When to Say No - Temptation

Statistically speaking, if you are the first-born in your family, you have a harder time saying no than your siblings do. Dr. James Dobson surmised years ago that it’s because the oldest are pleasers who aren’t necessarily craving approval, they just don’t want to get it wrong. Their need to be right even trumps their desire to get what they want, and getting what we want is something that is inherent in all of us. Have you ever wondered why our nature or bent is the way it is with us? Then we may have a friend that was raised pretty much the way we were that has significantly more or less fear or apprehension, or more or less confidence than us.

I realize that we all aren’t first born people, yet I believe the vast majority of our culture has a hard time saying no, not to mention the discernment of what to say no to and what to allow through our mental firewall or to align ourselves with. Here’s something else I have found to be true: The things that we end up saying yes or no to are determined by our value system, the things we see as significant above all else. That value system has to be shaped by something or someone and that someone is usually our parents, followed by teachers, coaches, pastors, friends and finally the general culture. If that’s true, then there has to be standards, gauges, filters that we measure those values-shaped yes or no decisions against.

I invite you to join us this coming Sunday as we unpack When to Say No by looking at the subject of Temptation. We’re going to see in the next few weeks how important it is that we use the Word of God as the standard by which we measure those pivotal yes or no decisions we have to make in life, and I’m not talking about the ones like, “Do you want fries with that?”

To: You From: Bethlehem – Grace

Clark Griswold says to his family gathered around the Christmas dinner table in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, “Since this is Aunt Bethany’s 80th Christmas, I think she should lead us in the saying of grace.” You probably know the rest — “Grace? She passed away 30 years ago.” “They want you to say grace... the B-L-E-S-S-I-N-G!”

To some, many in fact, that’s all they know of grace. It’s something someone says before a meal, thanking God for the food and for their blessings. Beyond that, asking them to define grace can prompt a thousand different opinions, or none at all.

Dinner table grace and biblical grace however, are two very different things. And, while you may not think of Christmas and grace as walking together, they are indeed undoubtedly linked. Without the birth of Christ, grace doesn’t enter the world and without the grace of God the Father, Christmas doesn’t happen. So you see, grace is all over the Christmas story.

To: You From: Bethlehem – Worship

As a young boy, my dad owned a grocery store, at which we were expected to go and help work during the summers or whatever times school wasn’t going on. Early one summer dad’s Dr. Pepper rep brought in a promotional poster that had a Rawlings baseball glove as the prize for selling a certain amount of Dr. Pepper drinks over the summer months. Well, having never owned anything but a cheap vinyl glove up to that point, I had my eyes and dreams set on getting that baseball glove. So, everybody that came in to eat lunch at the snack bar would be offered an “ice cold Dr. Pepper” by me and, by summer’s end, I was the proud owner of a genuine leather, Brooks Robinson autograph model Rawlings, with the basket web pocket! Man, what a glove! I sat it in a special place on a shelf in the basement and would go down there every day to put it on my hand and admire it, wanting to keep it in pristine condition. Not proud to admit it... but I worshipped that glove. That next spring as baseball tryouts were being held, I reluctantly grabbed my Rawlings and headed to tryouts. Here’s what I discovered about that glove. The thing I worshipped sitting on that basement shelf in undisturbed, perfect condition, I grew to appreciate even more after using it and getting it loosened up and broken in.

A relationship with Christ is a lot like that, especially at Christmas time. If all we learn to worship is Ricky Bobby’s “tiny little baby Jesus” in the manger, and never put our faith in Him into practice in and through our lives every day, we’ll never fully learn to appreciate all that He is and does. He will always stay more mystical than practical to us. However, when we take Him down off the basement shelf, oil Him up and put Him into practice, He will astonish us with His power, astound us with His love, and amaze us with His grace. And the key to unlocking all of that? God-centered, rightly-focused Worship.

To: You From: Bethlehem – The Face of God

A lot of commercially available products have chosen to have a spokesperson make the pitch for them in advertising their product or service, to give it “a face.” For Lincoln automobiles, their “face” is Matthew McConaughey. Marlo Thomas has long been the face of St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital. Peyton Manning is the face of Nationwide Insurance... and Subway... and Tennova Hospitals. Shaquille O’Neal is the face of Papa John’s Pizza and Icy Hot. The obvious goal of these companies is to get people to think, “Hey, if Matthew is driving one, or if Peyton is watching it, eating it, or using it, it’s probably worth me checking it out.” The point is to help consumers make a connection to your product or brand and for those companies it’s working or they wouldn’t still be using those folks.

Have you ever wondered what the face of God looks like? Is it recognizable or so radiant and full of glory that you can’t even see it? Jesus said in John 14 that “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” So is the face of Jesus the face of God? If so, what does He look like? Mary got the very first look into the face and the eyes of Jesus. Wouldn’t you like to have been there to see what she saw and experienced in that first moment, that first encounter that anyone would have with God in the flesh, in the human form of an infant? The Bible teaches us that every Christian will eventually have a face to face encounter on the other side of this life, but what about here and now? Is it possible to get a glimpse of the face of Jesus, and if so, how do we do that? Because, looking at the Scripture, one thing stands out, no one has a face to face encounter with Jesus and leaves the same.

To: You From: Bethlehem – Pride & Humility

A number of years ago, I can recall a conversation with my then 5 or 6 year old daughter Hannah about pride and humility. We were watching a football game on television and I commented on a player’s celebration after scoring a touchdown by calling him a “hot dog.” She promptly asks, “Why did you call him a hot dog, Daddy?” To which I reply, “Oh, he’s just in love with himself.” Which then prompts the question, “What do you mean by that?” I finally stopped and looked at her and said, “He’s got too much pride.” To which she replies, “Oh, okay.”

A week or two later we’re watching another game and the same thing happens - a guy scores and goes into his “I’m the greatest one to ever play the game” dance, at which she looks up at me and asks, “Too much pride, Daddy?” “Yup, too much pride, honey.” Now that was a rather benign lesson in pride & humility for her, but it made the point nonetheless.

A lot of things go into a person’s ability to live a life of humility, while being proud of the right things at the same time. How we were raised for example: If we were/are the center of the universe in our home, humility can be a challenge. If we were/are driven, accomplished, successful, humility can be a challenge. If we feel like we’ve gotten a raw deal and think that life owes us something, humility can be a challenge. In short, life circumstances can position us more or less favorably when it comes to what we do with pride & humility, especially in the “everybody deserves a trophy” world in which we live. And just as certain circumstances can tend to make us prideful, others can humble us pretty quickly. Such is life, as my mom used to say.

Some incredibly powerful lessons in Pride & Humility can be learned from King Herod and from the Magi in the story of Christ’s birth. They couldn’t have been more different in how they saw it.

Reclaiming an Attitude of Gratitude – Thanksgiving

I’m grateful for a lot of things in my life and consider myself an extremely blessed man. But next to my relationship with Jesus, I am most grateful for the wife, partner and friend that God brought into my life when we were in high school. In fact, I was even grateful for her back then. You see, I enrolled in a music theory class I had absolutely no business being in just because she had signed up for it and I just wanted to get to know her. I would sit next to her every day in class and was very thankful that she would make the answers to the assignments and tests “available” to me. Otherwise I would have never passed that class or at best would have squeaked by with a D. From those days to these days, she has always had a knack for seeing what I needed even before I did and has done her best to either meet it herself or at least make sure I knew about it and was ready for it. What a rich blessing she has been and still is, and not just to me but to our family and friends also.

What or who are you most grateful for? You need to know that gratitude is the key that unlocks the door to contentment and without it, real contentment will always be just beyond our reach. As we’ll see on Sunday, Gratitude is all about seeing the role that our attitude plays in order to cement a lifestyle of contentment in place for us. We also need to understand that our enemy the devil doesn’t want us knowing these things because he wants to keep us at the center of our universe, thinking that everything and everyone revolves around our needs and wants. And that kind of thinking can never occupy the same space with gratitude. So let me ask you, are you content regardless of what’s in your bank account, or what you drive, or where you live or work, or regardless of the outcome of the next election? Real contentment doesn’t hinge on those things, it runs in a much deeper place than that and the key to having it and living it is an Attitude of Gratitude.

3 Guys, 3 Lessons, 1 Church – The Johns

In his book, Forgotten God - Reversing our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit, pastor and author Francis Chan writes in the final chapter about the idea of Supernatural Church - a church really being attuned to and following the leadership of the Holy Spirit. He probes and prods the reader along into examining our beliefs, our motivations, our expectations when it comes to church, and more specifically the church we attend or call home. Have you ever considered what motivates you to attend church or what you expect when you get there? Do you go to church to give or receive, or both? Should we leave feeling better about ourselves, or worse? Should we expect to be informed or inspired, or both? Should my takeaway from church be dependent upon the people up front doing the leading/facilitating/prompting? Do we have a responsibility when we come about what happens there and/or what we leave with? Are we supposed to let the Spirit out when we come to church or let Him in?

These are fascinating questions that there are indeed answers to, but the answers depend on two or three things; 1) What has our experience at church been in the past and was that experience in line with the scriptures? 2) What is our view of the Holy Spirit’s role and our roles when it comes to church? 3) What kind of attitude have I brought with me when I walk in the door?

This Sunday’s wrap up to our study through “The Johns” looks at three guys in the same church, all three coming with very different attitudes, and how those attitudes affect everything else. Attitude affects every arena of life and always leaves something behind, good or bad.