Deacons and Missional Communities

Over the past couple of months we have been thinking through how to develop some simple organizational structures within our network which lend themselves to our specific ecclesiology (a community of local believers, founded and motivated by the gospel, sent on mission for Gods glory). Obviously we think that missional communities are the driving engine for this ecclesiological aim. The following is a brief illustration of what we have come to. Ask me questions for clarification if you like. 

The guiding principle behind almost everything we do is Gospel, community, and mission in the context of missional communities. Missional Communities are small groups of believers who have covenanted to be the church together. it is here that we see the actual stuff of church happening. Everything from mission, to repentance, to partying is done with your Missional Community. They are families of christians, living lives as missionaries, for the glory of God in the gospel. And as  such, every problem, need, or issue is considered in the light of those things and filtered through that sieve. For example; mercy ministries are handled at the MC level by asking people who need aid to become part of a MC so they can be helped and aided financially by that body of believers as a family member, not as a beneficiary. Counseling is handled at an MC level by funneling all people who need it into a missional community so their issues and sin are dealt with in the context of a family who can speak the gospel into their lives, using professional counseling as a sort of last resort. 

That being said, the deacon role in a church is classically defined by them getting things done which are conducive to the daily running of the church (i.e. production, org, leadership, gathering set up, etc.). However, if we see the MC as the fundamental building block of how we live life as Gods people, then we are forced ideologically to filter the role of deacon through a missional community lense. That is to say, how do deacons fit into the picture if we believe that the church is place where we serve one another as an MC? When we did this, we started to view the role of deacon in two senses. 1. As a conduit of service and 2. As a leader of servants. I willl break down those two distinctions. 

1. A Conduit of Service: As we began to see how this would work, we realized that while Missional Communities could serve in the day to day of church functioning, there needed to be people who could organize and facilitate these day to day tasks. In a sense, we needed people who could act as administrative hubs to train, organize and locate specific areas of service that the community needs. This is where the role of deacon finds its sweet spot for us. Our deacons in training (we have none who are declared yet, but I am currently training them and allowing them to be the role of deacon so we can declare them in good conscience) write and create protocol for the missional community leaders who in turn train and implement the missional communities to do the job which is needed. They also organize all of the systems which allow the MC's to do there job (i.e. sign up sheets, MC rotations, etc). In this way, they operate as hubs for administration for the entire community, a central node through which all serving opportunities flow.

2. As a Leader of Servants: As the deacons develop and determine what plan of action they want to employ in order to create a act of service, they instantly become leaders. Our hope is not to simply make our Deacons another cog in the machine, but to rather create and replicate missional leaders who can implement tasks. In this way, we let them lead, fail, and succeed and see it as great training opportunity. 

This system is very conducive to a fast moving church planting community as it is adaptable. It establishes a simple organizational principle which can be applied to a multiplicity of situations and can be applied to a brand new community of believers (i.e. a new church plant). In our context, we are a network of three church plants. We have a central admin (me) and book keeper. The central admin raises up, trains and establishes the deacons in each of the church plants. As we look forward to planting more churches in san diego, we look forward to applying this administrative model to all them.  Attached is a diagram which portrays this idea. 

Repentance in Gods Story

Hey Guys,


This is a sermon and notes that I preached last sunday. Enjoy!


http://www.kaleochurch.com/sermon/amos-ben-porter-repentance-in-gods-story/

Repentance in Gods Story

Today we are going to be examining a small group of 8th century palestinian Jews. As we dialogue and learn about what they can teach us about God and ourselves I think that it is necessary to first examine their cultural story and to see what exactly they were living out of.

These Jews lived in response to a story that really didn’t have anything to do with them. That may sound strange to us who have a story so involved with ourselves. But never the less, the Jews had a cultural story influenced by someone who was entirely different then them- namely YHWH. The covenant king of the universe.

God Establishes His Kingdom- Creation:
 
The story starts with God. God exists eternally past and future. Nothing holds him or binds him. He is the eternal overarching personal power of all. The thing about God in this story, is that he is immensely good, majestic and beautiful. And In a spontaneous bubbling up of his good, beautiful, and creative character he begins to sing and speak creation into existence. He creates the universe, our world, and everything in it. Because of his good and perfect character, God creates everything good and perfect. The humans are the crown jewel of this creation and receive the wonderful honor of being Gods image bearers on earth. In a small way they were to glorify God by acting out of there identity as his creations.

Rebellion in the Kingdom- Fall:

This beautiful peace, of safety and joy from God didn’t last however. In the place that God had prepared for the people he grew a tree which the humans were not allowed to eat. This was to remind them how good and great God was and how horrible it would be if they were to go against his rule. The serpent through,who is satan, convinced the humans that they could be like God if they were to eat the fruit of the tree. The humans wanted to overthrow God rule over them because they thought that they could have it better. They declared that God was not good and they rebelled against their beautiful and good king- God. This brought sin into the world and corrupted everything. All of Gods perfect kingdom was infected by death. Where life and light once flourished, Gods creation became the place of darkness, death and pain that it is today. Generation, after generation, came from the first humans and they grew farther and farther away from their God.

The King chooses Israel- Redemption Initiated:

As generation after generation grew farther and farther away from God, wars started, diseases spread, people died, lies about God were spread and false religions started. In the midst of this horrible disaster, God chose Abraham. Abraham was a moon worshiper who lived in the middle east, he was just one more human falling farther and farther away from God. God however, chose him for himself and called him away from his home. God made an agreement with Abraham. God said that through Abraham, all of the nations would be blessed. That in Abraham’s offspring, God would reverse the work that humans had done to distance themselves from him. In the pitch black despair of Gods broken creation there was now a little light.

Abraham’s descendants grew and grew until they became a nation. They were given more promises. They were promised that God would lead them to a land where he would stage his great redemption. He promised that they would usher in a new kingdom of righteousness which would return the humans back to God. Also, God began to dwell with his people in the temple. Where God was separate now he is with the people.

But Gods people were still rebellious. In spite of what God had done for them, in spite of all of the love and honor that was shown to them by being Gods people they still rebelled. They asked for a human king instead of God to be King. That king was evil and so were all of his sons. They led the people of God to Idolatry. Gods kingdom people began to worship other Gods and the land was torn into two kingdoms.

At this point when all seems lost, God sends men to go and preach to his people. They are sent to plead for the return of israel, to tell of coming correction and judgement so that they can turn and repent. And that is where we are at as we examine the next couple of verses. It is coming from a prophet called Amos. Does someone want to read it?Amos 4:6-14

This particular rebuke is for the jews in samaria according to verse 12.Now Samaria is apart of ancient Israel that was to the west and on the coast. These people, we are promised, will be saved like a lamb out of a lions mouth- only an ear or a couple of legs will remain. There punishment will be utter destruction. Only parts of furniture will be maintained. Only pieces of there former life will remain. God promises to purge them of all that they have except for him- and he expects that that will be enough.

There evils are these:

They have gone after other Gods in bethel and gilgal. These were heavy hitting places of worship in this time. They were pillars of worship  for the God of the bible. However, this particular group of Gods people have changed that to a place of idol worship. They have taken Gods places of worship and used them to worship other Gods. This is spiritual adultery, its like they are cheating on God.

They have been greedy at the expense of others. What they were doing would not be unlike many places in the world where white tourist travel to exotic locations to stay at hotels which use up 75% of that regions clean water supply for pools and fountains. All the while, ten miles away,locals die from water born illnesses like dysentery. Its selfishness, at the expense of others.

They have hated and oppressed the poor. Those with less money and resources are left without help.

They have crushed the needy

There women have become drunks and have demanded of their husbands.

They have taken there sin on the road and gone to different cities to sin all over the region in cities dedicated to worshiping the one true God.

They have become massive hypocrites

It is for this that God is punishing them.

Additionally, 6-9 reflects many agrarian catastrophes- devastation of the fields and crops. The land of milk and honey is now the land of death and starvation.

Food is scarce, there is no bread

There is no rain to feed the fields

People wander from town to town, looking for water and being unsatisfied.

The crops wither and die because of mold and mildew.

Locusts devour all of the crops

A shocking realization here in verse 10 is that the land of promise is being punished like the land of Egypt. Egypt was the symbol of oppression and captivity, it was the opposite of the perfect land of rest that was promised to the israelites.

They are compared to Sodom and Gomorra. These places were the symbols of uncleanness, and unrighteousness. It was the place exactly opposite to the beautiful and spotless israel, promised in Gods covenant.

To sum up all of this death and destruction God declares that he is behind every last piece of it. It is God who sends every pestilence, every death, every sickness. He says as much, as his condemnation is coupled with him claiming it as his rebuke. He makes no apology. This is his punishment.

Additionally, God claims that it is all done to produce repentance. God in all of his power and authority, bends even the elements to his desire to rebuke his people. His number one desire of them is that they repent. He does this by removing every distraction from them. He peals away the would-be-attractive things so they can see God for what he is, the majestic and wonderful father that they truly long for. He urges his people to a beautiful and radical dependance on him through his punishment of the guilty. He is offering them a way out. He is asking them to once again be the people of God. He is giving these Samarians a chance to to turn and submit themselves under the gracious rule of God. But the question is, do they take it?

Sadly, they do not. In fact, the entire pattern of the bible is one of God coming down, giving his word, man receiving it with repentance, but then falling away. God desired of his people a radical dependance on him, even when they had nothing else. But that he did not receive.

Our stories though are not that much different though are they? God has come down and given us his word in the form- but in the form of His Son. He has shown that he is the most concerned for us. He literally lost everything when Jesus was sent to the cross because in a way he lost himself. He even still to this day lovingly pursues us in this by tearing us away from the would-be idols of our heart. Some of you need to hear that! God is not evil for taking your things away he is Good!

And still we stand in obstinate un-repentance. You see, brothers and sisters, our sin at its heart, is failure to see God as most glorious, good, gracious, and great. We are so created for his face and presence that we try to find it in everything but him. When God is calling you back to repent and love him, he is not putting a burden on shoulders but he is lifting one off. It is in God that we find the culmination of all of our hearts desires.

But, what happened to Israel? They never repented. They continued to believe the lie that Gods rule was heavy and burdensome. They never turned from sin. They spiraled down into further and further obscurity. The purpose of God returning the world back to the garden seemed like a long forgotten dream, lost forever.

But it was in the dust of the israelites dreams that hope arrived. Jesus was born and he was the coming messiah who was to deliver and fulfill the work of Israel. He was the perfect King, who never sinned. He is the only one who could return us back to our creator in the garden. God did not sit idly by and watch his creation fall apart. He came down and did something about it. God became man in Jesus to return us back to him. He lived the perfect life that we could never live and he died the death that we all deserved to earn the right once again to live with our beautiful and perfect God.

In fact that it is in him, that it is only possible to repent. Let me say that again. You can only repent and turn from your sin, if you trust in Jesus to be the king over your life. If you try to fix your own sin, you will crumble into an ineffectual mess!

The reason for this is that you have no power over your sin, But Jesus did. We are powerless to sin, we are slaves to it! But God in all of his mercy, came to us and lived the only life that was free from sin. As a result, he has the goods. He has the power to release us from sin and its effects if only we submit to his gracious reign over our lives.

So the question is, how do we repent?

What are the ways that you commonly deal with your sin, in a way that isn’t with the gospel? How do you incorrectly deal with your sin, outside of Jesus?

There are three things that we must know about repentance that will allow us to repent well.

1.Sin is a heart issue, not a behavior issue. Does everyone want to turn to Matthew 12: 33-37? It tells us where our sin comes from.

What is Jesus saying here, about our relationship to our sin?

How does this run contrary to what the world says about our sin?

The sin isn’t our fault
The sin can change, if we change ourselves.
This goes radically against what Jesus says here in this verse. It seems like Jesus is saying that we are bad, if we are bad, and we are good if we are good. There is no good people bad people distinction! We are all bad!

Our sin is very far removed from what we do, according to this verse. It says that it all starts with a hearts desire that is not for God. At the root of our sin is a fist shaking, rebel declaring war against the most benevolent and good being in existence. Our hearts resort to accusing God of things are not true.

It kind of all channels back to where we see our identity. It comes all the way back to how God defines us. If we live outside of the identity that we have, in God, then we will be in sin. Our hearts search for identity all day long and very seldom do they find it in their creator.

What false identities do you live out of, that lead to sin?

It kind of works like this.

Work backwards (ask for examples):

Belief about God
Belief about what he has done (Jesus)
Belief in our identity
That effects what we do.

We must be defined by who God is and what he has done, so that we can live out of that. That is why we put such a high emphasis on believing the gospel. The gospel returns us back to being defined by God and therefore we are once again living as we were created.

2.The gospel both inspires us to repentance and empowers us to repentance.

Inspires:

Grace- forgiveness, leads us to repentance because it causes in us a love of Jesus which diminishes the love that we have for other things. You see, it is in Jesus that God dwells in all of his loveliness and desirableness. Colossians tells us that “it is in him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. And what he did on the cross was the most that you will ever be loved. God, abandoned his Godhead, for you, so that he could live with you forever. This was done not because you were worth it, but because he loved you so much. This beautiful love demands a response. It demands your heart. It woos you to repentance. This love is the thing that allows you “to get to” repent and “have to”. Jesus asks you, “do you love me” and then asks you to obey. His love inspires us to repent.


Empowers:

The spirit of God enables us and gives us the emotional and spiritual strength to walk in repentance. This has everything to do with trust. We must trust the spirit to empower us to obedience. You see, repentance literally means a turning. A 180 deg. turn from what you were doing and just stopping. So that means, what ever you are doing, must stop now. That porn issue- ya. That fear of man issue- ya. That anxiety issue- ya.  But you cannot do that on your own. You must take advantage of the holy spirit. He empowers you to take the first baby steps of repentance. He is the one that gives you the power to take one step in front of the other. Repentance starts with that first step. Trust in him to work through you to repent.

3. [[[Repentance must be done in community.

We must live this out together, with everything in the light. The spirit works in community. And therefore, in order to deal with your sin with God, you must confess it to community. That means, guys- confess your porn issue to your MC this week. Do it. That is a command from the pulpit and from scripture. 1 John says, ‘if we say that we have fellowship with him, yet walk in the darkness, then we lie and do not practice the truth.

But not only that, we must be a gospel community that calls one another to repentance and to a belief and trust in the gospel. We must always be confessing and encouraging. Confessing and encouraging. Remember that we cannot turn from sin unless we believe the truth about God. Community reminds us and beckons us back to live under God rule for his glory. No doubt that somewhere along the line in this sermon, you were convicted of sin. Confess it this week in your MC. Do it! You must. And then you will experience Gods people speaking truth into you as you grow up in him. leaving that sin behind.

What this will mean for the world?

This leads to a radically grace filled community that commends Jesus in everything that they do. When churches stop confessing and repenting of sin, they whither and die. That is because they stop operating in the grace of Jesus’ forgiveness. They stop living as a community formed by grace and they start living as a community formed by their own accomplishments.

But if we live in the grace of Jesus daily together, making a demonstration of how much he has forgiven us through our repentance, then we will begin to commend grace to the world. The world must see us repent! When, you invite someone into community, confess all of your junk to community in front of them. Or they will not understand why they need a savior.

Truth be told we are prideful and we do not want people to know that we are evil. But the answer to that is still Jesus’ grace. You see, grace leads to humility and humility leads to more grace. If we can understand how much he has done to save us, then we will understand how to repent. This is how we commend Jesus to our community and to ourselves. Lets pray.

4G's- God is Glorious

This is manuscript and Audio from a sermon I preached a couple of sundays ago. Enjoy!

http://www.kaleochurch.com/sermon/the-four-gs-god-is-glorious-ben-porter/

God is Glorious

Today we are going to tackle the issues of sin. Sin is a biblical word which means all of our neagtive behaviour, negative emotions, evil motives and oppressive addictions. It is a catch all word which allows us to put in all the same bag, all of the junk that comes out of us.

Particularly, we are going to be talking today about how we can actually live a life un mastered by sin. You will not be abe to live with an absence of sin in this life, but you can live a life of pereptual and gradual change. You can experince a liberation of your heart from the things which hav always kept you captive.

Some of you may have just flinched becasue you might not think that I have the ability to gaurantee this; or you may have snickered at the audacity of  that comment; but if you leave here today with one thing I hope that it is that you can change.

What are some of these things that you feel trapped with?

For me its love-There have been times where i have ripped my wifes heart apart because I have not loved her well. I have not considered her above others.

But These entrapments are so prevelant that any person wandering around in reality can tell you that they exist, but we all have different ways of dealing with them dont we?

What do you do?

Many of us pretend that they dont exist. We push our issue to the margins and let them be out of site and out of mind. We like to believe that our problems and issues are ours alone, that they dont effect any other person around me. We arrive at a place where we actually think that if I dont care about them, then no one else will. When this is actually very untrue isnt it? No man or woman is an island. We so obviously walk hand in hand with others and our very selves- our issues- bump in to others. We dont have to be in a romantic relationship for very long to see his do we? Allow yourselves to wander back in your memories to old girlfirends and boyfriends. Which one of them were not affected by the your sin?

Some of us try and deal with them by shear force of will. We are those who see our sin probably most clearly. When i descibed that first person, you were certain you were not him.We know how much we have effected others, we know the damaging affects of our sin. Our answer is this; that we must deal with it! Work and it will go away. We try to construct ways of leveredging ourselves out of sin. This at many times results in self denial, self loathing, and immense frustration. The truth is, is that we cannot do it. Those men out there who have struggled with porn and masterbation, how many of you have sinned, hated yourself, and then tried to construct some assinine way of not allowing yorself to fall back again, only to do just that. Or you women with fathers who were absent, cruel or even abusive; no matter how may times you tell yourself that you can trust your husband or boyfriend does it ever work. Have you overcome your sin?

The truth is that you cannot beat your sin down because it is coming from within you. And you cannot ignore it or you will hurt many and your life will be a destructive force, damaging everyone.You cannot address the issue because you are the issue. It is insanity and foolishness to overcome the works of our own heart. We will return to it, over and over again without fail.

It is for this reason that we hold that the gospel  is the only asnwer to our sin. We at Kaleo believe that the gospel addresses every issue in our life. And to tell you the truth, you wont receive much out of this sermon if you do not side with us on that. And the gospel is this: that Jesus Christ, Gods proclaimed rescuer and ruler has come to cancel our debt against God by living our life and dying our death, then rising again in victory over our sin. In many ways, the gospel is who Jesus is and What he has done for us on our behalf. It is this truth that can only overcome  sin because it is not a change that comes from within us. It comes to us. Christ was perfect where we sin. But not only that, he inspires us with his love to be obedient and joyful as we are empowered by the holy spirit. It is the help that we need.

We are going to spend the rest of our time examining how that works itself out on a day to day basis. In order to better understand how the gospel is the change we need, we must first examine Jesus and what his answer to change was. The astonishing thing was about Jesus is that he did not come proclaiming a 12 step program for change. In fact he did almost the opposite. He laid out a system of change which is so different from anything that came before him and anything that came after him. It was so different and radicle, that he was killed by those who took offense to it.

John 3 is a radical account of Jesus and his definition and method for change. A religous official, names Niccodemus presumably afraid of losing his reputation, sneeks to Jesus at night in order to ask him a series of questions about entering the kingdom of Heaven. Someting to keep in mind is that the Jewish system of morality had everything to do with their country. They believed that God had created Israel to show the world what He was like. They also believed that a redeemer was going to come and solidify that demonstration of Gods character and enact the kingdom of God.  But Israel had been sinful and had fallen short of what it should have been. When Niccodemus asks, how shall I enter the kingdom he is essentially asking, how do I change? How do enter the kingdom which is perfect like God? We have messed up, how do we get this right?

Jesus' answer is astonishing. He says, ''You cannot enter the kingdom unless you have been born again''. Niccodemus, then very confused, sarcastically asks how that could be possible. ''How can a man be born when he is old? Should he enter a second time into his mothers womb?''.  Niccodemus's response almost sounds rational does it not? Would you have responded much differently? Jesus however, undonted by Niccodemus's sarcasm, responds that we must be born again. If we are born again, then we can approach the kingdom. Then we can change. He says that he must die for us, and that will change our hearts by the power of his spirit because of the love poored out for us.

In John 3, Jesus is essentially saying that the problem is our heart. We are a bad a seed. We are not made of the right stuff. We cant make the mark. We live inside a cultural story that says you can do anything and if there is a problem you have the right stuff to fix it. 'You can do it! ' Jesus would have soundly disagreed.

You see, Jesus was responding out of cultural story, in fact he goes on to say  that he is the author of that story. But in order to best understand what he was talking about we must go back to that story so we can find out what is at the root of our sin, why do we need to be born again?

The story goes like this: God in all power and beauty, bubbeled up in creative impulse and created the universe. He literally sang the universe into existance. He did this day by for six days. He created the moon, the stars, earth and everything that fills it. He declared it all good. He created humans as the centerpeice of his creation. The great crown jewel of his beautiful masterpiece. Humans were made in his own image and reflected his attributes. Man was to cultivate and populate earth all the while displaying and mirroring their beautiful and wonderful creator. Their joy and life was to be a glorification of God. All of their security and hope was solid in who God is. However, this changed and altered everything.

It is here that we will pick it up in Genesis 3... this effected who they were. It effected their heart. In fact, it re created there hearts.

Note: Tell the story of the fall and read the story from genesis 3:1-13

What were Adam and Eve saying about God when they did this.

That God isnt good

This is an accusation and accusations come from the heart. They are a moral (or immoral) position about what you think of the person being accused.

You see, the true evil in this passage didnt start with what Adam and Eve did, it started with they believed. It started with their hearts. God, the ruler and creator of all matter, is neither foolish or capricious. He has no desire to set up arbitrary rules which have no reason. The tree in the garden is not a silly powerplay by God. It was sprouted to show that there can be disbelief. It was there, starkly reminding man what life could be like without the beautiful assurance of truth about God. It stood as a momument to Gods goodness- reminding everyone what horrible atrocities lay at the feet of those who would accuse God with lies.

It is in spite of that that man rebelled. But they rebelled not by simply breaking a silly rule. They rebelled by accusing God of soemthing that wasnt true. They accused him, inspite of all that was given to them. And this is sin.

Here is when our Hearts changed. Adam when he sinned, seared mans hearts with an accusation, burning and maiming them irepreably. In a way our hearts were recreated that day. They were recreated into the image of Adams heart. Where there once was an obedient joyful child, filled with wonderment and excitement, ther was now a bitter and depressed old man, selfish in all of his ways. Our hearts no longer want to believe the truth about God.

This works itself out in devestating ways in all avenues of life. Everything we once did was once defined by God and his love. We still dont exist outside of the relationship we have with God. But when we rebelled, when we accused God, we abandoned the very thing that defined us. We have no hope or peace because we lost it. We rebelled against it. We tell people lies to make ourselves look better because we have accused God of not being sufficient, and therefore untrustworthy. At the root of our sin is a lie.

Jesus is the only one who can alter this vicious cycle of destructive behaviour and desapair. Jesus Returns our hearts back to the image of God. When adam sinned he seared our collective human hearts. Ever after, they were recreated in his image. We as humanity were plunged into despair and sin. Once we a were a people whose hearts were created after the image of God, now we are a people whose hearts have been recreated in the image of Adam- angry, fist shaking image bearers of our earthly father.

But that is why we need Christ! Jesus comes to make our hearts new! He, reverses the work of Adam and allows us to be made new and capable of trusting in God once again. It only comes through faith, as we trust in Jesus to graciously give us all things. It is at that point that our hearts are re made for the last time in the image of God. Think of it as an exchange. When Jesus went on the cross he exchanged his perfect believing heart for my evil, unbelieving one. He now covers my sin becasue he took my punishment.  

Read Romans 5:12, 14, 15, 17

We can finnaly be returned to ones who can trust in God and his promises. And if we are believers of those things then we will see our sins die daily.

You see, once we believe in Christ we are forever freed up to believe truth about God again. We are no longer angry fist shakers, but now we are once again loving children. It is for this reason that we will be going through the 4 G's these next couple weeks in our gatherings The four G's are this: God is Great- So we dont have to be in control, God is good- so we dont have to look elsewhere, God is Gracious- so we dont have to prove ourselves, and Finnaly, God is glorious- so we dont have to fear others. The 4 G's are not even by a long shot all of the attributes of God, however, they represent a powerful tool to diagnose our hearts and see exactly what we are accusing God of.

Some of you maybe thinking, I allready know those things, but do you?

A strange thing about our thought as westerners, is that we consider knowledge seperate from what we can feel. We think feeling has nothing to do with our ability to know. That is impericism, and its not the bible. The bible shows that true knowledge is bound up holistically and involves your heart and your soul and your mind. I was just married. If you were to ask me to write a paper on marriage or tell you about it, before i was married, i would have done it. And I would have been totally satisfied with my answer. I think back on that confidence and laugh! I can assure you, it was not until I was actually married and was sharing a sink with Katie every day that I actually began to know what  being married was. It was not until I was participating and living in that knowledge daily that I actually knew.

It is the same thing with God. We may be able to affirm all of these theological truths about God, but do you actually live in them. Lets take a pole, raise you hands if you affirm that Jesus raised from the dead in power over your sin and death? Now, Who has had money wories? But wait a second, i thought you believed that Jesus had power over sin? Doesnt he have power over death!? Wouldnt he have power over your bank account?

We must be a community which graciously reminds one another in these truths that are in Christ. In him we can overcome sin.

This week we will be looking at ' God is glorious, so I dont have to fear others'

What is Glory?

Glory is the experience of Gods attributes. The glory of God is the             splendor and majesty of God himself, as we behold his nature and abilities.

In order to get a sense of Gods glory we must see and encounter him in his spirits work in us, community, and scripture. Lets take a minute take a walk through these things to see and experience the glory of God.

What glorious things has God done in your life?

In the bible we see so may instances of Gods glory being displayed. Where do we see Gods glory in scripture?

Texts like: Ezekial 1:4-14; 22-28, Revelations 1:9-18

God in all his glory is beautiful and terryfying, You see, true glory  is always terryfying. When you see it, you know that you have encountered something which is inescapibly more powerful and better then you. All you have is to hope that it will not destroy you.

Now, if this is the God that created us in perfect subjection to him, then what happens when we rebel against this truth. What happens when we call him not glorious.

What happens when we accuse God of not being Glorious?

We fear others.

What happens when we fear others?

We ''need'' things from our spouses

We dont function until we are loved in a certain way because if we arent then we know that they hate us.

We are concerned with self esteem

This is one that we could spend an entire sermon on but it is worth it to say that those who are most concerned with self esteem are those who are most insecure. The word is repeated like a montra but is unable to change you.

We are over commited because we cant say no

We are so worried about what other people are thinking about us that our schedules fill up to the brim and our lives unravel before our eyes.

We are afraid of being exposed and we peform white lies to make ourselves look good.

Our entire lives are giant orchestrations to cover our tracks and make ourselves look good to people that we respect.

           

People mak us jealous, angry, anxous, and depressed.

We avoid people

We begin to be crushed under the fear of others. We so concerned about all of the expectiations of everyone that it begins to not be worth it anymore. So leave, we check out. We avoid people.

We compare ourselves with others  

You see, we actually become what we fear. There is something in us that almost adores ina sick way, that shich we are scared of. The batman series is like this. We are fine tuned to be afraid of God but when we put that fear in people we want to emulate them. Then we start to compare ourselves. The problem is, that we can never match up and we despair.

We cannot be on mission  becasue we are afraid of speaking the name of Jesus to people.

Now, what must we do in order to see this dibilitating sin fall? We must believe the truth about God. John 12:42-43 describes an instance where Jesus is in the last couple days of his life, and he is sitting down at a festivle eating. Overcome by the expectation of his sure future on the cross, he cries out ''father, glorify your name!'' . Then God responds verbally to the festival, '' I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again''.  The people at this festival are terrified and know for certain that God has spoken. However, they tell know one, fearing the elders of the city. This passage sites their disobedience like this, '' they loved the glory that came from man more then the glory that comes from God''

The problem is an exchange of glory. The problem is that you ascribe those people who you so want to impress with the glory that should be for God. You hang Gods glory on them.

Do you remember the wonderful texts that i read pertaining to Gods glory? Here is another. But as I am reading it, I want everyone to close there eyes and visualize a person or persons who you are afraid of. Ill give you a second, ok got them? Now as I am reading this passage, I want you to compare that person,with the person I am about to describe.

Here we go, Revelation 19:11-16, 9-10

Do you guys understand what I am trying to get at? God is so glorious and perfect. And when we are living in a community that is sincerely reminding one another of this truth then we will see our sin die daily! Because when you rightly see God as Glorious, you will see the cross so much more wonderfully. You will trust that God loves you and that you are approved because you will hold with weight the gift of glory gi[ven to you by Jesus. Then you will not see yourself as the worthless sinner, unable to say no. You will be the son or daughter of God, gloriously loved and empowered by the spirit. Then and only then will you be able to change.