Sermon Tone Analysis

7 Sept 2013

Colossians 4:2-6

God’s Grace Enough for me!

Amen and Amen

Listen I am in the beginning of reading a book about Prayer, it is called:

“Power through Prayer” by E. M. Bounds.

I haven’t really gotten past the first paragraphs though, because what I am getting out of it, is this, We go to church only a small fraction of our time.

A couple hours of the typical Christians life is spent in the church a week, speaking about Sunday worship, ministry work and bible studies they only add up to a few hours a week for most people.

Here is what E.M. Bounds says about it, and he is talking about pastors but I see it as everyone he says “for your sermons last but an hour or two; your life preaches all the week”.

I pray that what I preach to you each week, that you can see that in my life, as I live the rest of my week.

I pray that God’s word is making this incredible impact on your life, that what you hear preached is what your life preaches the rest of the week.

If you want to see this church grow, if you want to see this place packed to the rafters with people each Sunday.

If you want to see Wednesday evenings as standing room only because of prayer, if you want to see this church having Bible studies all over the city, then this church needs you to preach what you are learning the rest of the week.

This goes right back to what we have been talking about our Christian Character.

I haven’t gotten much further than that in the book, because for me, it is so profound, and I am stuck right there hoping and praying that it is what I do.

Listen, sermons last but an hour or two; But, your life preaches all the week”.

Opening Prayer

PRAYER

Open your Bibles with me to Ephesians, and when you get there let me know by saying amen.

Ephesians chapter 2.

This past week has been full of emotions for me, hoping that the transition of is going to go as planned, being reminded from all the pictures I have been looking at, of all the people that God has touched through this awesome church and ministries, to packing and of course Baby Sammuel being in the hospital for a blood transfusion.

I know that transitions are a struggle.

I know the fear of the unknown can be a struggle.

I know that the questions to God of: what are we going to do now?

Its a struggle.

And I understand the concern, the worries for yourselves and the church, but I want you to know today that no matter what we are going through today, God’s Grace is enough for each of us.

There is a reason that God placed me here over four years ago and that was to grow His church, to grow His kingdom, to get His church set on a course and I believe that we have done that together.

We each have personal struggles, I never thought that I would be standing before you today and telling you that our one year old grandson has brain cancer, I never would have imagined that the Man I meet a few years ago Brother Ron Owens, that I would watch him waste away to nothing because of prostate cancer and to go home and be with the Lord.

I had plans for him.

I never thought that I would be standing before you and telling you that I have friends who suffer in the most harsh ways, or that my mother was just diagnosed with stage 4 COPD, but I have to tell you that God’s grace is enough for all of us, NO matter what you are going through today, tomorrow or years to come.

And that is Not just for those of us who are here today, but for those of you who are watching now over the internet and in the future.

God’s grace isn’t just for a certain people group, certain social economic class, a certain country nor is God’s grace only for a certain race.

You, We, Our church extends past the barriers of our walls, the barriers of our problems and go out of the walls of this church in a mighty way.

In a way that I have never seen before.

God has given us a fantastic vision and has blessed us as we go.

To Go find His people bring them back to God wherever they may be.

I have been asking God forever two years as I have prayer walked the communities here, as we done ministries, I have asked God to give us this city, I want to tell you how God has responded to hid children.

When I send out Be Encouraged text messages that God has told me to do and facebook messages and messages on twitter it goes to hundreds of people, probably into the thousand mark all over the United States.

When we send out food from this church, it reaches hundreds of people in not thousands, we have helped send food to Joplin in their time of need, we have sent food to Indiana when they were struck buy tornadoes, Our chiefs in the our Church went to New York to help with that disaster.

The Schools program alone reaches well over 100 families.

Jackie heads that up, Listen, We are reaching many more people than you see here today.

We are reaching other churches through our food and clothing ministries, we reach many people with our clothing ministry.

Since the time I have been here we have reach in hundred if not thousands of homeless folks and we have connected and partnered with other churches as we reach out to them.

We have seen people receive jobs and get off the streets, people become healed from addictions such as drugs and alcohol and begin a new life, becoming a member of other churches in their area.

Gayle going reaching out on her red tarp, she has Monday pray days, reaching hurting people.

When youth groups come we reach out to their hurting adults and kids and we heal them and make this everlasting relationship with them, this is over 200 kids and adults every summer, then we go out to fox park and other parks and reach out to them reaching over 250 people, At faithfest I don’t know the estimated numbers for this year but through advertisement, music and the word of God it is save to say over 5,000 people heard about Jesus easy, we were heard on Joy FM for two weeks….

How many people is that?

Then we go out to Mardi Gras and we reach out to those who come to minister to others and before we go out we spend time listening to their stories and we help heal them and praying for them, then we go out to do God’s work in the City, over 240,000 people seen our cross this year.

People were on the cell phones using the cross as a reference, “I am the cross just come to the cross and you will find me” I heard one girl say.

I also thought that’s the message of Jesus!

Then we do our Fall festival which we are able to minister to over 250 people in a matter of a few hours while their children play games.

Then we have an Easter egg hunt where we minister and tell the Gospel to each child and last year we had over 55 kids who heard the gospel of Jesus Christ through the resurrection eggs.

Our Bible studies reach out to others who are in other churches, not just the confines of the members of the church, but others as well.

I don’t know how many people that is all together, but God knows.

What I want you to know is that you are a part of all that- and when you belong to God you are a child of God

That brings us to our Big Idea:

Our Big Idea today is: You are a Child of God.

When you are a child of God doing the work of the kingdom you can expect to have trouble in life.

The Enemy is not going to sit back and watch you take his people- helping them find their way back to God and In Matthew Chapter 13 verse 37-39 Jesus says that the enemy is the devil.

When a church is doing the work of God there will be struggles and attacks.

God wants all His people to come to know Him.

If you have received my text messages, in the last few days you know that I am in this place of His Grace, mercy and love for all of us.

And When you look at the people ,what we do with them, how we reach out to them and help them physically and spiritually, you can see that we mean what it says on the front of our bulletin.

Love God, Love People- Change the World.

We are doing it, you are doing it.

You are a child of God and you are simply amazing.

Listen to what 2 Corinthians says:

I will be a father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty (2nd Cor 6:17-18)

In the context the word LORD is KYRIOS in the Greek and it means owner, ruler,

When you own something it belongs to you, we say it is mine, my car, my phone, my house, my shoes, so for us Lord means owner, when you are owned you are the one who belongs to the Lord.

You belong to Lord, you are a child of God

Lets also take a look at the Ephesians chapter 2 Are you there?

Amen ?

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body[a] and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind (what is Paul talking about?

He is saying that we at one time were on the side of the devil and doing the work of the spirit of the devil and the work that is the spirit of the devil is not the work of God so you were lifting out side of the will and love of God). 4 But God,(Can I tell you how much I love to hear those words BUT GOD, I can’t wait to come back to Saint Louis one day and preach and say But GOD.. healed Sammuel or used him in a might way, I love the words BUT GOD,,,,, because something great is about to happen.

But God.. are you following me?

But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ Listen to church even when we were against, totally against God, doing the work for the other team—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith.

And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, Do you see that not of your own doing remember last week I talked about undeserved favor,.

Favor that you don’t deserve because of what you are doing but you get the favor anyway, Paul says this favor this gift of what God has for you is 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.You cannot work you way into heaven, you cant buy your way into heaven, there is nothing you can do but accept Jesus, look at verse 10 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

The Works are what you want to do as a result of receiving the free gift of living eternity in heaven with Jesus, so you work in the church, you work in the kingdom not because you have to but because you want to show that love of Christ back.

Because you are know a child of God

God wants to use you in a great way, but that doesn’t stop the fact that there is trouble lurking though the back door.

All that stuff that we do, all the awesome work we do for our Father, for the Kingdom of God, for the one we belong to, it means that there is another side of all this.

There is a enemy who right now wants to stop the Rock in Soulard, He wants to cause problems, have people mad and sad and thinking that we can’t get along without someone.

SO I want to give you four facts about being a child of God

So the first thing I want you to know about being a child of God is that

First.

We are in a spiritual war (whether we realize it or not) 1 Peter 2:11 tells us: Dear friends, “I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul”.”

The King James version of the bible say “I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts

(There are two things Peter is trying to say.

One, He is reminding the Christians of their status here on earth that the earth is not our true home it is not our place and by Living as Aliens we are to Bring Glory to God in a foreign Hostile World.

KJV calls us Pilgrims, A Pilgrim is one who journeys to foreign lands "One who comes from a foreign country to dwell by the natives of a city or land, a stranger.

Since heaven is our Home as Christians we are pilgrims on our short time on earth, the NT speaks of Abraham and other believers as pilgrims while here on earth.

Second Peter says abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul”.

What he is saying is that there is the “SIN NATURE” still within the Christian, and it is wars against us.

Peter is giving instructions to every Christian who professes that they are Child of God, because Peter goes on to say in chapter 5 verse 8

He says be watchful….. “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”

If we are not paying attention of our sinful desires, the devil will use them to devour us,

and listen to me he is prowling around our lives right know looking for that place, that is in the church just as much as in our personal lives outside of the church.