Message Archives | Page 80 of 89 • Spirit & Truth | Life Church St Louis

Surrendering To God

God, Message / By Pastor Dan Walker / March 6, 2006

The last person to be rescued from the Twin Towers of the 9/11 tragedy was Genelle McMillan. She had been trapped in the rubble for 27 hours when she was finally rescued by fire fighters. Genelle had worked on the 64th floor of the World Trade Center but when the planes hit she was encased alive in between slabs of concrete. Although Genelle had been raised in church, she had fallen away from God. In the darkness of the rubble, her thoughts once again turned to God and she began to pray. She prayed, “God, please save my life. Give me a second chance. I promise, I will change my life and do your will.” She prayed that prayer of surrender over and over until she was finally rescued.

When we’re in trouble over our heads, when our lives hang in the balance, we know that we need to surrender our lives to God. How much better to live a lifestyle of surrender to God. Today my message topic is entitled “Surrendering To God.” Surrendering your life to God is an act of worship. In fact, worship is really about surrendering the throne of your life to God.

Every person begins with self firmly seated on the throne of their lives. God asks each person to step down from the throne of their lives and surrender that throne to their creator. TEV Romans 6:13 Nor must you surrender any part of yourselves to sin to be used for wicked purposes. Instead, give yourselves to God and surrender your whole being to him to be used for righteous purposes. When you or I are on the throne of our lives, we have surrendered to sin and the enemy uses us for wicked purposes. The middle letter of sin is I and the essence of sin is self being on the throne. However, when you surrender to God, when you allow Him to be enthroned in your life, God can then use you for righteous purposes. That is how you were created to live. You were created to live a life surrendered to God and His purposes.

Today I’m going to talk about some of the barriers we have to surrendering our lives to God and about the benefits of surrendering the throne of your life to God.

To hear more about this topic, listen to my March 5, 2006 message entitled Surrendering To God

Learning To Please God

God, Message / By Pastor Dan Walker / February 27, 2006

Currently, we’re in a message series which I’ve entitled “Worship Can Change Your Life.” Worship is one of the five biblical purposes for your life. God created you to worship and He gave you a free will to choose what or whom you would worship. The only worship that makes sense is to worship your creator, God Himself. However, many people worship created things. The Bible calls worshipping created things foolish and it leads to big problems in your life.

When you worship God, you build a relationship with Him. You draw near to God and God draws near to you. That’s a good thing to have God close to you. Worship is all about pleasing God. If you do things that aren’t pleasing to God, it certainly is not worship. So, if we can learn to do the things that please God, we are learning to worship Him, we are building our relationship with God. So today, I’ve entitled my message “Learning To Please God.”

You can learn a lot of God as your Father by observing children interacting with their parents. Have you ever been in a store where a child was screaming and yelling about buying something and the parent was dragging them out of the store as fast as possible? What kind of expression was on the face of that parent? I’m sure it wasn’t a smile, they weren’t pleased with their child. In our theme picture today, the father is smiling at his daughter and they are enjoying their relationship. She is pleasing him as he reads to her and she is smiling back. That’s a picture of how you and I should please our heavenly Father.

Pleasing God is a necessity for a believer. NIV Galatians 6:8 The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. So I want to learn how to please God. Our world is full of people who are not God pleasers but self pleasers. Our world is similar to the world that existed in the time of Noah. Jesus said in NIV Matthew 24:37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. We’re closer today than we were yesterday to the 2nd coming of Jesus Christ and our world is becoming more and more like it was in the days of Noah.

In a world full of evil, there was one man who was different, his name was Noah. The Bible says that NCV Genesis 6:8 But Noah pleased the Lord. God wants you and I to be radically different than the people around us. He wants you to be like Noah. He wants us to learn how to be God-pleasers and truly worship God. So how can we learn to please God?

To hear more about this topic, listen to my February 26, 2006 message entitled Learning To Please God

Why Worship?

God, Message / By Pastor Dan Walker / February 20, 2006

Today we begin a new message series which I’ve entitled “Worship Can Change Your Life.” I suspect that if I went out on the street and asked people the question, “How could you change your life for the better?”, an answer of worship would be pretty low on the list. People would say things like, “Exercise can change your life” or “Getting more education can change your life” or “Working harder can change your life.” However you wouldn’t hear anything about worship.

For many people, worship is a take it or leave it proposition. Most people equate worship with going to church and for more and more people going to church and worshipping is something to do if there is nothing better to do. So today I’m going to address the question “Why Worship?” Is worship really irrelevant to our lives? Do we really even know what worship is? Many people think of worship as singing songs in church. Singing worship songs can be worship. NIV Psalm 100:2 Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Singing can be worship if it is joyful singing from glad hearts.

Here, we are beginning to get a glimpse that worship is more than just performing some religious activities. Worship is not some outward ritual, worship must come from the heart. Jesus said in NIV John 4:24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. Jesus describes two aspects of genuine worship of God. First of all, worship must be in spirit, since God is spirit. Worship must not be simply outward physical actions, whatever they may be. Worship must engage the spirit and the emotions. Secondly, worship must be in truth. Worship must engage the mind and it must be in keeping with God’s revealed truth in the Bible.

As we’ll see in a few minutes, everyone in the world worships, but it is not all genuine worship and it is not all directed toward the same object. Not everyone that worships, worships God. Not everyone who worships God, worships in spirit and in truth. So let’s look more closely at the question, “Why Worship?”

To hear more about this topic, listen to my February 19, 2006 message entitled Why Worship?

God’s Purpose For Your Life

Life, Message / By Pastor Dan Walker / February 14, 2006

Today we’re going to conclude the message series “Why Am I Here?” by answering the question “Why Am I Here?” The Bible teaches and we believe that you are here because God created you. However, the question “Why Am I Here?” has a deeper answer because everything that God created, He created with a purpose in mind. NLT Proverbs 16:4 The LORD has made everything for his own purposes. This really isn’t very surprising is it? When you make something, you make it with a purpose in mind. When an artist paints a picture, he has a purpose in mind. When a company builds a factory, they have a purpose in mind. So today I’ve entitled my message “God’s Purpose For Your Life.”

What purpose did God have in His mind when He decided to create you? Whatever purpose he had in mind should be the purpose of your life. If it’s not, you’ll be incredibly frustrated in life trying to be something you weren’t created to be. Think about the question for yourself, “What is my purpose?”

Today we want to sum it all up and then break the answer down into bite site chunks that we will talk about in the weeks ahead. Whenever somebody creates something, it is a reflection on them, whether good or bad. Every creation reflects back on its creator. This is true of all of nature, whether the wonder of the galaxies, the diversity of plant and animal life or the incredible complexity of life on the molecular level. It all tells us something about God, creation is a reflection of God’s nature. That reflection of God’s nature, the Bible calls glory. NLT Romans 11:36 For everything comes from him; everything exists by his power and is intended for his glory.

Everything created has it’s origin in God and God even now holds everything together. The purpose of all creation is for God’s glory, to reflect His nature. People by giving into sin have rebelled against God and do not reflect God’s glory. NIV Romans 3:23 For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Every person has sinned and so no longer fully reflects God’s glory. So how, can you fulfill God’s purpose for your life?

To hear more about this topic, listen to my February 12, 2006 message entitled God’s Purpose For Your Life

Life In Light Of Eternity

Life, Message / By Pastor Dan Walker / February 6, 2006

Currently we’re in a message series entitled “Why Am I Here?” In this series, we’ve talked about how God created you with a purpose in mind. God’s purpose for your life transcends the 70, 80 or 90 years that you will live on this earth. God’s purpose for your life is for you to affect eternity by impacting the lives of other people here and now. Your life has far greater significance then you have probably ever realized. What you do in this life will affect your eternity and it will affect the eternity of many other people forever. Your life will produce ripples in the pond of eternity that will go on forever.

If how we live our lives is that important, then we’d better give some thought to eternity, we’d better give some thought to the unseen spiritual world. I’ve entitled my message this morning “Life in Light of Eternity.” What you see around you with your eyes is very real, but it’s not all there is. All around you is also an unseen spiritual world which is just as real. What seems to us is the most tangible, the most permanent, is our physical surroundings which we can see with our eyes and touch with our hands. The Bible tells us that what we see is temporary, but what we cannot see is eternal. NIV 2 Corinthians 4:18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

So we need to fix our eyes, not our physical eyes but the eyes of our hearts, on the unseen, on the things of God which are eternal. When you begin to live life in light of eternity, when you begin to understand the importance of the unseen, your life and values will begin to dramatically change. All the hustle and bustle of modern life must be measured on terms of what it will accomplish for eternity. Even the problems and difficulties that we face in this life will not go on forever. For the believer, they are temporary, they will be gone in eternity.

Death is not the end, but simply the doorway into that unseen realm. For the believer, death is simply the gateway into the presence of God and the wonder of heaven. NIV Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. A believer, someone who has faith in Jesus Christ, is someone who is sure of eternity and certain of the unseen world. A believer lives life completely differently than those who do not believe because the believer lives by faith in an unseen God. A believer lives in light in eternity and fulfills God’s purpose for their lives. So how can you and I live in light of eternity?

To hear more about this topic, listen to my February 5, 2006 message entitled Life In Light Of Eternity

How Does God View Your Life?

Life, Message / By Pastor Dan Walker / February 3, 2006

Why are you and I on this earth? We are here not because of random chance, not because of evolution, but because an intelligent designer, God Himself, created us. Everything that God created, He created with a purpose in mind and that includes you and me. We will only be happy, we will only be fulfilled, we will only be prepared for eternity if we live out the purposes that God created us for.

As people, we tend to live life as though there will be no end, even though we know that one day our lives will end. An interesting question to ponder is “How would you live your life if you knew you had only 24 hours left?” You would give those last 24 hours to the things that you thought were most important to you in life. People’s responses to a question like this tell us a lot about their values and how they view their lives.

When you understand how God views your life, you will be able to live every day as though it could be your last. So today, my message is entitled “How Does God View Your Life?” We are encouraging everyone to read this year, in addition to their Bible, the book “The Purpose Driven Life.” This week my message coordinates with Chapter 5. In the video that we watched, I don’t believe that most of the people interviewed understood how God viewed their lives or viewed their own lives with much wisdom.

The Bible says in NLT Romans 12:2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do. When you understand how God views your life, you’ll know what God wants you to do with your life. Don’t look around you in the world for examples, don’t copy what you see. If you want your life to change, if you want to be transformed into a new person, let God change the way you think. Begin to think about yourself as God does.

When you begin to view your life as God does, your life will be transformed. You will become radically different than the people around you in St Louis. It takes a radically different kind of person to change the world and God wants you and I to turn our world upside down.

To hear more about this topic, listen to my January 29, 2006 message entitled How Does God View Your Life?