Video Clip: The Ultimate Gift      DVD Chapter: 15     Start Time: 0:53:35     End Time: 0:57:59

What does your Thanksgiving dinner look like? Better than that I hope! Is your Thanksgiving truly a time to be thankful or is your thanksgiving more likely to end in a fight? Does your family actually reflect on what they’re thankful for? What is the likelihood that your family would laugh at you if you proposed going around the table and sharing something you’re thankful for?

I want you to be honest with yourself for a moment. Is it difficult for you to be thankful? If you were to guess, how much of your day do you spend being thankful? How many minutes a day do you spend being thankful? One, five, ten? If we’re honest with ourselves, most of us spend very little time being thankful. Read the rest of this entry »

How much sin should we expect in the church? We have gauges for other elements of church life. We generally monitor attendance. We know how many people are in small groups and how many people come to each outreach event. Somebody counts the offerings. And often we don’t just measure what we’re interested in-we set goals.

Anybody hear of a church that set a goal for a 5-percent sin reduction next year? I don’t mean to be glib about this. Sin is, somehow, at the root of all human misery. Sin is what keeps us from God and from life. It is what keeps us from great joy and peace, goodness and blessing. Sin is in the face of every battered woman, the cry of every neglected child, the despair of every addict, and the death of every victim of every war.

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9-13-09 Fundamentals Series: Shackles or Sunshine

What are the first words that enter your mind when I say the word slavery? What descriptive words enter your mind when I say the word slavery? (Write these on an Easel)

The slavery that I’m thinking of removes your value as a human being. It removes your identity. It removes your worth. It strips away your freedom and with it your ability to think and act in independent, creative ways. Slavery is abusive, oppressive, and destructive. A slave owns nothing, controls nothing. If you are a slave, you are, really, nothing. You are bought. You are owned. You become someone’s possession. Slavery removes your humanity. It removes all that you were created for.

We were not created for slavery . . . and yet we are. Listen to what Paul says about you and me.
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (NRSV)

Slaves are not their own. Slaves are bought and sold for a price. The scriptures say that you and I were bought with a price? The scriptures say that we are not our own? What does that mean? It sounds like we’re not free, but slaves. Is that who God is? Is God a slave owner, and we’re his slaves? Is that why life seems so hard? Is that why life seems so much like a struggle?

Within Christianity there are these huge paradoxes. You and I were given free will, but we were bought with a price; we are not our own. That seems absurd doesn’t it? How can you be free and yet purchased?

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This series is based upon the premise that direction determines destination. Direction determines destination. This is something that we know when we drive down a road or when we hike down a path, that what ever direction you take determines where you’re going to end up. We said at the very beginning that even though we understand this principle to be absolute in geography, we said that there is a huge disconnect in every other area of our lives, whether it be dating or marriage, or relationships, or finances or our health, whatever it might be.

And somehow we think to ourselves, that if we just pray enough or if we have enough money or if we are really good people, or if we have great hopes and dreams, or if we just trust God enough that we’ll somehow end up where we want to end up, but it doesn’t happen that way. Direction determines destination. It is a principle that we can’t break; we can just break ourselves upon it.

Last week we came back and said, “Even if you or I were the wisest person in the world, the smartest person in the world, the most intuitive person in the world, we said that it’s not enough to have lots of information to choose the right path. When it comes to paths that lead us to desired destinations, we don’t just need more information, we need God. We looked at the life of Solomon where late in his life, even though he was the wisest man who ever lived, and wrote more about this principle of the path than anyone else, at one point late in his life, he decided to follow his own will and his own way, his own path – not God’s, and all of his wisdom was to no avail, because he abandoned God in one area of his life and his life came crashing down around him.

In every area of our lives we need God, because our perspective is so small and we understand so little, and we don’t want to choose the wrong path early in our life and later find out that the path we chose was a horrible bad choice and our lives ended up in a place that was far from being blessed and good.

Here’s the principle, and you either work with is or you break yourself upon it. Direction, not intention, determines destination.

Here’s the deal, it will impact your life. It will impact your life, whether you know it or not, whether you embrace it or not, or whether you admit it or not. Here’s the rest of the formula. Direction determines destination, but often times it is the things or the people that get our attention that influence our direction. The things that grab or capture our emotions, are the things that we give our attention to, and these influence the direction of our lives.

Now looking back, every one of us knows that this is true, and I’ll give you enough illustrations so that you’ll know it’s true. I love the phrases that we use in the English language. That grabbed my attention or that captured my attention. She captured my attention. Here’s the principle. When something grabs or captures our attention, we are turned in that direction and that something that grabs or captures our attention leads us down a different path in a different direction of your entire life.

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