerned about it…
Killing the Sin in Your Life (Part 2)
(By John MacArthur)
Today’s post is the second part in our series on how to kill sin in your life.
Yesterday, we considered the first of five steps necessary to killing sin in your life — namely, that you must recognize the presence of sin in your flesh. Today we will consider steps two through four.
2. A Heart Fixed on God.
Second, in order to gain victory over sin, you must have a heart fixed on God. You must love Him more than you love your sin.
The Psalmist said in Psalm 57:7, “My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed.” What did he mean by that? He was speaking of undivided devotion to God! He was referring to a wholeness in spiritual life where he was given wholly to God. This attitude must be true in your heart if you are to conquer sin. You must be wholly devoted to God in every area of life. You cannot tolerate sin in any one area, even if it seems like a relatively small area. You must eradicate sin everywhere.
You can’t starve it out and kill it in one spot, but then allow it to remain somewhere else. If sin lives anywhere it will crawl all over everywhere. It is the most noxious, fastest growing weed in existence. It will not confine itself to one flower bed. Left unchecked, even for a short time, it will soon take over everywhere.
The Psalmist said in Psalm 119:6, “Then shall I not be ashamed.” When? When will you not be ashamed? “When I have respect unto all thy commandments.” In other words, our lives are notgoing to be right or without shame until we give proper respect to every command of God. And that is to deal with every issue of sin in our lives. The only unashamed life is the life of one who is totally fixed on God; everything has been dealt with.
3. Meditate on the Word.
Third, the victorious Christian life is a life that dwells on the Word of God (cf. Psalm 1:2).
The way to kill sin in your life is to feed it Scripture. Scripture is a spiritual weed-killer. It will poison sin.
Whatever really controls your mind, controls your behavior; so keep out the garbage (of worldly thinking) and saturate the soil of your mind with a steady diet of God’s glorious truth. Sin can’t grow in a Spirit-controlled life. And the Spirit controls our thinking through the Word of Christ (Col. 3:16-17; cf. Eph. 5:18; Rom. 12:2). If you want to kill sin, you must give yourself to the Word. That means you have to read it, listen to it, learn it, study it, and think about it.
4. Commune with God in Prayer.
These are so very basic, but fourth, you must commune with God in prayer.
This circles back around to the first point that I gave you. True prayer gives the heart a sense of its own vile character and renews the hatred of sin. It agrees with God about what sin is, recognizing that any violation of God’s law is a direct affront to Him. John Owen said, “He who pleads with God for the remission of sin also pleads with his own heart to detest it.”
Somewhere along the line in your own prayer life you need to get honest. You need to begin to say to God, “I want You to reveal my sin, I want You to stir it up in me. I want You to show it to me. I want You to blow away the dust that is covering it. I want You to peel off the things that have been hiding it away in my life, so that it becomes manifest and visible to me. I want to see the reality of my sin. I want You to show it to me just the way it is.” That is a vital part of your communion with God.
When you pray to God it must be an honest confession. The true prayers of repentance go something like this, “God show me all the sins of my life, reveal all of them, uncover every little corner of my life. Bring it up and may it become as detestable to me as it is to You. May I never do that again, and may You give me the strength to see it go away.”
Prayer exposes secret sins. Prayer weakens prevailing sins. Prayer finds strength in fellowship with the Holy God to kill sin in our lives.
(To be concluded on Monday)
Kinda Funny
This is probably useless, but I thought some of these were good.
=>You know it’s going to be a bad day when you jump out of bed and miss the floor.
=>I can handle pain until it hurts.
=>If you cannot convince them, confuse them
=>If everything is coming your way, then you’re in the wrong lane
=>Do not believe in miracles, rely on them
=>Oh well, I think this is going to be one of those lifetimes
=>Death is life’s way of telling you you’re fired
=>In GOD we trust all others must pay cash
=>Death is the consequence of being alive
=>Don’t worry about life; you are not going to survive it, anyway
=>Lead me not into temptation; I can find it myself
=>Don’t take life too seriously it’s not permanent
=>Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an escape key for all of our problems
=>I’m serious, it was a joke
=>The whole purpose of your life is to serve as a warning toothers
=>Overdrawn? But I still have checks left! YOU KNOW IT’S A BAD DAY WHEN…
=>The bird singing outside your window is a buzzard
=>You put both contacts lenses in the same eye
Ideas would be good
Well Sunday we want to get together for some brainstorming. The missions conference is coming up in September and we want to pool some ideas we can do for it as a class. Maybe a skit, a promotion, or some other way to enhance it.
So Sunday afternoon, if you want a meal and think you could help us with some ideas, we are going to get together after church for lunch at a house nearby.
So, those are your lunch plans.
It’s Tuesday
I just wanted to let you know that we are having Tuesday Night Dive tonight! Someone told me that they saw in the bulletin that it was cancelled, but no no. It is alive and well tonight.
NEXT WEEK it will be Cancelled, for I will be in TX. But THIS WEEK just might be the climax of the book. Paul (God) has been building his case against the guilty world for 3 solid chapters, but tonight we will see Divine Righteousness manifested!
Makes me want to shout already.
Here is the verse - Romans 3:20-21 “But now is the righteousness of God without the law manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe, for there is no difference…
My iPhone makes me a better Christian
I always have my handy iPhone at my side, and it comes in handy for about 100 things, BUT, for me, it is the channel by which I can sit at the feet of some of the greatest Christians the world has ever known.
You would probably think, with me being the Music Director and all, that I would spend a great amount of time listening to music, but I actually spend far more time with classes, conferences, books, and sermons. All made possible by the iPhone.
I know some of you can go months without a spiritual influence in your life, but I find a battle waiting for me almost every day. If I am able to think on things that are good, and fill my mind with Biblical truth, the Lord seems to use that in my life in a profound way.
So, why an iPhone?
Because CD’s, tapes, and even iPods are rarely conveniently in reach when I need them. But my faithful phone….always there.
Now, my point in this really isnt to get you to buy an iPhone, it is to get you encourage you, and challenge you to spend time under God’s teachers!!! There are a ton of amazing resources that would help you in an radical way if you just heard them!
God wants us to “think on good things”, “study to show thyself approved unto God”, “give ear”, “add to your faith knowledge…” He wants us to be growing and stretching and seeking! He must have invented the iPhone for that reason.
Buy a book, burn a CD, download some sermons, listen to some classes, but whatever you do, influence yourself for good!
Climbing and Carousing
Well, if you didn’t make it to our rock climbing, it was pretty fun. We all went and some of us climbed up the wall, all of us raced NASCAR, and others shot aliens and some more played air hockey.
It was pretty fun. I think it was my first time to meet Sophia and I am glad she was able to come, I think she was the most adventurous of all of us.
We went to Andrettis carting and games and really had a good time. I just thought I would let yall see a few pictures (all we thought to take). Even me with my helmet on backwards.
Next Saturday we are planning on bowling so, hope you can make it out for that.
We missed a bunch, but here you go.
Read your Bible
Man, that’s about all I can say to encourage you, I guess.
It is just that recently the Lord has been working so powerfully in my heart through His Word!
I know all of you have probably heard something from the Bible that has helped you and you have liked it. Just a ‘nugget’. Though I like the nuggets, that isnt really what I’m talking about….
When God seems to really work on me is when I really invest time consistently. It is easy to read at the Bible throwing some time at it every once in a while, but God seems to build and thrill His children “line upon line, and precept upon precept.”
That’s just what I want to challenge you to experiment with. Pick a significant amount of time to invest every day for just 2 weeks or so, every day - focused, concentrated time - and I am just convinced that if you seek Him, you will find Him.
And when you do, you will probably start to see that life looks different from God’s perspective.
I dare you.
Lots going on!
I was just thinking of all the things going on around here and thought I would give you a quick summary.
- Tuesday Night Dive is back (tonight!) after being interrupted by…..
- Vacation Bible School - which was great and a ton of people had a great time doing - see the video
- We are almost through with the Old Testament in class Sunday Mornings! I have loved it and learned a ton! These people remind me of myself a whole lot.
- Saturday we are going Rock Climbing - we will meet at 2pm at the church.
- The Vision Bible Institute is just about to start in August. Register Now!
- Revival services are coming with Tim Fellure!
- Missions Conference is 2 weeks after that!
- We are planning a Rafting trip here pretty soon….stay tuned.
- World evangelism committees are meeting all through the church partnering with the missionaries our church supports.