Message

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Coping With Stress

Life, Message / By /

Life is certainly not easy, it can be like mountain climbing. Just when you thought things were going to get easier, another mountain looms in front of you. Those mountains are the difficulties that God allows into our lives. Everyone one of us has at least one difficult mountain that we’ve got to climb over to move on in our lives.

This morning we start a new message series which I’ve entitled “Dealing With Difficulties.” If God allows those difficult mountains to come into our lives, doesn’t it make sense that He would help us deal with them? NLT 2 Peter 1:3 His divine power gives us everything we need for living a godly life. This promise from God promises us that God will give us everything we need for living a godly life. Notice that God doesn’t promise to answer every question you may have about life. He doesn’t promise to give you everything you may want in life or everything you may need to live life the way you want to. What He does promise is to give you everything you need to live the life He created you to life. That includes scaling the mountains that block our path.

Today my message is entitled “Coping With Stress.” The mountain that I’m going to be looking at is the mountain of stress. Stress is “a mentally or emotionally disruptive or upsetting condition occurring in response to adverse external influences.” Notice that stress is not the adverse circumstances, but our response to them. Stress affects our physical health. Stress can increase your heart rate, raise your blood pressure, give you headaches and make you irritable and depressed. A high percentage of illnesses are ultimately due to the effects of stress in our lives.

NIV Psalm 46:10 Be still, and know that I am God; God tells us to just get quiet before Him and realize that He is God, He is in charge, God is in control, not you. So that’s what we’re going to do this morning. We’re going to take some time and listen to what God’s Word has to say about how you can cope with stressful situations in your life. To do that we’re going to look at the life of Jesus.

Jesus was constantly under pressure He began his public ministry at the age of 30 knowing that he had only three years to live and change the world. Huge crowds clamored for his attention he rarely had personal privacy. He had to train twelve bumbling disciples to carry on after him. He was constantly interrupted, questioned, criticized and ridiculed. He dealt with enormous stress in His life, yet Jesus was never stressed-out, He remained at peace under pressure. Today, we’re going to discover what Jesus’ secrets were to coping with stress so we can apply to them to our own lives and follow Him.

To hear more about this topic, listen to my September 30, 2007 message entitled Coping With Stress

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Healing For Injuries

Life, Message / By /

When American adults are asked what their top priority in life is, 91% list good physical health Good physical health is an important part of life but even more important is our emotional health and the most important part of life is our spiritual health. People can get sick physically emotionally or spiritually and need healing. God wants you to have good health in all these three areas.

NIV 3 John 1:2 Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well. John says that God wants you to enjoy good health. God wants things to go well with you, but notice the last phrase John says “even as your soul is getting along well.” John is saying that your spiritual health is to be your top priority. When your soul is healthy in its relationship with God, it provides a foundation for you to have good physical and emotional health as well.

Today my message is entitled “Healing For Injuries.” When I speak of healing today, remember the principles apply to physical, emotional and spiritual healing. We all need God’s healing touch in our lives on a regular basis.

A friend of mine here in St Louis named Scott finished law school at Wash U in 1991. After his last final exam, he went to a driving range with a friend. After hitting balls for a few minutes, Scott doubled over with excruciating pain in his lower abdomen. When the pain didn’t let up, his friend drove Scott to the emergency room. There they ran some tests, gave him some pain medication and sent him home. The next week Scott was shocked to learn that he had cancer. Scott was 23 years old and just married 2 years.

Before the scheduled surgery could take place the tumor ruptured. Scott was rushed to emergency surgery and the tumor was removed and found to be malignant. The prognosis did not look good. There was a good possibility the cancer had spread. Scott, his family and church all began to pray for God to heal him. One day as Scott was riding in a car he was praying he said “God, I believe in you. You have to help me. Just give me a sign to show me you’re with me and I’m going to be Ok. How about a bright flashing light or something?” Just then the car drove over a hill and Scott saw the flashing light of radio tower. The peace of God came into his soul and he knew everything would be alright. To the doctor’s amazement the cancer had not spread and 5 years later he was declared cancer-free and still is today. God had healed Scott.

Today we’re going to look at the last 8 verses in the book of James to discover how to pray for healing.

To hear more about this topic, listen to my September 23, 2007 message entitled Healing For Injuries

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Resisting Quitting

Life, Message / By /

Today, I’m going to talk about “Resisting Quitting.” Ever felt like quitting? People quit for all kinds of reasons. Might be that waiting in the line at the checkout counter is just taking too long, so they put their stuff down and leave. Maybe someone is in some kind of relationship and things aren’t going well, so they break off the relationship, whether a friendship or a marriage. Could be that someone thinks that God isn’t helping them as much as they think He should, so they bail out on God and go their own way. When you quit, you lose whatever you quit out of and it’s very difficult to get it back.

The opposite of quitting is being patient and waiting. James begins chapter 5 with the words NIV James 5:7a Be patient, then, brothers, until the Lord’s coming. God commands us to be patient until the Lord’s coming. What is the Lord’s coming? When Jesus rose from the dead, before He ascended into heaven, He promised to return to earth again. When He comes the second time, it will be as a triumphant king, to wrap up history as we know it. But in the meantime, James is saying that we need to be patient, we need to resist quitting, we need to learn to wait on the Lord. TEV Isaiah 49:23 You will know that I am the Lord; no one who waits for my help will be disappointed.

When you’re going through a difficult circumstance in life, you will be tempted to quit waiting on the Lord. You will be tempted to get mad at God or other people. You will be tempted to quit believing that God cares about you. If you quit on God, you won’t receive anything from Him. But, if you wait for God’s help, you won’t be disappointed. It seems to me that in most situations, God makes us wait longer then we would like. We want an answer yesterday, but God makes us wait just a little bit longer. So our faith and patience grows stronger. So, how can you resist quitting? How can you learn to practice patience in every area of your life?

To hear more about this topic, listen to my September 16, 2007 message entitled Resisting Quitting

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Keeping Team Unity

Church, Life, Message / By /

Today I’m going to talk about “Keeping Team Unity” in our message series Faith Workout. Each of us is on multiple teams in life. Your family is a team, you should work together for common goals. Not just the parents, but the parents and all of the children are together on the family team. You’re part of a team at work, maybe multiple teams. If you’re in a Life Group you’re on a team. If you’re a member at Life Church, you’re part of the Life Church team. If you’re working on a ministry with others, you’re part of a team.

When everyone on a team is in unity, it’s an enjoyable experience and the team can accomplish what it was created to do. However, what happens when the team unity is broken. What happens when you don’t get along with someone else on the team? What happens when arguments begin? How do you become part of the solution, not the problem in a team environment? That’s what I’m going to talk about today.

I believe that one of the most important teams that each of us is on is our families, so I’m going to focus on the family team today, but the principles will apply to any set of relationships. Probably the most common result of a breakdown of relationship on a team is an argument. You might call it a quarrel or a fight, but it’s not fun. Arguments can lead to emotional injury and sometimes things even get physical. We need to learn to avoid arguments.

Today we’re going to look at the fourth chapter of James which explains the causes of arguments and the cure for arguments. James begins with a question. NLT James 4:1 What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Here the Greek word for fights literally means “armed conflict or war.” The Greek word for quarrels literally means “physical combat fought with weapons.” So James is here likening arguments to armed conflicts fought with weapons. In an argument the weapons are words.

This morning I’d like to ask you to think about the person that you’ve had the most arguments with recently. As we go through the message, I trust that you will better understand what causes the conflict between you and how God would have you bring peace to the relationship in the future.

To hear more about this topic, listen to my September 9, 2007 message entitled Keeping Team Unity

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Exercising Your Tongue

Family, Life, Message / By /

Currently we’re in a message series called “Faith Workout.” In this series we’re looking at many of the important themes from the book of James. James is a short book of five chapters in the New Testament. If you haven’t taken the time yet to read through it during this series, I would encourage you to do it this week. James is an intensely practical book that deals with many of the day to day issues we all face.

Today I’m going to talk about “Exercising Your Tongue.” When you exercise in a gym, you can exercise the right way or the wrong way. If you exercise the right way, you grow stronger, it benefits you and others. If you exercise the wrong way, it can hurt you and even others who may be around you. Some people think that what you say really isn’t that important. However Jesus taught that every word you speak is very important. NLT Matthew 12:36-37 “And I tell you this, that you must give an account on judgment day of every idle word you speak. The words you say now reflect your fate then; either you will be justified by them or you will be condemned.” Jesus is saying that on judgment day God is going to turn on his cosmic tape recorder and play back the words of your lifetime. Even idle careless words will be judged and the result of this final test will determine your destiny, heaven or hell. I want to learn to exercise my tongue correctly.

Our words can get us into a lot of trouble. At an outpatient surgery center, the anesthesiologist often chatted with patients before their operations to help them relax.. One day he recognized his patient as a co-worker at the hospital where he had trained. Speaking idly, he said, “So, tell me, is the food still as bad there as it used to be?” “Well, I suppose,” she replied, “I’m still cooking it.” Whoops, wrong exercise of the tongue. Our words can get us into a lot of trouble or our words can have wonderful effects.

Last week we talked about the importance of our actions and you might be thinking that your actions or more important than your words. Listen to what James says. NLT James 3:2 We all make many mistakes, but those who control their tongues can also control themselves in every other way. James is saying that if you can exercise your tongue correctly, you’ll be able to control your actions.

To hear more about this topic, listen to my September 2, 2007 message entitled Exercising Your Tongue

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Faith That Wins

God, Message / By /

Currently we’re in a message series called “Faith Workout.” In this series we’re talking about real faith. I use the term real faith because not all so-called faith is real. There are a lot of religions in the world: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and the list could go on and on. Is the faith of all these religions the same? Is it real faith that connects to God? The answer is “no.” Christianity is unique among the religions of the world in teaching real faith.

In all the other religions of the world, a person must do good works in order to become right with God or to become God. These other religions can be described by the word DO. In Christianity alone, God became man in the person of Jesus. What needed to be done to make man right with God has been completed through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Through Jesus our sins have been forgiven. Christianity can be summed up by the word DONE. Big difference. You don’t have to do anything to be accepted by God, just have faith, just believe.

NIV Ephesians 2:8-10 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works. Notice the sequence here described in this verse. Entering into a relationship with God comes through faith not works. However, as we’ll talk about today, you were created to do good works as a believer. In this verse Paul makes it clear that faith is the root of salvation.

So today my message is entitled “Faith That Wins.” What is a winning faith? Faith that wins is a real faith, a faith that pleases God, a faith that lasts. Winning faith changes the world and leads you to heaven. We’re going to look at what the book of James has to say about faith that wins.

Some people read James as saying that you have to do good works or actions in order to have real faith. They quote NIV James 2:17 Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. Is James contradicting what Paul said in Ephesians? Are you saved by actions not faith? No, James is saying that so-called faith that is not accompanied by actions is not real faith at all. Good works flow from and accompany winning faith. If those good works are not evident, it implies that the faith is dead. So this morning, let’s look at what real faith, what faith the wins is all about.

To hear more about this topic, listen to my August 26, 2007 message entitled Faith That Wins

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