Patricia

Pixels: Who’s the Villain, Who’s the Hero?

July 27, 2015 by Patricia Leave a Comment

God on Film: Pixels
Who’s the Villain, Who’s the Hero?
Sycamore Creek Church
July 26/27, 2015
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

It’s a good day to be here as we continue our series God on Film. Each week we’re looking at a different summer blockbuster and exploring a theme or two in that movie. Today’s movie: Pixels. Suspend your sense of disbelief for a moment and enjoy the basic plotline. America sends a rocket into space in the 1980s that includes several cultural artifacts including sample video games. Aliens intercept this rocket and instead of taking it as a sign of friendship, take it as a declaration of war. They mimic the video game characters and come back to earth ready to do some damage, video game style. One of those video game characters that comes back to Earth is Pacman. Of course, Pacman is the good guy in the video game and the ghosts are the bad guys, but in this plot line, Pacman is the bad guy and the only ones who can defeat him are the ghosts.

The Problem
Here’s the problem I want to deal with today: We think we’ll always be who we are right now. If we’re the good guy doing good stuff now, we’ll always be the good guy. If we’re the bad guy now doing bad stuff, then we’ll always be the bad guy doing bad stuff. You think that what you do is who you are and who you will always be. What you are doing is a reflection of who you are, but it is not who you must always be or what you will always do. You see this mistaken thinking in the parable of the turtle and scorpion.

A turtle was swimming up a river when a scorpion on the river’s edge got its attention and asked for a ride on the shell of the turtle. The turtle said, “No way. If I let you climb on my back, you’ll sting me and I’ll die.” The scorpion replied, “Why would I do that? Then we’d both die.” The turtle realized the logic in the scorpion’s response and agreed to let the scorpion climb on its back. Halfway across the river, the turtle felt the sharp sting of the scorpion on its neck. The turtled shouted out, “Why did you do that? Now we’ll both die!” “It’s who I am. I’m a scorpion. I sting,” replied the scorpion as they both began to sink into the water.

Granted, there is some truth in this parable. The most likely predictor of future behavior is past behavior. But this is not always true. I find myself right now having a hard time not raising my voice with my kids. It’s hard not to do so. Sometimes I feel like I will never change. Likewise, I’m a thinker and debater. My tendency is to tell you what I think about what you’ve said before really taking the time to understand it. I’ve been talking to a friend about this and seeking to change. One suggestion was to ask lots of questions before I jump in with my own thoughts. But it’s so hard to remember to ask questions before making statements. Sometimes I feel despair that I will ever be able to change.

These may not be your specific issues but maybe you’re not a good student and you feel like you never will be a good student. Or you have always been overweight and you feel like you’ll never be a healthy weight. Or you’ve never found a romantic partner and you fear you’ll be single your whole life. Or you feel far from God and despair that you will never be or feel close to God.

Today I want to look at a story in the Bible of a guy who no one thought would ever change. But when he encountered Jesus something amazing happened. This guy is called “Saul.” But that was his name before he met Jesus. After he met Jesus he became known as “Paul.” We’ll read the story as it’s told in the ninth chapter of the book of Acts in the Bible.

Meanwhile, Saul was uttering threats with every breath and was eager to kill the Lord’s followers.
~Acts 9:1 NLT

Whoa! This guy Saul was out to KILL anyone who followed Jesus. He was not just out to do it, he was eager to kill them! Saul is essentially a terrorist. I don’t think that’s too strong of a word to describe Saul. He’s essentially like a member of Isis. Now when have you gotten up in the morning and checked the news and seen a story about an Isis fighter and thought, “Man, this guy seems like a guy that God could really use in some big ways.” Never.

Saul reminds me of a guy named Ken in High School. Ken was a terror to all of us who were seeking to follow Jesus. He terrorized us. He would shout us down in the hall. He would corner you and debate you in front of everyone walking by. And he was good at debate. He was on the debate team! I’m not sure how many of these stories that got told about Ken were true, but that’s how we felt as Christians. We never went to school thinking, “Wow, Ken is really somebody that God could use.” While Ken never threatened violence, Ken was like Saul for those of us who encountered him in the hallways of Ben Davis High School.

So he went to the high priest. He requested letters addressed to the synagogues in Damascus, asking for their cooperation in the arrest of any followers of the Way he found there. He wanted to bring them—both men and women—back to Jerusalem in chains.
~Acts 9:1-2 NLT

Notice that it wasn’t just Saul here. It was the whole religious system. The High Priest of the temple was involved. Not just one of the underling priests, but the top dog priest. Sometimes it’s not just a person that seems like they’ll never change, but it’s a whole system. And sometimes that system is the religious system. Will the church ever change?

I think it’s interesting to hear how Christians were referred to at this point in the history of the church. They’re not actually called Christians. They’re called “followers of the Way.” What way? Jesus’ way. They aren’t so much an institution at this point or a religious group, but followers of a particular way or set of practices or way of looking at the world that Jesus taught and lived. It’s important for us Christians to remember that first and foremost we’re not an unchangeable inflexible institution but a community of people following a way that Jesus showed us to see and live. But Saul was following a different way…

As he was approaching Damascus on this mission,
~Acts 9:3 NLT

Saul is a man on a mission. He’s executing a military style strike on Christians. But something happens that he doesn’t have a contingency plan for.

A light from heaven suddenly shone down around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul! Saul! Why are you persecuting me?”
“Who are you, lord?” Saul asked.
And the voice replied, “I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting! Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”
~Acts 9:3-6 NLT

Saul encounters Jesus, and Jesus sees something different in Saul. Something that those who are being persecuted could never see in Saul. Jesus saw Paul, the first missionary of the church and the future writer of many of the books in the Bible. But right now Saul’s group was without words.

The men with Saul stood speechless, for they heard the sound of someone’s voice but saw no one!
~Acts 9:7 NLT

Saul, the prolific writer of so many books of the Bible is speechless. He is likely quite afraid. And we know that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10). Paul’s encounter with Jesus leaves him with a wound.

Saul picked himself up off the ground, but when he opened his eyes he was blind. So his companions led him by the hand to Damascus. He remained there blind for three days and did not eat or drink.
~Acts 9:8-9 NLT

Saul’s encounter with Jesus creates not just a physical wound but an existential would. Saul is in crisis. He can no longer see. He can’t see who he is. He can’t see the world around him. He can’t see what he should do. He is blind.

Now there was a believer in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord spoke to him in a vision, calling, “Ananias!”
“Yes, Lord!” he replied.
~Acts 9:10 NLT

God works directly with Saul but he also works indirectly through people to bring about transformation. In this case God is about to work through a man named Ananias. Imagine Ananias’ reaction: “God, you want me to go to WHO?!” This must seem absolutely crazy to Ananias, but he responds saying, “Yes, Lord!”

The Lord said, “Go over to Straight Street, to the house of Judas.
~Acts 9:11 NLT

So God tells Ananias to go to the “house of Judas.” This isn’t the same Judas that betrayed Jesus, but it does remind us of that Judas. While Judas began on the path of following Jesus, he ended on the path of betrayal. But while Saul began on the path of betrayal, he ended on the path of following Jesus as Paul. His life is transformed. This brings us to the point of this entire message: it doesn’t matter where you began, it’s how you end that matters. Judas began strong but ended in betrayal. Saul began with betrayal but ended strong as a changed man with a new name: Paul. It’s not where you begin that matters. What really matters is where you end.

When you get there, ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul. He is praying to me right now. I have shown him a vision of a man named Ananias coming in and laying hands on him so he can see again.”
~Acts 9:12 NLT

The laying on of hands is a symbol in the Bible of reminding you who you really are. Saul is reminded that he is not the persecutor that he thinks he is. He’s something more. Something deeper. But he must be transformed into that something more. There is at this point a physical and spiritual healing in Saul’s life.

Transformation and laying on of hands also happens in baptism. There is the story told of a machinist at Ford who begins to follow Jesus and is baptized. He realizes that he has stolen a lot of tools from his job, and this behavior is inconsistent with following Jesus. So he decides that he must bring the tools back to his boss and confess what he’s done. He explains that he’s been baptized and his life has been transformed. The foreman is so impressed with the behavior of his employee that he sends a telegram immediately to Henry Ford who is visiting a plant overseas. Ford responds, “Dam up the Detroit River and have them all baptized.”

The point here is that an encounter with Jesus and following Jesus changes and transforms your life because it changes who you are.

Another well known leader in the business world is Max DePree. Max DePree’s dad was the founder of Herman Miller and Max was the CEO during the 70s and the 80s. His leadership website points out that under his guidance, Herman Miller “became one of the most profitable Fortune 500 companies. From 1975 – 1986 it ranked seventh in terms of total return to investors.” The site continues by adding that “He is readily forthcoming about his commitment to Christianity, and it is his theology, more than anything else, that shaped who he is and the way he lives.” DePree was well known for running his business with employee participation and involvement in decisions. He advocated the “silver parachute” (in contrast to the CEO “golden parachute”) in which terminated employees were given a severance to help transition. DePree says in his book on leadership, “In the end, it is important to remember that we cannot become what we need to be, by remaining what we are” (Leadership Is an Art).

When we encounter Jesus and who we are is transformed, what we do is transformed too. Saul is able to see again. Who he is changes what he does. He sees the world anew. He has a new vision, imagination, and mission.

Three Pixels of Transformation
Pixel – noun pix·el \?pik-s?l, –?sel\
Any of the small discrete elements that together constitute an image.

So what does this mean for you? A pixel is a small element of a bigger image and today I’ve got three pixels of transformation for you. First, transformation is both a personal and corporate encounter with Jesus. Paul has a very personal encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. We may not all have a “Damascus Road” experience with Jesus exactly like Paul’s, but we all need some kind of personal encounter with Jesus. Just believing in an “idea” won’t keep us through the storms of life. We give not only our mind/intellect but also our heart (that deepest part of our selves). Sometimes this is emotional, but often times it’s not. And yet Jesus has an invitation for all of us:

“Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends.
~Revelation 3:20 NLT

Jesus personally invites us to a friendship with him. But that encounter is also corporate. Saul has to go to Ananias first. You need someone who believes in you as much as Jesus does. You need someone who guides you when you feel blind. You need someone who lays hands on you and reminds you who you REALLY ARE. These may not all be the same person. They are more likely multiple people in a community of faith. We all need a personal and corporate encounter with Jesus.

Second, we each need to be patient with the transformation process. You don’t start training for a marathon by running 26 miles. When you start training, you can’t run a marathon. No real skill ever happens overnight. It takes time. Be patient.

Third, don’t give up the ghost. In the movie Pixels, pacman is the bad guy and the ghosts, the original bad guys in the video game, are the good guys in the movie! Don’t give up on the ghosts in your life. Don’t give up on the “bad guy” who you think will never be transformed. God can work in anyone’s life and bring transformation. Remember, it’s not where you start that matters, it’s where you end. You may think that radical transformations like Saul to Paul just don’t happen anymore, but you would be wrong. They do. Maybe one of the most dramatic in recent times is the story of Johnny Lee Clary. Clary was a professional wrestler who eventually became the Imperial Wizard of the KKK. After leading the KKK he ended up encountering Jesus and leaving the KKK. He became a preacher in the black denomination, Church of God in Christ (COGIC). Here’s his story:

Jesus stands at the door of each of our lives inviting us to follow him. He doesn’t care where you started. What he is concerned with is where you end:

Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends.
~Revelation 3:20 NLT

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Change, transormation

Ant Man – Are You Too Small for the Challenge?

July 22, 2015 by Patricia Leave a Comment

Ant Man – Are You Too Small for the Challenge?
Sycamore Creek Church
July 19/20, 2015
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

So who has actually heard of “Ant Man” before just now? I had never heard of him as a super hero before looking at the movies coming out this summer. He isn’t the biggest super hero out there. In fact, he’s kind of, well, small. But he packs a big punch!

It’s a good day to be here at SCC because we’re continuing in our summer series, God on Film. Each week we’re looking at a different summer blockbuster. We’re exploring one theme in each movie and looking at what the Bible has to say about that theme. Today’s it’s Antman and the question is: are you too small for the challenges you face?

What BIG challenges are you facing today? Maybe you feel like one person standing against injustice. Or you’ve got too many obstacles in the way of your goals. Or you think your relationship is too far gone. Or you’ve got no hope for a job or a child is in trouble. Maybe you’re struggling with a BIG powerful addiction. Or you feel small and isolated and alone. Or there’s BIG criticism you’re facing and feeling smaller and smaller with every critical comment. Maybe at work you’ve got too much to do and not enough time or employees. Or at church you’ve got too much to do and not enough volunteers. Or financially there are too many bills and not enough money. Or maybe you’re on the opposite side and you’ve got too many opportunities and not enough money to take all of them. Maybe today you know too many people around you who need financial help and you don’t have enough money to help everyone. Or your bad habits are ingrained in BIG ruts. Maybe like at my house there’s too much noise and not enough peace and quiet. Or you’ve got too many kids and not enough time to spend with each one. Sometimes we feel really small in the face of BIG challenges.

Today I want to look at one person in the Bible who was too small and had too many big challenges for God to do much in his life. But one day Jesus walked by.

Jesus entered Jericho and made his way through the town. There was a man there named Zacchaeus. He was the chief tax collector in the region, and he had become very rich.
~Luke 19:1-2 NLT

Zacchaeus is an interesting character in this story. Any Jew reading this in his day would have thought immediately, Zacchaeus is too much of an enemy for God to do anything with. He was the “Chief Tax Collector.” In other words, he was an extortionist. His job was to get as much tax out of you so that he could have as big of a commission as possible. You pay more taxes. He makes more money. What if the IRS worked on a commission? Yikes! Add to that, Zacchaeus was very good at his job. He had become “very rich.” Probably too rich. Remember what Jesus said about rich people? “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!” (Matthew 19:24 NLT). And these are just the first two of many BIG problems for Zacchaeus. Let’s keep reading.

He tried to get a look at Jesus, but he was too short to see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree beside the road, for Jesus was going to pass that way.
~Luke 19:3-4 NLT

Yes, Zacchaeus is not only too crooked and too rich, he’s also too short! What a way to punch a man when he’s down. Zacchaeus has BIG problems for God to work in his life and he’s too short to meet Jesus.

When Jesus came by, he looked up at Zacchaeus and called him by name. “Zacchaeus!” he said. “Quick, come down! I must be a guest in your home today.”
~Luke 19:5 NLT

Jesus just walked over a serious line here and you may not have even noticed it. He wants to be a guest in Zacchaeus’ house! What’s so bad about this? Well, Jesus is offering to not only hang out with one wrong person, but he’s going to go hang out in the lion’s den itself! Zacchaeus certainly has too many of the wrong kind of friends, and Jesus wants to go meet them all. Well, this puts the people in an uproar!

Zacchaeus quickly climbed down and took Jesus to his house in great excitement and joy. But the people were displeased. “He has gone to be the guest of a notorious sinner,” they grumbled.
~Luke 19:6-7 NLT

More BIG problems. Now Zacchaeus and Jesus both have a publicity problem. There’s too much criticism. People are seriously displeased. Not just one person but people. A whole crowd of criticism. Of course, there’s criticism. What did Jesus expect? Zacchaeus is a “notorious sinner.” Like the Ant Man, he “broke in and stole stuff.” He cheated people on their taxes.

Needless to say, Zacchaeus had BIG problems and just wasn’t the right kind of person for God to work in. So why does Jesus do it? Because Jesus’ mission is clear:

For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.”
~Luke 19:9-10 NLT

When it comes to feeling lost amidst BIG problems in the world there are two kinds of people:

Those who feel small and lost in a BIG world;
Those who don’t feel small and lost in BIG world.

1. Those who don’t feel small and lost in BIG world.

Let’s begin with the second kind: those who don’t feel small and lost in a BIG world. Did you notice what kind of tree Zacchaeus climbed up? A “sycamore-fig tree!” Before Jesus walked by, Zacchaeus may have been too short to see Jesus, but he was at the top of the food chain when it comes to living in a BIG world. He’s likely not very religious. He’s interested in “BIG” things: money, power, and politics. But catching a glimpse of Jesus was about to change all that. As the “Ant Man” says, “This wasn’t my idea.”

It’s my hope that Sycamore Creek would be a “sycamore-fig tree” that provides a glimpse of Jesus for those who don’t yet know they’re lost in a BIG world. But rest assured, God is at work in that person’s life even though they don’t recognize it yet. John, one of Jesus’ closest followers said, “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19 NRSV). God loves that person even before they realize that they need God’s love back. But for them to respond, there has to be some kind of small stirring in their heart. I think that we at SCC can provide that stirring. We can be the sycamore tree that they climb up and catch a glimpse of Jesus. We do that in many ways but one very significant way: the way we welcome them.

When a first-time guest shows up and gives us their email on the Connection Card, they get an email on Monday welcoming them and are invited to take a 30-second survey. The first question we ask is: what was the first thing you noticed? Over the last year or two here are most of the responses we’ve gotten:

Friendly people
The greeter at the door was playful and friendly
The first thing I noticed was how friendly and inviting everyone was to me.
Signs inside and greeter
relaxed atmosphere
nice building (under construction)
Everyone was smiling and having a good time.
The friendliness everyone we saw was saying good morning and happy Easter. It felt awesome!
Everyone that I met was really nice and welcoming
Friendly people
The friendliness of church ‘regulars’ and representatives from church staff.
Welcoming atmosphere, praise & worship team.
I could hear the nice music outside of the church
I was immediately greeted by very friendly greeters.
Warm greeting from so many people
Friendly, welcoming people. very accessible worship service
Friendliness
Friendliness of people when I walked in
The friendliness of the congregation.
Friendly, welcoming atmosphere and a sense that things are “happening” at Sycamore Creek. Clearly an exciting time of growth.
Friendly people
The friendliness of congregation
When people realized that I was a stranger, they smiled and welcomed me.
The greeter
There was somebody at the door to greet me as I walked into the building. That was awesome.
Age diversity for a contemporary service
orange cones directing traffic, children check in point, and food
The warm welcome and laid back atmosphere
The crowd of people and the happy faces. The general atmosphere of well-being….that everything was right with the world at that moment.
Honestly? The smell of popcorn. After that, the smiles.
Everyone was so friendly and welcoming!
How welcoming everyone is
Everyone was super filled with GOD and happy.
there was a greeter directing people
Pastor Tom’s friendliness.
Greeters opened the door for us and were very inviting
Friendliest of people
How quickly people came up to greet me in a very genuine way.
smiling faces
Friendly welcome when we entered (and we saw the great sign out front)
a warm welcome
The friendliness of everyone.
Being greeted when we sat down.
The welcoming feeling I got from my first step in.
Ministry teamwork. Good communication. Preparedness.
Warmth

Do you notice any common threads among the answers? It’s pretty obvious isn’t it? People experience a warm welcome here. We don’t always nail it, but we do it more often than not. In the face of BIG questions about how to reach new people, sometimes a small welcome is all that is needed to help someone catch a glimpse of Jesus.

We do this using one simple tool. We call it the 5-10-LINK rule. While we all want to come to worship and reconnect with friends we haven’t seen, we can’t neglect the guest among us. Five minutes before the service and five minutes after the service focus on getting to know someone you don’t know. You don’t have to cover the entire building. Just cover the ten feet around you. That’s probably the seats beside, in front, and behind you. Then LINK that person to others around them. You’ve got ants in your kitchen? Let me introduce you to Bob, he’s got ants in his whole house!

OK, one caution here. Welcoming guests can be overdone. This is a bit of an art form. Watch for signs and cues about how much that person really wants to interact with you or others. Are their answers to your questions short and to the point? Is their body language closed? Then welcome them and let them move on.

Friends, for those who don’t feel lost in a BIG world, we can be the “Sycamore Tree” that someone climbs up on and catches a glimpse of Jesus.

2. Those who feel small and lost in a BIG world

While there are some who don’t feel lost in this BIG world, many of us feel like the ant man:

For those who do feel small and lost in a BIG world, it’s my hope that Sycamore Creek would be a place where Jesus regularly passes by. I don’t mean a “place” in the sense that the building is where Jesus passes by. The building is a tool. The community that meets in the building is the “place.” Wherever the community is at, that’s the place. I also don’t mean that a pastor is the place where Jesus passes by. I mean the whole community. Each one of you. The pastor is just the chief equipper, the head coach of the community. I also don’t mean a formal ministry of the church, as important as that is. Ministries are tools the community uses to create spaces where Jesus can come to town. What I do mean is that wherever you are, there Jesus is passing by. You are the “Sycamore Tree” that people will climb up to see Jesus when he passes by!

When people encounter Jesus at Sycamore Creek, everything changes! Our “smallness” actually becomes a strength. As John the Baptist says, “He [Jesus] must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less” (John 3:30 NLT). I think you could say, “Jesus becomes bigger and I become smaller.” Your mission in life becomes clear as it lines up with Jesus’ mission. Why you exist becomes clear as it fits into why Jesus exists. Your vision for what can be gets bigger. You see how God can use your small contribution to accomplish BIG things. Your creativity for how God will get you to where God wants you gets bigger. Jesus takes you to unexpected places. Let’s go back to Zacchaeus and see how God does big things through this small man.

Big Outcome for a “Small Person”

Meanwhile, Zacchaeus stood before the Lord and said, “I will give half my wealth to the poor, Lord, and if I have cheated people on their taxes, I will give them back four times as much!”
~Luke 19:8 NLT

Zacchaeus has a BIG change of heart. His heart moves from greed to BIG generosity. He gives away half his wealth! And some of you complain about 10%. There’s a BIG turnaround in how he treats people. He makes things right by giving them back what he stole with interest, 400% interest!

Jesus responded, “Salvation has come to this home today, for this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.”
~Luke 19:9-10 NLT

Jesus’ mission is clear: “The son of man came to seek and save those who are lost.” Jesus’ mission overcomes BIG obstacles and results in BIG salvation.

Are the Obstacles too BIG for SCC?

I want to take a moment and reflect on some unique obstacles that SCC is facing right now. They are unique because of the size of our church. Those who study church size describe four different sizes of church from small to big. The first three sizes are:

Family Size Church (made up of a couple of families) – <75
Pastoral Size Church (made up of the friends one pastor can sustain) – 76-140
Small Program Size Church (made up of several pastoral size churches under one roof with key staff being the “pastor” of each “church”) – 225-400

Notice the jump from pastoral size church at 140 to small program size church at 225. In between this is a fourth church size:

Transition Size Church – 14-225

It’s a transition size church because it is “too large to be a small church and too small to be a large church” (The Myth of the 200 Barrier). It is also called the awkward size church. It’s awkward because a church of this size needs facilities, staff, and programs all at the same time but only has the resources to cover one at a time.

So where is Sycamore Creek? Sycamore Creek has on average 220 people every weekend. We are at the top end of the transitional size church, but I think our transitional nature is somewhat exaggerated because we never have 220 people all gathered in one service. We have three services that are each family to pastoral sized. When it comes to facilities, staff, and programs, we’ve focused rightfully so on facilities. But if we are going to continue to grow, we’ll need to focus more and more on the other two: staff and programs. You can grow programs in one of two ways: with staff or volunteers. It’s my sense that God is calling SCC to grow our programs primarily with volunteers. Individuals giving small amounts of time can together accomplish great things. Consider the ant:

I think God is calling us to mobilize twice our current volunteers in three different areas: teaching ministries, caring ministries, and hospitality ministries. When it comes to teaching, you’ll begin seeing more and more volunteers and staff preaching and teaching. If we’re going to launch seven satellites in seven venues on seven days of the week, we’re going to need more preachers than just me! As we continue to reach new families with young children and teenagers, there will be more opportunities to serve in Kids Creek and StuREV than ever before.

When it comes to caring ministries, a family size and pastoral size church can easily receive care from one pastor. A pastor is essentially a family chaplain for a family sized church! But that doesn’t work when you’re providing care for 220 people. Because if there is an average of 220 people in worship on the weekend, that means there are 300-500 people in our orbit. So you’re going to see Tom Fox, a retired pastor in our church beginning to organize volunteers to provide care in the hospital. You’ll see our Caring and Listening team providing congregational care for our church so that I’m not the only one doing counseling. You’ll begin seeing other staff doing funerals and weddings.

When it comes to hospitality we’re about to open a new Connection Café on Sunday mornings. But wouldn’t it be great to see that café open other days of the week?! There will be more opportunities than ever before to help provide a warm welcome with a warm drink in our new Connection Café. Another key aspect to hospitality is a clean facility. When the building is clean, some small and BIG obstacles are removed from a guest encountering God in this building.

Now we can do this. We do it pretty regularly. When we take our worship Live on Location (LOL) “ants” come out of the woodwork to lift the heavy loads. At Baptism @ The Beach we had sixty people sign up to help make that day happen. Many hands made light work. And many hands turned a park into a sacred place where BIG salvation happened in the lives of those who were baptized that day. Is SCC too small for the task? Not when Jesus walks by this way!

Prayer
God help us to look to you when we feel small and the obstacles feel BIG. Use us together to accomplish BIG things in the lives of those we meet. May we join Jesus in seeking and saving those who feel small and lost amidst this BIG world. In Jesus’ name, AMEN.

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: hospitality, salvation, teamwork, volunteer

Terminator: Genisys – Endings & Beginnings

July 13, 2015 by Patricia Leave a Comment

Terminator: Genisys – Endings & Beginnings
Sycamore Creek Church
July 12/13, 2015
Tom Arthur

I’ll be back!

Have you ever tried to stop doing something? It’s hard. Maybe you’re trying to stop eating sugar or greasy foods. Or stop staying yes to everything. Or stop watching too much TV. Or stop smoking. Or stop telling white lies. Or stop looking at porn. Or stop criticizing your spouse. Or stop raising your voice at your kids. Or stop worrying. Or stop spending money impulsively. Or stop speeding. Or stop texting while driving. Or stop posing. The habit just keeps saying “I’ll be back.” What in your life do you need to terminate?

Homer Simpson says, “Trying is the first step toward failure.” Trying to stop something is hard. That’s why the first step toward termination is dying. Paul, the first missionary of the church and the author of many of the books of the Bible said:

Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism.
~Romans 6:3-4 NLT

Today as we celebrate the baptism of many in our church we continue in this series, God on Film, with the movie Terminator: Genisys. Each week we’re looking at a theme the summer’s blockbusters evoke. This week I’m struck by the irony in the title. Terminator implies ending. Genisys implies beginning. So as we move toward baptism today I want to explore two things that we terminate in baptism and two things that begin in baptism. You can call them our “to stop doing list” and our “to do list.”

2 Things that Need to be Terminated: Shifting Allegiances

If you’re not that familiar with the Terminator movies, let me give you a quick recap. Skynet is an Evil Artificial Intelligence that launches an attack to exterminate humanity on a day called “Judgement Day.” John Connor is the Tech-Com human resistance leader. Sarah Connor is John Connor’s mom. Kyle Reese is a Tech-Com lieutenant sent back to save Sarah from Skynet’s plan to kill her through time travel. The Terminator is played by Arnold Schwarznegger, but there are more than one terminator. There’s the T-1000, T-X, T-800 are other future Terminator Models.

Some version of the terminator is always trying to, well, terminate Sarah or John Connor or some other key person to the future human resistance. In the first Terminator movie (1984), Arnold Schwarzenegger is a bad guy. He’s out to kill Sarah. But in Terminator 2, Judgment Day (1991), Schwarzenegger changes allegiances and is a good guy. He’s out to save Sarah. In Terminator 3, Rise of the Machines (2003), Schwarzenegger’s Terminator alternates allegiances between good guy, bad guy, good guy. Then Schwarzenegger takes a break from 2003 to 2011 to be the Governator and Terminator 4, Salvation (2009) comes out and Schwarzenegger is rendered in CGI. Then this summer we get Terminator 5, Genisys (2015), and Schwarzenegger is once again the good guy protecting Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese from, the last person you expected to be the bad guy, John Connor, Sarah’s son! Talk about shifting allegiances. Back and forth. Flip flop. Good guy. Bad guy.

Paul knows that we’re tempted to shift our allegiances back and forth and so he tells us:

Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?
~Romans 6:1-2 NLT

Sin is a force inside us that causes us to miss the mark, intentionally and unintentionally, and we keep flip flopping our allegiance back and forth with it. This causes our external allegiances to be constantly shifting. What’s really worth our allegiance? What determines our allegiances? Sometimes we form allegiances based on where we were born: Neighborhood, City, State, Region, or Country (“I pledge allegiance to the flag…”). Or we base our allegiances on our education: High School, College (Spartans vs. Wolverines), or Grad School (Blue Devils). Or we base our allegiances upon politics: Republican, Democrat, Green Party, Natural Law, or Independent. In our culture our allegiances are often to price: Sales, Deals, and Coupons or advertising and marketing: brand and celebrity. Or novelty: the latest tech, ideas, or fads. Or maybe we base our allegiances on our family: spouse, parents, grandparents, or kids. All the while God is asking for our full allegiance. Yet our allegiances are cyclical. Self – God – Self – God

We keep telling God: “I’ll be back.”

Today, those being baptized are making a choice to TERMINATE shifting allegiances. That’s the first thing to stop doing.

2 Things that Need to be Terminated: Sin’s Control

The second thing that is on our “to stop doing” list is sin’s control over our lives. Paul says:

Do not let sin control the way you live; do not give in to sinful desires.
~Romans 6:12 NLT

Remember, sin is a force inside us that causes us to miss the mark, intentionally and unintentionally. It has control over us. We give it control. We succumb to its control. Yet Paul tells us to not let sin control the way we live. Yet we often feel helpless against the power of sin within us.

Today those being baptized are being given a new power to TERMINATE sin’s power and hold over us. The new power is the Holy Spirit! The Holy Spirit is God’s presence and power at work in us. It’s not that God isn’t at work in you before you are baptized, but that in baptism you’re fully submitting to participate and cooperate with God’s Presence, the Holy Spirit’s work in you. This is why we anoint with oil after baptism. Oil is a symbol of the Holy Spirit.

So does this mean that we never sin again after we’re baptized? No. But as John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church says, “Sin remains but it does not reign.” Tide of the war is won, but battles remain. Daily we have to “repent” or turnaround from the ways we’re heading away from God and turn toward God. And yet, something significant changes. I’m reminded of my son learning to ride a bike. In the last month he’s gone to a peddle two-wheel bike with no training wheels. He knows how to balance. He’ll never forget how to balance on a bike. You can’t unlearn how to ride a bike. (Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The skeptics are thinking about how you can lose your inner ear balance ability. Stop stretching my analogies to the breaking point!) But just because Micah can’t unlearn how to ride a bike doesn’t mean he won’t fall and scrape himself up. Sin remains but it does not reign.

Today those being baptized are TERMINATE-ing two things:

Shifting Allegiances
Sin’s Control

Say it with me: “Hasta la vista baby.”

2 Beginnings in Baptism: Give yourselves completely to God

So we’ve talked about what gets terminated in baptism but what about two things that begin in baptism? The first is this: you give yourself completely to God. No more shifting allegiances. Complete and total devotion to God. Paul says:

Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life.
~Romans 6:13 NLT

“Completely.” Other translations say “yield.” One thing I love to do on water is sail. There are a whole set of rules governing who yields to who on the water. Motor boats yield to sail boats because they’re more maneuverable. Smaller boats yield to bigger boats. And everybody yields to freighters! A freighter sometimes takes several miles to stop or turn. You can’t half-yield with a freighter. You can’t partially yield with a boat that takes a mile to stop. You yield completely or you sink. You yield ALL THE TIME: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow! In baptism we give ourselves completely to God.

At Sycamore Creek Church our mission is to ignite authentic life in Christ and fan it into an all-consuming flame. When we say “authentic” we mean completely or all the time. We’re not one way today and another way tomorrow. When we say “all-consuming” we mean not just one part of the pie belongs to God, but God is the filling throughout all the pie.

We live this mission with three values: Curious, Creative, and Compassionate. When we say “Curious” we mean that your questions are welcome. You don’t have to have it all figured out to join in. You will never have all your questions answered to give yourself completely to God. Curiosity is welcome. When we say “Creative” we mean that we experiment with new ways to reach new people. And when we say “Compassionate” we mean that no matter who you are, where you’ve been, what you’ve done, or where we meet you we’ll do our best to show you God’s compassion, completely.

Those being baptized today are BEGINNING a life of giving themselves completely to God.

2 Beginnings in Baptism: Live a New Life

The second beginning in baptism is BEGINNING to live a new life. Paul says:

For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.
~Romans 6:4 NLT

We live new lives by choosing a new master. Do you know that we all serve something? Paul reminds us of this:

Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey?
~Romans 6:16 NLT

Bernard Shaw says that “Hell is where you must do what you want to do.” Or as another writer has said, we are all struggling with the “tyranny of our own desires” (Willimon & Hauerwas, Resident Aliens). We are slave to our desires, to our stomachs, to our sex drives, to our emotions, to our fashion, to our philosophy, or to our group. Yet in Christ, Paul reminds us that something new begins:

Now you are free from your slavery to sin, and you have become slaves to righteous living.
~Romans 6:18 NLT

“Slave to righteous living”? What does that mean? I think it means that we’re now serving a new master and that service leads to the life well-lived. You become fully who God has called and created you to be. Irenaeus, a second century church leader, says, “The glory of God is a human fully alive.” Who is the most fully alive human? Jesus was the most fully alive human. He lived with complete allegiance and devotion to God. Sin had no hold over him. His perfect life gave the most glory to God!

But who is Jesus? Christians believe that Jesus was not just a great guy. He was not just a “fully realized” human being. Jesus wasn’t just a prophetic voice. Those being baptized today will confess an ancient creed, a set of statements about what they believe and who they trust. The Apostles’ Creed has three parts:

I believe and trust in God
I believe and trust in Jesus Christ, God’s only son.
I believe and trust in the Holy Spirit.

Jesus was fully God and fully human. Humans were the ones who were stuck in the power of sin and God was the only one who could break the power of sin. So God became a human in Jesus. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection heals, forgives, and sets us free. Jesus is able to heal, forgive and set us free because of who he is: the Son of God. When we are baptized we join in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

To understand how baptism works and what baptism is, let’s think about water for a moment. What is water? Water is death. People die in water. Today those being baptized die to multiple allegiances. Water is birth. We think about the waters of the womb. Baptism is rebirth and new life. Water is cleansing. We wash our bodies in water. Baptism is a washing and cleansing and forgiveness. Water is a renewal of life. We can go three weeks without food but only three days without water. Baptism is renewal of life. Water is protection. We build motes around castles to protect us from danger. You can only go three hours in a harsh environment without shelter. Baptism is the protection of the Holy Spirit. Water is fun. We play in and with water. Baptism is joining God’s fun adventure. Water is community. We always build cities by or near water. Baptism is the door to the church, the family and mission of God.

When we are baptized we terminate our changing allegiances and sin’s control over us dies. When we are baptized we begin giving ourselves completely to God and living a new life.

I want to invite those being baptized or reaffirming their baptism to come forward and join me in making these commitments:

To the parents and candidates
Tom: Do you seek to avoid evil and do good?
Parents/Candidates: I do.

Tom: Do you confess Jesus as Savior and Lord in community with the church?
Parents/Candidates: I do.

Tom: Will you stay in love with God?
Parents/Candidates: By God’s grace, I will

Tom: Do you believe in God?
Parents/Candidates:
I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.

Tom: Do you believe in Jesus Christ?
I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.
He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.
He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended to the dead.
On the third day He rose again.
He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

Tom: Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy Catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting. Amen.

To parents
Tom: Will you along with the church nurture these children by teaching and example guiding them to accept God’s grace for themselves when they are able?
Parents: I will.

To the church
Tom: Do you as the body of Christ, the church, reaffirm your own desire to avoid evil, do good, and stay in love with God?
Church: We do.

Tom: Do you commit to connecting with God and one another, growing in the character of Christ, and serving the church, community and world?
Church: We do.

Tom: Will you nurture one another and these new partners and members of the family of God in the Christian faith and life, and surround them with a community of love and forgiveness?
Church: We will.

Confirmation (for those reaffirming their faith) & Anointing with Oil
When they come up out of the water…
Tom: NAME, the Lord defend you with his heavenly grace and by his Spirit confirm you in the faith and fellowship of all true disciples of Jesus Christ.
or
The Lord bless you, and keep you;
The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you.
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
and give you peace. Numbers 6: 24-26

Congregational Remembrance
Tom: Friends, remember your baptism and be thankful.

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: Baptism, forgiveness, repentance, sin

Never Give Up*

June 30, 2015 by Patricia Leave a Comment

From this Day Forward – Never Give Up*
Sycamore Creek Church
June 28/29, 2015
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

Today is a great day to be here at SCC. We’re wrapping up this series, From This Day Forward. We’re looking at five commitments to failproof your marriage:

1. Seek God
2. Stay Pure
3. Have Fun
4. Fight Fair
5. Never Give Up

Two weeks ago I spoke on the commitment to have fun and made a suggestion that if you’re having a hard time finding time to have sex, then put it on the calendar. Sometimes things I suggest get taken in a way that I didn’t intend. A wife in our church sent me this screen shot of a calendar invitation from her husband:

As you can see, she declined to put S.E.X. on their calendar every day for the rest of the year! Come on guys, work on your approach!

Today we’re talking about the final commitment to failproof your marriage: Never Give Up. I’m reminded of the Faith Hill Song, Love Ain’t Like That:

You can’t buy it at the store
Try it on for size
Then bring it back if it don’t feel right
No love, love ain’t like that

You can’t trade it in
Like an automobile
That’s got too many miles an’ rust on its wheels
No love, love ain’t like that.

Some of us are wondering if we can take our marriage back in and get a refund. It may be because you married your opposite. When you’re dating, opposites attract. But when you’re married, opposites attack. What’s cute when you’re dating is not so cute when you’re married. Some of you are punctual. Others are creative with your time. Some of you plan. Others spin a bottle and start driving. Some of you are spenders. Others are savers. Some of you like thin crust. Others like deep dish. Larry Burkett says, “If you are the same, then one of you is unnecessary.”

These differences can over time cause us conflicts and problems. John Gottman, one of the leading researchers on thriving marriages, has found that 2/3 of conflicts are unsolvable. When you get married you choose your set of problems. The grass isn’t greener on the other side of the fence. If you ditch one relationship, you’re just ditching one set of known problems for one set of unknown problems.

Let me say up front that this message is NOT about staying stay in an abusive marriage. According to research compiled by the American Bar Association:Approximately 1.3 million women and 835,000 men are physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States. 9% of female rape victims are raped by a husband. Intimate partner have killed approximately 33% of female murder victims and 4% of male murder victims. This message is not a guilt trip for the divorced. Many of you did everything you could. Some of you look back and see that you could have done more. But this message isn’t about that. It’s about living From this day Forward!

Jesus teaches about marriage when some religious leaders try to back him into a corner one day. We read:

Some Pharisees came and tried to trap him with this question: “Should a man be allowed to divorce his wife for just any reason?”
~Matthew 19:3 NLT

Let’s get a hold of the cultural context in this story. In Jesus’ day and age women were property. A man could just say, “I don’t want you” like he’d sell some livestock. These religious leaders are trying to put Jesus in a corner on this issue of divorce and what Jesus says SHOCKS everyone:

“Haven’t you read the Scriptures?” Jesus replied. “They record that from the beginning ‘God made them male and female.’” And he said, “‘This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.’ Since they are no longer two but one, let no one split apart what God has joined together.”
~Matthew 19:4-6 NLT

Jesus says that when you get married, you are one in the eyes of God. He is NOT saying that you no longer have individual personality, gifts, and identity. Divorce is like ripping two superglued pieces of paper apart. It’s messy. It rips and tears. It’s very painful.

One of the reasons for this is that marriage is a covenant not a contract. A contract is based on mutual distrust. A contract limits my responsibility and increases my rights. A contract says that I’m in as far as you are in, and I trust you as far as you perform.

A covenant is something very different. A covenant is based on mutual trust. A covenant is a permanent relationship. God is a covenantal God. The Hebrew word for “covenant” is “beref” which refers to a cutting. In ancient times a covenant was made and a bull is cut in half and laid on the ground. Each party who made the covenant would walk through the cut in half bull essentially saying, “If I break my covenant may what happened to this bull happen to me.”

Vows are supposed to be a covenant. But too often they are something else:

In the name of God,
I take you to be my husband/wife/spouse,
to have and to hold,
from this day forward,
unless someone better comes along, or things get worse
until someone richer comes along, or you lose your job,
unless you get really sick and lose your health,
to love or to neglect,
until we are parted by divorce.
This is my solemn vow.

NO! Till death do us part! My wife got the “in sickness” part really quickly. I ate some contaminated food and came down with Hepatitis A on our honeymoon. I was down for three weeks! I lost thirteen pounds. I’m glad she stuck with me. I’m glad we made a covenant, not a contract.

So what happens when marriage is difficult? You say, “I don’t love her/him?” Giving up would be like selling your car because you’re out of gas. Go refill the love. Or you say, “I don’t have any love?” That’s when seeking God pays off, because the God who is love fills you with love when you don’t have love. God forgives you when you can’t forgive. You let God do what you don’t have the strength to do.

But what do you do when you’re not seeing any change. Well, let’s look at the principle of sowing and reaping as Paul, the first missionary of the church and the author of many of the books of the Bible, describes it:

Don’t be misled—you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.
~Galatians 6:7-9 NLT

There are two principles of reaping and sowing in marriage:

1. You Reap What You Sow
You reap WHAT you sow. Apple seeds produce apple trees. Smiles lead to smiles. Grace, compassion, and thoughtfulness lead to grace, compassion, and thoughtfulness. But complaining, criticizing, and criticism lead to defensiveness, anger, and self-justification. If you don’t like what you’ve been getting, look first at what you’ve been giving. Don’t point your finger at your spouse without first taking a hard look at yourself. Taking a hard look at yourself may require inviting other people besides your spouse who you trust reflecting back honestly what they see in you and your marriage. You reap what you sow.

2. You Reap Where You Sow
You reap WHERE you sow. If I plant all my energy and passion into my hobby, will it help my marriage? No. If I put all my energy into my kids, will it help my marriage? No. If I put all my energy and passion into my career and job, will it help my marriage? No. In your life, God is your number one. Your spouse is your number two. Not your kids. Not your career. Not your hobbies. God = One. Spouse = Two.

But this is hard. Sowing and reaping takes patience and perseverance. Have you ever experienced the “fog of learning”? When I was learning Hebrew they referred to the learning process as being in a fog all the time. Whatever you were learning seemed so hard. It made no sense. But if you kept at it and pressed forward, you could look back and see progress. While you always stayed in the fog and that fog never lifted until you mastered the language, you could nonetheless see progress. This doesn’t just happen with learning a language. It happens with learning anything. Learn how to play a musical instrument and you’ll be in the fog. Learn how to become a better parent and you’re in the fog. Learn how to have a better marriage and you’re in the fog.

You say to me, “I still don’t feel like it. I just don’t want to do it.” What other area of your life can you make that excuse and get away with it? I just don’t feel like work. I don’t want to do it. I just don’t feel like taking care of the kids today. Let them fend for themselves. I just don’t feel like paying taxes. NO! You get over your feelings and you do what’s right. C.S. Lewis offers us some helpful instruction at this point:

“The promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise to never have a headache or always to feel hungry.”
~C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

So let me be really clear here. When I say we don’t give up, I’m not saying, “We’re going to clench our fists and grit it and stick together and suffer.” No. When I say, “Never give up” I mean never give up seeking God first. Never give up staying pure. Never give up having fun. Never give up fighting fair. NEVER GIVE UP! Remember what Paul said:

So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.
~Galatians 6:9 NLT

What does it mean to have a harvest? It means you’ve got a testimony, a story. Look where we were and look where we are now. You wouldn’t believe how neglectful I was. Our kids saw it but look how our kids believe in us again. We didn’t give up and it was hard hard hard hard hard hard work, but God used that commitment to turn it around. We don’t give up because we didn’t make a contract, we made a covenant. It’s the same kind of covenant that God makes with each one of us. God doesn’t give up on us.

Prayer
God, from this day forward help us to never give up seeking you. Help us to never give up staying pure. Help us to never give up having fun. Help us to never give up fighting fair. Help us to never give up because your love never gives up on us.

*This is based on a sermon first preached by Craig Groeschel

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: convenant, divorce, marriage

Have Fun

June 24, 2015 by Patricia Leave a Comment

From this Day Forward – Have Fun*
Sycamore Creek Church
June 14/15, 2015
Tom Arthur

Peace friends! Today we’re going to have some fun in this message. That means it’s rated PG. So parents, be guided. We’re in this series called From this Day Forward. We’re looking at building a thriving marriage by making five commitments:

Seek God
Stay Pure
Have Fun
Fight Fair
Never Give Up

I want to give a plug for next week. Fighting fair is probably one of the most important things we can learn to do well to help our marriage thrive. So don’t miss next week. But before we get to the fighting, we’re going to have some fun. What’s the best advice on marriage you’ve ever been given? I’m not sure it’s the best advice, but here’s some advice from famous people and celebrities:

Will Ferrell: “Before you marry a person, you should first make them use a computer with slow internet to see who they really are.”
LeAnn Rimes: “A good friend just told me that the key to a successful marriage was to argue naked!”
Phyllis Diller: “Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.”

What’s the best piece of marriage advice you’ve ever heard? We asked people around our church what’s the best advice they were given about marriage. Here’s what they said:

The best advice I was ever given was by my dad, who has been married three times. I think he knows something about what doesn’t work. He told me: “You either grow together or you grow apart.” In other words, there’s no coasting in marriage. You can’t just set your marriage off on a shelf to the side and hope it will stay thriving. I was reminded of this the last time I was at my dad’s house. I saw my trick bike from High School hanging in the garage. I had so much fun on this bike growing up. I took it everywhere. It gave me hours and hours of fun.

My son has just learned to ride a bike and I thought it would be fun to bring my old bike home and ride it with Micah. It was fun back then. Surely it will be fun right now. The next time we went to the skate park, I put it on the bike rack and took it with us. When I hopped on it and began riding, I realized the truth that my dad had taught me. The tires were so brittle from 20 years of disuse that they almost immediately shredded and disintegrated. They literally fell apart. (Not to mention that I’m no spry teenager hopping around on a trick bike anymore.) You can’t ignore something for twenty years and imagine that you can just pick it back up and it will be just as fun as it was. You either grow together, or you grow apart. You either take the time to keep at something, or it falls apart. You either work at it, or you lose it. There’s no coasting when it comes to keeping up a bike, and there’s no coasting when it comes to marriage. One of the key ways you pay attention to your marriage so it doesn’t fall apart is have some fun together.

The author of Ecclesiastes took a long and hard look at life and all that this world has to offer and wrote down what he saw. Here’s one of his observations:

Relish life with the spouse you love
Each and every day of your precarious life.
~Ecclesiastes 9:9 (The Message)

Without some fun, adventure, romance, and physical intimacy, marriage is reduced to a business partnership. What bills do we need to pay? Who is picking up the kids after school? What do we need to do in the yard this weekend? People don’t fall in love having a bad time: “I went out with this guy and we had nothing in common and did nothing and it was such a turn on!”

When Sarah and I first got married we had a lot of fun keeping up dating one another. We would each plan one surprise date a month. We were super creative about these dates. One time I took Sarah on a scavenger hunt around town. We would sit down on a bench and taped underneath it was a love note. We’d walk by a tree and clipped to a branch was another love note. She had an awesome time walking around finding all these love notes hidden. Then there was the time she created an “Eco Challenge” for me. The Eco Challenge was this adventure race on TV. She made a miniature version of it that included hiking, biking, swimming, and ended at the beach with a little boat she had just bought me. Wow! But here’s my favorite one I ever planned (or at least the favorite one I’m willing to talk about publicly). I took her to a sushi place. We have this little “tradition” of putting “in bed” on the end of the fortune cookies we get. So to surprise her, I talked to the manager earlier in the day and gave him some custom fortune cookies I had made all ending with “in bed.” When we were done with dinner, he delivered the fortune cookies to the table. I’ll never forget Sarah’s surprise at opening one fortune after another of what life was going to look like in bed.

Let me provide one note of caution before we dive further into this idea of having fun in marriage. The kind of fun we have in marriage changes over time. Usually as a culture we idolize the puppy love and infatuation that romance begins with. We spend a lot of time and energy trying to reclaim or rebuild that same puppy love even though we’ve been married for twenty years. C.S. Lewis has this wisdom to share with us:

“It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go—let it die away—go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow—and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life. It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them. It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy.”
~C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)

So be ready for the kind of fun you have in a relationship to change over time. But remember fun is not a luxury in marriage. You don’t have time not to have fun. If you don’t have time to have fun in marriage, then one day you may not have a marriage. So I want to share with you three ways every couple needs to have fun.

1. Face to Face Fun

When you’re dating you talk and talk for hours on end. Run out of things to say and just listen to each other breathe. (Not that kind of breathing!) But when you get married there’s a temptation for the face to face time to become business time. How are the finances doing? How is school going for the kids? Did you get the oil changed in the car?

The Song of Solomon is probably the steamiest book in the Bible. It’s a love song between two people madly in love. Sometimes the woman sings to the man and other times the man sings to the woman like here:

How beautiful are your sandaled feet,
O queenly maiden.
Your rounded thighs are like jewels,
the work of a skilled craftsman.
Your navel is perfectly formed
like a goblet filled with mixed wine.
Between your thighs lies a mound of wheat
bordered with lilies.
Your breasts are like two fawns,
twin fawns of a gazelle.
~Song of Solomon 7:1-3 NLT

Did you notice anything about how the man sings to the woman besides the fact that he talked about her breasts? I know, a lot of you got stuck right there. But here’s what I’m driving at: he talks about details. Some of us like headlines but others like details. This reminds me of an article I once read about writing a really good thank you note. There were four parts:

Be specific – “Thank you for the extra time you put into…on Friday.”
State the cost – “You could have been relaxing, biking, etc.”
Personal affect – “It made me feel great and helped me do what I needed to do.”
Thank – “Thank you so much for…”

Be specific. Give details. Find the face to face time to have fun.

Sarah and I began having a weekly date night when we moved into the Isaiah House while we attended seminary. The Isaiah House was a Christian intentional living community. We lived with other Christians and offered a couple of rooms to woman and children in transition. Every night we ate dinner together with twelve or so other people. We realized after the first two weeks that we had barely talked to one another because we were no longer talking to one another at dinner. We were talking to the other twelve people around the table. We needed a time apart for just the two of us to talk about the details of what was going on in our lives. Enter date night.

Do you have a time when you have face to face time with your spouse? Let me be clear here. Face to face time is NOT driving your kids to an activity. It’s NOT talking while watching a show. It’s NOT talking while messing with your cell phone. Face to face time is focused time with your spouse.

Sarah and I have found after eighteen years of marriage that we need a little help moving from business conversations to personal conversations. So we often use a conversation starter book. Before we head out on a date, I look through a little book and rip out one of the pages to help us start conversations. Sometimes our conversation flows just fine. Other times we find the questions on the page helpful for having some fun conversation. Last Friday, here’s the question we talked about: “If you could wear a magical pair of glasses that allowed you to read your partner’s MIND for 60 seconds in a 24-hour day, when would you want to wear them most?” Wow! That was an interesting conversation.

When do you have face to face time with your spouse? (By the way, if you’re not married, we all need face to face time with our friends too!)

2. Side to side Fun – Men generally crave

You might say that generally speaking, women crave face to face time while men crave this second kind of fun: side to side fun. Side to side fun is enjoying time doing common activities. Back to the Song of Solomon:

Come, my love, let us go out to the fields
and spend the night among the wildflowers
~Song of Solomon 7:11

In other words: Weekend getaway! Campout! Cabin! This kind of fun has changed over time as Sarah and I have grown. Before we had kids we liked to ski together, downhill and cross country. We liked to bike together. We would hike and camp together. We’ve spent five nights on the trail together backpacking. Now that we’ve got kids our side to side time is a little less exotic but still important and fun. We go on walks together. We go to a bookstore and pick out books to show one another. Last time we did this Sarah suggested we each pick a book of somewhere we’d like to travel together some day and spend time looking through it together. We go see plays (we particularly enjoy plays at Peppermint Creek Theater). Sometimes we go shopping together. Neither of us is big shoppers, but Sarah likes shopping with me. She says I pick out better clothes for her than she picks out herself. Here’s my secret: I just pick out clothes I like. She likes that I like them and somehow they always seem to fit better and feel more comfortable. This was not a skill I knew I had before I got married. But we have fun doing it together.

Do you know what your spouse enjoys doing? Does he enjoy golfing, hunting, classic cars, NASCAR? Have you ever tried to do these things with him? Does she enjoy Downton Abbey? Shopping? Running? Have you ever tried doing these things with her? And I mean really trying to do them? To enjoy them? Maybe they’re not your favorite thing to do, but you’ll be building bridges with your spouse when he or she sees you making the attempt.

Here’s a little tip, women. I mentioned that men tend to crave side to side fun more while you crave face to face fun. You’re more likely to get face to face time if you include it with some side to side time. Your man is more likely to open up when he’s doing something he enjoys, or right after he’s done something with you he enjoys (if he doesn’t fall asleep first!). Which brings us to the last kind of fun every couple needs.

3. Belly Button to Belly Button

I know you think the Bible is just boring literature with nothing sexy in it. But I’m about to blow your mind here. Back to the Song of Solomon. The woman sings to the man:

Let us get up early and go to the vineyards
to see if the grapevines have budded,
if the blossoms have opened,
and if the pomegranates have bloomed.
There I will give you my love.
~Song of Solomon 7:12 NLT

“There I will give you my love.” What’s she talking about? She’s saying, “Let’s go have sex in a park!” Whoever said that men were the only ones with crazy sex ideas just didn’t know women very well. Now I’m not telling you to go have sex in a park, unless…well, no. But I am telling you that every marriage needs some good belly button to belly button fun.

My dad gave me another piece of advice when it comes to sex that has turned out to be just plain wrong. He said that if you put a quarter in a jar every time you have sex the first two years of marriage and then take one quarter out every time you have sex after the second year, you’ll never run out of quarters. That’s just not right. Every piece of research I’ve read says that married people have more sex than unmarried people. Here’s my own tip for you: calendar sex. I know it doesn’t sound very romantic. And I’m not saying you can’t have sex if it’s not on the calendar, but if you know sex is coming on Thursday night, then everyone will be ready for it. The anticipation will build. Who knows, the anticipating may be too much to wait for Thursday night!

My dad’s not the only dad who gave his son advice about marriage. The book of Proverbs, an ancient wisdom book, records the advice a dad gave to his son about marriage. Although it could as well be the advice given to a daughter by a mother:

Let your wife be a fountain of blessing for you.
Rejoice in the wife of your youth.
She is a loving deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts satisfy you always.
May you always be captivated by her love.
~Proverbs 5:18-19

“This is the word of God for the people of God. May God add blessing to the reading of his word!” In other words, enjoy sex. Enjoy the body of your spouse! Enjoy sex. Let it be intoxicating. The word “captivated” is Shega in the original Hebrew. Shega almost always is translated as “led astray” by strong drink. Or the dad could say, “May you always be intoxicated by her love.”

Let’s talk a bit about sex here. Yes, we’re going to talk about sex in church. Yes, that’s because the Bible talks about sex in church. Well, not sex in the church building, but giving the church counsel on sex. Here’s two tips. One of you, generally speaking the man, needs to work on your approach. What worked when you first got married and were young lustful bunnies, probably isn’t working for you anymore. I know that men can turn anything into a sexual innuendo.

Wife: “Honey, will you get me some cereal.”
Husband: “Yeah, I’ll get you some cereal.”

Wife: “Honey, will you get the oil changed in the car today?”
Husband: “You know I’ll change your oil, baby.”

Well, actually, in my house, we find this pretty funny. But if that’s all you’re doing, men, then you’ve got to improve your approach. Think of the whole day as foreplay. Actually, think of the whole marriage as foreplay. You can’t go from zero to sixty in the time it takes you to roll over onto her side of the bed.

So if men need to work on their approach, then generally speaking, women need to work on making an approach. “But we’ve got kids, and I’m always exhausted because of them.” Well, put the kids in front of the TV, pop in the Dora the Explorer DVD, run to the room, lock the door (very important!) and say: “We’ve got 30 minutes. Go Diego! Go!”

I know I’m speaking in a lot of stereotypes today. The stereotypes aren’t meant to suggest that this is the way things are supposed to be, but rather to suggest that this is the way things generally are. Generally speaking most men desire physical intimacy more often than women, and women desire more face to face fun or emotional bonding than men. Here’s the hitch. Women have legitimate and holy opportunities for emotional bonding outside of their husbands. But a husband has no other legitimate sexual outlet other than his wife. Wives, when you turn off the physical intimacy faucet in your marriage, it’s the equivalent of an emotional crisis for yourself. Men, when you turn off the emotional intimacy faucet in a marriage, it’s the equivalent of a sexual crisis for yourself.

But I don’t feel close to my spouse. Remember, feelings follow actions. You had fun once. Learn to have fun again. If the grass is looking greener somewhere else, then it’s time to water your own yard. Take off the old brittle tires from the relationship bike, and put on some new ones. Stop ignoring the fun in your marriage. From this day forward…

God the Eternal keep you in love with each other,
so that the peace of Christ may abide in your home.
Bear witness to the love of God in this world
so that those to whom love is a stranger
will find in you generous friends.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and the love of God,
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit
be with you all. Amen.

*This sermon is based on a sermon first preached by Craig Groeschel.

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: communication, intimacy, marriage, sex

Seek God

June 3, 2015 by Patricia Leave a Comment

From this Day Forward – Seek God*
Sycamore Creek Church
May 31 & June 1, 2015
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

You’ve heard of Chuck Norris jokes, right?

At Chuck Norris’ wedding, instead of flower girls dropping flower petals, they were tossing dead ninjas to walk on.

After his wedding, Chuck Norris sent “You’re Welcome” cards to his guests.

Chuck Norris is starring in the sequel to “Four Weddings and a Funeral”. It’s called “Four Funerals and a Funeral.”

Chuck Norris tried to be romantic once, so he wrote a love letter to his girlfriend. It went something like this: Chuck Norris. She married him.

Ok, maybe Chuck Norris isn’t the best model for how to live a happy marriage. So today we’re beginning a new five-week series called From This Day Forward. For those of you not married, we want to spend the next five-weeks helping you prepare for marriage someday. For those of you who are married we want to make your marriage better. And if you’re single and have no plans for marriage, there’s nothing more holy about being married than being single. Jesus was single after all.

When we get married there are some stereotypical dreams many of us have. If you’re a lady, you probably dreamt a lot about the wedding, what kind of dress you’d wear, how many kids you’d have, what you’d name them, how you’d write your name. If you were a man you maybe dreamt of having sex twice a day and three times on Sunday. So how many of you are still dreaming? Some of us may be asking, is a good marriage possible? Today I am celebrating 18 years of marriage, and I can tell you that the answer to this question is: Yes, a good marriage is possible, but it is not likely if you do what everyone else is doing.

Divorce Statistics
According to a New York Times article summarizing the current research on divorce, the divorce rate is thankfully on the decline. In the 1970s-1980s it was 45-50%. But current trends still show a 33% divorce rate. The reason for this decline is complicated. One key reason is people are getting married older. In 1890, Men got married at age 26 and women at age 22. In 1950 men got married at age 23 and women at age 20. But in 2004 men were getting married at age 27 and women at age 26. Research also shows that the more education and income you have, the less likely you are to divorce. Although if you make less and have less education, the divorce rates are comparable to the 70s & 80s. Add to this continued change in gender roles. 2/3 of divorces are initiated by women (Men, you better pay attention the next five weeks!). The social acceptability of single parenting has reduced the number of “shotgun weddings.” And the feminist revolution of the 70s & 80s has slowly begun to find a new normal for gender roles in a marriage. All of these things have contributed to a decline in the divorce rate.

Although there is one more big reason the divorce rate is in decline: fewer people are getting married. More people are cohabitating, living together without getting married. More cohabitation = more “breakups” rather than more “divorces.” According to an Atlantic Magazine article, in the 1960s there were less than 500,000 people cohabitating. In 1996 that number jumped up to 2.9 million, but by 2012 7.8 million people were cohabitating.

This raises an interesting question: should you “test drive” the relationship before you decide to “buy” the marriage? While this may sound like common sense, research has shown that cohabitation can have a negative effect both on the quality of marriage and the length of it: “The likelihood that a marriage would last for a decade or more decreased by six percentage points if the couple had cohabited first” (New York Time article). Prof. Pamela J. Smock—PhD, University of Michigan—says, “From the perspective of many young adults, marrying without living together first seems quite foolish…Just because some academic studies have shown that living together may increase the chance of divorce somewhat, young adults themselves don’t believe that” (New York Time article). So if you want to do what everyone else is doing, live together before you get married. But if you want to give yourself the best chance for a healthy long-lasting marriage, do what no one else is doing: wait to move in until you’ve made the life-long commitment.

So if you’re an average person, you’ve got a 33% rate of divorce in your marriage. What other area are you satisfied with a 33% chance of negative outcomes? 33% chance of getting cancer from eating something? 33% chance of not getting your money back from the bank? 33% chance of getting attacked outside your house by man-eating-cats? I’m not satisfied with a 33% chance of divorce. I want to live fully into the vows I made when I got married:

To have and to hold,
from this day forward,
for better, for worse
for richer, for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish,
until we are parted by death.
This is my solemn vow.
This is not a beat up on divorce series. It’s a series about making changes from this day forward. We’re crossing a line from the past and living by God’s grace into the future. We’re going to do this over the next five weeks by make five commitments:

1. Seek God
2. Stay Pure
3. Have Fun
4. Fight Fair
5. Never Give Up

Seek God First
Let’s start at the beginning: Seek God first. Most of us are seeking not God first but a spouse first. We have this idea floating around in our culture that you can’t be happy until you meet the ONE. You’ve heard that one right? The ONE soul mate out there for you. The ONE who you are always looking for and if you miss that ONE person, then you’re doomed for the rest of your life. Now, I don’t believe that God has only ONE right person for you (there are a lot of good God-honoring people you could marry), but there’s something wrong even deeper with this way of thinking. What if someone said, “I think I’ve found my TWO”? TWO? Yes, your TWO. Your ONE is God and your spouse is your TWO. Jesus teaches us that:

“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
~Jesus (Matthew 22:37-38 NLT)

God is your ONE. Your spouse is your TWO. You get that mixed up, and you’ve built a faulty foundation. So let’s explore this idea further with two further commitments. If you’re not married, but you’d like to be married someday then make this commitment today:

1. I will seek the One while preparing for my two!
Too many of us put the God thing off until later when you “really need it.” We party now and find God later. This reminds me of something St. Augustine said:

“Oh, Master, make me chaste and celibate – but not yet!”
~St. Augustine (4^th & 5^th Century Church Leader)

If you hope to have a godly marriage one day, seek a godly life today. Here’s the key: It doesn’t matter what you want, like attracts like. If you want a particular kind of person to marry, then you must first seek God to become that kind of person. If you want someone who has had multiple sex partners, then by all means, have multiple sex partners. If you want to marry someone who tells you white lies, then learn to tell the best white lies right now. If you want someone who is critical, then learn to criticize before you get married. If you want someone who has no idea how to manage money, then don’t learn how to manage your own money. If you want to marry someone who is in denial of their mental and physical health, then deny your own mental and physical health issues.

During my second year of college I began to notice some serious relationship challenges I was having with my family, particularly my dad. I made a decision that year that has had positive consequences for the rest of my life. I decided to go see a counselor. You see, my dad was not being the dad that I wanted him to be. I was so frustrated and angry with him. Over a year of counseling I began to realize that the problem wasn’t with my dad. The problem was with my expectations of my dad. Moreover, I began to realize that I played this pattern out with most everyone around me. I was trying to get them to all fill my expectations and if they didn’t, then I was sorely frustrated with the relationship. In a word: I was very judgmental.

Over that year, my counselor helped me in some very subtle ways to let go of my expectations and have a relationship with the person my dad actually was. It was incredibly freeing to give up judgment and let grace define the relationships around me. My relationship with my dad improved in significant ways. But even more importantly, I met Sarah, my future wife, during this year. I went into this relationship with her with my eyes wide open about my own judgmental tendencies and patterns of relating to people around me. I can’t say I don’t still struggle with this, but it’s one thing to be ignorant or in denial, and it’s another thing to actively seek God’s grace for a better way forward.

If you’re not yet married and you want to be, then begin by seeking the ONE while preparing for the two. For those of you who are already married, here’s a commitment for you to make today:

2. I will always seek the One with my two!
We have a tendency to idolize our spouse when we put them in the ONE spot. Perhaps the highest moment of idolization is the most romantic moment ever captured on film. You know it. The “You complete me” scene in Jerry Maguire. Come on! Sarah does a lot of things for me, but to think that she is the total completion of myself is to say that Jesus was incomplete without a spouse and that God is not the one who ultimately completes each one of us! This idolization puts undue pressure on our spouse who is incapable of meeting all our needs. When they let us down, we stop idolizing them and we demonize them. When we’re idolizing our wives we say, “She’s so organized and driven and passionate.” But when then we demonize the saying, “She’s a control freak. She wants everything her way. She just nags…nags…nags…” When we idolize our husbands we say, “He’s so laid back, comfortable and easy going.” Then we demonize him saying, “He’s a bump on a log. He does nothing. He’s not a leader. All he does is play video games.” In each case, we’re making our two our ONE rather than seeking the ONE with our two.

So how do we seek God together? There’s lots of things I could say about this. We could read the Bible together. We could attend worship regularly together. We could join a small group together. We could serve together in the church and community. We could raise home run kids together. All of these things are excellent ideas and practices. In fact, the common wisdom that Christians divorce at the same rate as everyone else is actually false. It all comes down to how you define Christian. Ed Stetzer, Executive Director of Lifeway Research, summarizes the effect these spiritual practices have on our marriages:

“What appears intuitive is true. Couples who regularly practice any combination of serious religious behaviors and attitudes—attend church nearly every week, read their bibles and spiritual materials regularly; pray privately and together; generally take their faith seriously, living not as perfect disciples, but serious disciples—enjoy significantly lower divorce rates than mere church members, the general public, and unbelievers.” ~Ed Stetzer, Exec Dir of Lifeway Research (Christianity Today Article)

When you practice these spiritual habits together regularly, your chance of dodging divorce and staying happily married improves:

“Catholic couples were 31% less likely to divorce; Protestant couples 35% less likely; and Jewish couples 97% less likely.”
~Ed Stetzer, Exec Dir of Lifeway Research (Christianity Today Article)

So let me focus down on one keystone habit of all of these. A “keystone habit” is one discipline triggers positive or negative habits across the board. For example: flossing is a keystone habit. I floss every morning because it gets me going with the day in the right direction. When I stop then my discipline goes out the window. I stop exercising. I stop eating well. I get fat. I stop working because I don’t have the energy. I get fired. In frustration I speed home. I run a red light. A cop chases me. When I finally get pulled over after a high speed chase on the news, I go to jail. All because I stopped flossing! Flossing is a keystone habit. OK, you get the point.

The keystone habit I want to encourage you to make a commitment to today is to pray together. Seek the ONE with your two by praying together every day.

If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.
~2 Chronicles 7:14 NLT

Can we say, “Restore their marriage?” I think so. It all begins with humbling ourselves before God together in prayer. But how do you pray together? It seems kind of obvious, but I think most of us are a little clueless about how to do this. I want to share with you one way that Sarah and I pray together each day. We meet in bed at or around 10PM (if you’re not married, don’t pray in bed together!). Then we use the Daily Devotions for Families and Individuals from the Book of Common Prayer (you can find the whole thing here). Here’s the prayer for bedtime:

At the Close of Day
Psalm 134

Behold now, bless the LORD, all you servants of the LORD, *
you that stand by night in the house of the LORD.
Lift up your hands in the holy place and bless the LORD; *
the LORD who made heaven and earth bless you out of Zion.

A Reading

Lord, you are in the midst of us and we are called by your
Name: Do not forsake us, O Lord our God. Jeremiah 14:9,22

The following may be said

Lord, you now have set your servant free *
to go in peace as you have promised;
For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior, *
whom you have prepared for all the world to see;
A Light to enlighten the nations, *
and the glory of your people Israel.

Prayers for ourselves and others may follow. It is appropriate that
prayers of thanksgiving for the blessings of the day, and penitence for our
sins, be included.

The Lord’s Prayer

The Closing Prayer

Visit this place, O Lord, and drive far from it all snares of the
enemy; let your holy angels dwell with us to preserve us in
peace; and let your blessing be upon us always; through Jesus
Christ our Lord. Amen.

The almighty and merciful Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
bless us and keep us. Amen.

That’s it. It takes us about five minutes to pray through this prayer each night. Other friends of mine take a moment to ask what went well and what didn’t go so well in their day. Then they thank God for the good stuff and ask God for help with the bad stuff. Others just pray the Lord’s Prayer together each day. Another set of friends uses a prayer list together that has all the important people in their life and various other prayer requests on it. Sarah’s parents take time each morning at breakfast to listen to Pray as You Go then pray for two people they received Holiday Cards from. They then send them a post card letting them know they prayed for them. Another couple reads a devotional together and discusses it before they go to bed each night. Another friend texts prayers back and forth throughout the day. There’s no one right way to do this. There are lots of good ways to pray together. The question is: will you seek the ONE with your two by praying together daily?

OK, I know it’s complicated for some of you. You’ve got a spouse who isn’t a believer. So do you pray for your spouse each day? There’s a popular country song out right now by the Notorious Cherry Bombs titled, “It’s Hard To Kiss The Lips At Night That Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long.” Well, you could say it’s hard to chew the ass off the person you’re praying for all day long. It’s really hard to fight with someone you’re praying with. It’s hard to commit adultery or get hooked on porn when you have regular spiritual intimacy with your spouse. It’s hard to divorce someone you’re seeking God with.

So you’re thinking this is too hard? Fine, take the odds. 33% failure rate. Or you’re thinking, But we don’t do that. Well, from this day forward do it. But we don’t like each other. From this day forward. We don’t know how to do this. From this day forward. But I’m uncomfortable. Get over it. From this day forward!

I was listening to an interview with Elmer Towns. He was asked about the recent death of his wife. He said that toward the end of her life as she lay in bed drifting between this life and the next, her favorite gospel song came on the radio. Elmer prayed to the Lord in that moment, “God, this would be a good time for my wife to end this life and begin the next.” By the end of that song, the Lord answered that prayer. I sat in my car crying and thought, I want to be the kind of husband who prays with and for his wife so much that when it’s time for her to meet the ONE, I’m ready to let go of my two.

Lord, make it so in each of our marriages.

*This message is based on a message first preached by Craig Groeschel.

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: divorce, marriage, prayer

Second Base: Think Season, Not Game

May 19, 2015 by Patricia Leave a Comment

Raising Home Runs Kids
Second Base: Think Season, Not Game
Sycamore Creek Church
May 17/18, 2015
Tom Arthur

Let’s play ball!

Today we continue this series raising home run kids. In week one we stepped up to the plate and realized that we are our child’s first coach when it comes to faith and following Jesus. And before we’re a coach, we need to be a player first. You can’t coach something you don’t know. Week two, we rounded first base as we learned that raising your kids isn’t a solo sport. You need a team. Today we hit a double as we get to second base. We’re thinking this whole raising kids is about the long haul. It’s a whole season or even multiple seasons. Not just one game. So as we get to second base today, I want to look at training over an entire season.

Have you ever trained for something? I remember when I took what was then called a “keyboarding” class in Jr. High. We were learning to type. It wasn’t just one day at the typewriter learning where all the keys were at. It was an entire semester of learning followed by years and years of practice. I also played baseball growing up. By high school being on the baseball team meant a morning gym period with the team during the winter, and daily practice after school the rest of the year. Then there was training to read Hebrew in seminary. Learning Hebrew was three years of daily study. Or I think back to hiking the John Muir Trail in southern California with my friend, Bill, who is an Iron Man. I spent months and months of walking and exercising on stair masters. I remember the first time I got on a stair master. I could barely do it for five minutes, but by the end of my training I was easily doing sixty minutes or more on the stair master. These are all examples of things I’ve had to train for over a long period of time to do well. What is something you’ve had to train for over a long period of time to be able to do well?

I think it’s helpful to understand that training is a long-term process with some setbacks but an overall general movement forward. So when we think of our key verse for this series, we should think of it in the context of a season, not a single game:

Train children in the right way,
and when old, they will not stray.
~Proverbs 22:6 NRSV

Or as Dave Stone says, “God is more concerned with your direction than he is with your perfection.”

As we look toward training today, I want to explore a topic of parenting that vexes the best of us. Another word for training is discipline:

Discipline – noun dis·ci·pline \?di-s?-pl?n\
Training that corrects, molds, or perfects the mental faculties or moral character.
~Merriam-Webster

Isn’t that what we’re trying to do? Correct, mold, and perfect (or at least steps toward a kind of perfection) of the mental and moral faculties and character of our children? Discipline is a kind of development of self-control. We read in the ancient wisdom of the Proverbs:

Those who do not control themselves
are like a city whose walls are broken down.
~Proverbs 25:28 NCV

The walls of an ancient city were the primary defense against enemies. Children without training and discipline are like a city with no defense against enemies. The problem is that discipline or developing self-control in children is hard work. Really hard work. Really really really really hard work! But discipline isn’t achieved in one game. Discipline is achieved over an entire season and even several seasons back to back to back. Search Institute, a research group that has done significant research on the faith development of children found that “Single factors alone do not usually explain much of young people’s well-being, but that it takes multiple influences operating in multiple parts of young people’s worlds, and over multiple points in time, to promote positive youth development.”

So what I want to look at today are four drills for faithful discipline that will help you win over a season even if you’re not necessarily winning every game.

1. Faithful Discipline is Based on God’s discipline

First, it’s important to understand that faithful discipline of children is based on God’s discipline of us. Paul, the first missionary of the church and the writer of many books of the Bible, says:

Children, obey your parents because you belong to the Lord, for this is the right thing to do.
~Ephesians 6:1 NLT

Parents’ discipline of their children is rooted in the character of God. Our children belong to the Lord. We all do. So parents are essentially stewards of someone else’s property. Our children belong to God. Therefore, it is the right thing for children to obey parents and for parents to train and discipline their children.

I think that discipline can sometimes come across as a rules vs. heart kind of activity. Should we as parents set down rules that kids are to follow or are we to try to speak to the heart. I think the ultimate aim of God’s discipline is always heart formation. But rules play a part in that heart formation. Looking for direction from Paul we find that he makes an interesting observation about the role of the law (the rules guiding personal, religious, and national behavior) in the Old Testament:

The law was our [paidagogos] until Christ came; it protected us until we could be made right with God through faith.
~Galatians 3:24 NLT

The word “paidagogos” is translated in different versions of the Bible as guardian, tutor, schoolmaster, governess, guide, or pedagogue. So let’s put that back in the verse:

The law was our guardian/tutor/schoolmaster/governess/guide/pedagogue until Christ came; it protected us until we could be made right with God through faith.
~Galatians 3:24 NLT

So the rules governing or disciplining our behavior were like a guide until our heart was formed in the right way. Or as the prophet Jeremiah said:

I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
~Jeremiah 31:33 NLT

God’s goal was never just to give us a set or rules to live by. Rather, God gave us a set of rules to live by so that our hearts might be formed in love for God and others. In this way we could get to a point where we could “love God and do what you like” as Augustine, an early church leader, liked to say. If we love God, then what we like will ultimately be what God loves too.

Faithful discipline of our children is rooted in the character of God and God’s discipline of us: heart formation.

2. Faithful Discipline Is an Expression of Love

Second, faithful discipline is an expression of love. Sometimes when you’re in the throes of disciplining your child and your child is pushing all your buttons, you can lose sight of the motivation here: love of your child. Of course, your child doesn’t feel like you’re loving them. As the author of Hebrews says:

My child, don’t make light of the Lord’s discipline,
and don’t give up when he corrects you.
For the Lord disciplines those he loves,
and he punishes each one he accepts as his child.
~Hebrews 12:5-6 NLT

If you didn’t discipline your child and gave them no training in self-control, you would be building a city with no defense. Any enemy could walk in and do whatever they wanted. It’s tough to remember, but don’t forget, discipline is an expression of love. Or as the ancient wisdom of the Proverbs says:

A refusal to correct is a refusal to love;
love your children by disciplining them.
~Proverbs 13:24 NLT

Or as more literal translations have put it:

Whoever spares the rod hates his son.
~Proverbs 13:24 ESV

Now this verse can really send us for a loop these days, can’t it? We’re in the thick of the parenting wars now. To spank or not to spank? At the risk of spinning us perilously out of control, let me share with you my thoughts on this modern day discipline controversy.

First, Sarah and I haven’t felt a need to spank to discipline. We find that there are a lot of other creative ways we can accomplish the same thing. And we’re committed to active non-violent resistance as a method of change that finds its roots in the nature and character of the cross. Jesus could have taken the world by storm, but instead he chose to empty himself of his right to divinity and take upon himself the nature of a servant, even a slave who willingly gave his life for us. Somehow that doesn’t seem to jive with us with the act of spanking. Add to that theological understanding modern day research on spanking. Psychological research shows that spanking has some pretty negative long-term results that most of us would probably not want to train our child in (http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/04/spanking.aspx). And yet, even as I read all this research, I don’t really see an important distinction being made about spanking. I think most of our ideas of spanking look something like the child in the grocery store line crying because they want some piece of candy. To stop the crying, ironically, the parent swats the child’s bottom. More crying, just of a different kind ensues. This kind of impulsive on the spot spanking really isn’t very effective at accomplishing much of anything. On the other hand, my mom practiced a very different kind of spanking with us. If we did something particularly egregious, we would be asked to go to her room. A couple of minutes later she would show up and ask us if we’d prefer to be grounded for a set amount of time or to be spanked. I always chose spanking because it was over quicker. If we chose spanking, she would then spank us. I can remember maybe three times that she ever did this. It was not impulsive. It wasn’t an expression of frustration or anger in the moment. It was very deliberate, and she even put the choice in our hands. When I read the literature about spanking, I don’t see this kind of spanking represented in the literature, and I can think of a lot of other worse ways to discipline a child.

I’m not certain there’s a perfectly clear answer to the question of spanking, but I do know this, the principle of Proverbs 13:24 still holds: if you don’t discipline your child, you’re doing them harm. Faithful discipline is an expression of love for your child.

3. Faithful Discipline is United

Third, faithful discipline is a united front between parents. This united front requires submission. Paul tells the church at Ephesus, particularly husbands and wives to:

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
~Ephesians 5:12 NIV

I know you usually hear about wives submitting to husbands but this is always in the context of husbands and wives submitting to one another. Notice how it’s also rooted in the character of Christ. We see Christ practicing submission when John, one of Jesus’ closest friends and followers, says:

So Jesus explained, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does.”
~John 5:19 NLT

How confusing it must be for a child to get one set of training from one parent and another set of training from another parent. Faithful parenting is united which requires submission to one another. Or course, this is the ideal. So let’s take a moment and talk about the less than ideal situation when parents disagree on how to discipline children. And then throw into the mix co-parenting between divorced parents. Things get really sticky and messy. How do you faithfully discipline your child as a united front when you aren’t a united front?

My friend Bill, who I mentioned earlier is an Iron Man who I hiked the John Muir trail with, is also a research psychologist at Duke. He’s been studying child development for over a decade. He has a theory of parenting he’s developed after studying kids longitudinally over several decades. Basically, Bill has noticed that there are only a couple of things that can really throw your kid off the tracks: abuse, domestic violence, and sustained bullying. If those three things aren’t in your kid’s life, then Bill has noticed that kids are really resilient. He wrote me a summary of his research in an email saying:

Most negative experiences and parental missteps – even some things that we all agree are suboptimal – don’t affect children’s functioning long-term even if they are unpleasant in the moment. Contrariwise, there is very little evidence to support the long-term value of many of our ‘enrichment’ activities. Read to your kids, yes, and certainly give them a broad range of experiences and opportunities. Just don’t be under the illusion that baby Einstein or Spanish-immersion preschool is going to super-charge their development. Implicitly this suggests that parents’ every decision is perhaps less important/critical than they may fear. I hope that it frees parents up to relax a bit, put their parenting foibles in perspective, co-parent without judgment, and avoid viewing parenting as a minefield where they might inadvertently step wrong and cause irreparable harm.

In other words, it just might be more important that you show a united front by not complaining in front of your kids about your divorced spouse’s parenting methods. If your spouse or ex aren’t abusing your child, abusing other members of the home, or putting your child in situations where they’re getting bullied, then it’s likely that your child will turn out OK. Give your co-parent some grace even if he or she doesn’t parent quite the way you want him or her to parent.

Faithful discipline is united.

4. Faithful Discipline is Consistent

Fourth, faithful discipline is consistent just as God is consistent. The prophet Malachi says:

I am the Lord, and I do not change.
~Malachi 3:6 NLT

God doesn’t change. Of course, none of us are God, and when we realize we’ve been doing it wrong, we should change. But the principle here is that God is consistent, and in as much as our discipline is good, it should be consistent too.

Sarah and I were recently looking for some help from our Facebook friends on ideas about how to set up a chore and payment system with our kids. I wrote on Facebook:

Pondering with Sarah Faulman Arthur how to set up chores and payments for our four year old. I’m curious to hear how others are thinking about this. List of chores? How much you’d pay for each? Etc…

Dave Hemingway, a Facebook friend and regular attender of SCC, commented:
Our plan was to be haphazard and inconsistent. We found that approach kept them on their toes as they never knew what to expect. It also helped them develop their sales techniques as they continuously had to think of new arguments to convince us to buy things they wanted. Our approach also helped them develop their drama skills. As I recall they responded to the chore of loading/unloading the dishwasher as though we were dabbling in medieval torture.

Of course, Dave is being sarcastic to be funny, and funny it was. I laughed out loud! But he makes my point for me by stating the opposite. Haphazard and inconsistent doesn’t work as a discipline strategy for children.

So what method do you use to be consistent with your children? I don’t think there’s any one right method, but one that we’ve found helpful was suggested to us by Jana Aupperlee, a child psychologist who is a partner at SCC. When Micah was about two, we found that we were wrestling with him being really fussy. We didn’t know how to navigate our own emotions and frustrations with his fussing. So we asked Jana to come over and give us some parenting coaching. She did what she does best and mostly asked us really good questions. But she also gave us some tips and left us with a book titled 1 2 3 Magic. The basic gist of the book was a strategy for responding to behaviors you wanted to see stop, like fussing. When the behavior occurs, you simply name it and say, “No fussing. That’s one.” No emotion. No trying to explain everything and getting into a debate with your child. Just count, “One.” Then if it happens again, you count, “Two.” No emotion. No trying to explain everything and getting into a debate. If the behavior continues, you say, “That’s three. Timeout.” No emotion. No debating. No “2 and half…two and three quarters…don’t make me count three.” Just a dispassionate count and timeout in their room. One minute for every year of their age. We found this method really was magical. Micah learns from the consistency of the process. One is a warning. Two is further warning. He knows three means business. He almost always pulls it together at two. It gives us clear direction and Micah clear direction. But it only works if we are consistent.

I want to emphasize that there are a lot of right ways to be consistent. You don’t have to count like we do. You can find lots of good methods out there. The key is finding a method that works for you to be consistent. Because faithful discipline is consistent.

Closing

Let’s go back to Hebrews:

No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening—it’s painful! But afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way.
~Hebrews 12:11 NLT

Training and discipline are rarely fun. But peace in the heart of the child is the ultimate goal. What does this look like? Thinking back to training for the John Muir trail, I realize that it wasn’t much fun to do the training. But when I got on the trail after having trained well, I had the chance to see things very few people ever see. We were able to climb up the back side of Half Dome and be there for the sunrise all by ourselves. I was able to keep up with an Iron Man! Even on the really big day we had where we hiked 16 miles and climbed over 3500 feet, I kept pace with an Iron Man, and it felt good. And I had the satisfaction of having trained so that I enjoyed the journey rather than just suffering through it. The training and discipline reaped a harvest of good living on the trail.

I want the same thing for our kids. I want them to see things in this world that very few people ever see. I want them to recognize God’s glory, God’s call, and God’s rescue mission to the world! I want them to keep up with the great cloud of witnesses, the saints who go alongside of us and have gone before us. I want our children to have the satisfaction of hearing the master say at the end of their life, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter the joy of the Lord.”

God, give us wisdom to train and discipline our children as you train and discipline us. May our children grow to see it as an expression of our love for them. May we be united even in the tricky places of parenting. And help us to be consistent so that our children might one day hear you say to them, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter the joy of the Lord.”

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: discipline, parenting

Step Up To The Plate

May 7, 2015 by Patricia Leave a Comment

Raising Home Run Kids – Step Up To Home Plate
Sycamore Creek Church
May 3/4, 2015
Proverbs 22:6
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

My first interaction with parenting came before I was a parent myself. I was living in a house with other people who had kids. Several of these people were homeless women and children. One of the women had a little three-year-old boy named CJ. CJ was a handful at times. He didn’t have a lot of structure in his life. He loved to treat me as a living room jungle gym. He’s climb all over me like I was a set of monkey bars. He’d grab hold of whatever he could get his little hands on and pull himself up and over my shoulders and head plopping down behind me on the couch. One day while he was climbing all over me, he found a great handhold at the neck of my church. As he pulled himself up the neck of my shirt stretched out far enough for him to put his head down into my shirt. He immediately popped his head back out, looked me straight in the eye, and said (I’m quoting here….), “Where are your titties!?” I sputtered, thought, paused, then responded, “I think you need to go ask your mom.” What I did in that moment was drop the ball for helping this single mom talk about how God made us different. I lost the chance to teach him something about the beauty of God’s creation, including our bodies. I failed to step up to the plate.

Today is a great day to be at SCC, because we’re starting a new series called Raising Home Run Kids. Some of you who think you’re not parents are thinking, “A whole series on parenting!?” Let me remind you that if you’re not a parent right now, good chances are that you are a grandparent or that you have children in your life in some shape or form (nephews, nieces, cousins). And then there’s the church. All of you are spiritual moms and dads if you’re part of SCC. Fuller Youth Institute, based at Fuller Seminary in southern California, has been running a longitudinal study on youth learning what makes faith “sticky faith.” In other words, what has to happen for faith to stick in a child as he or she transitions into adulthood. They found that:

“While most U.S. churches focus on building strong youth groups, teenagers also need to build relationships with adults of all ages…Churches and families wanting to instill deep faith in youth should help them build a web of relationships with committed and caring adults” (Emphasis added).
~Fuller Youth Institute’s “Sticky Faith” Longitudinal study of Youth
(See more at: http://stickyfaith.org/leader/about/press-releases#sthash.bjMAhD4u.dpuf)

So you may not think this series directly applies to you, but I think it does. I think it does because you are part of the web of relationships that my boys will form as they grow into young men. Each of you is an essential part of Sarah and my parenting strategy. But let’s assume for a moment you don’t buy it. So what do you do when a message series isn’t specific to you? Here are four things to consider:

1. Don’t drop out (Your presence encourages others who need you).
2. Learn to help others (Enjoy learning about something you may not have chosen to learn about so that you can help others).
3. Pray for those who need it.
4. Invite someone you know who does need it.

So we’ve established that this series isn’t just for parents. It’s for all of us. So let’s talk about three ways to step up to the plate when it comes to the children in our lives.

1. You Are Your Child’s First Coach.

Our theme verse for this series is Proverbs 22:6 NRSV which says:

Train children in the right way,
and when old, they will not stray.
~Proverbs 22:6 NRSV

Let’s talk about some potential pitfalls when it comes to this verse. This is not a promise, it is wisdom. Wisdom is ancient psychological research. Wisdom is what happens most of the time. But we all know examples of parents who did all the training you could reasonably expect of a parent and whose child exercised the amazing and terrible freedom that God gives each of us: free-will. And yet, generally speaking, when you train up a child in the right way, when they grow up, they will certainly improvise on that way but they’ll stick to it.

Another research group that has studied what is effective in the faith development of children is Search Institute (By the way, much of what I share today is based not only in the Bible but also confirmed by research). Search Institute did a big cross-denominational study on the Effectiveness of Christian Education (aka Sunday School, children’s programs, etc.). What they found was that the biggest influence in the faith formation of children and teenagers is Mom and Dad. Here’s the results of their study:

Top Positive Faith Influences (Search Institute)

Mother – 64%
Father – 34%
Sunday School – 33%
Spouse – 32%
God’s Presence – 31%
Worship – 30%
Bible – 25%
Prayer – 24%
Love – 22%
Pastor – 21%

Notice how I’m number ten on that list. Mom and Dad are first. But not far behind is Sunday School. That’s a great team. Parents and Kids Creek together train children in the way they should go. That raises an interesting question in my mind: What “way” do you want your children to go? What are you aiming at? I think most of us are aiming at least at healthy behaviors. Here’s some good news: church participation predicts healthy behaviors. Search Institute found that:

“Young people who are religiously active are, on average, 39% less likely to engage in 10 high-risk behavior patterns, especially use of tobacco, illicit drugs, school problems, alcohol abuse, antisocial behavior, and driving and alcohol…In addition, they are, on average, 26% more likely to have 8 indicators of thriving, especially getting good grades in school, resisting danger, maintaining physical health, and leadership.”
~Search Institute

Now that sounds nice and safe. But I want more! If I think about it clearly, there are worse things in my mind than sex, drugs, and rock and roll. More than my kids staying away from “dangerous things,” I want dangerous kids. I want fully committed followers of Jesus! I want children who have joined the divine rescue mission to the world! I want kids who love Jesus with everything they’ve got. I want kids who are dangerous to all that is wrong with the world! Parents, what are you coaching your children toward? In order to train your child in this way, parents, you are your child’s first coach. Not me. Not Kids Creek Teachers. You. Parents are a child’s first coach. Of course, it’s good to have a team, and we’ll talk about that more in the coming weeks, but today, you are your child’s first coach.

2. Be a Player First, Coach Second (Be a Christian first, parent second)

Have you ever played a sport and had a coach? Every sport I’ve ever played had a coach. And every coach I’ve ever had was a player before he or she was a coach. Consider some of the great coaches. Mark Dantonio “attended the University of South Carolina and earned three letters as a defensive back.” Tom Izzo “played guard for the Northern Michigan men’s basketball team. In his senior season, he set a school record for minutes played and was named a Division II All-American.” Then there’s the best coach of all time: Coach K. Coach K played basketball under Bob Knight while training at West Point to become an officer in the United States Army. “He was captain of the Army basketball team in his senior season, 1968–69, leading his team to the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) at Madison Square Garden in New York City, where West Point finished fourth in the tournament” (Thank you Wikipedia).

While these coaches were good players, they weren’t perfect star players. But they were players first before they were coaches. The same is true of your coaching your children in the faith. You’ve got to be a player first before you can coach your kids. You’ve got to be a Christian first before you can coach your kids to become Christians.

Jesus says:

Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.”
~Matthew 6:33 NLT

You may be tempted to put your identity as a parent first. Resist that temptation. If you pick parent first, you will lose something. But if you pick Jesus first, and put parenting second, you will gain both. I think it could be said that if your identity is primarily in your child, your child will train you rather than you training your child! So here’s some training questions for you today from your pastor coach:

What are your personal spiritual H.A.B.I.T.S? (H.A.B.I.T.S. is an acronym for basic spiritual practices that we all need to develop: Hanging out with God and Hospitality; Authenticity in Small Groups; Bible Reading and Memorization; Involvement with the Church and Inviting; Tithing and Stewarding God’s Money; and Serving the Church, Community, and World).
Have you developed a personal spiritual growth plan for yourself? (Consider the 3 Simple Rules: Do No Harm, Do Good, and Stay in Love with God. What intentional steps are you taking under each of those “rules” to grow as a better “player”?)
Are you investing time in other significant relationships/friendships, particularly your spouse? Do you set time aside from parenting to nurture your marriage? Do you set time aside from marriage to nurture your friendships? Friendships support your marriage and your marriage is ground zero for your parenting. If you neglect the significant relationships in your life, there’s no way you will be a healthy player first to be able to be a healthy coach to your kids. Your kids need you to spend time on your marriage and friendships. (Of course you can take this and any other important thing overboard.)

If you want to coach your kids to follow Jesus, then you’ve got to be a player first yourself. Follow Jesus first yourself.

3. Get Your Family in the Game (Family Faith Practices Matter)

There’s a crucial point in the story of Israel, when God’s People are tempted to begin following other gods. Joshua, the leader of Israel following Moses, stands up and says:

But if you refuse to serve the Lord, then choose today whom you will serve. Would you prefer the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates? Or will it be the gods of the Amorites in whose land you now live? But as for me and my family, we will serve the Lord.
~Joshua 24:15 NLT

Joshua is picking his team and getting his whole family in the game. How do you get your family in the game? What are family faith practices you can do at home? What are family faith H.A.B.I.T.S.? The answer to this question is almost limitless, but I want to focus on three today that we practice in our home. Let me clarify. These are practices that we aim at but we’re not batting 1.000. But we are definitely far above .500.

1. Family Prayer & Bible Reading

Before we go to bed each night, we gather together and pray the Lord’s Prayer as a family. The Lord’s Prayer was probably the first long text Micah had memorized (the next was probably Psalm 23). Then while I’m laying in Bed with Micah, we reach from a Children’s version of the Psalms and a children’s Bible (I’m kind of a children’s Bible snob and the version we use is no longer in print. What I like about it is that it’s not a paraphrase of the Bible, but it’s an actual children’s translation of selected stories. It’s gritty and sometimes makes me a squirm a little reading the real stories to my children. But I like that it makes no attempt to sanitize the stories. The stories of the Bible aren’t just simple clean morality stories. Sometimes they are meant to be wrestled with amidst other Christians. The closest I’ve found to the Bible we use that is currently in print can be found here.) After we read the Bible we take a couple of moments to ask what made us happy and what made us sad from the day. We then thank God for what made us happy and we ask for help with what made us sad. That’s it. Easy. Simple. Children’s Psalms. Children’s Bible. Happy. Sad. Prayer. (I should add that between the Children’s Bible and the Happy/Sad/Prayer almost always comes a book about dinosaurs.)

2. Family worship

The second family practice is regular corporate worship attendance. Do you attend worship regularly? What about when you can’t attend? Do you gather with a local or online church when you’re on vacation? Do you prioritize worship involvement over extracurricular activities? One year one of the teenagers I was baptizing ended up with a conflict. His sports camp began on Sunday morning when he was scheduled to be baptized. He had a conflict here. I told him that I would baptize him on another day, but that I would recommend telling his coach that he was being baptized that Sunday and would show up at camp late. He was worried that it would cause his coach to think he wasn’t committed. Turns out that he chose baptism over his sports camp, told his coach, and his coach was so impressed that he asked him to share with the sports camp why he was late and why he was being baptized! It became a moment to share his faith. Wow!

Now I’m not a purist about this issue. We do have a vision here at SCC to have seven satellites in seven venues on seven days of the week: 7 – 7 – 7. You’ve hit the jackpot at SCC! So if you can’t get your Sunday on Sunday, get your Sunday on Monday @ Church in a Diner. Can’t make it on Sunday or Monday? Then get your Sunday on Saturday @ Riverview or Trinity. I often go to one of these mega church Saturday services just so I can worship without being in charge of anything. And I bring my kids with me! Or you can’t do Saturday, Sunday, or Monday. Then get your Sunday on the first Tuesdays @ The Loft, Crossroad’s Church in a Bar downtown (yes, they stole our “Church in a Diner” idea and just made it sexier in a bar downtown).

The National Study of Youth and Religion found that:

“On average, adolescent religious service attendance declines over time, related to major life course transitions such as becoming employed, leaving home, and initiating sexual activity. Parents’ affiliation and attendance, on the other hand, are protective factors against decreasing attendance…The religious context within the home, however, is also an important buffer against declining rates of attendance. Parental religiosity predicts a smaller decrease in religious service attendance over time.”
(http://youthandreligion.nd.edu/assets/124513/hardie_pearce_denton_2013.pdf)

Want your kids to attend worship as they grow into adults? How’s your worship attendance?

3. Family Faith Conversations

Do you talk about faith at home? Do your kids know how you became a Christian? Do your kids know how God has worked in your life in the past? Do your kids know how God is working in your life right now? Do your kids know how faith impacts your finances? Do your kids know what you believe and why? One way we begin faith conversations at our home is through a set of cards we keep on our table called Faith Talk Cards. We used to try to do this at dinner, but for some reason it didn’t work very well. So we moved this practice to breakfast. At breakfast most mornings we pull out the Faith Talk Cards, and Micah pulls out one or more cards. The cards have questions on them or faith conversation starters. Micah loves it. He often gets to answer the question too.

Get your family in the game by taking time to read the Bible with your kids and pray with your kids. Get your family in the game by attending worship together regularly. Get your family in the game by having family faith conversations.

Train children in the right way,
and when old, they will not stray.
~Proverbs 22:6 NRSV

What is “the way” you are training your child? Do you have to be perfect? No. Dave Stone, a pastor and author, says, “God is more concerned with your direction than he is with your perfection.” But if you don’t think intentionally about it, then it’s unlikely that you’ll have moments like this:

My oldest Son Micah, has a stuffed animal puppy he’s named Huckle. Huckle is always doing whatever we’re doing. Huckle is currently building church. Or Huckle is in a band and plays the drums. Or Huckle is cooking dinner tonight. Or Huckle is doing chores and getting paid for them. The other day, Micah told us that when Huckle does his chores and saves up his money, he wants to give the money to Nicaragua and Compassion Closet! Now where did Huckle come up with that idea? You know. He came up with it because Micah (and Huckle) attend Sycamore Creek Church, and SCC gives us opportunities as parents to participate in things like Nicaragua medical missions and collecting items for Compassion Closet. Micah is being coached by his parents and by his church in the way he should go, and when he is older, it’s my prayer (and I think it’s your prayer too) that he would be dangerous to all that is wrong with the world because he’s faithfully following Jesus. Church, thank you for helping Sarah and me coach our child. Thank you for helping us step up to the plate. Now are you ready to step up to the plate too?

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: children, parenting

Do You Believe I Can Do This?

April 30, 2015 by Patricia Leave a Comment

The Counselor – Do You Believe I Can Do This? *
Sycamore Creek Church
April 19/20, 2015
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

If you’ve read much of the Bible you’ve come across a curious fact about Jesus. He likes to ask lots of questions. Jesus asks hundreds of questions and in our current series, The Counselor, we’re exploring four of those questions:

Why do you doubt?
Why are you so afraid?
Do you want to be well?
Do you believe I can do this?

Today we’re looking at the last of those questions. Jesus asks two blind guys: Do you believe I can do this?

Before we dive into this question fully I’d like to take a moment and reflect on a mission we’ve been a part of that seems just about impossible to accomplish: Imagine No Malaria. Imagine No Malaria is a campaign to eradicate Malaria from Africa. Yes, eradicate it! Unlike many other diseases that are awaiting a cure, malaria was eliminated in the U.S. in the 1950s. However, in Sub-Saharan Africa, malaria continues to kill a person every 60 seconds. In our generation we can beat malaria once and for all. 90% of Malaria victims are pregnant women and children under 5. Since 2007 United Methodists have helped cut Malaria deaths nearly in half! We participated in this mission in our Christmas Eve offering. We gave $3000 of our Christmas Eve offering to help Imagine No Malaria. That feels a bit like a drop in a bucket doesn’t it. Do you believe that Jesus can take our $3000 and eradicate malaria? Well, our $3000 has been added to all the offerings of the United Methodist Church in Michigan in the last two years to total $1,542,269! Friends, that’s pretty amazing. But wait, there’s more! In 2006 the United Methodist Church across the world set a goal to raise $75,000,000. Yes, 75 MILLION DOLLARS! Since 2006 together we’ve raised over $60,000,000. Yes, 60 MILLION DOLLARS! We have effectively cut malaria deaths in half. Our $3000 went to help accomplish a goal that seemed at one time almost impossible. And today, Jesus asks us again: Do you believe I can do this?

What are you having a hard time believing that Jesus can do right now? I’d like to explore this question today by diving into a story of Jesus healing a couple of blind guys. The context of this story comes right after Jesus has raised a dead girl back to life. Whoa! That’s pretty impressive! So right after this he gets lots of attention. Here’s where we pick up the story as Matthew, one of Jesus’ closest followers tells it:

After Jesus left the girl’s home, two blind men followed along behind him, shouting, “Son of David, have mercy on us!”
~Matthew 9:27 NLT

When these guys shout “Son of David” they’re making a faith statement. They believe he is the messiah, the anointed one who has come to save them. This title makes the religious leaders of the day furious, but the blind guys shout it anyway. Speaking of “shouting”, the word here for “shout” means “to cry with an animalistic cry.” It shows up elsewhere in the Bible describing a woman screaming out in labor during childbirth (Revelation 22). I’ve heard this kind of shout twice, and I’ve taken measures to make sure I never hear it again short of immaculate conception! So these guys are crying, shouting, howling out because they figure that if Jesus raised a dead girl back to life, then it’s likely that he could do something much easier: give them sight.

I don’t really know what it’s like to be blind but I almost blundered into temporarily blinding myself once. When I first began backpacking I read up about protecting yourself from bears, and I bought a big can of bear spray. A can of bear spray is like an air-freshener size can of mace. Yes, it’s big. I bought it at the local backpacking store and before I went out on my first solo hike, I read the instructions about how to use it. The instructions suggested that you carry it on your belt (it’s no good to have it buried in your backpack when a bear is charging at you!). They also suggested that there’s plenty of spray in the can to give it a test spray so you were familiar with how far it would spray and what it would look like. Now, bear spray works a little different than the kind of personal mace you carry around for self-protection. Self-defense mace sprays in a direct stream. Bear spray sprays out in a big cloud so you don’t have to be a very good shot when you’re crapping in your pants as a grizzly charges at you. So I put the bear spray on my belt, and practiced popping the hood and pointing it forward. Remember, I was going on my first solo trip and was all by myself at the trail head. I tried this several times then figured I was ready to actually press the trigger. So I pulled it out of the holster and pointed it forward all in one fluid motion and pulled the trigger. The mace came out in a big cloud and in that moment I realized a strategic error I had just made. I was facing into the wind. The cloud quickly came right back at me! I began to cough and felt my eyes beginning to sting as I did my best to take evasive maneuvers with a forty-pound backpack on my back. Well, I didn’t lose my sight that day, but it’s not an experience I ever want to repeat. So back to the real blind guys…

They went right into the house where he was staying, and Jesus asked them, “Do you believe I can make you see?”
~Matthew 9:28a NLT

They follow Jesus right into the house, and Jesus turns on his inner counselor and asks them a question: Do you believe I can make you see? A good counselor always asks good questions, and Jesus’ question is spot on at this moment and for us today. Do you believe I can do this?
“Yes, Lord,” they told him, “we do.”
~Matthew 9:28b NLT

They respond with faith: Yes, Lord. We believe you have the power to make us well.

Then he touched their eyes and said, “Because of your faith, it will happen.” 30 Then their eyes were opened, and they could see!
~Matthew 9:29-30a NLT

Jesus responds to their request because of their faith. Not according to their income, their church attendance, or the brand of clothing they’re wearing, but their faith. God responds to faith. The anonymous author of the book of Hebrews in the Bible says that “it is impossible to please God without faith.” (Hebrews is usually attributed to Paul but nowhere in the book does it claim to have been written by Paul. The most interesting theory I’ve heard about the authorship is that it was written anonymously by a woman because no one in that day and age would have read a book written by a woman.) If we have faith we can move the heart of God.

Now before we go too far into this we need to clear up some baggage that churchy people have given to this kind of thinking. Churchy people have taken what should be encouraging and turned it into something discouraging. It can be discouraging because people say: You weren’t healed because you didn’t have enough faith. Or maybe because you didn’t pray right. You didn’t pray long enough or hard enough. You didn’t sign off with the right formula: “In the name of Jesus” or “in the name of Jesus and the Holy Spirit” or “in the name of the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit.” Or you didn’t shout loud enough or bind up the devil or put your finger in your ear and pat your head and turn around three times. Whatever!?

All this confusion comes from a logical fallacy. Just because God responds to faith, doesn’t mean that if God doesn’t respond, that you did something wrong or don’t have faith. I respond when my kids say “please” but do I always respond when they say “please”? No. Of course not. I take into account all kind of things that they’re not even thinking about. No you can’t “please baptize your brother in the bathtub.” Yes, God does honor faith, but if you don’t get what you ask for, don’t fall into a false sense of guilt that you necessarily did something wrong. What I want to share with you are three types of faith that God honors.

1. God honors the faith that believes when it doesn’t see.
We read again in Hebrews:

Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.
~Hebrews 11:1 NLT

Let’s be honest about this. Faith has to do with things we can’t always see. Is the world that you can access with your senses all that exists? Or are there some things that can’t be accessed by your five senses? Faith is a confidence and assurance that while you can’t see God, God is at work in your life. Back to the two blind guys:

They went right into the house where he was staying, and Jesus asked them, “Do you believe I can make you see?”
“Yes, Lord,” they told him, “we do.”
~Matthew 9:28 NLT

Before they saw the results, they believed. Jesus hadn’t even healed them yet, but they believed. Whatever your challenge today—whether physical, financial, or spiritual—do you believe God is able? All things are possible with God. And of course, the churchy answer is, “Yeah, I believe God can do it.” But our actions and our words betray us. We don’t act as if we have faith and often we don’t talk as if we have faith. We say things like, “All we can do now is pray.” In other words, “I guess we’ve tried all the sensible things and the last thing is a hail Mary prayer to God.” No, the first thing you do is pray.

Over the last seven days what were you praying about? For most of us, it’s not much. If you don’t pray for much, that shows that you don’t believe much. The size of your request reveals the strength of your faith. If you’re praying for safe travel, well, you’re probably going to get there safe anyway. If you’re praying for the food to nourish your bodies…well…actually given what some of you eat, that may take real faith! Instead, are you praying for your marriage to be healed? Are you praying to be healed of an addiction? Are you praying to overcome cancer? Lately, I’ve been praying two things for our church:

Lord, double our church in one day.
Lord, double our church in one year.

Those are big prayers, aren’t they? We came really close at Easter. We average about 225 each weekend across our three services and two locations. I was praying that we would reach 450 people at Easter. This Easter we were one church, celebrating Easter on three days in three locations with five services. 1 – 3 – 5. We had a record attendance this Easter of 413 people! So close to doubling in one day. I think it’s going to take 1 – 3 – 6 next year! Then compared to last year at this time we’re up 25% year to date in attendance. But I’m praying for us to reach so many new people that in one year we’re up 100%. Double in one day and double in one year. That’s my big prayer lately. I can’t quite see how we’ll double in one year, but I’m praying and I believe that God can make it happen even though I can’t see it yet. God honors a faith that believes when it doesn’t see.

2. A faith that persists when nothing changes.
Let’s get back to the two blind guys:

After Jesus left the girl’s home, two blind men followed along behind him…
~Matthew 9:27 NLT

So these guys start following Jesus even though he hasn’t yet promised anything. They just follow. They persist even though nothing has changed. Have you ever persisted in following someone? I had an unusual experience one year following my congressman. I got the idea one year to try to meet everyone who held an office that I had to vote for. I figured it would be pretty easy to meet with my local mayor of Petoskey and ward representative, but didn’t imagine I’d get much further than my state representative. But then my congressman from the House of Representatives came to town for a town hall meeting. I figured that was the best I was going to get so I went. During the Q&A time I asked him a question and after it was over, he came right up to me and talked to me. In that conversation he invited me to spend the day with him the next time he was in town. So a year later his office called and I spent the day with him following him around Petoskey. That day he invited me to come spend a day with him in Washington D.C. I happened to be going to Washington D.C. in a couple of weeks so I ended up following him around D.C. for a day. Have you ever wondered what your congressman actually does? I learned in those two days. When he was in Petoskey he met with people who asked him for money for various projects. When he was in Washington D.C. he met with committees and asked them for money for various projects! I don’t know how much changed in our world in those two days, but I learned a lot persistently following him around.

Paul tells the Colossians to be persistent when they ask God for things:

Be persistent in prayer, and keep alert as you pray, giving thanks to God.
~Colossians 4:2 GNT

Jesus tells the parable of a widow and an unjust judge. The widow is so persistent in seeking justice that while the judge didn’t care about justice, he gave her justice just to get her off his back. Jesus summarizes saying that if an unrighteous judge responds to persistence, how much more a loving God?

For many of us who have been around Sycamore Creek Church for a long time, we’ve had to be persistent. Fourteen year of setting up and tearing down in a school is a long time to persist. I’ve only been around for five of these years, but in my second year I had a problem of persistence. I am the second pastor of SCC. I followed Barb Flory, the founding pastor. Second pastors have their own unique set of challenges including a not unusual or unexpected drop of 30-50% in attendance after the founding pastor leaves. We didn’t experience anything quite like that, but in my second year we lost about 20% of our attendance. It wasn’t very much fun. Toward the end of my second year I began to wonder, should I throw in the towel? Five years into it now, I’m glad I persisted although at the time I wasn’t sure anything was really changing. I’m glad we persisted. God honors faith that persists even when it appears that nothing is changing.

3. A faith that works when it doesn’t make sense

There is a difference between hope and faith. Hope is a desire. Faith is a demonstration. Let’s explore that further through the story of Abraham and Isaac. God asks Abraham to sacrifice his child, Isaac. Isaac was a miracle baby, born when Abraham and Sarah were too old to have children. Sometimes you’ve got to wonder what God is doing asking Abraham to sacrifice his child, but you read the story and you find out that just as Abraham is about to do it, God sends an angel to him to stop. There are at least two main points to this story. The first point is to teach that in contrast to other ancient religions, God does not require child sacrifice. But the second is to show trust and faith in God.

In the New Testament we see James, Jesus’ brother, reflecting on Abraham’s faith:

“You see that [Abraham’s] faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did.”
~James 2:22 NLTAbraham shows a lot of faith in this moment. But there’s also someone else who shows a lot of faith, maybe even more than Abraham: Isaac. In fact, the Jewish Rabbis don’t call this story “The Sacrifice of Isaac” they call it The Akedah or “Binding of Isaac.” You see, we often think of Isaac as a little boy in this story. But if you read the story carefully you’ll see that he’s probably a pretty strong young man, and Abraham is probably not the strongest old man. So Isaac has faith to allow himself to be bound. Both Abraham and Isaac show amazing faith in the face of something that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.

The blind guys in the story we’ve been reading have a similar faith. They are like any of us. We have a problem, and we tend to magnify the problem. In the midst of it all we lose sight of God. In their culture if you were blind, people thought it was because you or your parents sinned. But these guys ignore all that. Nothing makes sense. But they realize that there are some actions they can still take. I can’t see, but I can hear. I can’t see, but I can talk, and I can yell. I can’t see, but I can walk, and I can follow Jesus.

Sometimes there are things you can’t do, but there are still some things you can do. You can’t heal yourself from cancer, but you can seek God and change your diet and go to the best doctor. You can’t erase temptation online, but you can pray for deliverance, and install a filter, and delete apps on your phone. You can’t change your spouse, but you can continue to love your spouse as Christ loved the church. You can’t rescue every sex slave or help every inner-city child get an education, but you can do some things…

You see, our faith is not in our faith, our faith is in the faithfulness of God. It may not make sense, but we trust that God is in control.

Some of you may say, “You go ahead with your blind faith.” But I say that I would rather be blind and have faith that God can heal, than have sight and have no faith at all. So God help me have:

Faith that believes even though it doesn’t see.
Faith that persists even when nothing changes.
Faith that works even when it doesn’t make sense.

*This sermon is based on a sermon that was first preached by Craig Groeschel.

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: belief, Faith, persistance

Why Do You Doubt?*

April 7, 2015 by Patricia Leave a Comment

Why Do You Doubt?*
Sycamore Creek Church
Tom Arthur
Easter 2015

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

Or did he? Maybe we’re just deluding ourselves. Some people don’t wrestle with doubts. They say: “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it.” But some of us, myself included, are more naturally skeptical. We think, “What if this isn’t true? What if we’re being brainwashed? What if we’re making ourselves feel better? What if we’re being told a lie?”

The church is not always a friendly place for people who have doubt. Church people can be mean to other church people. If you have doubts, you may not be one of us. If you have doubts, you may not be saved. If you have doubts, you may not have faith.

But what I want you to know today is that if you don’t lean into some honest doubts, you may never have faith. Is doubt the end of real faith? I don’t think so. Doubt can be the beginning of real faith!

Today I want to look at the story of Doubting Thomas. Poor guy. That’s how we know him. “Doubting Thomas.” Not “Faithful Thomas” or “Believing Thomas” but “Doubting Thomas.” But what I want to show you today is that who Thomas becomes is evidence that even the biggest doubters can become the biggest followers of Jesus. Let’s begin the story a little after Jesus raises from the dead. He meets some of his followers on the road but surprisingly they don’t recognize him. Eventually they “break bread” with Jesus and recognize him. Then he disappears. They get together with the other disciples and here’s what happens:

And just as they were telling about it, Jesus himself was suddenly standing there among them. “Peace be with you,” he said. But the whole group was startled and frightened, thinking they were seeing a ghost!
~Luke 24:36-37 NLT

They all saw him dead. But now he’s alive! I’d be freaked out too. I’ve buried a lot of people, and if one of them showed back up, I’d pee in my pants!

“Why are you frightened?” he asked. “Why are your hearts filled with doubt?
~Luke 24:38 NLT

Jesus is probably thinking, “Didn’t I tell you this was going to happen? Did you forget?” And guess who wasn’t there…Doubting Thomas.

One of the twelve disciples, Thomas (nicknamed the Twin/Didymus), was not with the others when Jesus came.
~John 20:24 NLT

Thomas missed church. You miss a lot when you miss church. He missed the presence of Jesus, the power of Jesus, the proof of Jesus, the “Peace be still” of Jesus. If you haven’t been here since Christmas, you missed a lot. A lot.

But [Thomas] replied, “I won’t believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side.”
~John 20:25 NLT

Thomas sometimes gets a bad rap here. He’s chastised for not having faith. But I see something much more positive at work here. I think Thomas is saying, “I don’t want second-hand faith…I want first-hand faith.” So many people just kind of believe because their parents/grandparents/other people believe. One day, something happens, and it shakes us, “Do I really believe?” If the claims of his resurrection are true, it demands a response. Thomas says, “If it’s true, it changes everything.” For many, the doubt is the beginning of faith. Thomas and many of us are saying, “I need a little more…” Jesus doesn’t blush.

Eight days later the disciples were together again, and this time Thomas was with them. The doors were locked;
~John 20:26 NLT

That’s pretty cocky, isn’t it? Jesus walks into a locked room. David Copperfield move there. I don’t really get it, but it’s no crazier than being raised from the dead in the first place!

Suddenly, as before, Jesus was standing among them. “Peace be with you,” he said. Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and look at my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!”
~John 20:26-27 NLT

Jesus cares about the one who wants to believe, and talks only to Thomas. Nobody else. He says, “Stop doubting and believe.” Jesus didn’t put Thomas in a time out: “You sit in the corner. You can’t be my follower.” Jesus gives Thomas what he needs. Today Jesus is going to give some of you what you need to believe too.

I resonate deeply with Thomas and not just because we share the same name. I grew up in the church. I grew up believing what my church and my parents told me. I was very active in our church’s youth group. I chose to go to a Christian liberal arts college. When I got there, I began to have some pretty significant doubts. I began to ask some pretty hard questions. I was looking for complete certainty but I wasn’t finding any. During that time the Smashing Pumpkins covered a Fleetwood Mac/Stevie Nicks song called Landslide. They lyrics of that song felt like they expressed where I was at with doubt and faith:

“Well, I’ve been afraid of changing
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you.”

The landslide of my doubts left me without any faith. I left Christianity for a period of time and life became very dark. What I noticed when I went to the side of unbelief was that I didn’t gain any certainty. I was still as uncertain as before. The big difference was that when I believed, I had some sense of meaning and purpose and hope in life. But when I didn’t believe, I had no hope, no ultimate meaning, no ultimate purpose. And so in the midst of that dark place, I made an intellectual decision to believe in spite of uncertainty. What I learned was that faith is not the absence of doubt or uncertainty but faith is the decision to believe in spite of doubt or uncertainty. And I found that my life did begin again to have purpose, meaning, and hope. Jesus was faithful to provide all three. I had ended up back where Thomas ended at the end of the day:

“My Lord, and my God!” Thomas exclaimed.
~John 20:28 NLT

MY. We’re talking about a first degree faith here. A first hand faith. Believing Jesus, not just belief in Jesus. This is what is going to happen to some of you today. You’re going to receive from Jesus whatever it is that you need to have that kind of faith in spite of uncertainties and doubt. It happened to all of Jesus’ first followers:

Peter’s Story
Peter was one of Jesus’ closest followers. He was in the inner circle. But when Jesus was arrested Peter denied Jesus three times. But after the resurrection, Peter becomes “the rock.” He preaches to thousands and thousands put their faith in Jesus. He is ultimately persecuted for his faith and tradition tells us that he was crucified. But he refused to share the same crucifixion that Jesus had, so he was crucified upside down. From runaway doubter to crucifixion upside down. Jesus gave Peter what he needed to believe.

James’ Story
James was Jesus’ brother. What would your brother have to do to convince you he was the son of God?! James became the leader of the church in Jerusalem. Tradition tells us that ultimately he was pushed off the temple, but miraculously he doesn’t die. While lying on the ground he prays that his persecutors be forgiven. Then James is clubbed to death. From Jesus’ brother to martyred church leader. Jesus gave James what he needed to believe.

Paul’s Story
Paul hated Christians. He was one of the religious leaders of his day and he was given legal permit to hunt down and kill Christians. They blasphemed against God claiming that Jesus was God’s son. But on his way to Damascus one day to catch and kill some Christians he meets the resurrected Jesus who blinds him. Eventually he regains his sight and becomes the first missionary of the church of the entire Mediterranean region. He would eventually say, “To live is Christ, to die is gain.” The persecutor became the persecuted and he was beaten and imprisoned. Tradition tells us that he was beheaded. From Christian bounty hunter to Christian missionary, Jesus gave Paul what he needed to believe.

Thomas’ Story
Then there’s “Doubting Thomas.” Thomas got what he needed. He saw Jesus. He traveled to India to tell those who lived there about Jesus. His message was met with resistance and he was met in a cave and speared him through. “Doubting Thomas” believed enough to die for Jesus. Do you believe enough to live for him?

Sometimes my faith is talking so loud, I can’t hear what my doubt is saying. When I bring my doubts to God, God gives me faith to believe in spite of my doubts.

Recently I’ve had the chance to hear about how Jesus has given someone else what she needed to have faith and believe. Noelle currently works in our nursery. She started attending SCC about a year ago. About a month ago she emailed me to tell me that she had just had an amazing experience with God and had chosen to believe. I asked her if she’d be willing to meet to tell me more about her life and story. Here’s what I heard.

Noelle grew up being abused in every way possible for about seven years of her childhood. At the time she was attending church regularly with her grandma. While there she would pray for God to make it stop but nothing changed. The abuse continued. She felt like God had abandoned her so she abandoned God. The abuse made her very skeptical of men, but she still didn’t want to be alone. Over her teen years she made many unwise choices that led to lifestyle habits that she isn’t proud of. About a year ago she met Thomas online and began dating. Thomas had grown up at SCC but was no longer regularly attending.

One thing led to another and within a couple of weeks they were pregnant. The pregnancy was somewhat miraculous. They were using three different forms of birth control! One of those forms of birth control should have caused the child to be miscarried.

A month into dating Thomas, it was time to meet his parents for the second time and tell them they were going to be grandparents. Noelle knew that Dotty was very active at SCC. She expected judgment, cruelty, and shaming. What she received instead took her by surprise. She was shown kindness, gentleness, compassion, and love.

Dotty began to invite her to church and she came somewhat reluctantly expecting more judgment, cruelty, and shaming. But at SCC Noelle was again surprised to find kindness, gentleness, compassion, and acceptance. She liked a church where you could ask questions and the pastor shared his own doubts and uncertainties. She felt safe.

Noelle began to open up to Dotty about her past abuse and decided to marry Thomas while being very pregnant. Dotty invited her to watch several “corny” Christian movies (“same actors with basically the same plot”), but one, Courageous, really touched her. It was about four dads who made a commitment to protect their children and raise them in faith in God. After that movie she did something she had never done: listened to God. While listening she heard God saying: “I am here. You are not alone.” Noelle began to see how God had protected her and was with her through her past.

The pain has not gone totally away, but Noelle has begun to make some changes. She finds herself being more open in her relationships. She has begun to feel that God is calling her to help others who have suffered from abuse. As a nursery worker, she attended an abuse prevention training program for the United Methodist Church and is actively looking to help make our children’s ministry an even safer place for children. Noelle still has questions, uncertainties, doubts, struggles, and some pain. But she’s also experiencing some health and healing. She knows God is with her, and she has a renewed sense of purpose in her life, in spite of the doubts and uncertainties.

Friends, doubt is not the end of real faith, it is the beginning. Maybe right now you’re feeling that tug of God’s presence, God’s love saying, “Come home child. Believe. I have never let you go. I am here. You are mine. I am yours. Rest in my arms. Trust. Surrender.” If that’s where you’re at, here’s a prayer:

Prayer
God, I have honest doubts. Thank you for meeting me in the midst of those doubts. In spite of my doubts and uncertainties, help me to believe in and follow your Son, Jesus. I trust you. I give myself to you. Help me see how you never leave me alone. Amen.

If you prayed that prayer for the first time today, or if you prayed it anew, would you let someone know? Drop me an email (tomarthur@sycamorecreekchurch.org) or tell a trusted friend who is also a follower of Jesus. Then would you consider taking the series challenge. You’re here today, but when you miss church you miss a lot. Take the challenge to come each week of this series: The Counselor. You’ve met Jesus when he asked “Why do you doubt?” How will you meet Jesus when he asks you more questions? Come and see.
*This sermon is based on a sermon first preached by Craig Groeschel

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: belief, Doubt, Easter, Faith

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Terminator: Genisys – Endings & Beginnings

Never Give Up*

Have Fun

Seek God

Second Base: Think Season, Not Game

Step Up To The Plate

Do You Believe I Can Do This?

Why Do You Doubt?*

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