SeaCoast Grace – God Forgives

1 – Get honest

• I agree it was wrong and agree that it was destructive (contrition)
• Acknowledge my sin
• About Face (repentance)
• It’s not about trying harder, it’s about being honest about needing God’s help

2 – Get free

• Are you who you were created to be?
• Leave your sins at the cross (confess) – don’t let them haunt you
• Faith the forgiveness
• Feel the forgiveness
• Fight the familiar

3 – Experience God’s grace (daily)

SeaCoast Grace service – God is…

• God is in control
• God will provide
• God has purpose in each life
• God has a plan for you (will you allow it?)
• God is listening and hears you
• Our natural inclination is to hide from God
  • I’ll handle this on my own
  • What if God wasn’t a last resort?
• It’s less important how you pray than that you pray
  • God reads your heart
• Pray with sincerity – like a child to a father
• Pray with confidence
  • Remember who you’re talking to – Almighty God
• You are invited to prayer through grace – and receive grace because He loves you
• Change doesn’t come from self-examination, it comes from focus on god examination
• It’s not a matter of perspective, it’s a matter of trust (in God)
• We know what God’s intentions are – "All things together for good"
• If God said you could pray for one thing what would it be for you?
• When we pray, we must ask for His perspective
• Don’t depend on stuff (money, world), depend on God
• Listen in prayer, and receive His answers
• Asking in prayer is like lifting / releasing the outcomes to God

SeaCoast Grace service

• Holy is a critical word – what is Holy?
• How is holy different that pure?
• 1 Peter 1:13-16
• There ought to be increasing evidence of Christ in your life
• To make the most out of life, be holy
• Holiness is internal, not external
• Is ‘holy’ even comprehensible?
• Moral integrity, absolute perfection, pure ~ holy
• Without a fresh glimpse of God, the people will self-destruct
• Worship is about keeping God in His place in our hearts – Holy and worthy of fear / reverence
• We are called to be holy
• God is inviting us to live the life He intended
• Need to delete unholiness from our lives from time to time (frequency will come from your level of focus)
• Protect yourself (with God’s help) from allowing unholiness to enter your life
• As you move toward holiness, it requires you to leave things behind (people, ideas, habits, attitudes, hurts, unforgiveness, unbelief, control)
• All we are truly capable of as Christians is being obedient – let Him be in charge
• Sanctification
• Christianity is a journey toward holiness, dropping off unholiness along the way
• Glimpse His holiness by studying His word
• Write letters to God
• Conform to God’s will and Christ’s likeness
• Put everything on the table and invite God to decide whether each "thing" is holy and / or leading to your holiness
• Not inviting Him to "inspect" is like hiding from Him
• Lord, show me what needs to be left behind

SeaCoast Grace

• Faith is like a growing grassfire (creeping), with the edge being the front of obedience
• Before church this morning, I fought the impression I should bring my journal in to service.  One of the greatest lessons today was that I should never miss an opportunity to record how the spirit is leading / teaching me.

Sent email to Pastor Doyle

Pastor Doyle,

I just wanted to affirm and say thank you for your sermon this morning. I’d like to offer you some feedback, and want to say that I offer it with love and in what I feel is obedience to the Holy Spirit’s leading – I wouldn’t normally do this, but am trying to be much more sensitive and obedient to His leading.

I’m a relatively ‘young’ Christian, rededicated my life a couple years ago after many stray years. But, I am blessed to say that I am now solidly on a path of becoming centered on Christ (of His initiative). I have been attending SeaCoast Grace church (admittedly somewhat inconsistently) throughout 2008, as one of many influences I now learn from in my walk. To be honest though, I had consistently thought of many of your sermons as ‘soft’ or ‘comfortable’ (that’s not meant with offense) and not really one of my personal most important Christian influences. To me, attending the church was good for worship and for Christian influence for my wife, who would say she’s a Christian, but really is not Christ centered. I pray the Lord brings her closer to Him, and she seems to enjoy and be comfortable at SeaCoast (although the comfort is maybe not what she really needs). But today was different – the message was direct and bold, which I appreciated and respected greatly. Thank you. By the way, usually when I ask my wife what she thinks about a sermon, she says ‘it was good’, and doesn’t have anything more to offer about it. This week, she said ‘it really hit home’.

I also very much liked the ‘amen’ suggestion you’re making, and believe strongly that it should be consistently encouraged to the congregation in order to create engagement with believers and interest from and insight / understanding for invitees. One of my teachers is Miles McPherson of The Rock Church in San Diego (they stream videos of his sermons via internet), and I believe he uses this very effectively to create energy and engagement from his congregation (mostly college students). It becomes contagious.

I feel that the Holy Spirit is truly being revealed to and through me more and more as I choose to spend time with Him and obey Him. As an example of how I had felt the Holy Spirit leading me, I have been feeling lately that ‘amen’ has been mysteriously absent from SeaCoast, and had considered emailing you the suggestion. Then I saw you at Baja Fresh in December, but didn’t introduce myself. As I walked away, I actually felt that I was walking away from purpose, but regretfully did nothing about it. This story may sound strange for something you may or may not think is very important, but I suppose I just offer it as reinforcement to what it appears you’re already doing (and as obedience to how I feel I’m being led).

I’ll be back next week and look forward to this series. I am also planning on attending Next Steps 101 and 201 and being baptized on Feb 8.

In Christ,
Mike

Trusting and obeying God

• There was a great analogy that he used for trusting God even when his direction is not the humanly intuitive direction:  He described a scene where he was driving somewhere using a GPS device, and the GPS was telling him to go in another direction than where he knew his destination was.  Point was that he didn’t know there was a mountain range in front of him and the GPS was directing him around something it knew was in front of him, but he didn’t.  God’s direction needs to be trusted and obeyed – he is all knowing and loves us – or we get ourselves into trouble.
• Doyle also talked about obeying as NOT what we do to earn grace but what we do IN RESPONSE to grace.  His analogy was that he loves his wife so much that he would never do something that would hurt her – like an affair.  He doesn’t stay faithful because of the marriage contract, he stays faithful (obeys) because he loves her so much.  The same is true as we obey God and Christ.

Pay attention

1. Pay attention in the waking hours.  This requires:
   1. Being fully present – in each moment
   2. Looking long enough – stop to look long enough
   3. Taking a fresh look at the familiar – as a gift from God
   4. Being available – can He whisper or does he have to yell at you?
   5. Being aware – God is at work in your life
   6. Waiting with expectancy
   7. Being mindful – stay at attention
   8. Being wakeful – can you just stay awake long enough to pray
2. Periodically refocus on God throughout the day
3. How do things remind you of God
4. What are you missing if you’re not paying attention?
5. Pay attention in the working hours.  This requires:
   1. Contemplating – see life through God’s eyes
   2. Abiding – no matter where you are, you’re home
   3. Indwelling – knowing He knows you
6. Pay attention in the waning hours
   1. Instead of the news, end your day on pause
   2. Recount God’s blessings
   3. Release the day – let go
   4. Rest in God’s love and peace
   5. For what moment am I most grateful for today?  Why?
   6. Just stop, be quiet, and know God is there

Cleaning out the closet

• They will know we are Christians by our love
• Love versus Selfishness
• Clean out your closet now
• Take the old clothes out and burn them now
  • Put the old behavior to death now
  • Is it more loving to tell a sinner that their sin is ‘ok’, or is it more loving to get in their face, get all over their case and try to save their life?
  • Bible says no sex outside of marriage – period (sexual immorality)
  • Lust, greed
  • “These things don’t work”
• Clean up the inside (attitudes, thoughts)
  • Rid yourself of anger, rage, malice, slander, filthy language, lying
  • Anger – don’t be an angry person.  Appropriate anger is normal – Jesus got angry.
  • Tell your story – the power is in its secrecy
  • Rage – anger that surfaces
  • Get rid of the things in your life that aren’t you anymore
  • Replace the old with the new, now
    • Don’t get caught spiritually ‘naked’
    • Knowledge of God – His Word, prayer
    • Dress appropriately for a person of your person – you are chosen (belong), holy (set apart / righteous), and loved by God
    • Choose clothes that never go out of style
• Compassion – tenderness toward those who are suffering
• Kindness – graciousness, goodness, sweetness of disposition (purity)
• Humility (one of the highest values in Scripture) – accurate view of yourself
• Gentleness (one of the highest values in Scripture) – knowing who we are in Christ so we can give and be strong, concede when necessary
• Patience – self-restraint to endure injury / insult w/o retaliation
• Don’t be a fashion snob – all are sinners – remember to love
• The answer is to pray for more love

6/1/08 Sermon notes

• Baseline in Christ
  • Don’t get distracted by “shadow missions”
  • May not be able to completely control random thoughts, but we can control what lives there (stays)
  • Invite the Holy Spirit to guide your thoughts to stay focused on pleasing God
  • Not everything that counts can be counted
• Re-calibrate your expectations from time to time (to shorten your “need” list)
• Keep the baseline as Christ
  • Gifts above the baseline are just gravy
• What do you have going for you?  Christ
• Christ-centered
• What are you doing when no one is looking?
  • Humility: think less about you and more about God
• What is the majority of your discretionary thinking spent on?  You get to choose
• Are you an authentic seeker or an image manager?
• Are you a Christ follower or a try-hard Christian?
• Are you Christ knowing or rule keeping?