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In the fourth sermon of our Etched series, we come across the 4th commandment:  Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy…

{Listen if you want}

Of the 7 days we get each week, clearly, one of these days is not like the others.

We discovered that this commandment is rooted in God’s call on our lives for rich relationships – with Him and with others.  So, to fully love God and to fully love others, we MUST set aside some dedicated time for these relationships.   A sabbath day is meant to Provide Refreshment, Protect our Priorities and Point to our Redemption.  All of this helps us build relationships with God and others.

But a lingering question exists which didn’t get answered in the sermon.  I thought I would take a minute to address it.  Why do Christians not practice a sabbath on Saturday any more?  Did Jesus rewrite this commandment to be for Sunday?  Well…kinda, but not really.

By the time Jesus got on the scene, the Jewish people were scattered throughout the world, and weren’t following the 4th commandment properly anyway.  So, when Jesus rose from the grave on a Sunday…the followers of Jesus found this to be a great time to reinstate the principles of Sabbath on the first day of the week.

Throughout the book of Acts, we see the church gathered for worship on Sunday.  The Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1) was on a Sunday, which is also the day that Christ ‘launched’ his church.    (See also Acts 20:7 and 1 Corinthians 16:2)

But the point is not THE day.  Jesus said in Mark 2:27:  “The Sabbath was made for man…NOT man for the Sabbath”.  In other words, follow the spirit of the law, not the letter of the law.  Find the underlying reasons that God wrote this commandment, then chase after that with all your heart.

That’s why Paul urged the church at Colossae to be flexible:  “No one is to act as your judge in regard to…a Sabbath day” (Colossians 2:16).  Some religious systems have turned this commandment into legalism, and have forgotten the point.  I like the way scholar John Eadie says it:

“The new religion [Christianity] is too free and exuberant to be trained down to ‘times and seasons’ like its tame and rudimental predecessor [Judaism]. Its feast is daily, for every day is holy; its moon never wanes, and its serene tranquility is an unbroken Sabbath.”

The point of Sabbath is to celebrate and recalibrate.  We celebrate God for who He is and what He does.  And we recalibrate ourselves relationally, physically and spiritually.

Enjoy and practice the Sabbath – and do it with the people you love.  Rest.  Rejoice.  Play.  Worship.  Read.  Converse.  Feast.  Recreate.

Remember: One of these days is not like the other.

What's Written on Your Heart

This week we began our series “Etched”, which is a fresh look at the most well known social law system in history: The Ten Commandments.   (Exodus 20:1-17) {Listen if  you want} 

The 10 Commandments aren’t meant to break our backs with rules, but to break our hearts for relationships. If we were to identify one ‘big idea’ for these set of commandments it would look like this: “Together…let’s enjoy our REAL, RELATIONAL, REDEEMER.”

The 10 Commandments are designed to help us enjoy God…together, with other people. So, the first 4 are vertical – they teach us how to fully enjoy (love) God. The last 6 are horizontal – they teach us how to enjoy (love) others.

Remember…the Ten Commandments were written by a REAL God, who has loyally pursued a RELATIONSHIP with us, and has even gone to great extents to REDEEM us from our sins. With that as a back drop, God has every right to demand from us these ten basic pinciples for life in community.

But, here’s the brutal truth: if we don’t like God…we definitely won’t like His commandments. We will never receive the message of the Ten Commandments until we first fall in love with the God who spoke them!

This week, I challenge you to put the Ten Commandments to memory. ETCH THEM ON YOUR HEART and learn to ENJOY your REAL, RELATIONAL REDEEMER!

For further study of the Ten Commandments, here are some great books I encourage you to buy:

That’s really all we have to know about Hard Times. This is a moment that will change me. No matter the outcome of this moment – I will either trust God more in the process, or I will trust Him less.

The question is: How do I learn to trust Him more in Hard Times?

This week, we discovered that God takes great pleasure in watching us learn to trust Him more. We learned from a mom in 2 Kings 4 who was facing a very hard time. Using empty jars, God met her need in a UNIQUE way. He COLLABORATED with a lot of people, and His miraculous provision was PROPORTIONATE to her faith.

Listen to this week’s message and then answer these questions for yourself:

1. What’s Your Jar Story?
2. Who will God collaborate with in your Jar Story ( OR How will God use YOU in someone else’s Jar Story?)
3. How big will your jar story be?

Feel free to share your “Jar Story” below

Before you quit…listen to this sermon on Perseverance.

Noah was a nobody. Not famous. Not well known. Just an ordinary guy with an extraordinary story.

Listen to my sermon about Noah and discover what God can do when we listen to the heart of God…

Power is intoxicating, isn’t it? We want it. We crave it. But we don’t know how to really get it. So, as with many of our other unmet desires, we resort to being chronically frustrated, angry, depressed or a myriad of other unhealthy emotions.

So, how do we break free – and still get what we want?

We need to redefine what power is. We think we know power…because we’ve been abused by it. But, do we really know much about SPIRITUAL power?

I’m intrigued by Jesus’ approach to power in Matthew 20. If you didn’t get a chance to hear the sermon on this, you can check it out here. I’m intrigued because Jesus didn’t come down on his disciples because they wanted power. He just came down on them for the KIND of power they wanted…worldly power.

As usual, Jesus provided an alternative. The alternative to our worldly desire for power is the spiritual practice of Servanthood.
Servanthood is like graduate school at Harvard. It won’t be experienced nonchalantly. It takes intentionality. It requires that we sit at the feet of Jesus as an apprentice and learn from him:
“The last will be first”
“The greatest among you will be your servants”
“Love your enemies”

The power that Jesus brandished was spiritual power.  Power that came through being a servant.  Being submitted to someone else’s mission.  That’s the kind of power God wants us all to experience.  That’s Kingdom power.

It’s time to go to school on the subject of Servanthood. If you want to get started right away, begin by reading the book of Mark and noting every time Jesus gave up power…enjoy.

It’s hard to miss God’s intention for His creation, isn’t it?  From the very first day a cosmic rhythm was strummed by God.  The reverberations were meant to infiltrate our lives.  Unfortunately, Rhythm & Rest are two of God’s gifts that we have chosen to  ignore.  We ignore them for one simple reason – we don’t trust them.  We don’t believe they will really meet our desires as much as our accomplishments will.  So…we bury ourselves, refuse to comply with God’s gifts, and then sink into the mire of life.  Maybe it’s time for something different.  Maybe it’s time to turn the noise of our lives into music.  Rhythm and Rest can help us do that. They are gifts from God to help us deal with our desire for less CHAOS  Let’s get started.

If you missed the message on Rhythm & Rest, you can listen to it here.  Either way, I encourage you to watch a short addendum to the message that I’ve posted to YouTube:

Blessings on your journey towards better Health, better Community and more Happiness.  I leave with you with another thought from Mark Buchanan:

“When we get to busy, everything becomes either a trudge or a scramble, the doldrums or sheer mayhem. We get bored with the familiar, threatened by the unfamiliar. Our capacity for both steadfastness and adventure shrivels. We just want to be left alone… When we stop caring about the things we care about – that’s a signal we’re too busy. We have let ourselves be consumed by the things that feed the ego but starve the soul.”

~ Mark Buchanan, The Rest of God -

Off.  Turn it off.

Noise.  Noise.  Noise.  I wish I had more of it, don’t you?  More technological noise to distract my hands.  More entertainment noise to distract my mind.   More digital noise to distract my ears.  More visual noise to distract my eyes.  That’s what we need…more noise.

Or not.  With an increase in our cultural noise, I strangely find myself longing for…something.  How about you?  Until recently, I wasn’t sure what it was that I was longing for.  But, I think I’ve discovered it.  I long for more…SILENCE.

Shhh.  Stop talking to me.
Shhh.  Stop selling me.
Shhh.  Stop bombarding me.
Shhh.  Stop convincing me.
Shhh.  Stop ‘billboarding’ me.
Shhh.  Stop advertising to me.
Shhh.  Stop seducing me.
Shhh.  Stop distracting me.

I have a Savior to love.  I have a family to love.  I have a soul to protect.

I can’t continue to drift from one noise source to another, and fully protect my soul.

In our “CRAVE” series, we are discovering ancient pathways that lead us to our true desires, our true cravings.   Maybe you’ve not been able to articulate it…but I’ll bet you crave for SILENCE just like me.   But…then we face reality and that fleeting thought disappears as quick as it came.  It just can’t happen.  Not in the twenty first century.  Not with my hectic schedule.  Not with my life.  I guess that dream is for someone else, who lives somewhere else and can hire professionals to filter their noise.

What if what we crave for could be a reality?  Interested?

The spiritual disciplines of Silence & Solitude are lost arts, but they are the gateway to personal and spiritual renewal.

Ignore them and you can expect to be perpetually overwhelmed….frenzied.
Pay attention to them and you can expect to find renewal.

Let’s get started this week.  Find OR force 30 minutes of uninterrupted space into your schedule this week where you can be alone and free of noise.  See what happens.

In addition to the sermon on this subject, here are some resources you may find helpful on your journey of escape from the NOISE.

Imagine bitterness as a house.

We’ve all stayed in the house of bitterness. Some of us are long term residents. When we stay at the House of Bitterness…we take on all the characteristics of the other house guests: we begin to bear the fruit of other bitter people and suddenly we find ourselves hurting people in ways that are worse than the offenses that made us bitter.

The only way out of the house of bitterness is through the doorway of forgiveness.

To learn more about getting rid of the toxin of bitterness…listen to my message on this topic…