New

Mark 2:21-22

“No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins.”

 

Jesus says these words in response to religious leaders who were questioning him because Jesus’ disciples were not fasting like other people were.  They wondered why not, why are you different, why this new way of doing things?  Why can’t you just be like everyone else?

 

But Jesus and his followers understood something others did not. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV)  To follow Jesus meant all was new.  Most people struggle with new, we are much more willing to compromise, to take a little new with a lot of the old.  We like to add some new things, but keep all the old stuff too.  But Jesus anticipates this, and makes it clear, you don’t combine the two.  New life in Jesus is new life.  It does not mean you add a few new things like a patch or another layer to your life, but that all things are made new in Jesus.

 

2012 is a new year.  It will be unlike 2011, and different than any other year you have lived before.  We can handle this new reality in one of two ways.  We can dig in our heels, and try to go back to the way it was, to complain about all that was, which is not very constructive, or we can explore the new reality of today.  We can try to live in the past, or we can live in the present God has placed us in.  We can think about what was, or we can live into all that God has blessed us with new. 

 

Second Corinthians reminds you that the moment you say yes to God, you say yes to new.  Yes to transformation, yes to change, yes to things not being like they always have been, and yes to life to the fullest in Jesus.  Yes to new opportunities, new friendships, and new growth.

 

Pastor Bill

 

Discussion Questions:

 

1. What new has God placed in your life as we begin 2012?
2. How might God be stretching you in a new way?
3. What makes new most challenging for you?

Expectations

The alarm goes off, but you “accidentally” hit the snooze.  A little while later, you wake up panicked and running late.  You fly through the shower, grab coffee at the gas station on the way and shoot into your parking spot like a NASCAR driver.  You blaze past everyone between you and your “assigned” seat and sit down 15 minutes late.  Welcome to Sunday morning, and your have just arrived at church.  What do you believe comes next in this story?  For some it sounds like this, “There is some music, some of which I love the rest I dislike because it is not my style.  People read some stuff from the Bible.  Some person talks for way too long about thee’s and thou’s and other irrelevant things to my life.  We stand up and sit down a few times. They ask for my money.  I eat a cookie, drink some coffee, and I talk about the weather before I hurry home to begin the rest of my day.”

I hope that this is an extreme take on what many of you experience in your life.  But I ask this because I wonder, what is our expectation for church Worship?  Take a moment and honestly ask yourself, what do I expect or believe happens at church Sunday?  What do I hope will happen because I go to church?  What do I believe we gather for?  If we are not careful, church Sunday is just another part of the weekly schedule.  We come and go through the motions, and go home excited to check one more thing off our “to do” list.

Look at this scripture from the prophet Isaiah about his experience in worship, “At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” (Isaiah 6:4-5, TNIV) In Luke 1, Zechariah has such a powerful experience in worship that he goes home speechless for months.  As we read through scripture worship, being in the presence of God, is an event that transforms people’s lives.

Jesus tells us in Matthew: “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” (Matthew 18:20, TNIV)  Jesus tells us that we should come to church with high expectation.  We should come expecting that God will show up in a powerful way that will change our lives.  What would Sunday morning look like if we came prepared and expecting something powerful?  What would the music sound like if we expected that we would connect with God in an intimate way through our voices, if the sermon and scripture reading was a place that God could warm our hearts, open our eyes and change our lives.

What if we took the car ride to church or 2 minutes in the shower to prepare our hearts for worship, what if we expected God to transform our hearts when the Word was read, or that God could use all of the music to bring us peace or clarity?  Just try it.  Come with great expectations, prayerfully ready to worship for 2 or 3 weeks, and see if God won’t meet us in worship in powerful and life changing ways.

Pastor Bill

Biggest Loser

Each year hundreds of thousands of people try to diet. People seek to modify what they eat, how they look and feel about themselves. People diet seeking transformation. Some are trying to transform their self-esteem, that if they lost some weight they would feel more confident. Some want to diet to transform their health. They have been to far too many doctor’s appointments where they were scolded by the doctor and warned of negative effects of their current health. But at the core when people diet they are seeking transformation and change, and that comes at a cost. One struggle that comes with dieting though is that you cannot just remove a bad habit (eating unhealthy, smoking, etc) from your life. There will be a void left that needs to be filled, a void that will fill up with something, and too often people backslide after a short time to the bad habits they were seeking to lose. A central part that most diets leave out is the importance of replacing your bad habits with meaningful good habits. Out of that culture the show Biggest Loser was created. Each season the show invites a number of dangerously overweight individuals to change their lives through losing weight and adopting healthy habits for physical, emotional, and spiritual health. But a central part of the show is that for them to gain a better life, and to see transformation, they have to lose, to lose weight, bad habits, and bad attitudes.

In Matthew 16 Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:24-25, ESV) So part of becoming a follower of Jesus is losing. Losing habits, behaviors, attitudes and more so that we can be used by God. To be transformed by God, we will experience change and loss, but as with any diet it is not just losing that matters, but what you fill those voids with. Throughout scripture God does not just tell us to lose, or to avoid, but asks for us to adopt different behaviors, different attitudes, and a different lifestyle. For the next three weeks we are going to look at a number of things that we are called to lose as we seek to become followers of Jesus, things that we are called to give up so that God can transform our lives, but also new things that we are called to embody as Christians. We are going to look at the transformation that God calls us to in scripture, both through losing, and changing.

September 12th- Lose Fear – 1 Corinthians 5:6-13, Matthew 7:1-5

September 19th- Lose Selfishness- Psalm 119: 9-24

September 26th- Lose Doing it Alone- Ecclesiastes 4:9-12, Galatians 5:22-6:5

So what is it in your life that you need to lose so that you can grow? As we seek to continue growing in our relationship with God, and to grow closer to Jesus, are we willing and ready to change, to lose, so that we can gain and grow? Are we ready to be the biggest loser as Jesus suggests in Matthew 16?