Fourth Avenue Church

An excerpt from Rick Atchley’s Podcast Unhindered Courage below.  Today’s podcast continues the Church on Fire series.

My name is Rick. Let me get something settled right now.  I am not speaking in tongues.  This is called a Texas accent.  Its the only one I have.  Now, Texas and Tennessee are cousins and so most of you can understand me.  If you are from the coast and you cannot.  Find someone with the gift of interpretation and they will help you out.  Because I cannot do anything about how I sound.  I am delighted to be with you.

I have been at Fourth with you before.  Several times in fact.  It has been a long time.  I’m sure you can tell that I have changed.  I’m sure some of you have changed too.  There’s not a lot we can do about that.  I remember in my 20s I would play basketball all night long.  I’d get up the next day and go again.  Then I hit my thirties and I’d play basketball all night long.  I’d get up the next day and I would be sore.  Then I hit my forties.  I’d get up in the morning and I’d be sore.  I didn’t do anything last night.  And now I’m at that stage of life where I can injure myself sleeping.  Some of you understand what I’m talking about.  I can wake up with a crick in my neck.  I have hurt myself going to bed.

What hasn’t diminished is my love of the word God and the church.  And so I’m delighted to bring the word to you today.  You can finds Acts Chapter 27 in your Bibles.  We will be there in just a moment.  I want to start with a strange question.  Have you ever been on a sinking boat?  I have.  Because I was a young boy.  My father took me and my brother fishing in East Texas.  In the middle of a lake, in an old wooden boat.  And it began to take on water.  And it sank.  For about thirty minutes I stayed afloat in a frigid lake around Thanksgiving time waiting for someone to rescue us. That explains why I have an irrational fear of boats.  I have two irrational fears in my life.  The other is snakes.

In conclusion – Thank you for listening to Unhindered Courage!  For more podcasts such as More Church on Fire, see our media page.

Click to listen or see the excerpt from Is It All About Me?

Today we are going to continue our series in Acts.  That we are calling Church on Fire.  When Kyle called me a couple of months ago, he said hey I’m going to be taking a study break.  Here’s a couple of scriptures you might want to think about. So he gave me a choice.  The ones that I picked are actually from two different chapters in Acts.  Act 12 and Acts 14.  And they are similar stories but different responses.  Ok.  Its not something that we have preached on a lot.  But it is really really interesting stories.  I’ve enjoyed studying and preparing for that.  And really the goal for that, is to answer the question “Is It All About Me?”.

Now the answer to that question seems pretty obvious doesn’t it?  Now if you are an enfant or a man the answer to that question is probably regularly yeah yeah it is all about me.  Uh I know just personally in my life I’m challenged on a pretty regular basis with trying to make it all about me.  Selfishness, pride, arrogance, and wanting to have power.  I’ll admit those are all things I have struggled with in the past.  Unfortunately I think we all do.  Pretty common human traits.  We take pride in a lot of different things.  Our education, our wealth, our possessions, our standing in the community, our standing in the church, our jobs.  And the list goes on and on and on.  And when you are driven by those characteristics – pride, selfishness, search for power – you act in some awful ways.  You do some awful things.  Here are some thing’s that I have done.  Manipulate people.  Manipulate situations.

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