Waypoint Omaha

In our last sermon of the Whole series, Pastor Matthew talks about how taking care of our body fits into being people who are whole. We are the house for the Holy Spirit. What does our "house" look and feel like?

We are God’s house, and we see evidence of this in 1 Corinthians 6:19–20, 1 Corinthians 3:16–17, and Hebrews 3:6. In Genesis, God creates the earth for man and woman to live on, as well as for Him to dwell there with them. It’s always been about God dwelling with and having intimate fellowship with us! Fastforward from the garden: God frees the Israelites and gives them specific instructions to construct a temple so that he could dwell among them (Exodus 40:34–38). Once we move into the New Testament and Jesus steps into the scene, He lives and fulfills everything that the Israelites couldn't, and through His death comes a new covenant and His kingdom. When he died, the veil that separated the most holy place was ripped, which was proof that God had left the temple to dwell with us. We should also accept what God has given us and make sure we take care of it. We have all been given bodies; they are all different, but we must take care of them. That can be by eating less sugar, exercising a little more, or putting a little more effort into looking nice. Walking is a great way to help with this! Our bodies are connected to our minds and emotions. In new research coming out about EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), using the left and right sides of the brain through walking, running, or drumming has been successful in treating trauma, mental health challenges, processing emotions, and bringing healing. In 1 Timothy 4:8, it talks about the word godliness, which means a reverence for God when translated from Greek. We need to be living our lives with rhythms that prioritize living for God with awe, respect, and reverence.

It’s also important that we stop using our bodies to cope and sin. Many of us have learned to cope with things by developing addictions, which harm your body and spirit. Some use pornography, food, alcohol, and more to cope. These things are killing us spiritually and physically, but God can set you free!

20% of adults are struggling with mental health today. If you don’t struggle, then you probably know someone who does, but there is hope and healing! There are different ways to receive the healing that Jesus wants for those who struggle with mental health.

We must renew our minds. There are both positive and negative thought patterns. Negative thought patterns can begin with something that happens in everyday life and then spiral down to something that you struggle with frequently.

We must renew our mind (Romans 12:2) in response to negative thought patterns. Renewing means transformation. You have the option of replacing the negative with the positive. Reading and applying scripture is imperative. Know what God thinks of you, and dwell on things that are good and lovely (Philippians 4:8). We also don’t always know the truth! It’s important to find the truth before we jump to conclusions.

We also must stop sinning. All the therapy and counseling in the world will not truly bring the restoration that God has for you if you are living in sin. It can also be helpful to find ways you can impact the kingdom. Sometimes taking the focus off ourselves aids in the healing God has for us. We give God worship, and he in turn gives back to us. When we worship him, it releases dopamine, which is the "happy chemical" in our brains.

What if you can’t renew your mind even though you’ve tried? What if you can’t stop? Sometimes medicine can be helpful! Amanda was able to start renewing her mind and unboxing the trauma she was operating in after she was able to get on medication.

God is the ultimate healer. He is not there to help us cope, but to heal us! We do need good coping mechanisms, but he never wants to stop there. He is here to give hope and healing.

In the last part of our All You Can series, Pastor Alex talks about giving all we can. Giving can be seen as one of God’s greatest gifts to his people. God enables us to live lives marked by generosity, hospitality, and the preference of others by choosing to give away our wealth, time, and attention. Throughout the centuries, the Church has been marked by its generosity and hospitality. They are a group of people that caused society to look at them and question, "Why are they the way they are?" or "What makes them different?" In Acts 2:44–47, we see how the early church operated. Hospitals, schools, and many of our systems that we have today originated from the church and people going out of their way to help those in need and improve their quality of life. We earn all we can and save all we can because we want to give all we can.
Through giving, we actively resist our current culture of self and step into the role of God’s people. The big idea is that giving is one of our greatest ways to serve and love God and people. It also actively resists evil. When you give all you can, you turn to God’s design, desire, and purpose for your life.
Giving aligns us with the Greatest Commandment. To fulfill the Greatest Commandment (Matthew 22:36–39), we must align our hearts with what really matters, and we can’t do that when we have lives that are divided and disordered. Matthew 6:24 talks about how no one can serve two masters. To truly love God and love people, we must be focused on the one true God of this world. Giving is also a powerful way to resist evil. In 1 Timothy 6:2b–10, Paul is teaching that our faith is not a means of worldly gain. Great gain is godliness with contentment. We also get to use our God-given design to work, earn, provide, and multiply for a kingdom purpose when we give. We get to be a people who put our finances through the filter of Jesus, which can lead to meeting practical needs in this world. Our world has a lot of needs, but that also means we have a lot of opportunities for us to step up and be the church.
Giving truly is one of our greatest ways to serve and love God and people. Let’s earn all we can and save all we can so that we can give all we can!

You don't want to miss this one! Join us as we dig into our All You Can series--this week's topic is SAVE all you can. In addition, we discuss why Pastor Matthew does NOT believe in the rapture and also dig into how to read your Bible better.

In this week’s sermon, Pastor Matthew continues our series of All You Can and talks about saving! We don’t save because times are rough, or we’re headed to the end of times, or even because resources will be scarce in the future. Instead of being in self-preservation mode, we should look for wisdom. We discussed several Proverbs that talk about money (Proverbs 6:6-8, 10:4-5, 12:11, and 13:11). Proverbs are meant for us to think on and chew on, as they are wisdom for our lives.
We want to save all we can because stewardship is what we are called to do. We don’t own anything! A steward is a person who manages another’s property or financial affairs. We are stewards of all we have, and when it comes to our money, it’s not really ours. Our money isn’t what takes care of us; God does. Saving also helps us not to be frivolous in our spending. Most of us spend money on things we don’t need. It has become very normal for us and what was once a convenience or even a luxury has become a need in our minds (Amazon, Starbucks, YouTube, and more). Having a goal to save can help us reduce our frivolous spending. It can be used as a tool to think through what we are spending before we spend it. Saving also puts us in a position to be generous. It’s fun to give and be generous, but we can’t give what we don’t have. Saving all the money we have puts us in a position to be generous. We save not to preserve ourselves or to live comfortably, but so we can give all we can! Think of the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30); the one that buried his talent didn’t make the money work for him (investing), but instead he feared for his life and went into self-preservation mode and buried the talent. The master rebuked him and said, "Whoever does not have, even what they have, will be taken from them." We make our money work for our master. We save so we can make it work for Him.

In this week’s kickoff sermon for our series, All You Can, Pastor Luke talks about earning all you can. This series is inspired by John Wesley. The reason why we talk about money is that the Bible talks about it often. We want to be good stewards and handle the money well that God has given us. We often say that we need more money in order to give as much money as possible to God’s purposes. We don’t actually need more money, but more wisdom! In Proverbs 2:3-4 and 3:13-14, the scriptures show us that wisdom is better and more important than money. Wealth in and of itself is not bad, but it can lead to problems if not accompanied by wisdom.
Wealth without wisdom is four things: a trap (1 Timothy 6:9); leads to unfruitfulness (Mark 4:19); can lead to greed (Ecclesiastes 5:10); and will become idolatry (1 Timothy 6:10). Again, wealth is not a sin, but wisdom plans for wealth as it has the end in mind. Wisdom also sees work as a calling and not a curse. We spend most of our waking hours working and most of us wrestle with the thought, "Am I operating in my calling? Is what I’m doing even have to do with my calling?" For Christians, work is no longer a curse, and our callings are much broader than we often realize. It was originally created, then corrupted by sin, redeemed by Jesus, and we are now empowered to make a difference in the world! How we redeem it is by reframing how we look at work with God’s vision. We are called to be faithful wherever he places us. A calling means that someone has called you to do something. How we work says a lot about who we are and what we stand for. Our identity isn’t tied to our jobs but to Jesus, which means our work (whatever it is) should be a display of our faith and, in turn, create fruitfulness (Proverbs 22:29)!