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Weekend Recap – Bible Intensive and the Dangers of Declension

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Wrapped up a huge weekend at Crestview.

Before that, though, I was blessed to serve my family on Friday as Meg’s great aunt passed away.  The memorial service was Friday afternoon in Coldwater, KS.  I tried to encourage them with the truth of Jesus being the Resurrection and the Life.  It was a great time remembering lost loved ones with them.

I hustled back to Hutch for a Bible Intensive Retreat with Jim Elliff and Kole Farney.  Our Elders had benefitted from this earlier in the year, so we met as Elders and Deacons with Jim and Kole to think about John 10 together.  It was rich fellowship seeing Jesus is the Door, the Good Shepherd, The Christ, and the Son of God — truths that must be responded to.

Jim graciously filled the pulpit for me on Sunday morning with a sermon out of many passages in Hebrews on the Dangers of Declension.   We included Jim’s handout 5 Resolves for Personal Revival in the bulletin.  I know God used this sermon to call me out of staleness to vibrancy and I’m praying God uses this entire weekend in our body to awaken us to the realities of who He is and what He’s done for us.

Weekend Recap (Part 1) – 11/1/15

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My 11/1/15AM sermon, Assuring Love from 1 John 3:19-24, is now online.  This sermon helped showcase what God is up to in calling us to love and how this works to build assurance in us.  So, the big aim of John – helping us know that we have eternal life – was tied to the practical aim of 1 John 3 – having our identity in love.  These two purposes were fused in action.  I hope this sermon proves helpful and encouraging to you.

Weekend Recap – Love Out Of Identity

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My 10/18/15AM sermon, Identity of Love from 1 John 3:10-12, is now online.  This sermon tried to get at where these calls to love come from.  And, rather than merely rushing to practice love, John compels us to examine our identity in Christ before we step in to the practice of love.  It’s more about being before doing.  So, this is my encouragement to examine your heart before you do the “doing” of the Christian life.  I hope it helps you.

Weekend Recap – 10/11/15AM

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My 10/11/15AM sermon, Marked By Righteousness from 1 John 3:4-9, is now online (the link also gives you the chance to download sermon notes/small group material).   The point of the sermon, pretty simply, was to think about why we take sin so lightly and, once we considered that, to look to Jesus and the hope found in the Gospel.  I hope you find it encouraging and useful as well.

Abiding and Crestview’s Women’s Prayer Retreat

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For a past few weeks in 1 John, over and over again the theme of abiding has emerged.  I asked Monica Warren to journal some thoughts in her mind around this idea (Monica is one of the coordinators for the Women’s Prayer Retreat this Fall which has chosen the theme “Abide” for their time together).  Here’s her musings these days…








Come and Rest
In Matthew 11:28, Jesus calls us and pulls us into Him with those gentle words: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”  This verse may tend to be too familiar to us.  Jesus has made a way of salvation, a way for His disciples to rest eternally with Him. We know this. I know this.  But what I believe Jesus knew of His first disciples such as the Apostle John, and what He knows of us in this day is that we would soon forget this truth, that we wouldn’t stay there in that restful state with Him while on this earth.  We would again and again become weary – again and again try to find rest in the world and its allures.  When I muse on what it really means to abide in Jesus (something our pastor and elders have been exhorting us to do for months now), I can’t help but think of John and his personal relationship, his friendship with Jesus.  We have such convincing evidence in John’s gospel and epistles that he knew and wanted us to know how to rest and truly abide in Jesus. 
The One Whom Jesus Loved
Many times in John’s gospel he calls himself “the one whom Jesus loved” (John 13:23; 19:26; 21:7; 21:20). John knew Jesus’ face, the emotion in his eyes, the looks of love, mercy and even holy frustration He may have given him.  John saw and was convinced that Jesus’ every action was motivated perfectly, expressed with sinless emotion.  Wouldn’t you want to be with, abide in someone with perfect emotional expression, someone whom you knew perfectly loved you? John felt His physical presence as evidenced through his recollection of reclining next to Jesus at the dinner table in John 13:23.  Just imagine that intimate moment, and notice it is recorded so close to the Abide language used in John 15.  John was not only hearing the exhortations from Jesus to abide, John saw Jesus abide in His Father as they walked on this earth together on mission. I also think of Jesus’ supernatural Revelation to John and how the abiding theme can even be seen in John’s last book (which Dawn Rhoades will show us). There is no one better in all of history, in all of scripture, I believe, to teach us and plead with us to abide in Jesus’ presence than the Apostle John.  
Stay and Abide 
I don’t think we will fully know and experience Jesus’ abiding presence as John did, but what I pray is that I, that we in this day, would reach the place where we are not thinking of ourselves anymore.  When sin threatens to invade our mind and affections, we stay in His rest considering Jesus’ power over sin, Satan, and remember His work of forgiveness.  When we are tempted to be sorrowfully self-absorbed, we abide in Jesus and think of others instead, seeking how we may fulfill their needs Jesus wants met. After all, how will they see and know Jesus if not through our service to them and by our proclamation of Him? God the Holy Spirit chose and empowered John to be a vessel of this good news to us, and Jesus has chosen us to walk as vessels delivering this gospel to our community and beyond. The only way we will know where Jesus wants us to go next, what He wants us to do tomorrow, is if we abide in Him.  It is a person we cling to, not a set of rules, not simply a message of good news, but a living, perfectly loving person who empowers us. Jesus is His name…the same person John walked with on this earth hundreds of years ago is the same person we are called to abide in now. While we are in this place that is not our home, I pray John 15:5 echos in our hearts. May we never forget that if we are apart from Christ while on this earth we can do nothing…nothing that lasts for eternity.

At our annual 2015 Women’s Prayer Retreat, several women of Crestview who have shown to be not only women of prayer, but women who truly abide in Jesus will be encouraging us with content on this very subject.  I look forward to their wisdom and invite all women who are weary and heavy laden to come find rest…and abide with us in His loving presence.  (Here’s a link to the event on Crestview’s website)

Weekend Recap – 10/4/15

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My 10/4/15AM sermon, New Relationship from 1 John 3:1-3, is now online.  The idea in the sermon is that having a relationship with God changes things.  In fact, you could say your past, present and future are affected because you know Him.  I hope you’ll listen to this sermon and find help in it.

Weekend Recap – 9/27/15

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My 9/27/15AM sermon, United to Christ from 1 John 2:28-29, is now online (this was also discussed with Small Groups).  The sermon was kind of a final engagement of our hearts before chapter 3 to make sure we’re abiding.  Specifically, abiding in the Gospel, or in Jesus Himself, is THE way we prepare for the end of this life.  I also sought to marvel at how Jesus Christ is righteous and make some connections for how that relates to the way we live.  I hope this sermon helps you.

Weekend Recap – Deception

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My 9/20/15AM sermon, Deception from 1 John 2:26-27, is now online.  The sermon encircled that ongoing theme in 1 John of abiding.  You might think that the best defense about deception would be a good offense.  But, in 1 John, the answer is abiding, not just abiding in the message, but abiding in Jesus, who is the message.  I think if you listen to this sermon you, too, may be helped to fend off deceptions that come your way.