Sermon Tone Analysis

*/Matrix – The Training/*

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*/1.

The Task/*

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l*Defining the primary reality of my life.*

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/“The matrix is the world pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth”/

 

* I’m not who I think I am.

I’m not who you think I am.

I am who I think you think I am.

* We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.

* The Magnificent Ruin.

“Before we can grasp the need for a revolution of character, we must see the human soul in it’s state of profound ruin.

Remember that all people undergo a process of spiritual formation.

No one escapes.

From the most hardened criminal to the most devout person, everyone has had some form of spiritual formation.

In one of C.S. Lewis’ more striking passages, he challenges us to remember this:

 

/“The dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption, such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. . . .

There are no ordinary people.

You have never talked to a mere mortal.

Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.

But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”/

*/ /*

*/2.

The Test/*

 

l*Daring to “act” or to live out of that reality.*

/“They all fall the first time.”/

*/3.

The Truth/*

 

l*Discovering the deficiencies of my own  life.*

/“I never said it would be easy, just the truth.”/

The hardest thing in the world to face is not the “truth” alone but the “truth” about me.

There are a good number of people who cannot bear this pain and they spend their lifetimes running away from it.

They just look at it.

God however knows it all.

He has never been surprised at any of your failures.

Karen Mains, using beautiful language of her own choosing, is talking about the effects of restorative grace when she writes:

 

/   “Nature shouts of this beginning-again-God, this God who can make all our failures regenerative, the One who is God of risings again, who never tires of fresh starts, nativities, renaissances in persons or in culture.

God is a God of starting over, of ge//nesis and re- genesis.

He composts life's sour fruits, moldering rank and decomposing; He applies the organic matter to our new day chances; He freshens the world with dew; He hydrates withered human hearts with his down pouring spirit.”

/

 

*/   -- With My Whole Heart/*

 

Most people are not on a quest for truth but on a quest for personal convenience.

They are looking for something that blinds them from the truth.

Hitler deathbed confessions - do they work?

For many "repentance" is nothing more than not wanting to go to hell.

Repentance is being sorry about who I am more than what I have done.

It is acknowledging the painful truth about me.

As we come closer to God two things happen.

We see Him as we have never seen Him.

We also see ourselves as we have never seen ourselves.

We look good next to most everything else.

But next to God it's amazing what shows up.

Next to God my pride is so obvious.

Manifest, when I don't get my way either in anger, hurt or bitterness.

Of equal importance to discovering the truth about God is discovering the truth about me

 

God isn't finished with me yet.

There are times when I feel that He is just beginning.

The worst test that I ever had in Tae Kwon Do was the red stripe.

Yesterday's run.

Discouraged?

Perhaps?

I know the truth though.

The truth is that I am out of shape.