Sermon Tone Analysis

Overall tone of the sermon

This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
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Anger
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Fear
Joy
Sadness
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Openness
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Prelude Welcome          Call to Worship
The voice of God calls in love, inviting us into the shelter of kindness and grace.
Within these walls, in the house of God, we gather in the sanctuary of faith, waiting to be fed, and then to be led forth again into pastures beyond the boundaries of our certainties.
*We will follow the loving Shepherd, the one who never fails us,*
*and who calls us each by name.
Let us praise our God.*
~*Hymn of Praise                       #45                  The Lord’s My Shepherd
Invocation        (the Lord’s Prayer) We believe that you are present, O God, in the faithfulness of the Holy Spirit.
You never leave us nor forsake us.
Make yourself known to us in the heights and depths of life here, that we may be renewed and receive the fullness of your life.
Unison Psalm 23 RSV  The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; He makes me lie down in green pastures.He leads me beside still waters; He restores my soul.He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff They comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflowsSurely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life;And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
Our  Offering to God    let us bring our offerings in celebration of the saving love of Christ
Doxology
Prayer of Dedication     Receive our gifts, O God.
We bring them with thankful hearts
and confident faith in your guidance.
Help us always to share them with others.
~*Hymn of Prayer                      # 439               He Leadeth Me
Pastoral Prayer                         O God, loving shepherd in Jesus, we know that so many people in our world have little experience of emotional sanctuary, or of a physically abundant life.
Where there is hunger or despair: *bring your plenty, O God, and open hands of hospitality.
*Where exploitation brings drudgery and weariness:  *bring your rest, O God, and strengthen commitments to justice.
*Where violence breeds fear and death:  *bring your peace, O God, and give wisdom to reconciling acts.
*Where isolation leaves people lost and lonely:  *bring your open and loving arms, O God.*
Lift up our hearts this day, that we may hold firm to the faith, daring to go beyond where we have been, free to venture in your name and listening for your true voice in every person and place.
*This we pray in hope.
Amen.*
~*Hymn of Praise                       # 581               There’s a Sweet, Sweet Spirit
Scripture Reading/                     Acts 2:42-47/  
Message                                   The Zone
The Zone. \\ It’s an extraordinary place.
In baseball, when you enter the Zone in the batter’s box, you have no trouble getting a hit, because the baseball looks as big as a watermelon.
Curt Schilling, pitcher for the World Series champion Boston Red Sox, was in it last fall when the strike zone was as big as the side of a barn, and he was hitting his spots, winning two games.
\\ In basketball, you’re in the Zone at the foul line when the basket looks like a hula hoop.
In golf, every swing is effortless and every ball flies straight and true, and if you’re Vijay Singh you win 10 tournaments and almost $11 million.
\\ According to college coaching legend Dean Smith, the Zone is “where time stands still and performance is exquisite.”
Think of Barry Bonds hitting his 700th home run.
Michael Jordan leading his team to six NBA champion-ships.
Tiger Woods swinging a club so well that he once held all four “majors” simultaneously.
Lance Armstrong winning a record-setting sixth Tour de France.
All of these athletes have found this magical place of optimal performance, also known as the Sweet Spot, the Flow or the Effortless Present.
\\ All of these phrases describe a sporting phenomenon, but they’re also descriptive of a spiritual zone we can experience when the conditions are right.
In today’s passage from Acts, the early church has clearly found the sweet spot of Christian living.
“Awe came upon everyone,” says Luke, the author of Acts, “because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles.”
\\ But just what exactly is this place, and how do we get there?
Richard Keefe, the director of sport psychology at Duke University, explores this phenomenon in a book called /On the Sweet Spot: Stalking the Effortless Present/ (Simon and Schuster, 2003).
He describes the Zone as a state of mind and body in which action and reaction seem to happen automatically, a state that people can enter while hitting a ball, playing a musical instrument, or even typing on a word processor.
\\ According to brain-imaging studies, professional piano players don’t actually think about hitting the keys on the piano; instead, their brain neurons fire in areas associated with mechanical motion rather than consciousness.
Let’s do an experiment right now -  ask the organist to play a few bars of Since Jesus Came into My Heart.
Then ask her what the first note was.
Was it actually a chord involving fingers of both the right and left hands?
What were the second notes?
Did she have to mentally and visually search for the second notes after playing the first?
You get the idea.
A musician doesn’t have to think.
They’re in the Effortless Present.
Likewise, when we practice our faith, what might have seemed hard at first, loving each other, saying the kind word, being gracious, helping the needy, becomes the instinctive, unconscious reflex of the mature Christian living in the Zone with the Holy Spirit.
\\ Great players — whether they are on the piano or on the basketball court — don’t have to think about what they are doing.
They just do it.
\\ Of course, no one can pick up a golf club for the first time and hit below par.
Perfect practice makes perfect performance, which is why professionals build routine and repetition into their highly disciplined daily lives.
“This is how the adage ‘practice makes perfect’ really works,” writes Keefe in his book.
“The more you do something, the more the brain changes to devote its energy to that function.”
The more you practice, the more you are training your brain neurons to fire in a way that creates flawless mechanical motion.
\\ Visualization can help as well.
Simply imagining yourself doing something can light up the areas of the brain you’ll need to accomplish what you have in mind.
A pro golfer will mentally play a round, shot by shot, before stepping on to the first tee.
A major-league pitcher will reflect on his strategy for each hitter, inning by inning, before he arrives at the ballpark.
“By doing so,” says ESPN senior editor Jon Scher, “he’s warming up his neural pathways before he warms up his arm, increasing the likelihood that he’ll wind up in the effortless present.”
\\ The Effortless Present is a zone of automatic action, reached by /practice and visualization/.
It takes us beyond stress and self-doubt to an experience of truly optimal performance.
\\ So what does the Effortless Present look like for those of us on this journey?
\\ We’re in the Effortless Present when the fruit of the Spirit — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control — continue to have a larger place in our life (Galatians 5:22-23).
\\ We’re in the Effortless Present when we’re abiding in him and he in us (John 15:5).
\\ We’re in the Effortless Present when we have joy and peace in spite of adversity and suffering.
\\ We’re in the Effortless Present when we’re supporting our “faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love (2 Peter 1:5-7).
\\ We’re in the Effortless Present when we’re able to turn the other cheek, when we’re able to forgive 70 times 7 and when we’re able to turn away from temptation.
\\ We’re in the Effortless Present when we are serving God with our spiritual gifts and passion.
\\ We’re in the Effortless Present when we are sharing the Good News with others.
\\ We’re in the Effortless Present when our only business, as Brother Lawrence puts it in /The Practice of the Presence of God/, is “to love and delight ourselves in God.” \\ We’re in the Effortless Present when love flows out from us to others as freely as water from a tap.
\\ You say: “In other words, I’m in the Effortless Present when I’m — like — perfect.”
\\ Well, yeah.
\\ But don’t forget, the Effortless Present doesn’t happen very often.
Not for Curt Schilling, Tiger Wood, or Kobe Bryant.
And not for you.
\\ However, there are disciplines that create the possibility that you, too, every once in a while, will get in the Zone, find the Sweet Spot, experience the Effortless Present that the apostle Paul calls, “walking in the Spirit.”
\\ Those disciplines are visualization and practice.
\\ /Visualization/.
Notice that the apostles and the new Christians spent a lot of time in prayer.
In prayer we’re able to express our longing for a deeper walk with God.
We’re able to “picture” what kind of experience we want and hope for during the day ahead.
\\ Morning prayer helps us set the tone for the entire day.
Evening prayer allows us to express thanks, and “review the film” as it were, to look for spots where we stepped out of, or away from the zone.
It allows us to consider why what worked, worked, and what didn’t work, didn’t work.
\\ /Practice/.
They “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42).
\\ The word “devoted” is a rather long, compound Greek word.
It means to “be strong toward.”
No one finds the Effortless Present without being “strong toward” something.
If it’s golf, you have to be dragged away from the practice range.
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