Sermon at Grace Episcopal on March 15, 2009 by Lynette

1 Corinthians 1:18-25
The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

1:18
I know very well how foolish the message of the cross sounds to those who are on the road to destruction. But we who are being saved recognize this message as the very power of God.

This might be one of the most challenging teachings I have this year. You are a tough crowd this morning. Almost half of us have just returned from the HIM Honolulu 2009 conference at the Hawaii Convention Center in Waikiki. We heard anointed and funny speakers and had our tanks filled to overflowing. Some of us have had just another week, kind of a repeat of the one we had last week, maybe a bit better or maybe a bit worse. And still others of us came to church today like a tri-athlete gasping and cramping as we struggled to the finish line and hoping that just a sip of water will take the parchedness out of our dry and cracked throats.

I cannot be as funny or as smart as some of our speakers this weekend. We cannot lean on the common teaching that some of us had because it can sound like a "Ha-na- you should have been there" lesson. But I can do this: I can offer a drink of the Living Water that comes from knowing Jesus and I can share a way to have His Spirit continue to fill you to overflowing.

It is a simple message that takes us back to strengthening our CORE.

To some, the message of the Gospel might sound hard to understand, confusing or even down right silly, but to those who have had their hearts touched by Jesus Christ, it is a message filled with the power of the Living God.

God loves us. I mean really. I mean unconditionally. I mean deeply. I mean passionately.

Does anyone here remember their first kiss? Or their deepest love? God loves us even stronger than that. Scotty and I had our first kiss overlooking Makapuu point. I know that may be too much information & I won't say much more about that except that we later discovered that one of my favorite pearl earrings went missing. We found that earring only after checking all over the car. Well the Lord loves me… and loves us with even more passion than that.

And can you remember that time that someone close to you died? It may have been a parent, or a child or a sister or a favorite friend. Can you remember your heart breaking and crying? You felt like you would do almost anything if you could only see them, touch them or hug them one more time? God's heart is even more broken than that when we are apart from Him. That's how much He cares for you.

And can you remember the absolute joy when you caught your first fish, got your first car, watched your baby take their first steps, or made that hole in one? Well the Bible says there is party with more noise than even the biggest New Year's Eve party ever when one of the lost finds their way back to Jesus. There is even a bigger boom that George's famous cannon when a sinner repents and turns to Jesus.

Now if I just ended this teaching there, it would be a pretty neat message. The God of all creation loves us and wants us to be close to Him. He wants to shower us with His love. He wants to direct our paths, not just generically, but every day so that as we walk with Him, we can experience all that He has set aside for us. Paul Shepherd, a pastor from San Francisco says that if there is an account in heaven that has blessings for Him - you know, that "store up your blessings in heaven account?" Well he wants to make sure that he takes every last cent out.

But wait. There's more. God indeed loves us with a depth and a passion that we cannot fathom. But we haven't loved Him back. In fact, we have run after other loves and pretty much scorned His gifts. When the Lord has opened doors of goodness, we have often chosen evil. Where He has shined His light, we have chosen the darkness many times. When He has called us to rest, we have run until we are exhausted. When He has planned adventure for us, we have chosen to lock the doors and play it safe.

When my kids acted like that there would be some pretty harsh consequences for such behavior. If I were God, there would be hell to pay for us running away. But wait, as a matter of fact there IS hell to pay for rejecting the Lord. But that is where this message gets even better.

By the way, hell is one of the parts of the message of the cross that sounds like foolishness to some. But it's the place where God's love and power are truly revealed. If there were no big time consequences for rejecting the Lord, God would not have needed to send His Son to die. He could have sat in heaven and used a slingshot to try and pick off those of us who get really far away. The theme song of heaven would be "don't worry, be happy." Or else, He could just set the planet on fire and be done with us rebels. Or he could grab those of us who are really good, the upper 1 %, put us on a space ship and fly us to another galaxy to start a new colony.

I once heard that God sent a special letter to the upper 1% of people who are really good, giving them instructions on how to find blessed treasure. Do you know what it said? Uhhhh, I guess none of you got that letter, did you?

But God sent us Son to die for all of us, and even for the biggest sinners, with the biggest sins, and doesn't that rot your socks? We don't need a heavenly tape measure to determine whether have gone too far. We don't have a God'o-meter to tell us if we qualified for His grace. We don't have to wait by the mailbox for the secret letter to hit God's sweepstakes. And we don't have to get it all together BEFORE His mercy kicks in. The Bible is very clear: WHILE WE WERE STILL SINNERS, CHRIST DIED FOR US. At the point we deserved punishment, God offered us a rescue.

2 weeks ago 4 men set out on a calm day to go fishing off the coast of Florida. Pro football players, Corey Smith and Marquis Cooper and 2 other friends went out to catch dinner. Their boat was capsized by a large wave. All 4 survived, but as the waves kept pounding them, 3 of them drifted away and were lost at sea. The 4th man survived by clinging to the motor of the overturned boat and was rescued 46 hours later. He had on a life jacket. He clung to the boat because he knew that to let go was to be swallowed by the ocean and to die.

Grab on to Jesus and live. Take God's offer of love and a rescue. And then go to the website, blessingsforyou.GOD, and begin to make withdrawals from the account He has set up for your life.
Is that how you treat God's rescue? Do you cling to Jesus Christ because you know that if you drift away you will be overcome by the waves? Do you always wear the life preservers that He has given us? Have you go the pin number from that account?

It is time to take God up on His promise.

Let's look at placing our entire lives in the hands of the Master who rescues us from our own shipwrecks.

So how do we do this in a practical way? Last week I spoke about Kahu Abraham Kahikina Akaka urging us to tune our lives to Jesus like the 4 strings of a ukulele. As part of my talk at HIM I expanded it a bit to be more like the 6 stings of a guitar.

Now for a guitar to sound right, all 6 strings must be in sync. If 1 string is good and the other 5 are off, it'll sound bad. But even if 5 are in the right tune, just one off-tuned string can make it sound terrible.

Sometimes there is too much slack in a string and it must be stretched to be in tune. Other times there is too much tension and the string must be relaxed to sound right. Often, when one string is changed, it affects some or all of the other strings. But in the hands of a skilled musician, with a good ear and gentle hands, a well-tuned and well-played guitar can sing. Jesus has the ear and the gentle hands to tune our lives - if we let Him.

Here are some practical ways to keep our lives overflowing with Jesus

Let's tune our

1. Culture to the Sovereignty of God. It all starts and ends with Him. God has the ultimate control of our lives. Anything that we do that is not in tune with Him will become sour and interfere with His song. If we let Him adjust how we look at the world, the politics of the day will not be able to beat us down. We may hurt because we have lost a job or a home or an income, but no one can steal our joy in Jesus.

Let's tune
2. Our language to the Word of God. How do you speak? What do you speak about? Is gossip or envy on your tongue? Is anger your constant companion? Are your words blessings or curses? When someone blasts you, does a curse or a scripture come out automatically? We have to make sure that we yield this part to God. And not in plastic or fake ways. God has made us so that if we begin to SPEAK blessings, we will begin to THINK blessings. And then we will begin to FEEL blessings. If you want to experience blessings, let Jesus tune your tongue to His Word. You have been blessed to be a blessing.

3. Our lifestyles to the Holiness of God - this one might look hard. It is. We cannot expect the blessings of God unless we are obedient and are willing to cut things out of our lives. Now if we are dealing drugs or surfing porn sites online or embezzling money, it isn't hard to figure out the things that need to be removed. Some of our thought and actions need to be taken captive, and in obedience, turned over to Jesus to be buried and gone. But sometimes, to make room for the Lord, we may have to prioritize and change even some good things to make room for the new blessings that the Lord wants to give us. When we yield our will to live a holy life that brings God all the glory, we will find that our joy increases. Yielding to Jesus does not mean cutting out fun. It means finding an even deeper joy.

4. Our thoughts to the grace of God. One of the parts of the gospel that sounds and feels like the biggest hypocrisy is when Christians come off harshly and judgmental. To most non-believers it sounds like "we are in. You are out. Tough luck for you!" Every single one of us can stand before the throne of God ONLY because of His grace, not because of our goodness. We didn't earn His love. So't is time to quit acting like a country club and start living like forgiven people. There is no room for a perfect person at the foot of the cross. The only room for a perfect person was ON the cross.

5. Our memories to the mercy of God. We are a people who live for today as we hope for the future with lessons we have learned from the past. Jesus has tuned not all of our lessons yet. Some of them are so painful that we are unable to move past the hurt into the freedom He has offered for us. Those memories need to be healed by Him. Some of our memories are of unforgiveness, anger, and hurt because we believed we had been wronged - someone's done some pretty bad stuff to me. Some of our memories are of the wrongs we committed and about the people we hurt. All of that needs to be turned over to Jesus to be tuned too. If we carry our painful memories around with us every day, they become a weight that threatens to drag us down and drown us, even though we have been rescued! They threaten to rob us of our joy. They threaten to take the fine-tuning of Jesus and just crank on the strings. Those need to be healed. Jesus can rescue us and free our memories from even the deepest hurts.

That brings us to number 6. We need to tune our feelings to the love
6. of God. It all comes back to His love. When we want to be in tune, we have to remain, live, and walk in His love. And we have to do it even when we don't feel like it, even when we don't feel loving or loveable. Sometimes this is the one string that makes the others go out of tune. We feel like our spouse doesn't really love us. We feel like our friends have hurt us. We feel like we have failed God. We don't always feel loved or like loving, especially when we are tired, sick, or just plain cranky. It is precisely at those points that we have to subject those crazy feelings to the hand of Jesus or else our whole lives will be out of tune. Hurts can kill your fight, make you take off your life-jacket and can cause you to drift away from the boat. Our bad feeling can keep us from the people who love us, from the places we need to be the most, and from experiencing God. Let the love of Jesus tune them and please look for healthy ways to move past them.

We could take a week on each of these 6 ways to let Jesus tune us and still go deeper. But it is time to stop and pray, and turn all our cares over to Him. It is time to ask Jesus to forgive us, tune us, and heal us. That is not a message of foolishness. The loving hand of Jesus does indeed carry the power of God. Father, from my lips to Your ears, in Jesus' name. AMEN

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