Category Archives: sermon series

sermon series spiritual formation

My Thoughts About The New Series: LIFE, Week 1

August 25, 2010 – 4:19 pm

Our new series LIFE got a HUGE start with the help of the Creative Team turning our entire set into a kitchen and then our fine actors knocking the drama right out of the park.

As our actors so wonderfully asked — is this all there is to LIFE? I have a nagging feeling there is more to it than what I know and am experiencing.

Some of the nuggets said on Sunday morning…

Humanity’s search for happiness and meaning is hindered by two fatal blind spots.

First, we are spiritual beings with a body, not a physical being with a soul. Therefore, first priority should be given to our souls. More often, the physical/temporal gets priority over the spiritual/eternal.

Second, we were designed by God for intimacy. Relationships that are vertical and horizontal. It’s why the Greatest Commandment were about intimacy vertical (love God) and and horizontal (love others).

How Jesus established His ministry and His Church addresses these two blind spots. His focus on the Word of God and the use of a small group of disciples.

The decision to use a small group as basis for His Church and discipleship model was purposeful and still useful for the church today. And it’s why we do Life Groups at WHBC.

It is impossible to be mature in Christ without a small group experience. The large communal worship time is the appetizer to the main course. Live, Love, and Serve can best be incarnated in Life Groups.

Good start to what I think is going to be a fantastic series.

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sermon series

Hostage: Addiction

June 7, 2010 – 12:52 pm

Another incredible morning. Sermon will be uploaded soon (whillschurch.org). We had some MAJOR glitches behind the scenes this week. The worship center computer crashed plus the projector wouldn’t come on and had to be reset. On Thursday, it me that we needed to serve communion. Gary H. did a great job at getting us set up to do this. In the middle of dealing with all of this God reminded me that if you let it, the non-important will distract you from the vital. I’m so glad we didn’t.

Addiction comes in all sorts of sizes and packages. Some more acceptable than others, some easier to recognize than others. But all addictions have one end in mind – total dominance and control over a person. Whether it’s drugs, alcohol, porn, eating, greed, pride — the inevitable end of every addiction is to consume.

Addictions consume, control, and rob people. It becomes their god.

Paul’s journey in Romans 6,7, and 8 has great insight for addicts. I don’t do what I want to do but the evil I don’t want to do I do. The solution is to feed the “Good Wolf.” (Confused? Listen to the sermon! ha ha)

Romans 8:1 is the most scandalous verse in scripture. How ridiculous is it to say there is NO, none, nada — zip — condemnation for those IN Christ Jesus? Our bodies and emotions don’t believe this truth of scripture most of the time. Yet, this truth stands in the middle of our messes as God’s declaration of what He wants to do, WILL do and IS doing for those who place their life IN Christ. It’s nothing sort of scandalous.

It doesn’t remove our need for God AND our need for a place to share the LAST 10%. It does provide the basis for such a context – since there is no condemnation, I can BE accountable.

Next week: Anger

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sermon series

Hostage: Worry Thoughts

May 31, 2010 – 10:44 am

Another great weekend. I was pleasantly surprised with our crowd given this was Memorial Day weekend and the first real weekend of good weather around here. I remember last year, church felt like a ghost town. Not at all this year.

I was also totally surprised by how few people knew who Bear Grylls was. He is the patron saint of worrying about things that will probably never happen. I love his shows, his accent, his charitable works, and I think I’d like to hang with him — as long as I didn’t have to eat like him. I’m glad I showed the two clips of his shows because if I hadn’t – the joke/illustration would have completely been lost. Plus now our congregation knows the awesomeness that is Bear Grylls. Thank God for technology, huh?

Worry is sneaky because many of us don’t see it as a sin AND because it tricks us into thinking we have control over more than what we really do.

Worry is saying to God “I don’t think You are big enough to handle my problem.” Worry is the loss of perspective of big God is.

The weapon against worry – Matthew 6:33-34 — Seek first the Kingdom of God. Let God consume us and that will put in proper perspective our problems. God has given us a spirit of power, love, and a sound mind.

A sound mind is one that does what God asks me to do, gives to God what I cannot do, and trusts God no matter what happens.

I do think the ‘sound mind’ piece can often be missed. I have this conversation over and over and over again in all my years as a pastor — if you’ll do what you KNOW God wants you to do (His Word, serve, worship, give) it will be easier to recognize His voice when He speaks. If you NEVER do what is CLEAR that God wants us to do, you’ll NEVER recognize His voice in the more subtle ways.

Next week in Hostage is ANGER.

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sermon series spiritual formation

First Thoughts On New Series: Hostage

May 24, 2010 – 10:20 am

Wow. What a start to a series.

Yesterday we dealt with bitterness and I’m already hearing God-stories. The highlights for me:

The only solution to bitterness is forgiveness. Only those who’ve been forgiven can really give forgiveness.

And forgiveness is NOT about justifying the hurt. It’s about moving us to a place to be healed. Without this healing, we’ll end up poisoning ourselves as well as those around us.

Had the opportunity to pray with people for forgiveness and a new start.

Going to be a great series….going to see a lot of healing over the next few weeks.

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sermon series theological ramblings

Reflecting on the Broken Dreams series

May 10, 2010 – 7:41 am

Today we wrapped up Broken Dreams and the series turned out to be much ‘heavier’ than any of us anticipated. I don’t think that is a bad thing, just an observation.

Abraham’s life is a study in 2 steps forward, 1 step back (sometimes more than 1 step) kind of faith. And God is both ruthless and patient with him. He’s patient in that He doesn’t choose to take away the promise. He’s ruthless in that He allows Abraham to deal with the full measure of his choices, Lot as well.

I think more of us can relate better to Abraham than any other character in the Bible for this reason. Most of our walks look exactly like this – trust, trust, not trust. Hear the voice of God then run ahead of Him to ‘help him out’ and end up messing the whole thing up worse than it was in the beginning. Having pockets in our life where we feel this huge sense of entitlement – I deserve this – only to later realize how immature and foolish that line of thinking is.

The thing about Abraham is that he finished well. The last few years of his life — from the birth of Isaac forward, we see a man who for the most part walks by faith with God. It may have took him over 100 years to get to that point – but he did.

We (Creative Team) picked up on the theme of Broken Dreams because the more we looked at Abraham’s life, we saw all these fragments of decisions in his life – Lot, his dad, his relationship with Sarah, Ishmael. These fragments were once whole pieces of a dream of a life that he and perhaps Sarah had envisioned for themselves. And like all of us – life happens and these dreams began to break.

Yet we noticed that when God was seen as a resource – the Source – something different happened. Redemption. Healing. Refocus. When they tried to fix the brokenness on their own with their own schemes, it always ended worse than when they started.

Until Isaac. By the time God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, all of that had changed. Abraham now trusted God no matter what the outcome or directive. He knew better. He had the scars to prove God’s character. So now what normal people would call broken dreams, Abraham would call opportunity for the holy.

It was a good series and one that I hope gave our congregation some insight in how to deal with the broken dreams in the own life.

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church & emergent musings sermon series

Summer Sermon Series

May 7, 2010 – 8:40 am

We’ve got a full slate this summer. First up is Hostage. LifeChurch.tv originally ran this series and they have been super generous to let us some of their resources for this series. BREAK FREE from what keeps you hostage.

Starting July 11, The Truth About series will start. Ever wonder about the truth of the Bible? God? Jesus? Eternity? So have we.

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sermon series

Lot Rewind

April 19, 2010 – 1:01 pm

Yesterday we finished Lot’s story in our series on Broken Dreams. I can honestly say it was one of the heaviest messages I’ve preached. The story is the most bizarre in scripture but the principles that it teaches are the kind that just cut to the bone.

And God intersected my life with Francis Chan’s question “Has your relationship with God changed the way you lived?” last week. I think specifically for that message.

Broken fixes to our broken dreams often end up worse than the broken dream itself.

Lukewarm living for God has the same end result as outright defiance.

Lukewarm living makes us a joke with both are “friends” and our enemies.

We all eventually get what we really want. Lot’s wife really wanted to go back to Sodom, so God gave that to her. Lot really didn’t want to go back to God or Abraham, that’s what he got as well.

When we try to ‘fix’ our broken dreams instead of waiting on God, it’s a statement of how little we trust Him and that what He has for us on the other side of the door is bigger, better, and deeper than what we have on this side.

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sermon series theological ramblings

Broken Dreams: Life of Abraham

March 30, 2010 – 8:55 am

This Easter we will dive back into the book of Genesis focusing on the life of Abraham. Easter? Abraham? Genesis? Broken dreams? How does it all fit?

If you think about it, it all fits very nicely. We’re introduced to Abram in Genesis 12 with God giving Abram His dream for his life. That his offspring would be a great nation, that God wanted to bless the whole world through this nation. That is quite a dream.

What unfolds next in Abram’s story is a series of broken expectations, promises, and dreams. Nothing seems to go the way he thought, nothing seems to be working. It’s a life of broken dreams. Some of the brokenness was self-inflicted. Some of it was God-inflicted. All of it hurt. All of it had consequences.

It’s in the aftermath of the crash that we find out what God was up to.

And that’s the journey this series will take. I’ll connect the dots to Easter on Sunday morning.

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sermon series

Broken Dreams Trailer

March 25, 2010 – 11:02 am

Here is the new trailer for the series we will start on Sunday. Broken Dreams…

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sermon series

The Death of A Series

March 23, 2010 – 9:04 am

It’s always a bitter sweet week when we switch from one series to another. And that is this week. We just finished Sacred Rituals – an idea I stole from Mark Batterson at NCC – where we looked at our (Western Hills) rituals, the ones we think are crucial to the life of our church and transformative in the life of a believer.

Communion, worship, baptism, generosity, and last Sunday was community. A few nuggets I hope continues to transform us as we move forward…

We do the “rituals” because by doing them we are not only joining something larger than us but we are being changed by Him to look more like Him.

The problem with ‘community’ is so few of us know what it is or what it looks like INSIDE the church centered on Jesus. Part of the reason for this is that most churches don’t demand it but the biggest reason is because it’s risky, it comes with bumps and bruises and so many of us don’t want to get hurt. (Get back on the bike.)

There is no Christianity in the New Testament without community. It was not possible to follow Jesus and NOT be around a table in someone’s home somewhere.

The Church exploded because of the work of the Spirit in community, around the tables. Not programs, not personalities, not buildings, not great marketing. Love, Live, and Serve in community, around the table, in the home.

Do you have a place that you could run to in the middle of the night after breaking out of jail and they would pray with you? (See Peter’s story in Acts 12.) How much would that kind of community be worth to you? Two nights a month? Two hours a week?

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