Life

Thanksgiving is almost here. Thanksgiving is a time for family and food. Lots of it, turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. God has given us both family and food to enjoy, yet I believe there is something else He wants us to learn this Thanksgiving. It’s a lesson that is not just for one day of the year, but something you can practice every day. Thanksgiving is not meant to be about us, it’s meant to be about God. He’s the one that we are to thank. He’s the one that we are to be thankful to.

However, often it’s far easier for most of us to come up with things that are wrong in our life, than to thank God for what is right about our lives. Why should you be thankful? The Bible uses the word thanks 150 times, it’s not a small topic in the Bible. But you may say, Pastor, it’s so hard to be thankful, I have so many problems. Let me explain something about the Bible. It’s not just a rule book, it’s a manual for life. When you ask for God’s help and follow the Bible’s commands, you will be blessed. One of the blessings that comes from being thankful is being filled with joy. Think about it for a minute, are you more joyful when you are being thankful or complaining. The answer should be obvious. The more thankful you are, the happier you’ll be.

Today, we’re going to look at what the Bible has to say about “The Joy of Thanksgiving.” Do you want joy in your life? Then begin to put into practice the principles you’re going to learn today. Do you want joyful children? Teach them these principles. Do you want better relationships in your life? Who would you rather be around, someone who is constantly complaining about the dark side of life or someone who is optimistic and thankful? Learning to be a thankful person can transform your life.

Today our main text is Psalm 100, a short psalm of five verses which begins like this. NIV Psalm 100:1-2 A psalm. For giving thanks. Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth. Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Notice the combination of joy, gladness and giving thanks. God doesn’t just suggest, He commands all the earth to give thanks and shout for joy to the Lord. This is not just for Sunday mornings, it’s not just for one day in November, no, it’s for every day of your life. I want my life to be full of joy and thanksgiving, and I know you want the same for yourself and your family. So how can you enter into the joy of thanksgiving?

To hear more about this topic, listen to my November 18, 2007 message entitled The Joy Of Thanksgiving

It seems to me that these days a lot of people are overwhelmed with life. What I mean is that just the task of making an income and holding together a family is too much for many people. The average credit card debt is $10000 per family and rising, despite most families having two wage earners. On the relationship front, about 50% of marriages end up in divorce. One of the current presidential frontrunners is on his third marriage, as is his current wife. My point is that the simple things of life are simply overwhelming many people.

God wants to provide all you need with respect to life, from making an income to prospering your family. However, he has much more in mind for you than that. His purpose and plan for every believer is that they impact their world for Him. God wants you to be blessed and for you to be a blessing to others. He wants you to reach people who don’t know God and bring them to Jesus.

God wants you to be an overcomer. An overcomer is a believer who isn’t defeated by life, no, an overcomer is someone who wins great victories in life through God’s power. NIV 1 John 5:4 For everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Are you an overcomer this morning? If you are a believer, you should be an overcomer. You should overcome difficulties, problems, crises of all kinds through your faith. Why? So you can do something to help others find that same kind of overcoming faith in God.

Today my message is entitled “Becoming An Overcomer.” I’m going to talk about how you can go from being overcome by life to becoming an overcomer. Someone who is a positive force for God to impact the world around you. NIV Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. As I go through the message today, keep in mind what you need to overcome in your own life so that you can be freed up to impact your world.

In this series “Dealing with Difficulties” I am drawing principles from stories in the Bible The stories in the Bible were not put there just because they are interesting, but because they serve as examples of how we should respond in similar situations. The story we’re going to be looking at today involves a king facing an insurmountable problem. A vast army was poised to annihilate him and his people. How could he overcome such an obstacle?

To hear more about this topic, listen to my November 4, 2007 message entitled Becoming An Overcomer

The dictionary defines courage as “the ability to face danger, difficulty, uncertainty, or pain without being overcome by fear or being deflected from a chosen course of action.” Do you have courage? Are you a courageous person? The only way that you know for sure that you have courage is when you face a difficulty, danger or crisis in life. How you respond to a crisis will determine how much courage you have.

Todd Beamer was a passenger on board Flight 92 on September 11, 2001 when it was hijacked by terrorists. Todd and his fellow passengers showed courage in crisis. The easy thing would have been to do nothing, to be paralyzed by fear. Yet, due to his faith in God, Todd was able to lead the charge to overcome the hijackers. They stopped the plane from reaching it’s intended target of Washington DC.

Today I’ve entitled my message “Finding Courage In Crisis.” In this message series I’ve been talking about dealing with difficulties. However, sometimes, difficulties escalate to the point that they become a crisis. A crisis is a situation where action must be taken to avoid complete disaster. In every group of this size, there will undoubtedly by several people who are facing a crisis in their live or in their family. Even if you are not facing a crisis today, there will come a day when you will face a crisis. Will you be ready? Will you find courage at that time to take action?

NIV Deuteronomy 31:6 Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. These were God’s instructions to Joshua when facing a crisis. Note that the opposite of being strong and courageous is being afraid and terrified. How can you be strong and courageous? By trusting that God goes with you. Whatever difficulty or crisis that you may be facing today, God says to you “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified by your situation. I am with you and I will never leave you or forsake you.”

Today we’re going to look at a story from the New Testament about the courage of the apostle Paul to learn about finding courage in a crisis. In Acts chapter 27, we find Paul is a prisoner on board a ship headed for Rome. God’s purpose is for Paul to preach the Gospel to the Emperor in Rome. The ship, with Paul aboard it, is about to head for a life-threatening crisis. This crisis was one that could have been avoided. Some crises can be avoided, others are outside of our control. In this particular case, the crisis could have been avoided, but Paul was not in charge. So the end result was that Paul got involved in a crisis because of other people’s wrong decisions. So how can you find courage for a crisis?

To hear more about this topic, listen to my October 28, 2007 message entitled Finding Courage In Crisis

Currently we’re in a message series called “Dealing with Difficulties.” What I trust we’re learning is that no matter what difficulty you’re facing in your life, there is hope. God is bigger than any mountain you may be up against in your life. God’s Word, the Bible, has all the answers you need to live the life God created you to live.

NLT 2 Peter 1:3 As we know Jesus better, His divine power gives us everything we need for living a godly life. Circle that word “everything.” Everything you need for living a godly life is available to you through the power of Jesus. Jesus’ power is made available to you through His Word, His Spirit and His church. As a believer, you lack nothing to live out God’s purpose for your life. However, sometimes believers begin to doubt that truth. Sometimes the mountains of difficulties around them loom up bigger than God Himself. Sometimes they wonder if God cares about them. Sometimes they get depressed.

Today, I’m going to talk about “Defeating Depression.” God doesn’t want you to be depressed, He wants you to be filled with His joy. Depression is an enemy that God wants to help you defeat. What is depression? Depression is a whole range of emotions that range from feeling down for a day to being clinically depressed for weeks or months on end. For the purposes of this message, I’m going to lump them all together under the word depression.

When you feel depressed, the future no longer looks bright and worries cloud your mind. You don’t feel good about your ability to cope, even God seems far away. How do you deal with feeling down or depressed? Some people withdraw from being around others and even going to church. Others try to drown their troubles with alcohol or drugs. Still others try to escape in television, the internet or video games. None of those ways is going to help you defeat depression.

This morning, we’re going to turn to the Bible to discover how God moved a great prophet named Elijah from depression to a sense of purpose. In the story, Elijah had just won a great victory over the prophets of the idol Baal. However, the queen of the land, Jezebel, was greatly enraged. NLT 1 Kings 19:2 So Jezebel sent this message to Elijah: “May the gods also kill me if by this time tomorrow I have failed to take your life like those whom you killed.” So Elijah ran for his life and became depressed. Elijah became depressed because of wrong thinking. So the first topic we’re going to look at is how to avoid depression and secondly we’re going to look how to defeat depression if you’ve succumbed to it.

To hear more about this topic, listen to my October 21, 2007 message entitled Defeating Depression

Currently, we’re in a message series called “Dealing With Difficulties.” We’re talking about what the Bible has to say about dealing with the difficulties that we all face in life. Those difficulties loom in front of us like mountains to be climbed and overcome. God doesn’t want to see you overcome by difficulties, He wants to see you successful in life.

Success in God’s eyes does not depend on making a lot of money or making it to the top in your career. Success in God’s eyes is found by fulfilling God’s purpose for your life. It’s OK to want to have that kind of success in life and even pray for it. NIV Psalm 118:25 O LORD, save us; O LORD, grant us success. Yet there will be times in each of our lives when we fail. There will be times when you feel like giving up. Every successful person in the Bible had times when felt discouraged, when they had failed, when they had not lived up to God’s standard. The important thing is not to give up when you fail. Failure for the believer is not the end, but an opportunity to find a fresh start from God.

NIV Proverbs 24:16 Though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again, but the wicked are brought down by calamity. The point of this verse is not that the righteous man never falls, but that the righteous man rises again, he comes back. The wicked on the other hand, fall and can’t recover. Today, my message is entitled “Overcoming Failure.” Today as we look at God’s Word I want you to think about your own life. What failure hangs over your head? Keep it in mind during this message. What situations or circumstances haven’t worked out as you would have liked? No matter what you’ve failed at God wants you to rebound from that failure and find His success in life.

This message is for everyone who has failed in life and that includes all of us. God wants to give you a fresh start today. This morning, we’re going to look at the life of Peter. Peter and his fellow fisherman had been out fishing all night but hadn’t caught anything. Fishing was normally done at night so the fish couldn’t see the fisherman’s nets in the darkness. Yet after a long night of casting nets into the water, rowing to all the choice fishing spots, Peter had to admit that the trip was a failure. He would have nothing at all to show for all his hard work, nothing to take home to feed his family, let alone to sell in the market. Yet just a few hours later that same boat with the same fisherman, fishing at the wrong time of day would catch an enormous number of fish. What made the difference between the first and second fishing trips? What keys can we learn from this story about overcoming failure?

To hear more about this topic, listen to my October 14, 2007 message entitled Overcoming Failure

Today, my message is called “Finding Peace Of Mind.” What is peace of mind? Peace of mind is not something that comes when every conflict in your life is resolved or every stressful situation is a thing of the past. That’s how some people seek peace of mind. They think that if only their difficulties in life were fixed, then they would have peace of mind. The problem is that we live on earth, not in heaven. Difficulties are simply part of everyone’s life, you can’t escape them.

So then, how can you have peace of mind, even in the midst of difficulties? When that mountain of difficulty looms in front of you, how can you have peace, even as you strain to scale the peak? Peace of mind is a gift from God that you can receive even in the midst of turmoil. How to find and receive that peace is what I’m going to be talking about his morning.

What’s the opposite of peace of mind? If you don’t have peace of mind, you have worry, fear and stress. God is the source of peace of mind, not a change in your circumstances. NLT Philippians 4:6-7 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace. In the midst of the storms of life, you don’t have to worry about anything. In fact, God commands you not to worry, simply pray. Prayer replaces worry with faith.

Worry will destroy your peace of mind. Worry stems from unbelief which will lead you to make wrong choices in life. On the other hand, faith will lead you to make right choices in life. When you make the right choices in life, then you’ll have peace with God and peace of mind.

Today, to understand how we can find peace of mind, we’re going to look at the life of Moses. Moses was a great leader of the nation of Israel in the Old Testament. He was chosen by God to lead Israel out of slavery in Egypt into the promised land of Canaan. Moses became the leader of a nation numbering in the millions and led them out of Egypt across a desert wilderness. Moses was faced with countless decisions situations that looked impossible. Yet he was a man at peace under pressure.

The book of Hebrews lists Moses as one of the heroes of the faith. NLT Hebrews 11:1 What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see. Faith looks into the future and sees a future bright with the promises of God. Worry or unbelief looks into the future and sees a dark future without God. Faith makes it possible for us to make the right decisions in life. Decisions that will give us peace of mind.

Today we’re going to look at three faith decisions that Moses made in his life. If you make the same decisions, you too will develop a lifestyle of faith with peace of mind.

To hear more about this topic, listen to my October 7, 2007 message entitled Finding Peace Of Mind