I have a feeling that there are many unclaimed riches in Christ’s hands. Lately I have been struck with my need to make every effort to possess the riches that are mine in Christ. Possessing my riches is very much like Joshua and the Israelites going into that place (the land) that God promised them – which is not a picture of salvation as so many have conjectured. Going into the promised land and possessing it was meant to be a picture of the believer learning to possess what they have in Christ (something we call “growth” or in other words “being built up an established in your faith” – maturity). In that place, the promised land (“that place in Christ”), there is victory over self, deliverance from sins of the flesh, a constant flow of the Holy Spirit, fruitfulness in service, awareness of the presence of God, growth in grace and an unbroken spirit of worship.
God says, “go in and possess the land!” But we must remember these do not come automatically.
Here are four propositions:
1. You will get nothing unless you go after it -Joshua had to fight the enemies.
2. You may have as much as you insist upon having. “Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread shall be yours…” Deuteronomy 11:24a
3. You will have as little as you are satisfied with. God doesn’t make a person more godly than he or she wants to be. God doesn’t transform a person more than they are willing to be transformed.
4. YOU NOW HAVE AS MUCH AS YOU REALLY WANT. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” Matthew 5:6
Sunday I mentioned that you could go to the website and get a word study/ my talk on Colossians 2:4-15 on the website. Several of you have mentioned that you didn’t get a hard copy and are still working through those amazing ideas of “all the fullness of deity in bodily form”, circumcision, baptism, etc.
You can download that PDF by clicking here.
Press on to know the Lord… Dan hosea 6:3
September 20, 2009 | In: FUN
Hello everyone: Here are the clues for Prizes #2 & #3 for the REACH Retreat Treasure Hunt:
Clue Pic for REACH Retreat Prize #2
Prize #2 – You’ll need to head to a park that has the same name as one of the dorms on UNL’s Campus. Then check out the picture above for a little more direction.
Prize #3 -Which of these things is not like the other ones? To figure this one out you’ll have to go to the main Campus Impact Website – www.campusimpact.org and look in the Photo Albums of Past Events for a photo that doesn’t belong. That will tell you where to go…when you get there look for the prize near the year 1982.
Make sure and call or txt Matt if/when you find the prize!
Just a little reminder of what I mentioned earlier about our study this summer…
This summer on Wednesday Nights we are gathering together to look at Ordinary Heroes. People like Daniel, Samson, and Deborah. For many of us when we look at these people in the bible we think of them as heroes and we should. These are all people who walked with God, served God, and were used by God. But I also think that a lot of times, we kind of separate ourselves from these people. At times we think, “I couldn’t be like them.” Sometimes that’s what we do with heroes isn’t it. We want to be like them but somewhere along the way reality sets in.
As a kid you probably had a hero – like a professional athlete or a musician or an astronaut or maybe you just wanted to be a princess when you grew up. When I was younger, I wanted to be Magic Johnson. I loved the LA Lakers. I would imagine myself on the court…10 seconds left in the game…I bring the ball into the front court…dribble through the lane…make the no-look pass…and we win the championship. But over time reality settled in and I realized I’m not going to be Magic Johnson. I’m not as tall as he is, I’m not as fast as he is and, most importantly, I’m not as good as he is at basketball.
I think we do that with the people we read about in the bible as well. Sometimes the more we read about them, the more reality sets in that I’m not going to be like them. I don’t know if I could stand up for my faith like Daniel did. I don’t have wisdom like Deborah had. I can’t lead like Nehemiah. But one of the things I love about the bible and the people of the bible is they made mistakes and we’re told about those mistakes. The bible doesn’t leave them out.
One the of the things I think we have to keep in mind as we look at these people is God doesn’t want us to be exactly like them. God is not asking us to be exactly like Daniel or Miriam or Deborah or Hannah or Nehemiah or Barnabas. For one thing, we’re not in the same circumstances as they were in. We live in different circumstances and God wants to enlarge our faith and grow us for our circumstances. He wants us to become more like Him so we can live in our circumstances and so He can live through us in our circumstances. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from their circumstances and their lives and how they walked with God. So, most importantly as we read about these people and look at their lives, we should be asking this question:
What do I learn about God from this person’s life?
Because all of these people are just ordinary people, but they have an extraordinary God. Just like it says in James about Elijah, “He was a man with a nature like ours.” That means Elijah was just like us. But when Elijah prayed, God did an extraordinary thing! He stopped it from raining for 3 ½ years on the earth. Elijah was an ordinary hero with an extraordinary God!
I believe if you will ask the question “What do I learn about God from this person’s life?” God will show you himself. He will reveal more of Himself to you through these people’s lives and I think He will reveal more of Himself to you in your own life.
We had our midsummer party a few weeks ago. It was a competition based party, with four teams. Each team had to complete four events, trying to earn the maximum points. At the end of the night, the teams that were in first and second place had a bucket race for first place. Third and fourth bucket raced for third place.
The four events were the Meuse; the Tongue Drag, the Square Maze, and the Slide Puzzle.
In the Meuse, the team had a limited number of eight foot boards, and had to get all members of their team across an area, placing the boards on cinder blocks.
For the tongue drag, three members of each team had to drag their tongue down twenty feet of a substance, in a minute or less. A roll of the dice determined what substance each person would get. The five substances were catchup, mustard, mayonnaise, horseradish sauce, and the 2nd hottest BBQ sauce from Buffalo Wild Wings.
The Square Maze consisted of a blank grid, taped to the floor. Each team had to figure out the path through the maze, by process of elimination/ guessing. Every time someone stepped in a wrong square, that person had to go to the back of the line, and someone new had to try.
In the Slide Puzzle, there were giant pieces of a slide puzzle, each with a person underneath. Someone was on a ladder, directing the people to move, in order to solve the puzzle.
Finally, the bucket races consisted of four people on a team, each holding a large bucket with gravel inside. The goal of the race was for the teams to run around a square, holding the buckets. The teams had to stay in order, and when the first person on one team caught up with the last person on the other team, they won.
Here are a few pictures from each event.
