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.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
Emotion Tone
Anger
0.1UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.05UNLIKELY
Fear
0.1UNLIKELY
Joy
0.58LIKELY
Sadness
0.56LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.74LIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.34UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.85LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.74LIKELY
Extraversion
0.21UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.66LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.58LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
The Missing Something
What does it mean to Seek God? Scripture highlights that seeking God is a continual process.
Both the Old and New Testaments describe seeking as setting the Mind and hearts affection on God.
The setting of the mind and heart on God is divergently different from just coasting mentally in the Christian life.
*We do not make this effort to seek God because he is lost.
He is not like the coin or sheep.
God is not lost, there is always something around us pointing us to himself.
SEEKING IS THE CONSCIOUS MEANS BY WHICH WE GET PAST THE NATURAL MEANS TO GOD HIMSELF.
How doe we find Him?
*The heavens are declaring his glory
*The word reveals who He is
*Other people are evidence of God’s grace
BIG IDEA: Stop feeding your seeking heart apart from God’s navigational chart
A nautical chart is one of the most fundamental tools available to the mariner.
It is a map that depicts the configuration of the shoreline and seafloor.
It provides water depths, locations of dangers to navigation, locations and characteristics of aids to navigation, anchorages, and other features.
What is the navigational chart God has give us to Navigate the waters of this life?
THE HOLY SPIRIT!
The Missing Something!
Is the Sprit of God! Francis Chan called it the Forgotten God!
SO? HOW DO WE SEEK GOD’s Navigational Chart?
WHAT KEEPS US FROM SEEKING HIM?
1. Seek God First and Often
Seeking God first and often is all about trusting in His sufficiency.
ILLUSTRATION
How many times have you buttoned your shirt only to discover when you reach the top (or bottom) that you have an unoccupied button hole left over?
It’s a scenario that grows in likelihood the later you are for catching your morning bus or the more distracted you are by the headlines on your favorite morning news program.
Now you’re even more likely to miss your bus because you have to unfasten then refasten all your buttons.
APPLICATION
Life can be a lot like a mis-matched buttons, “If we get the top button of a shirt buttoned wrong, all the other buttons will also be off.
Many people have everything in their lives out of order because they haven’t fastened the kingdom of God button first.
… To have a wonderful life, we need to reset our priorities.”
The way of freedom in seeking is not in His omniscience it’s in His Sufficient Hand.
Seeking God first and often is all about knowing that He holds our future.
(the deposit, down payment he has give us is the Sprit)
To often our seeking God is all about knowing Gods plan and will for our life from beginning to end.
Jesus tells us in the sermon on the mount not to worry about the future because the future isn’t scary because he cares for us.
It’s all in His hands.
God’s will is that we live holy lives; bear fruit; and know Him better.
Kevin De Young
“God’s will is that you and I get happy and holy in Jesus.”
2. Seek God with an Abandonment
The freedom found in seeking God is not synonymous with safety.
As Elisabeth Elliot writes:
Our prayers for guidance (or for anything else) really begin here: I trust him.
This requires abandonment.
We are no longer saying, “If I trust him, he’ll give me such and such,” but, “I trust him.
Let him give me or withhold from me what he chooses.”
The freedom in seeking God is standing in His guidance
When Tim Keller first came to Manhattan to start Redeemer Presbyterian Church, people were constantly asking him, “Are you sure God has called you to start this church in New York City?” His answer was always, “No.”
Then he’d explain:
I think he did.
I see an opportunity.
I don’t see anybody else taking the opportunity.
I feel an obligation to come.
I think it’s a good idea.
I think God’s calling me.
But I can’t be absolutely sure.
I can be sure that I must not lie; it’s in the Bible.
I can be sure that I must not bow down to idols; it’s in the Bible.
I’m sure of a lot of things that are God’s will.
But as far as I know, I won’t be sure that I’m called to plant a church until it happens.
When people would persist, saying, “Didn’t you have a peace about it?”
he’d reply:
No, it was too hard of a decision.
It was too scary.
But I know this: guidance is as much something God does as it is something he gives.
Therefore, I knew that by selling my house and moving up here and signing a three-year lease that, if I failed to plant a church, God was preparing me for something I couldn’t envision.
*In other words we are standing in God’s guidance.
We are being navigated by God even if we cannot see it.
ILLUSTRATION
In ancient Celtic mythology there was a belief that there are certain places, called thin places, where the world of the seen and the world of the unseen came into closest proximity.
In each of the beatitudes, Jesus points us to a kind of thin place, a place on earth where we draw closer to heaven.
Surprisingly, these are lowly, humble places, each one of them repulsive in some way to the ego of man.
Not one of them is a place that you or I would SEEK to visit in our search for a happy and meaningful life.
But Jesus proposes that the treasures of the Kingdom of God are found in just such lowly places.
APPLICATION
So, if we are to discover the blessed life, we must look for it in these lowly places.
In want instead of plenty, in weakness rather than in strength, where we are lacking instead of where we feel adequate.
3.
Seek God with an active obedience
There are countless obstacles to get around in order to truly see God clearly.
Seeking God with active obedience involves fleeing spiritually dulling activity.
Daniel fled Potifers wife...... Daniel fled defiling his body with the kings food
“When David exhorted the leaders of Israel to seek the Lord with all of the heart and mind it entailed an active command.
Immediately following the command he said; “now go and build that Temple.”
Marine’s have their instant willing obedience to orders........
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU ARE SEEKING GOD AND FEEL LIKE HE IS NO WHERE TO BE FOUND?
Seeking God with active obedience involves calling and pleading
Seeking involves calling and pleading.
“O Lord, open my eyes.
O Lord, pull back the curtain of my own blindness.
Lord, have mercy and reveal yourself.
I long to see your face.”
Seeking God with active obedience involves the whole heart
Jeremiah
The heart symbolizes the totality of one’s will and emotions.
Loving God with one’s heart is the essence of faith.
True circumcision is of the heart, not simply the flesh.
The Great obstacle in seeking the Lord is Pride
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9