I had a last minute thought, “I should have Darin come up and team teach with me.”
Sucks to be Darin.
But actually it worked out great. He filled in all the gaps. He was a natural.
As a pastor, you always have to have Biblical backing for all your decisions. My backup for asking Darin to preach with me at the last minute was 1 Peter 3:15.
We talked about the vision of RCC. God has called us to be a unique voice in Missoula. He’s called us to be a force for transformation.
But if we try to be a force for transformation under our own power, then we run the risk of bringing glory to ourselves.
In order to make God famous in Missoula, we need to be His disciples. We need to live in the power of the Holy Spirit.
We need to do God things, not just good things, in Missoula.
So, how do we grow in our spiritual walk? How do we become modern-day Jesus followers?
Here’s what Darin and I taught: discipleship happens in a relational environment. Discipleship happens when you have intentional leaders. And discipleship happens when you have a reproducible process.
For River City Church, this can all be summed up in LifeGroups. We love Sunday gatherings, and we love to worship with everyone at RCC. But if you want to grow spiritually, you ALSO have to be plugged into a small group. It’s where life really happens.
Oh btw, I thought that worship was great. Not just because I was on the team either. But I think that our team really gelled last night. We’re growing in what it means to worship, and to lead RCC in worship.
As you probably know I own a tent business (westernwalltents.com) and we have been sending tents to Haiti and we have some potential deals in the works for Chile as well. For $120 you can house a family in Haiti for the next year or more. We are sending a container of 500 tents next week, and another container within the month. The organization purchasing these containers is Global Aid Network, a subsidiary of Campus Crusade for Christ. If you would like to sponsor a family, you can send a check to River City Church with “tents” in the memo line. The funds we raise will go to purchase more tents than would have otherwise been purchased by these aid organizations.
We had a technological nightmare tonight! Battery went out on my guitar twice, and my microphone once. As a result, the sermon didn’t get recorded. Seriously?
I know for a fact that the enemy was working overtime to distract us, to keep us from entering in to worship tonight. Sorry, didn’t work.
We had the richest time of worship during rehearsal that I’ve had in a LONG time! We were on our faces. It was the most incredible experience. Hard to explain unless you were there.
Regardless of the technological issues, we still sensed the presence of God tonight.
I know for a fact some chains were broken tonight!
I had a very busy week and spent 3 days last week working on a consulting project in Oregon. Needless to say, I got a late start on my sermon.
I actually didn’t even have the topic until driving home from Oregon late on Thursday eve. I was finally able to slow down enough to ask God what He wanted to say to RCC this week.
It was so cool the way He spoke to me on that drive. For some reason I just started thinking about scars. First I thought about all of the scars that I have on my left hand from playing with knives as a kid. I actually have 8 scars on my left index finger alone!
The best scar was one that cut right across the knuckle straight to the bone. I can remember seeing the bone and tendons when I did it.
Funny thing is, when I think back on that day, I don’t remember the pain of the wound, but I do remember it being one of the best days of my life.
You see, that day I shot the largest buck I had ever shot. I cut my finger cleaning the deer. To be honest, I didn’t even care that I cut my finger because I was so excited.
All of us have scars. Some of the scars bring back painful memories, and some bring back good memories.
Sometimes the scars that hurt the worst are the emotional scars deep down. But God does not intend for our scars to be painful. He intends them to bring healing.
There are a lot of men in the Bible who had deep scars. Jacob walked with a limp after wrestling with God. Jacob wrestled his whole life so that he could obtain blessing. He wrestled with his father, he wrestled with God. Finally, God blessed him, but not until after he dislocated Jacob’s hip.
Jacob walked with a limp the rest of his life. But I bet if you asked Jacob about that limp, and what happened that night, he wouldn’t have told you about the pain. He would have told you that GOD BLESSED HIM THAT NIGHT!!!
Job was also a man with many scars. Job was the richest, most influential man of his time. He was also a man of integrity, a worshiper, a man who shunned evil.
Satan came to God one day and said, “The only reason that Job worships you is because you’ve given him so much. Just take it away and he’ll curse you.” So God said, “I don’t believe it. Go for it.”
So Job lost his riches, his children, his wife, and the rest of his family. Even so, Job did not sin. Instead, he said, “Naked I came into this world, and naked I’ll leave. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord!”
Then he got boils. From the bottoms of his feet, to the top of his head. Nasty boils. He sat in a pile of ashes and scraped his boils with a piece of broken glass.
That causes scars. In fact, when his 3 friends finally showed up, they didn’t even recognize him because he was so scarred.
His friends were so traumatized by Job’s appearance that they just sat with him for 7 days and said nothing.
At the end of the day, God blessed Job with twice as many riches as before. He also restored his household.
Job lived the rest of his life with scars to tell his story. But the most painful scars wouldn’t have come from the painful boils on his skin. The deepest wounds would have been the apparent betrayal by his wife, his family, his friends, and even his God.
But I bet if you would have asked Job about those scars, he would have said something like, “Those scars are a reminder of the goodness of God. Those scars are a reminder that God gave me a double blessing!”
Scars are inevitable. Living with pain doesn’t have to be.
There was another man in the Bible who had scars. When Jesus rose from the dead, for some reason his disciples did not recognize him. I think it was because he was in his glorified body. The same body he dwells in today at the right hand of the Father.
Interestingly enough, he still had the scars in his hands, feet, side, and probably his back.
In John 20:24-28 when Thomas didn’t believe that Jesus was alive, Jesus graciously showed Thomas his scars.
Jesus didn’t complain about his scars. He didn’t complain that his disciples betrayed him. He didn’t complain that he didn’t deserve to suffer and die. Instead, Jesus scars were a sign of God’s grace towards all of us. A sign of his forgiveness for the sins of mankind.
I think the deepest scars that haunt most of us are caused by emotional wounds. Wounds of unforgiveness. Just like scar tissue can build up and end up causing more pain at times, unforgiveness can cause spiritual and emotional scar tissue to build up, becoming more and more painful with time.
What was meant to be healing actually starts to become painful.
Jesus’ scars remind us that we’re forgiven. We need to accept God’s forgiveness and move on in our lives.
Jesus’ scars also remind us that we need to forgive. Unforgiveness causes scar tissue to build up and become painful over time.
God works all things out for good, for those who love him. Also, what the enemy meant for harm, God will turn into good.
God’s in the business of trading old hearts for new, trading our sorrows for joy.
Great service last night. Seems that we continue to have a few first time guests each week, and also had a few people come back who we haven’t seen in a while.
I thought worship went well. We’re doing 3 songs at the beginning, and 2 at the end. We might even swap that around. The response time has been really good the last couple of weeks.
We played Jenga in church. I used the Jenga puzzle to represent the church. I then labeled a bunch of the pieces with different spiritual gifts. Each piece represented a unique person in the church with unique giftings. I then had people come up and take out pieces one by one until it collapsed. You get the point.
God has shaped each of us to serve Him in a unique way. None of us was created identical. We need to celebrate our differences.
The church is incomplete without you. RCC needs you to show up and serve with your unique gifts.
The best place to exercise your giftings and abilities is in a LifeGroup. If you aren’t in one now, get in one!
As is our new tradition, we wrapped up the evening with some ribs and a Cold Smoke at Famous Dave’s BBQ. Gotta love that place! Good food, good friends, can’t go wrong.