Skit done by member of youth group

Jesus: If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture said, streams of living water will flow from within him.

Disciple 1: Why does he always do that?

Disciple 2: Do what?

Disciple 1: You know!

Disciple 2: No. . .What?

Disciple 1: He’s always talking in hyperboles

Disciple 2. You mean parables don’t you?

Disciple 1. (said in anger) Hyperbole’s, parables, why doesn’t he just say what he means?

Disciple 2: I don’t know

(Pause)

Disciple 2: What do you think he meant?

Disciple 1: Maybe we’re supposed to ask him for  a drink?

Disciple 2: No, I did that once and he gave me a bottle of Aquafina

Disciple 2: So, what did he mean?

Disciple 1: I don’t know. (Short Pause) – Maybe he meant that we were supposed to drink a lot of water

Disciple 2: Yeah, maybe this is a test, we’re supposed to do this on faith. We’re not supposed to ask questions, we’re just supposed to drink A LOT like we’re really thirsty.

Disciple 2: (looks at small glass) What are you doing with that?

Disciple 1: I’m drinking!

Disciple 2: (laughing) That’s a little girl glass. (Deep Base Voice) This is a man sized glass, for a man sized thirst. (Drinking a lot)

Disciple 1: Do you see anything coming out of me yet?

Disciple 2: Nope. (Pause) Do you see anything coming out of me yet?

Disciple 1: Nope. I’m starting to sweat, do you think that counts?

Disciple 2: No! (Fidgeting like a little kid who needs to go to the bathroom) I need to really go. Do you think that’s what he meant by streams of living water coming out of you?

Disciple 1: No!

Disciple 2: Then what did he mean when he said, “If you are thirsty, come to me and drink, and out of you will flow streams of living water?”

Disciple 1: I don’t know.

Disciple 2: I’m not feeling so good!

Disciple 1: Yeah, you drank a lot of water.

Disciple 2: (Looking really sick, acting like he’s ready to vomit.) Vomiting

Disciple 1: (Looking at the audience, asking them) Do you think that’s what Jesus meant when he said, “Streams of living water will flow out of you?”

Disciple 2 I hope not!

Run off stage.

Message:

Jesus said, If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him. And then John, the writer of this account of Jesus’ life said, by this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.

Generally speaking in our culture we try to take in, get more, make more, have more. We try to get better jobs so that we can make more money, so that we can buy more things and then that cycle repeats itself as often as we can in our life time, get a better job, make more money, so that we can buy more, have more, own more. That is the American Dream! It’s all about taking more in. Read the rest of this entry »

Edited from Shane Hipps’ message “From Your Belly.”

(Review of last week and recent ideas: physical birth and spiritual birth, physical thirst and spiritual thirst)

On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him. John 7:37-38

Last week I preached about a woman at the well and Jesus said something to her almost identical to this. What’s interesting about this is that anytime you see something repeated in scripture, especially when it’s close together, here it’s only three chapters apart, where Jesus uses the same basic metaphor and says the same basic thing, it means that it’s really important. Here Jesus is repeating himself because he wants to reemphasize his point because it’s important.

Now, the really interesting part about this is that Jesus doesn’t repeat himself exactly. Instead, he changes it ever so slightly, to reveal another layer to his teaching.

The first thing that makes this teaching of Jesus unique compared to the one we looked at last week with the Samaritan woman at the well, is that this one takes place on the last and greatest day of a very important feast or festival.

For these people, there were two major festivals that they celebrated. One was called Passover, you may have heard of it, and we celebrate it at Easter. This festival was to commemorate or celebrate when God, with 10 mighty plagues, freed the Israelites from 400 years of slavery under the mighty hand of Egypt. God brought the Israelites out of Egypt revealing His mighty power and giving the Israelites freedom where they had none. Read the rest of this entry »

8-1-10 Baptism: Are You Thirsty? (edited from Shane’s Hipp’s sermon called Stay Thirsty)

Is there anyone here who is thirsty? Why do you drink water? Because you’re thirsty, right? What makes you thirsty? It’s because your physical body is 70 percent water and it needs to have a fresh source of water all the time in order to stay healthy. We all know this, right? But what happens if we don’t have any water or enough water? We get dehydrated and eventually die is the condition persists, right? Our physical bodies need water.

A couple of weeks ago Jesus made it abundantly clear that there are two parts of our body.  We are called to be born again. We have a physical birth, but we are incomplete without being born of the Holy Spirit. We can be born physically, but we must also be born or “born again” spiritually.

 The physical body we know needs water in order to stay healthy, but what does our spiritual body need? What does it need in order to stay healthy? Is it ever thirsty? Does it have a strong desire that needs to be satisfied? If we ignore the desire of our spiritual body can we also become really unhealthy and die? These are some the questions that I’d like to look at answering today.

One day Jesus said something really unusual. He was in the temple area that was filled with people and he cried out in a loud voice,  

Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’” John 7:37-38 (NRSV) Read the rest of this entry »

Two weeks ago we began this series on the Holy Spirit and we asked the question, “Do you ever feel powerless?” Do you ever feel like you are powerless to change your marriage, to change the relationship between you and your spouse, and you’ve tried, but nothing seems to work? Do you ever feel powerless to change your relationship with your children, and you’ve tried, but you feel powerless to change that relationship? Do you ever feel powerless to kick an addiction, I mean, you’ve tried, but you couldn’t? Do you ever have issues with anger, where you just go off and you say things and do things that hurt people, and you’ve tried to stop, but you just feel powerless? Do you ever wish that you could change this dark broken world, but when you think about it, it’s so big that you feel powerless to change it?

Then we asked the next obvious question if you’re feeling powerless, which is, “Where does your power come from?” Because as an electrician, when someone called me and said, “I don’t have any power” I immediately knew where I would begin, I would immediately go to the power source, which is the panel in most homes. If there’s no power there, then there’s no possibility to have power anywhere in the house. If there’s power there is the possibility of having power everywhere.

Popeye drew his power from spinach; Sampson drew his power from his uncut hair, but where does your power come from? And we said, that’s not a normal question to ask people in the 21^st century. I know it’s a bit of an unusual question in our world, but do you ever feel like you don’t have enough power?

  Read the rest of this entry »

Last week we started a new series on the Holy Spirit asking the question, “Where does your power come from?” We watched a video clip of Popeye and the spinach shortage, and we said that Popeye knew where his power came from. He knew that his power came from spinach, and when he didn’t have any spinach, he became weak.  But when Popeye had spinach he became strong, and we said that Brutas or Satan is a snake in the weeds and he wants to deceive us and steal our power from us. He wants us to be powerless. 

 When I was an electrician people would call me and tell me that they didn’t have any power. Upon arriving I would go to their power panel and see if they had power there. If they did, then they could have power that would run all over their home and do all kinds of amazing things that weren’t possible without it – that weren’t possible just a hundred years earlier. If there was not power at their panel, then they were powerless and I couldn’t do a lot about that.

If there wasn’t any power coming to their panel, all I could do was to make a call to the power company and tell them that something was wrong because the people of that home didn’t have any power.

Living without the Holy Spirit inside you is like having no electricity in your house. If you have the Holy Spirit in yo Read the rest of this entry »

Video Clip – Youtube – Popeye – “Spinach Shortage” -

“Do you ever feel powerless like Popeye without spinach?” Do you ever feel powerless to change your marriage? Do you ever feel powerless to change your relationship with your children? Do you ever feel powerless to stop an addiction? Do you ever feel powerless to stop angry tirades, and you just keep going off, though you’d like to stop? Do you ever feel like you’d like to make a difference in a person’s life, or in your community, or in your schools, or at work, but as you think about how big the problems are, you feel powerless to change to change anything, so you don’t even try? Do you ever feel powerless?

Popeye drew his power from spinach, but where does your power come from? Now I know that’s not a normal question to ask people in the 21^st century. I know it’s a bit of an unusual question in our world, but do you ever feel like you don’t have enough power? Do you ever feel like you’re powerless? Maybe the problem is at the supply?

The way that most people in our world answer the power question is they try to make more money, because we know that money is power. We think that if we just have more money, then our power problem will be solved, because we know that you can buy almost anything if you have enough money. Notice I said almost.

You can’t buy a better marriage. You can’t buy something that makes you a better parent. You can’t buy anything that will give you more time, when your time is up, your time is up. You can’t buy peace, or joy, or love. You can change how you look on the outside with money, but you can’t change how you feel on the inside with money. The power that I’m going to be talking about today, money can’t buy. Many of the wealthiest people in the world have died very lonely and very empty people because ultimately they couldn’t buy what they needed with money. They needed a different kind of power.

  Read the rest of this entry »

Service . . . Service . . .it’s kind of a weird word that can mean lots of things.

1. If you were the manager of a restaurant and I complained about the service, what would I be talking about?
2. If I was talking with my mechanic and asked him to service my truck, what would I be talking about?
3. If I was at a tennis tournament and I leaned over to you and said that was a bad service what would I be talking about?
4. If I told you that I was going to quit my job as a pastor and joined the Armed Service, what would I be talking about?
5. If I went to see my mom and dad this afternoon and they asked how the service went this morning, what would they be talking about?

Service is a strange word that has all kinds of baggage attached to it, and so I want to be really clear about what we’re going to be talking about today. I want to talk about the verb “To Serve”. This kind of service depicts action and this is the definition that I’d like to lay out before us as we get started:

Work done by one person or a group to benefit others.

Service is the way that Christians are called to display our love. If I say, “I love you” to my wife or my kids, but then don’t serve them in any way that reveals my love for them, then no love is present.  Therefore, service is critical to the life of a believer.

The Bible tells us to “Serve one another in love” Read the rest of this entry »

Why do we worship? What keeps us from worshipping more? What keeps us from falling more in love with God? What keeps us from falling on our face in front of him speechless because of the wonder of who he is? What keeps us from singing at the top of our lungs because of who he is? What keeps us from praising and loving God more?

In case you guess it, I just want to state that my point this morning is to move our worship to the next level. The point of this morning is to take your worship with God and put it on steroids and grow it bigger Read the rest of this entry »

Look at this amazing promise. Peter says, Humble yourselves that God may lift you up, and this is the part that we hate, in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. 1 Peter 5:6-7

You see, due time for me is different from due time for God, because I heard the sermon on Sunday and I applied it on Monday and by Thursday there ought to be some activity in my marriage, right? I emptied my box by Monday and by Monday at 5:00 and we’re back over here (Desires box), and I say, “Ok God, why isn’t he or why isn’t she looking in my box and taking notice of my wishes, dreams and desires?”

Here’s the promise. In due time, God will intervene on your behalf. What does that look like? I don’t know because everybody’s circumstances and everybody’s issues are different and everybody’s personalities are different, and everybody’s baggage is different. But in due time, God will intervene on your behalf. And let me tell you, I’ve seen some men and women live in the due time for a long time. But at the end of their due time with their humility and faithfulness, they’ve seen God do some amazing, amazing things – in their life personally and in their marriage.

I’ve seen a woman who waited 30 some years for God to change her husband – faithfully casting all her wishes, dreams, desires and anxieties upon God and then at the end of 30 some years God opened her eyes and she realized she was half the problem. She had been thinking that he was the whole problem, but then God showed her how she had been acting, obviously without knowing it, but that she was a major part of why her husband had responded to her in ways that did not meet her wishes, dreams and desires. Read the rest of this entry »

Good morning! If this is your first time here, then you’re coming in at the middle, a bit toward the end of the movie, so you don’t know what the plot is and so some of this morning’s message isn’t going to make sense.

So this is the third message in a four part series on marriage, not just everything there is to talk about marriage, because we’ve taken a very thin slice, a simple dynamic in marriage, and have asked a question that maybe you’ve never been asked and hopefully have been getting some answers that have been practical and helpful.

So let’s review for a second, so that we all get started on the same page. We said that we all get married with a box load of wishes, dreams, and desires. Like, I hope that one day we’ll be able to live in a certain kind of house. I hope that we’ll schedule our marriage in such a way that he’ll come home and she’ll come home at a certain time and eat together at a certain time and I hope me husband doesn’t do these things like my dad because they really irritate me, but I hope that she does these things like my mom because those are really great for me, and I hope she never wears anything like that to bed, and we’ll raise our kids like this and not like that. I mean we all have these wishes dreams and desires when we go down the aisle. It’s natural. It’s normal.

But when both man and women walk down the aisle together, they each have a box full of wishes, dreams, and desires and those wishes dreams and desires all revolve around “I”. And what we said is that sometimes we walk into the church and up to the alter with a box full of wishes, dreams, and desires and we walk out with a box of expectations.

There’s a difference between desires and expectations and we don’t know how this happens, but things that are fun to talk about – you know, “One day” or “Some day” move from becoming desires to becoming expectations. And as things move out of the dreams, wishes and desires box to the expectations box the whole dynamic of the relationship changes, because what was fun over here, now seems to be really heavy and no fun over here.

We said that if this has happened to you then your relationship is characterized as a debt debtor relationship. You owe me because, after all, you’re the wife and that’s what wives are supposed to do. And you owe because you, after all, you’re my husband and that’s what husbands are supposed to do. And you promised and I thought and you should, and why don’t you and your relationship devolves from this fun, joyous, romantic marriage into one that is just drudgery where all the fun and all the romance has been sucked out of it.

  Read the rest of this entry »