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I’m reading this classic work by Watchman Nee right now… It will definitely make it’s way into the preaching schedule… Possibly becoming a message series next year. I’ve highlighted lots of passages… Here’s one of my favorite ones so far:
We shall see that the blood deals with what we have done, whereas the cross deals with what we are. The blood disposes of our sins, while the cross strikes at the root of our capacity for sin.
Special guest posting by Sherry Dusek
I believe we all go through seasons in life. We go through seasons of physical, emotional, and spiritual change. All these seasons affect who we are to become in life. There are some bad ones that shape us and there are some good ones that shape us.
There was a season in my life that I grew closer to God than I’ve ever been. A time when I felt like God and I were BFF’s. He knew me(of course) and I knew Him. Now I know that being a Christ follower we’re supposed to have that relationship all the time, but if we’re honest with each other we’d confess that this is not always the case. One of the biggest factors in that BFF relationship for me was doing the study, “A Woman after God’s Own Heart”. God placed a sweet friend in my life that chose this bible study for us to do together. I was hungry for depth in my spiritual life and this study was very relatable to me at that time. It was life changing for me.
There are times in your life that you think God’s speaking to you and there are times that you KNOW God’s speaking to you. You can’t know God’s speaking to you unless you know what his voice sounds like. This was a time when I knew God was speaking to me because I was able to recognize his voice.
God puts things in place in our lives that he knows will be the tools we need at just the right time for the ultimate spiritual growth in our lives. We’ll be doing this study at The Orchard Church starting Sept. 8, 2013. This may or may not be the study that God has designed for this season of your life. I urge you to seek Him and decide if he’s calling you to do this with this group of women during this season in your life.
I felt like I preached my guts out on Sunday.
I really had a burden for this particular message. I felt it was something our church didn’t need to just hear, but needed to respond to. I felt that if we could only grasp this radical concept of actually loving others in the Body of Christ the way Jesus says to, that it would be a game-changer… Heck, maybe even a world-changer! So I stood in front of those present and preached a real “call to action” message, holding up the banner of what Jesus says about loving others.
Preaching like this is always dangerous. You wouldn’t think it is, but it is. Whenever I preach a real “call to action” message, some people love it, and others leave the church. That’s just the way it is. People love strong, action-oriented messages… As long as they apply to someone else.
Believe it or not, it is hard to preach a message like this, because it is dangerous… Not because people might leave the church, but because of the preacher’s responsibility to God. Here are three big “fine line” dangers in preaching a “call to action” kind of sermon:Read More
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I was a little frustrated to be in the tire store for the third time the week of camp. That SAME TIRE had gone flat a third time in just the few days that I was away in Alabama, and I felt like I had been changing tires all week long! I mentioned to Sue, the local tire store owner that I was headed back to Ellijay that afternoon, and she said “Well, I guess that’s why I’m here… We were supposed to be closed today.”
“Sue, why would your store be closed on a perfectly good Friday?”
She looked up at me from behind her cluttered counter, and with her eyes starting to moisten, she explained that her brother had just passed away, and that the funeral was this afternoon. She had just stopped into the store to do of couple of little things, and had gotten caught up. She should have been closed, but she just happened to be there when I pulled up again that day.
We talked for a little while. I got to know a little about Sue’s brother. She learned that I was a pastor. Over that tire store counter, we held hands and prayed together. When we were done, I was misty-eyed, too.
It was just one more chance for me to learn that every flat tire can be a divine appointment. On your most difficult day, don’t forget that somebody else is having a harder one, and that God may just want to use you to minister into someone else’s life. Smile. Listen. Be open to what God wants to do.
On the way out of the customer waiting area, a gentleman who had been sitting there stood to shake my hand as I was leaving. He said that the store had been open for him today, also… More than new tires, he needed some prayer time, also. It was the best tire store visit I ever had.
As I was browsing through some notes in my Evernote inbox this morning, I came across Louie Giglio’s “Six Rules of Preaching” from the Preaching Rocket conference earlier this year. Louie says that you are going to preach the best when you are preaching like YOU, and not like someone else. He says to take the time to “refine your style.” You aren’t Steven Furtick, Andy Stanley, or whoever you like to listen to. When you are trying to “preach like Andy,” all you can hope to be is a copy of someone else.
Louie’s Six Rules Of Preaching
1. Have something to say
if you don’t have anything to say, please stop preaching. If you only have a little to say, keep saying whatever is blowing up in your heart. If nothing is blowing up in your heart, tell them.
2. Be Faithful To The Text
It doesn’t matter what you are wearing, what kind of mic you use, what the brand of your church is. We
3. Lead people to Jesus
The goal isn’t to lead them to me… But to HIM. How do people fall in love with Jesus more in this message
4. Don’t be boring
5. Prepare
Work at it. It is a craft, a gift, an opportunity. Invest.
6. Be led by the Holy Spirit
A lot of people want to be “led by the Spirit” because they don’t want to prepare. We always want to be led by the Holy Spirit. What’s on the menu is a “suggested menu.”
I am thinking about having a short blog series about how I put together a message on a weekly basis. I am always interested in others’ systems and structure. What do you think?
If you missed Jamie Williams’ powerful testimony in our service from a few weeks ago, this message is definitely worth the listen. Jamie shared about his descent into addiction, the consequences it brought him, and the miracles that God has been working in his life.
Jamie sent me this follow up email after that service… You can hear the message at the link below. You can hear the entire “5 Steps To Wreck Your Life” message series at this link.
First of all thank you for inviting me to share what God has and is doing for me and my family. I mentioned in my testimony that my father had introduced me to meth, which is true. There again it wasn’t my father giving me the drug but it was what had control of him, his addiction (the enemy). As you know, the enemy doesn’t discriminate nor does the substance or what I believe, sorcery, that’s a study in its self. But what I’m trying to say I blame my father for nothing. The choices in my life I made on my own and to have the freedom to choose theirs power and what a great power it is and can be in the moment and in time that follows.
My father was an atheist. But by being involved in crime and being caught having to serve prison time he found God and is now saved. I look up to my dad and I am saddened to say that at the age of 67 he has Alzheimer’s and dementia. The smartest man that I have ever known is now like a child. I care for him here as he stays at the Gilmer Nursing Home. I love my father and looking back I can make sense of some of the plan that God has for us. I know I may never fully understand, but I will continue to seek. Thank you Stave and hope to see you soon.
Thank you, Jamie, for being open to God’s work in your life, and for letting Him speak to us through you in such a powerful way.
Jamie’s testimony is part of “How To Become Addicted,” which is right here at this link:
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School starts back this week! Can you believe it?
In the fall, I often teach a class for college students preparing for missions… So school kinda starts back for me soon, also. In light of that, here are my top ten grammar pet peeves… Don’t turn your paper in with any of these!
1. It’s “I couldn’t care less.” “I could care less” means that you actually do care.
2. An apostrophe is never used to form a plura.
3. “Literally” means it actually happened, not that it figuratively happened.
4. “Loose” and “lose” are two different words.
5. “Your” and “you’re” are also two different words.
6. “Their,” “there” and “they’re” are actually three different words with three different meanings.
7. “Nonplus” does not mean what you think it means.
8. “Affect” is a verb. “Effect” is a noun.
9. “It’s” is short for “it is” and “its” means “belonging to it.”
10. “Irregardless” is not a word.
As school is starting this week, Our elders and I are continuing to pray in earnest that God would provide a youth pastor for us. We really do believe that our effectiveness as a church will be determined by our ability to minister to teenagers in our community. Can you help by giving to support youth ministry at The Orchard? Let me know.
This is the third post in the “Vision” series. You can read part 1 here, and part 2 here.
This is one of the reasons I was so frustrated at our awkward conversation… I was frustrated that these well-intentioned people didn’t understand our vision because I know that we talk about it all the time. In fact, Just a month before this conversation, we had wrapped up a whole message series specifically centered around our church’s vision. (It’s called “We, Not Me.” You can hear the whole series at this link.)
But it isn’t just preaching… We intentionally communicate our vision in lots of very overt and very subtle ways.
Most of all, I my hope is that our church communicates our vision every day by LIVING IT OUT. We communicate it by BEING who God calls us to be.
In his book, “The Normal Christian Life,” Watchman Nee says “God makes it quite clear in His Word that He has only one answer to every human need: His Son, Jesus Christ. He works by taking us out of the way and substituting Christ in our place.”
This is the foremost and most basic application of the Gospel in our lives. Less of me and more of Him. This is what everyone needs to see. Believer and non-believer alike. So… Above all else, we make the Gospel relevant in as many ways as we can. Here are some of the ways we do that:
My hope for us as a church is that we are loving God, loving others, and making disciples every day of our lives by making the Gospel relevant with every single opportunity God brings each of us.
What do you think? What ways can we find to make the Gospel relevant?
Look for Part 4, “What if I don’t like the vision?” in the next week or so.
During Sunday morning’s message, I referred to my old Nikon D50. This 2005 camera has really been a nice starter DSLR for me. Still going strong! Each of these photos are reduced in size and stripped of some color content to load quickly on your computer screen. The full-sized version is much larger.
Summer sunset from Fort Mountain, between Ellijay and Chatsworth
Sunrise during spring break at Hunting Island, SC
Butterfly with broken wing in Gilmer County, GA
Late afternoon at Garden Of The Gods in Colorado. This is actually two shots “photomerged” together using Adobe Photoshop.
Another sunrise shot at Hunting Island, SC
Jumping Fox in Colorado. Spotted this guy on the side of the road. He appeared to be hunting a field mouse or something very small in the weeds… I waited for him to pounce. Thrilled to get this shot!
My son, Zac, on a glacier in Alaska