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I we have been talking about the work of the Holy Spirit in everyone's life and three weeks ago we really started and we talked about God's greatest desire for…
Well good morning everyone welcome to respond which church of Phoenix we'd like to have you take these fellowship paths are located somewhere in your island fill those out we'd…
Followed by a presentation from Pastor Josh about the Board Retreat and the direction to pursue the property on 12th Street. It's wonderful to be back here with you all again I feel like I'm I'm home when we're out on the mission field it can often feel like you're among strangers every Sunday but here we know we're among friends listeningto. Steve talk to the kids there it's it's so true they are a part of the church aren't they as I looked at the people performing up here. You know my dad and Nathan and Elizabeth and Brian and I mean I think when I first came they were about the age of those kids that were there and now look look at how they're such a important part of the churchand I think it's so. That's what church is it's more than a spiritual institution it's a social institution also and we raise our kids to love the Lord and to stand for him and to represent them in their in their generation just as we do with ourown generation I think our Joyce and my kids were in that group also the first time that we came back in three days Joyce and I will celebrate our thirty first anniversary. Thanks and I tell you that because we met in Grace Bible Church the first time that we laid eyes on each other was in this church not this building but this church this group of people this congregation how many ofyou are there any others who met for the first time in this who are married who have met for the first time here OK We have several here that's great so this church is very precious to us it's part of our family it's part ofour heritage and it always will be the rest of our lives. And it's wonderful to be back here with you I. Wanted to show I remember that time we came we stayed with Dan and Leroy also and I don't Dan and Lee are they here or know they're there. Not here today but I remember staying with them and. Meeting Joyce and from there we're all in those days you know we wrote letters to each other on pieces of paper and we made long distance phone calls for twenty five cents a minute and that added up to hundredsof dollars but it worked and it did bring us together even though Joyce was here and I was traveling around the country presenting our my missionary work in different places but we went to we went to Kenya thatyear nine hundred eighty six served there for eighteen years we were pioneer missionaries the work started with about four churches and I don't know today there's probably about seventy churches and bunch ofBible training programs and that work has expanded throughout the country and it's now turned over completely to the Kenyans You know that's the whole point of mission mission isn't about trying to us the two ofus trying to reach every person in Kenya that would be quite impossible the idea is to establish the gospel all Mung that people group so that they love Jesus Christ so that they only Gospel and so that they can beambassadors of Christ to their own people just like here in Phoenix around this church you are ambassadors of Christ to the people in this neighborhood the same in Kenya it is their responsibility to be ambassadorswhere they are and just last year our last missionary left Kenya for thirty years we had missionaries in Kenya and now our last mission areas left and we've left it in the able hands of the Kenyan leaders men the men andwomen that Joyce and I taught in Bible school that we work side by side with that we planted churches together with the day finally came a very sad day with a lot of tears when we got on the plane said goodbye tothem and we left the ministry with them I was in the executive director for eleven years. Based in our office in Indianapolis and the work continued to grow and finally the board says we've got to have more leadershippositions and they formed the International Director position development director and office administrator positions as leadership the leadership team of things to come mission and I took the International Directorposition which means Joyce and I now live outside of the United States and that's where Singapore comes in because that's the base that we use before I continue I want to I want to show a couple slides here and.Are those up on the screen you know there we go this Sara came over to see us in South Africa but these are Brazilian missionaries. We have here the Chris Myers Paul Marianna and Matthias press Meyer and they went directly from Brazil to South Africa to work and as the international director this is what I'm trying to do is get this network goingon between the countries so that. Rather than at all missionaries coming from the U.S. or having to come through the U.S. A missionaries can actually go from one country to the other and Chris Myers are now there they are working they haveestablished a new churches new Bible schools there's two new Bible training centers to train pastors that they are involved with there they do speak English but Marianna is Paul is probably half American and halfBrazilian but Marianna is one hundred percent Brazilian she just made one trip to the US.…
I'm not supposed to be around to those are gone. So all I had the chance to listen online is that someone from last week and I need to clear something up right at the very beginning because I found out that apparently in order to be uphere and preach you have to join across that gym and if that's true we'll just call it good right now and I'll head home. Because that is not going to happen we couldn't be here we were supposed to get back late Saturday night there was a problem with our flight and so they had to bump us which wasgood because we have family in Grand Rapids so we could stay another night family but bummer was that we then flew from Grand Rapids Michigan to Baltimore and then fromBaltimore back to Phoenix with a two year old in a four year old a five hour flight but that's OK because God was with us we didn't have a dirty diaper on a five hour flight which is amiracle I mean that he still does miracles today because we're here we were safe. I want I want you to do a mental exercise with me. I'm going to have an insurance agent come into your home and he is going to he's going to give you a price quote on home insurance if you have an apartment on your renters insuranceso that we can we can get you a competitive quote on on your insurance on your house. Let's let's say we're calling Raj because. You know he's going to go to Steve but who would buyinsurance from a man named Steve so we'll have Raj come into your house and and give you a quote on home homeowners insurance and he wants to know what is the most valuablething in your house because that's going to need an extra special writer because that's worth more than anything else so you have to pick the one thing in your house that's worth themost amount of money and you figure what you would need to put that special insurance writer on the thing that has the most value in your house. So when you maybe your car right because cars are pretty expensive we we have a thought. And nine Cyrano and it's not worth the gas that's inside of it so that it's ruled out for us if it'snot your cars maybe it is your your wife's wedding ring right we all got suckered into three months of salary and and now we're all poorer for it. Whatever it is the what is the mostvaluable thing that's in your house that needs this insurance writer now I'm going to break the rules a little bit because I'm I asked you to find a thing and I think what I want to do is saythat maybe one of the most valuable things you have is your time but your time is a fixed a finite resource you can't add more time to your life if if you sat down and you said we arespending way more money than we are bringing in in our house that's fixable you can go get another job you can go bring more money into the mix when it comes to time you look at itand you say there are only seven days in the week twenty four hours in a day I cannot add more time to my day I have a fixed amount of time so I think one of our our most valuableresources is our time. Because it's fixed then we have to be careful how we spend that time because if we spend it in places that don't do it any good it's wasted and we can't get it back and that's time that'staken away from something else that could be beneficial to us for families who are church and so what I want to do the smart thing is identify the distractions that sometimes pull us awayand waste our time if if our time is a valuable resource What is it that can can take that valuable resource and put it to waste so if you'll turn with me in your Bibles. To Luke Chapter ten. We're going to look at a parable that probably familiar to most. Ten thirty eight forty two. This is the parable are the parable this is a story I'm sorry about Mary and my. And. This is the first type of distraction this is the daily distractions these are the distractions that just popup throughout your day. That they get you sidetracked the things that fill up all of the time in a typical day they keep you busy so when talk first about daily distractions these are usually.Maybe even almost always self-inflicted these are things we do to ourselves take on too much responsibility we let the kids be involved in seventeen different sports that have to be takenall over the place start working forty hour weeks become forty three hour weeks become fifty hour weeks. We sign up to do too many things these are all self-inflicted bs these dailydistractions. So let's find out from the Mary and Martha story daily distractions Luke ten verse thirty eight. Now as they went on their way Jesus entered a village and a woman named Martha welcome to him into her house she had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened tohis teaching but Martha was distracted with much serving she went up to him and said Lord do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone then tell her to help me then. But theLord answered her Martha Martha you are anxious and troubled about many things but one thing is necessary Mary has chosen the good portion which will not be taken away from her. We have been in verse thirty nine. Something of a rare occurrence because Mary sits down at the feet of Jesus and essentially gets disciple gets taught by Jesus in a patriarchal culturethat's pretty rare to have an opportunity for a woman to sit at the feet of. A great teacher and to learn and so this opportunity in this house is it's huge it's a rare opportunity. But Martha who is so busy misses it and you can kind of relate to Martha right I mean if you knock knock guess who's coming over for Sunday dinner it's Jesus you're not going to just. Upsomewhat a burger on the way home and throw it on a paper plate in front of them right you're going to put on the best china the fancy glasses you're going to make sure the food isperfect you're not going to mess around you're going to have everything perfect this is Jesus that's coming to eat so you can you can kind of see where Martha is coming from but Verseforty tells us Martha was distracted with much serving that Greek word I'm going to I'm going to try and six rectally Pato per That's a there's a Greek word there for distracted but meansdrawing away or in Strong's Concordance it says over occupied too busy Martha was over occupied she was too busy with what she had to do in order to put this meal on for Jesus shemisses this opportunity to sit down with Jesus and to learn from and then to asking questions because she was so occupied so over busy with the daily distractions of what had to bedone. That happens to us quite often I think we get so involved in what has to be done in the day that we miss opportunities with a Sunday school class nine months a year ago about parentingand and one of my favorite parts is that we pulled in some of the the parents of adult children to say now that you've been through the parenting kids in your house phase what are somedo's and don'ts that we can learn from you what what are some of the things you would you would tell us duplicate this what are some of the things you would say I did this don't do thisit was a mistake one common theme in the don't do this was Don't get so wrapped up in parenting that you miss your kids don't get so caught up in raising your kids that you don't enjoyyour kids because it can be one of those things up I don't want to raise a derelict So I've got to be on them with discipline and making sure that they're polite to people and I've got toknow where they are at all times they've got to pick up the rooms and they're not doing this they're not doing that and you get so caught up in the act of parenting that you looked. Pastthe kids that are in front of you. We can do that. Even in daily life I don't know if any of you have had this I've had opportunities where five minutes later half hour later. I missed an opportunity to witness that person was asking to hear about Jesus and I was so busy thinking about I was running behind I was I was late I had to get to this that was a windowI had with that person to present the gospel. It can happen inside a church sometimes we get so busy volunteer and so busy serving inside of the church that you feed a lot of people and you get home on a Sunday or you get homeon a Tuesday night or Wednesday night and you're not bad because you've spent so much time feeding people now I'm not suggesting that Pastor Josh be greeted with everybodyturning in their volunteer card next week when he gets back it's just one of those things we have to be aware of what fills our day what kind of daily distractions are keeping us areabsorbing all of our time. Verse forty two one thing I want to point out to you there. But one thing is necessary and I have a little number three you probably have a footnote after thatphrase there are some manuscripts that have a different translation there down at the bottom of my Bible but number three says some manuscripts a few things are necessary or only onething is necessary so here I'm using the E.S.P. They say only one thing is necessary and that could mean look only the spiritual is necessary all of this other stuff is extra and if thenecessary thing should dominate our attention that is what should keep us busy if you take. Only a few things are necessary it's possible that Jesus is is. Functionally telling Martha look we just need to eat we don't need a grand buffet we just need a couple of things because allof those other things are distracting you and Mary has chosen the good portion which will not be taken away from her so they leave distractions. And. Can pull us away can absorb that time that is that that precious resource. What they do is make us miss opportunities they make us. Be so wrapped up in our schedule of what's coming next and and what's going to happen that we miss the opportunities that are in front of us mere Martha missed the opportunity to sitdown at the feet of Jesus and we're so caught up in our daily routines we miss out on opportunities. Zach said he picked a topic last week that was his spiritual gift I think I did too because being distracted is probably pretty close to my spiritual gift and so I can relate with Martha I Itotally get Martha. You plan a family vacation it's not you a family vacation you plan a family vacation right these you people that can say oh we're going to go up for a drive up the Pacific Coast Highwaywhere you stay in the first night we don't know that no you don't do that that doesn't make sense you know where you're going to stop How many bathroom stops to the kids get youknow where you're going to eat approximately what it's going to cost and what you'll tip where you're going to spend that night and then the next day's events and then you have acontingency because if it rains you've got to have a backup plan to stay you don't just go on vacation you plan a vacation but if you do that you get to the end of it and what do you needwhen you get back from vacation a vacation and so I relate with Martha Very well I understand I understand the over planning in the getting too busy and missing opportunities but theother thing that daily distractions can do is that. In making us miss opportunities and filling up our time they absorb that time with stuff that in the end doesn't matter and it takes awayfrom and if I just had fifteen thirty more minutes I I could get into the Bible like I want to on a daily basis I pray but I pray at meal times I need to spend some time with just me and Godwill that time is in the day it's just being absorbed by these daily distractions. So if that's that's one of the kinds of distractions. Another kind is what I'm going to call crisis distractions. Daily distractions our free much self-inflicted we do it to ourselves we get ourselves too busy week we start to care about stuffthat when we step back and look and say it's not that big a deal I don't need to spend the time crisis distractions can be self-inflicted we can put ourselves in spots where we did it toourselves I'm here I have a big mess on my hands but I did it to myself but Crisis distractions can also be something that are external that through no fault of our own we are just in theSituation. Let's look at Matthew Chapter fourteen. We're going to look at twenty to thirty one this is. A little bit of back history of all your turn in Matthew fourteen. Jesus finds out in the disciples find out that John the Baptist has been beheaded. I don't think I'm stepping out on a limb by saying if there was anybody that could relate to Jesus in the situation he was in it was probably John the Baptist the two of them couldprobably talk some ministry talk that Jesus just couldn't do with the disciples and so when he finds out that John the Baptist has been beheaded he wants to go away he wants to getaway from everything and just spend some time by himself. Get through this process he's Jesus so he tries to get away crowds find out hey Jesus is up here first some time away let's go I've got a friend that needs to be healed and pretty soonthere's a mass of people there and he starts doing healings then we get later in the day and the disciples say we got to boogie there these people got to eat we don't want to feed themlet's get out of here and Jesus says nope let's feed him so you have the feeding of the five thousand that gets done and and Jesus says OK disciples get on the boat head out to the lateI will catch up with you I'm going to dismiss these crowds and that's where we pick up and for. Twenty two. Immediately he Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side while he dismissed the crowds and after he had dismissed the crowds he went up on themountain went by himself to pray when evening came he was there alone.…
Yeah good morning. So Pastor Josh asked me about a month ago if I would preach while he would be in Michigan I told him I would. If he was kind of caught off guard that I said yes so quickly and one thing I actually didn't expect was the overwhelming feeling that I would have to not have to go join cross that. You guys laugh but actually I just finished our second week and we've been a tough cross fit with Pastor Josh So I'm going to have some references for you guys that you get to feel rightat home in this church Sunday so we'll make sure to get to that you guys have the privilege I guess most of you listening to my second ever sermon the first one I did was in two thousandand eleven it was man month I was twenty years old had no idea what I was doing. Fairly new question so I decided to talk about these five seventeen. Year old is gone Behold the new has come about cries about stairs is a good time. So I practice that thing over and over again and I knew we had twenty minutes and afterwards Brian Clark was supposed to follow me he was going to deliver a little sermon about thesesaw in the light and I mostly remember this because he had me come up as a visual He had a huge cup of water and he took a literal cup of salt poured into this water and I had to drinkit. I don't even remember what their last ration was but I just remember drinking the salt water and being nervous the whole time because I was doing that sermon so. You know so I was practicing over and over again at home much like I have this one and always hitting between about eighteen and twenty one minutes and I was right there in that littlesweet spot needed twenty minutes eighteen to twenty WANT TO felt good but something happens when you take this second step. You know you start to shake a little bit and start to sweat. But alas my you guys I'll be in the middle of my lesson and I like Zakir Pitts I'm sorry. But something happens and so I get up I take the second step twelve minutes I finish my sermon in twelve minutes. Brian Clark came up here I think he did and his like fifteen minutes sowe got you guys out like twenty minutes earlier it was it was awesome so we'll see how this goes worst case scenario we get to let you guys go get snacks and coffee early I think we'll beOK. So what we're going to talk about today Usually when I am delivering maybe to a class or I'm given opportunity to speak I like talking about something maybe I'm struggling with couldbe a awesome theological question that I want to look at could be some sort of sin that I'm looking into some sort of doubt that I might have that I want the answer to and I want todeliver it to people. I mean do something a little bit different today and I decided to talk a little bit more about something that I feel like is a strong suit of mine you could even say maybe one of my spiritualgifts and that is going to be the topic of joy. So we're going to do is we're going to look at this graph that I have prepared and this is what we're going to call our joy graph this is non biblical this is a non biblical view of joy and sowe have a few different situations up here and we're going to we're going to look at these and the further up this line goes the more joy we're having in these situations so we have ifwe're hungry in the desert our joy isn't that high the four insulated in Egypt our joy is now that we have water but it's bitter sort of joy still isn't really that great but now we're getting intosome little better situations I had an OK day at work you know our joys maybe right there in the middle you have a child he was there that brings a lot of joy. And then Pastor Josh'sfavorite you win the lottery that is just as. All time high enjoy Right that's what we've been talking about the past few weeks I think that's what I've got out of everything so. That's kind of how we view it and so what we want to do now is we're in turn our Bibles and it's going to be James one chapter two I'm sorry James Chapter one Verse two he has aprobably heard this verse twenty times probably lots of sermons about it and hopefully we will put a little bit of a spin on it so that you guys can take something away from this so Jamesone starting in verse two. I consider pure joy my brothers whenever you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance let perseverance finish its work so that youmay be mature and complete not lacking anything. So for the most part we're going to looking at verse two and what I've done is I've created a different graph and this is what verse two is telling us our situation should not look like. Sowe're still hungry in the desert but our joy is still at the top and our joy is going to stay consistent between all these situations so whether we are enslaved in Egypt whether we havebetter water we have an OK day at work for having a child or we won the lottery or joy staying the same. So I hope I'm a visual person so hopefully this this helps you guys a little bit what we're going to do now though is we're going to take this we're going to look at some of these situationsthat were maybe a little less favorable and we're going to see maybe why we were experiencing joy in these situations so we're going to look at early Israel and we're going to go tosome of these verses and we're going to figure out maybe where they were missing out on some joy. That's what I love about the Old Testament you can really learn a lot about human nature you can learn a lot about people and people say a lot of times like generations are gettingworse the next generation coming up it's. Going to be terrible if you look at early Israel you realize there was a struggle then too and so hopefully we get a little bit from that so let's gothere so we're going to turn now to Exodus sixteen verse two. That is Exodus sixteen verse two. In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron this is your light said to them if only we had died by the Lord's hand in Egypt they are talking about in Egypt wesat around parts of me and all the food we wanted we have brought us out here into the desert to start this entire assembly to death. So we have three main points so we're going to be going over today and I thought a whole bunch about different points that I want to hit narrowed it down to three. The first one isgoing to be this. The first thing holding us back from Joy is that we create trials from situations that are not even problems yet I'll say that one more time we create trials that are not even problems yet. As many of you know I work for Grand Canyon University and I and a chance to specialise there my main job is to help community college students take everything that they have theCommunity College bring it over to G.C. You make sure everything is smooth I make sure to be able to pay for everything and make sure everything is perfect for the transfer. One of thebiggest things I'm doing right now and I do and I meet the students is it's called a budget sheet and at the very top we have all of the tuition and fees and everything that D.C. is goingto charge the student then we get to a point was like Right what scholarships are we going to offer these students what money are we going to give them and then we subtract thatnumber from the top and we get another number and also and they see this big number like I need financial aid so we look at fine. Late to get them some government funding we takethat off and at the bottom we have a number it is an out of pocket cost to the students and when I see this I'll know if the cost is going to be relatively low or if it's a relatively high. And when I see one that is relatively high I start to freak out for the city because I know I don't want to pay that I don't want to pay that amount that I know the student is going to bepaying and so I search saying you know what maybe we can keep the committee called Get your G.P.A. we are trying to get you some more scholarships and we can look at alternativeloans or loans your parents could cosign I start going through all these things freaking out for the student. And I mostly do this I've been there for three years and I mostly did this in the first year. And the first year I did it up until a parent cut me off so I'm I'm still here going through alternative loan options you know they would stay at community college and so that stop. OK So is this out of pocket is perfect we can pay that so you see what I did is I created a problem for this family that wasn't actually an issue so I made a trial and made something thatwas tough something that was not a problem at all and that's kind of what's going on here in chapter sixteen so the yes they are hungry in the desert but complaining about itconsidering this to be something that they are struggling with is kind of crazy so I think honestly if they were just taking their. Request to God I honestly think you are still provided themanna if we still look if we look at the next chapter God Here's their complaint and he provides the daily bread he gives them instruction on that so I think if they're just like you knowMoses and Aaron I need my daily bread or we need something to eat God would have provided anyways you didn't need to make something that was an issue that's something thatshould have been an issue. I have another couple examples about how we are kind of tend to be complainer ZA little bit I've been reading this book it's called undefendable it is written by Brant Hansen. On my usecase I've heard all of these already but you're going to hear him again so Branson he might have heard of him he was the D.J. for air one for the longest time the super goofy superhilarious guy recently past couple years he for a couple years ago he decided that I wasn't the route for him and they kind of moved on but. In it there are some situations that he goesthrough. Just talking about how much of an impact he can make on people by not being offended and we just did a series on this newsgroup he just mostly talks about how being an offender willcan impact your self you can free yourself it can impact the nonbelievers and it can impact other believers and in it he does some situations where callers would call in and tell themsomething that maybe he's doing wrong while on air and so he's going to drink directly from the book they're pretty humorous so. Hopefully we can get something out of this. So oneday he was on the air and he was talking about the local forecast and he said this and I quote it'll be warmer than it should be for this time of year. Normally the highest seventy two buttoday there's a high of eighty two that's a little bit warmer than normal and so a listener calls in. You know I was really disappointed to hear your forecast it's not going to be warmer thanit should be because Goddard deigns the weather and it's going to be exactly how he wants it to be today that is very disappointing. Brant said nothing else except for I'm sorry you were disappointed by this a little bit later the same day he was playing his accordion he does these really weird things all the time. And he was doing his bit where. It the caller would call in and they would either give him a Christian hit song that was on the station or a hit song from the eighty's and he would goofygoofily that were to play his accordion while the caller would sing along. And so one day they did both they did a Christian hit song and they didn't eighty song and the phone rang.…
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