Lexical Light

I Have Faith For This

Here's  a quick recap  of what @RobKoke shared @shorelineatx Sunday 10/24/2010. (Filtered with Lexical Light.)

The one thing Pastor Rob wanted people to remember and remind themselves of:

"I have all the faith I need for this because God has given to each person a measure of faith."

What is faith?

Basically, PRob said faith is knowledge and an act of will. Knowledge that God exists, the God loves me and other scriptural truths.

(My side note:  Where can that knowledge be found? In the B-I-B-L-E.  You can have faith in the wrong knowledge. Make sure you look for it in the right place. Don't go lookin' for truth in all the wrong places.)

The Greek word for faith is pisti, which means persuaded in away that leads to reliance. So, it's not just knowing, but it's relying.

That's my takeway from this week's message.  Listen to all of it via podcast or pick up the CD at the Shoreline bookstore.

How can you make this truth stick? Here are a few ideas:

1)  Read the verses below during the week.

2) Remind yourself and others of the truth by updating your FB status or Twitter feed with #ihavefaithforthis, with or without mention of what you have faith for.  (Be wise about what you share online!)

3) Talk to God...and Jesus...and the Holy Spirit.

Be blessed.

Selected verses referenced:

(Listen to the podcast or the CD to hear all the verses and biblical examples used.)

Luke 22:32 - Jesus could have prayed lots of things, but He chose to pray that Simon's faith would not fail.

Romans 12:3  -  God gives to all the capacity to believe. 

Matthew 17:20 -  Faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains.

Hebrews 11 - What happend in lives of people with faith.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Love, Value, Behavior

"Love determines value. Value determines behavior." -P. Rob

That's what I'm carrying around  from Sunday's sermon, contemplating that truth in two ways:

1) God's love for me

    P. Rob's one challenge to us was to pray that we would know how much God loves us. I'm praying I will get that down in my gizzard. (That's way down there, by the way.) Of course I know that on many levels, but there are more levels to go. 

2) my love for others, esp. family

    Does my behavior reflect love for my peeps? What behavior in my kiddos is rooted in not feeling loved?

Just wanted to share what I took away from church this week.  Do you have something you're digesting?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Obey Your Thirst

Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, "I am thirsty." ---John 19:28

John 19:28 was the springboard for another installment of Pastor Earl McClellan's series "The Last 7 Sayings of Christ."

Because it's so late (Alexa wants me to let her know what time I get in bed tonight. Go figure.) this is the quick version of "What I Learned at Church." This is an incomplete recap of the sermon. Here the whole thing here. I'm just focusing on the take away value.

Basically, obey my thirst. My thirst for Jesus, that is. Pastor Earl started w/Jesus' vulnerability in admitting a need and ended with how we thirst for Jesus. If I believe in Him, streams of living water will flow through me. Don't seek to quench my soul's thirst with books, people, etc. When I feel my soul getting dry, I need to remember to look to the stream of living water flowing through me.

Huh? How do I do that? It goes back to the verse God gave me earlier this year, Matthew 11: 27-29., where Jesus said to come to Him and He will give me rest, plus some.

Who Loves Best?

"Those that love the best are the best loved." Pastor Rob Koke

"We love Him because He first loved us." 1 John 4:19

Using the Parable of the Lost Son (Luke 15:11-32) as a springboard, Pastor Rob exhorted us to get a fresh vision of the gift God has given us in Jesus. How many of us are like the older brother, in the midst of our Father's blessings and provision, yet we are not loving well?

How can we learn to love well? 
*Let God heal our hurt and fill our hearts (Didn't catch the Isaiah verse.)
*Let God's love fill my heart with love. Paul prayed the Ephesians would understand the depth, width and breadth of Christ's love. We can pray that, too. (Eph. 3:16-19)
*Let God's love lead the way in wisdom. In Eph. 3 we learn about the fuel of God's love. In Eph. 4,5,6 Paul breaks it down into practical  applications of love.   

Pastor's closing challenge to us was to receive God's love for healing, fuel, and wisdom. I want to know God's love well so I can love well.

How do we know God loves us? It takes faith. More on that in tomorrow's post.

Uncomfortable

Pastor Earl McClellan taught Part 2 of his series, The 7 Last Sayings of Christ. (You can hear it online here.)

In a fitting follow up to Easter weekend, he highlighted what Jesus said on the cross, as He was being crucified:

"Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." Luke 23:24

As Pastor Earl pointed out, it's one thing to read it in a book, but it's another thing to do it. Think of something horrible happening to someone you love and then think about forgiving the person who hurt them. That's uncomfortable. Hopefully, we won't have to endure that kind of pain. It does put in perspective the minor offenses we get riled up about.

Another quick thing that spoke to me - I walked in during P. Rob talking before the offering. He was talking about being able to receive from Jesus, using the Mary and Martha story. (Luke 10:38-42) There's no way anyone would confuse me with Martha, but that doesn't mean I'm always sitting at the Lord's feet and listening to Him. That will be on my heart during my closet time - being able to sit at the Lord's feet and listen to Him.

God Loves Me

This year our church did a fairly traditional Easter drama re-enacting the crucifixion of Christ. Seeing His suffering portrayed is always touching. That's not what I'll be thinking about this week, though.

What I'll be dwelling on for a while, to really absorb it, is how much God loves me. Pastor pointed out how we often get hung up on our faith, on how we need to love God more, etc. He challenged us to look to how much God loves us, not how much we love Him. A person who is loved well will love well.

Here's Paul's prayer for the Ephesians and my prayer for myself and others:

"For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." Ephesians 3:14-19

Jesus loves me, this I know. Now I want have the power to grasp the width, length, height, and depth of that love so I can be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

7 Keys to Health from Dr. Jordan Rubin

Dr. Jordan Rubin made a return appearance tonight because his visit in January was cut short due to the Austin Ice Storm 2007. (Cue dramatic music.)

Dr. Rubin is the author of The Maker's Diet, The Great Physician's Rx for Health and Wellness and other books.

Our pastor's wife has a passion for health, so I was familiar with some of Dr. Rubin's teachings. Some of it has rubbed of on me, but not enough, so I was open to hearing Dr. Rubin. He was an interesting speaker with an amazing story.  Hearing him reminded me Annie's journey at Chief Executive Mom.

The immediate take away from tonight (besides the book) will be to stop using Splenda and be more diligent in not drinking Diet Coke. (I don't drink a lot, but I don't need any.) Also, a renewed effort. for everyone at home, to eat more fruits & veggies.

When I took the kiddos shopping the other day, the kept asking for stuff. I had to remind them that ideally, we shouldn't eat most of the things in the grocery store. Crazy.

It's not like I don't like healthy food. If I had a personal chef/shopper, I would be happy to eat what they prepare. However, since that's not going to happen, I'll have to utilize what I have (including a husband who cooks) to eat well.

Another key to health was getting enough sleep, especially getting to bed before midnight. Because late nights can lead to rambling blog posts. Oh, yeah, your body needs the sleep. That, I can do.  That I will do.

Truth in Bloggin disclosure: I really posted this at 1:06 am on Thursday morning, but I changed the post time to 11:59 Wednesday so as not to break my "consecutive post streak" for March. I would've posted earlier if not for a late night at church & tuckin' in kiddos, etc. Yada-Yada-Yada   I feel the need, the need for sleep.

Ruined, Part 2

Pastor Earl hit it again, tonight. Okay, God hit it again, using Pastor Earl.

In Part 2 of his “Ruined” series, he taught about Gideon from Judges 6, 7, and 8. Gideon moved from hesitance to victory to pursuit. I was challenged to do the same with the gifts, calling, etc. God has given me. Don’t go back and forth between victory and hesitance. Move forward. God hasn’t equipped me for my own sake, but for His glory. Pastor Earl talked, quite modestly, about his own gifts, which often happen to land him in the forefront of things. He has learned to roll with them and use them to glorify God.

One of his gifts is oration. He is a preacher. You can benefit from his gift by downloading the podcasts of his sermons here.

You can also go to iTunes and find Shoreline.

A little connection note: A few months ago I watched a History Channel show about war in the Bible. The segment about Gideon explained how his maneuver became a military tactic used by British Major Charles Wingate and his “Gideon Force” in World War II. (See the Wikipedia entry here.)

Lessons from a pastor and a billinoaire

What do my pastor and Mark Cuban have in common? God recently used both of them to teach me something similar.

In his December 11th blog post Cuban gave some pointers on being successful at business, a few of them are relevant to some of my challenges over the past few years.

"Win the Battles you are in before you take on new battles....To use a sports metaphor, get the fundamentals right and then add to your fundamental skills before you try to take on the trick shots."

That resonated with me because there are some basic life management skills I need to work on, things I want to put on auto pilot so I can enjoy other things. That's part of my focus this year. Of course, everything doesn't have to be perfect before I start something new,  (If that were true we would only have one kid!)  but there are core competencies I need to get a grip on.

As Cuban said, the next rule is an extension of the last one.

"You can drown in opportunity...Every entrepreneur's mind goes crazy with the new and exciting things they can do beyond the new and exciting things they are already doing. The risk is that you can drown in all these opportunities."

I think you could substitute "creative person" for entrepreneur. I want to learn to manage all the ideas moshing in my head. What do I do with them? For a while that aspect of my brain seemed dormant. (I'm sure birthing four kids in 4.5 years had something to do with it.) When I began blogging, my reignited creative brain cells brought different opportunities. I committed to too many and couldn't fulfill them all. Back in the fall, my strong handsome husband told me just because the opportunity was there, didn't mean I had to take it. Now, I've put myself on hiatus from any new  undertakings until at least June, maybe longer. 

Now for the "Pastor Rob" part.

On New Year's Eve morning, Pastor Rob preached on GPS - God's Positioning System. (Listen to the podcast here. GPS, Part 1 - The Power of Vision) Here are the points of his message that smacked me in the head:

Point 2 - Own it. When God asks what I did with the vision & resources He gave me, what will I say? What will He say? (This resonates with Matthew 25 being dropped in my heart last year.)

Point 3 - Live it.  Sounds obvious, but that has been a challenge for SHH & I. We're great planners, vision writers, etc., but get hung up on getting it done. This was just another reminder to actually do something with all the plans we have.

Point 4 - Share it. On this one it was the actually the qualifier P. Rob put on the point that convicted me. He asked us not to share our vision until we've actually owned it & lived it for a while. I'm so guilty of doing the other, probably because I'm a teacher. Of course, there are times we need to share the vision with others who are part of it, but for me, there are often things I need to own & live before I start yammering about them.

The quick recap:

fundamentals ~~ just say no ~~ own it ~~ live it.

(Truth in blogging disclosure: I didn't actually learn about this in church today, but last week. My take away from today's service was to look for ways to love on people. Again, sounds obvious, but that's how it goes.)

Church is Good

The first Wednesday of each month we celebrate communion with an "all praise & worship"* service.  Tonight it was just me & the girls plus two of their friends. Strong handsome husband worked a little late and Gameboy was spending the night w/a friend.

We attend a relatively large non-denominational church with a big sanctuary. On communion night we sit at the top of the seats so the girls can dance w/out distracting too many people. They have to stay in our section and watch out for people walking by. Dancing is okay, but playing is not. They're learning the difference.

As you may have guessed, our church is fairly expressive in praise & worship, though we may seem too structured, etc. for some non-denoms. We have cool lights and a rockin' band. Those things aren't necessary to worship God, but they make it fun. 

So what's the  point of this post? Simply to say that the girls & I enjoyed worshiping God tonight.

*We still have prayer ministry time in mid-service, the video announcement and offering. Other than that, it's all music.