Daring to Dream Again: Make God’s Dreams… – Part 11

June 19, 2012 by admin

Make God’s Dreams For Us Our Dreams As Well—Part 11

READINGS – Part 5

The connection between faith and deeds, between spirituality and compassion, has societal dimensions, not just personal ones. The great philosopher of religion Elton Trueblood noted the role of religious faith in society when he wrote, “The terrible danger of our time consists in the fact that ours is a cut-flower civilization. Beautiful as cut flowers may be, and much as we may use our ingenuity to keep them looking fresh for a while, they will eventually die, and they die because they are severed from their sustaining. roots. We are trying to maintain the dignity of the individual apart from the deep faith that every man is made in God’s image and is therefore precious in God’s eyes.” We believe the saints among us are in touch with a transcendent dimension that more than many people realize, may be the hope of civilization.

Nancy Longhurst, a young woman in her twenties, is one saint who shows this connection through a simple but significant story. She was tin church one morning when a couple who worked with children with disabilities and profound retardation stood to talk about their work. “I remember clearly sitting in the church,” she says, “and feeling strongly that that is what I should do, even though I had never done it before and was a bit afraid of people with disabilities.” Living largely off savings, she spent the next year in the couple’s household. Through being with them and watching how they treated the children they cared for, she says, “seeing how their philosophy was always to approach a child with love, I learned to care for people. I learned that that has to be at the heart of this field: to serve people as Christ would serve.”

Historian Glenn Tinder has put Nancy’s discovery in more academic terms to suggest something similar. Ultimately, he argues, “good customs and habits need spiritual grounds, and if those are lacking, they will gradually, or perhaps suddenly in some crisis, crumble.” We cannot think that there are no societal implications from the secularization our culture has experienced in recent decades, he believes. We wrongly assume that we can continue to treasure “the life and welfare, the civil rights and political authority, of every person without believing in a God who renders such attitudes and conduct compelling.” Tinder asks, “To what extent are we now living on moral savings accumulated over many centuries but no longer being replenished? To what extent are those savings already severely depleted?”

If the dominant message we get from the culture is that our needs, our ambitions, our self-fashioned goals for life are all that matters, we need the saints among us to remind us differently. While we are told that we have a right to live for ourselves, buy what satisfies our whims, and think little about God or others, the saints model something else. By their convictions and by their behavior they can remind us how to live, and where to find the resources to act on our higher impulses, as a society and as members of society.
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The Saints Among Us, George H. Gallup, Jr. and Timothy Jones, Morehouse, pages 73-74.

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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

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Daring to Dream Again: Make God’s Dreams… – Part 10

June 18, 2012 by admin

Make God’s Dreams For Us Our Dreams As Well—Part 10

READINGS – Part 4

What difference do you make to those who love you and serve you with enthusiasm? You allow them the indescribable joy of contemplating you.

You have given me a special insight into the sweetness of your love: you gave me my life; when I wanted far away, you brought me back again to serve you; you wanted me to love you.

You are a waterfall of unceasing love! What shall I say about you? How can I forget you? You thought of me even when I was lost and desperate. You have been merciful beyond my wildest dream. You have been good to me far above anything I deserve.

How shall I pay you back? Most of us are not expected to give up everything, to renounce the world and begin a life of monastic solitude. Does it mean very much that I should serve you when all of creation exists for that purpose? I don’t think so. But I see this, and it staggers me: you are willing to accept the service of someone as poor and unworthy as I. You will make me one of your beloved servants.

I am your servant! Everything I have is yours. But even as I say that, I know you are serving me more than I am serving you. At your command all of the resources of heaven and earth are at my disposal, and even the angels help me. Yet you serve me in a way that surpasses all of this: you promise to give yourself to me. You are the great Servant of us all.

With what gift can I return your favors? I want to serve you all the days of my life. I wish it were possible, just for one day, to do something worthwhile for you. You are my Lord, and I am a poor servant who is obligated to serve you with all my strength. I should never tire of praising you, for this is what I want to do. This is my desire. Compensate for what I lack.

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The Imitation of Christ, Thomas a Kempis, Harold Shaw, pages 115-16.

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Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

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Daring to Dream Again: Make God’s Dreams… – Part 9

June 15, 2012 by admin

Make God’s Dreams For Us Our Dreams As Well—Part 9

READINGS – Part 3

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” (1949)

“One treasure, a single eye, and a sole master.” (1948)

“God, I pray Thee, light these idle sticks of my life and may I burn for Thee. Consume my life, my God, for it is Thine. I seek not a long life, but a full one, like you, Lord Jesus.” (1948)

“Father, take my life, yea, my blood if Thou wilt, and consume it with Thine enveloping fire. I would not save it, for it is not mine to save. Have it Lord, have it all. Pour out my life as an oblation for the world. Blood is only of value as it flows before Thine altar.” (1948)

“Saturate me with the oil of the Spirit that I may be aflame. But flame is often short-lived. Canst thou bear this, my soul? Short life? In me there dwells the spirit of the Great Short Lived, whose zeal for God’s house consumed Him. ‘Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God.’” (1948)
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Shadow of the Almighty, Elisabeth Elliot, Harper and Brothers, page 247.

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Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

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Daring to Dream Again: Make God’s Dreams… – Part 8

June 14, 2012 by admin

Make God’s Dreams For Us Our Dreams As Well—Part 8

READINGS – Part 2

Not many months after my conversion, having a leisure afternoon, I retired to my own chamber to spend it largely in communion with God. Well do I remember that occasion. How in the gladness of my heart I poured out my soul before God; and again and again confessing my grateful love to Him who had done everything for me-who had saved me when I had given up all hope and even desire for salvation-I besought Him to give me some work to do for Him, as an outlet for love and gratitude; some self-denying service, no matter what it might be, however trying or however trivial; something with which He would be pleased, and that I might do for Him who had done so much for me. Well do I remember, as in unreserved consecration I put myself, my life, my friends, my all, upon the altar, the deep solemnity that came over my soul with the assurance that my offering was accepted. The presence of God became unutterably real and blessed; and though but a child under sixteen, I remember stretching myself on the ground, and lying there silent before Him With unspeakable awe and unspeakable joy.

For what service I was accepted I knew not; but a deep consciousness that I was no longer my own took possession of me, which has never been effaced. It has been a. very practical consciousness. Two or three years later propositions of an unusually favorable nature were made to me with regard to medical study, .on the condition of my becoming apprenticed to the medical man who was my friend and teacher. But I felt I dared not accept any binding engagement such as was suggested. I was not my own to give myself away; for I knew not when or how He whose alone I was, and for whose disposal I felt I must ever keep myself free, might call for service. ‘

Within a few months of this time of consecration the impression was wrought into my soul that it was in China the Lord wanted me. It seemed to me highly probable that the work to which I was thus called might cost my life; for China was not then open as it is now. But few missionary societies had at that time workers in China, and but few books on the subject of China missions were accessible to me. I learned, however, that the Congregational minister of my native town possessed a copy of Medhurst’s China, and I called upon him to ask a loan of the book. This he kindly granted, asking me why I wished to read it. I told him that God had called me to spend my life in missionary service in that land.

“And how do you propose to go there?” he inquired.

I answered that I did not at all know; that it seemed to me probable that I should need to do as the Twelve and the Seventy had done in Judea—go without purse, or scrip, relying on Him who had called me to supply all my need. Kindly placing his hand upon my shoulder, the minister replied, “Ah, my boy, as you grow older you will get wiser than that. Such an idea would do very well in the days when Christ Himself was on earth, but not now.”
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I have grown older since then, but not wiser. I am more than ever convinced that if we were to take the directions of our Master and the assurances He gave to His first disciples more fully as our guide, we should find them to be just as suited to our times as to those in which they were originally given.

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To China with Love, J. Hudson Taylor, Dimension, pages 14-16.

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Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.