You are the reason for the season (from Sunday December 13 2015)

Sunday December 20 I like a little bit of controversy. I told you last year from all of my studies I do not in any way adopt the notion that Joseph and Mary travelled to an inn an actual hotel to find a room. I do not subscribe whole heartedly to the thought that He was born in an actual stable because in those days they had homes with levels. The animals were kept in the lower parts of the house and most likely the house they attempted to stay in was full. Homes in those days had guest rooms, they all had guest rooms for travelers and well everyone’s guest rooms were full. But the coldhearted mean old guy in our children’s Christmas plays that says there is no room in the inn is actually someone who had compassion. He couldn’t send them back out into the cold, here was a young man who had travelled 80 miles in two days by foot and by donkey. Here was a young lady who was very pregnant and as we would say about to pop. So, it was compassion that led him to tell them there was no room in the house, or in the guest room but there was the room where the animals stayed out of the elements if they couldn’t find anything else. Here is some big time controversy that will challenge almost everything you believe and have been told and sold through out the years. It is something that I discovered about 15 years ago and preach on about every other Christmas season. Here it is, You are the reason for the season. Jesus Christ existed before he was conceived in Mary’s womb. You and I did not exist before conception. So when we speak of our coming into the world, or speak of John the Baptist’s being “sent from God” (John 1:6), we don’t mean that he, or we, existed before we were sent. We mean our being sent was our coming into being. Not so with Jesus. Why God Wrote the Christmas Story Why? God could have created and run the universe differently. Why did it happen like this? For God so loved the world…… the end, go home have a great Christmas. One of the deepest biblical answers is that it was “fitting.” Hebrews 2:10-17 How is Christmas Fitting? Sandwiched between Hebrews 2:10 and 2:17 — between the declaration that Christ suffered because it was fitting, and Christ became like us because he was obliged to — is the great description of why Christ became human. Threfore this is part of the picture of how the incarnation was fitting. First, he became human because we are human. God’s great aim is to have a family of human children in which his eternal Son is one of them, yet supreme over them: Romans 8:29 Hebrews 2:17 Now I will tell you I try my best to remain transparent with you guys. I live out loud and under a microscope not because I think I am all that great of a person, but because as your pastor I want you to see that I am just a fallible as anyone in this room. I sin just as much and as often as anyone else. I may sin differently but all the same I sin. James tells us He who knows the good that He ought to do and doesn’t do it, for him that is sin. So there are sins we don’t think of in that manner as well. Well, it was very fitting that God’s own Son become flesh and blood. “That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers.” (Hebrews 2:11) Have you ever stated that someone was embarrassing. I really like to try to embarrass people. I tried to embarrass my little cousin Kaley because her engagement party was a hoe down. So I put on some over- alls, cut off the end of my boots, wore socks with holes in them and well it was well received. I mean one of the best parts was when she introduced me to her husband to be’s grandma as her cousin, the guy who will be doing the wedding ceremony. We also picked up one of my old youth interns from the airport dressed like that. Only, about 5 of us dressed up like that and held signs that had her named on it all misspelled. It was awesome because all her family from Ohio asked was if we were all rednecks and hicks down here so we greeted her that way. God sent His Son, and because His Son lived and walked and breathed on this earth He is not ashamed to call us his brothers and sisters. I mean come on, your kids do something and you just hope and pray that no one knows they belong to you, you shrink in the crowd and try to remain as quiet as possible while it goes on. Yet, Jesus is unashamed of us. This is story is fitting and beautiful — in God’s eyes. Second, he became human so that he might die. “He partook of flesh and blood that through death . . .” God, by his very nature, cannot die. But the God-Man, Jesus Christ, could die. Dying was fitting. Therefore, he became human — mortal. He became flesh and blood so that he could die. Have you ever seen undercover boss? I think it is funny to see these big suit wearing CEO’s flipping burgers or cleaning rest rooms on the other end of the chain. They see a lot of things, first they see how valuable the people at that level are and they see that they deserve better. They also, begin to relate to them much better. Jesus does not look down on us and think what a bunch of dummies, he looks down and says I feel your pain, I was tempted too, I was once human as well. Third, he became human “that (by dying) he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil.” Not to put the devil out of existence, but to weaken his ability to make death an ending. The devil destroys with one weapon: unforgiven sin. He also came to earth as I stated earlier to die, but also so that he could sympathize with our fear of death. I told you last week fear is a sign of an imperfect bond with Jesus and well that bond can be made secure because as a human being, flesh and blood he struggled with the same things we fear including death. But in the death of Christ, God “cancelled the record of debt that stood against us . . . nailing it to the cross. the fourth reason the Son of God became human was to “deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.” Now, when believers look into the dark face of death, they say, “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55). No more fear. No more bondage. Now. Or ever. Such a life is fearless life fitting for the saints. When God pondered how to write the story of the universe, there was nothing outside of himself to guide him. He made his choices according to how all things “fit” into a design that would best reveal his fullness. Christmas happened because it was fitting. Christmas happened because God saw a need, a need that every human being would ever have and He met it. How about this, Brae and I are huge Charlie Brown fans and well, there is a part of the movie I don’t think most of us have every noticed. To get the full effect you will need to watch the clip of Linus sharing the Christmas story during their play in Charlie Brown Christmas. During it he quotes the angels saying do not fear and as he says that he drops his blanket. That blanket has been a fixture for that little boy in every episode ever filmed of Charlie Brown, and he drops it. Jesus came to earth so that whatever our security is found in on this earth can be dropped and left behind because our only real, true security can be found in Him.

God's Plan A is always plan A (from December 6 2015)

God’s bump in the road is plan A, your plans were always plan B. I like to find great quotes from famous people, deep thinkers or theologians when I am planning a message. I like to google words or phrases or read old sermons from great preachers and dig up cool quotes. I do this for softball too, I like to have themes each week or each month and the theme is usually a quote from someone great. Well, this morning I am going to quote a deep thinker, a great theologian and all around wonderful person. Here it is, get your pens and pencils ready it’s Hall Mark card material. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. Mike Tyson We sometimes learn more in the change of plans than we do from our planned out lives. I don’t know about you guys, but I am a huge planner not necessarily an organized planner but a planner all the same. I like to have my sermon series all mapped out and ready a few months in advance. I do it because you never know what may happen, what may come up, I want to never walk into a Sunday morning with a message that was thrown together the day before or even that morning. Let’s look at Mary’s life, let’s look at Joseph’s life. They were engaged, which I wish there was a class for guys to go and take as young adults or as teenagers. Something that teaches them what is about to happen the moment you ask a young lady to marry you. Guys have this vision of proposing, and trying to do it in a cool or romantic way for them to be able to brag to their friends. Which is a set up, in reality what ends up happening is they plan this amazing night and propose and make it beautiful only to be sitting at a restaurant some day and have someone tell their fiancée how much more amazing theirs was. It’s a trap guys, don’t do it. I didn’t I just told her I loved her and handed her a ring on her break at work one evening. After I had let Tara pick out the ring and pay for the majority of it. I like every other guy in the world will be outdone in some way, but the real challenge will be for someone to under do me. But back to my original thought, the class should be for young men to know what really goes on in life. While boys are playing football, shooting one another with nerf guns and having wars in treehouses girls are living something quite different. While boys are learning to throw better, shoot hoops, maybe even starting to lift weights to impress the ladies girls are doing something quite different. You see guys think the wedding planning starts a few months after they propose, that is what they walk into that proposal night thinking. But you want to know the truth, girls have been planning for years and years. Guys, girls have the wedding all planned out, it’s even worse now with technology. She probably has every detail right down the the type of appetizers served at the reception pinned to her board in Pinterest. While young boys are drawing pictures of animals, and cars and guns girls are doodling their name with the last names of different prospects inside their notebooks in class. So what really changes after we propose, guys is you are now made aware of all of those plans and included in SOME of them. It’s like this, (kneel as if proposing), stand and do an oh my God yes! Then before he can stand up whip out huge binder full of stuff. ( I acted this out by myself during themessage to get the full effect.) Wedding ceremonies are important and I take great pride in preparing what I think is a unique ceremony for brides and grooms. But I get calls, texts and facebook messages regularly asking me if I will perform a wedding and what I charge. I then set up a couple of meetings with them. The first meeting is to get to know them and see what their plans are for the future. Then, we start to plan out the ceremony. 95% of the time when I ask what do you want in a ceremony I get shoulder shrugs from both of them. But, venue, color of dresses for bridesmaids and color of ties and tuxedos that is all figured out. So you get all of the colors right, you get all of the decorations and the music and the table decorations, and the flowers and all of that all lined up. Now, have you ever gone to a bride on the day of their wedding and said to her, ____________ there has been a change of plans. I dare say it’s dangerous the month of the ceremony to tell them there is a change of plans. You talk about panic, you talk about fearing for your life. All her life she has pictured this and all her life she has dreamed of this day and now a few minutes or hours before she gets to live out her fairy tale you are telling her that there has been a change of plans. Luke 1:26-38 Today this would mean she had to go back to all of the stores and delete her wedding gift registry and turn it into a baby gift registry. All of the furniture for the house, all of the curtains and towels and appliances she had chosen were now turned into cribs, strollers, changing tables and diapers. What a change of plans, what a turn of events. What about the other guy? What about Joseph? He had plans too, he was engaged and planning on starting a family….. sometime later. He was to be married to Mary but they had time, they had to pick out the venue and the flowers and the dresses and the time of year. Oh and did I mention this about Tara? I just told her I wanted to get married in February or March because that was before the race season usually begins. Again, Jeff planning out for the future. It wasn’t about our wedding day, it was about the fact that every 7 years it would be on Saturday and every 7 years there would be a discussion as to how we were going to spend our anniversary, and well she was marrying a racer so it would be at the track. No sooner had that come out of my mouth than I found out that we were getting married the next March 6th. Again, she had a plan before I was made part of it. Back to Joseph….. he had plans, he was ready and no doubt he had a picture of what this would all look like. And, let’s be honest guys we are just in it for the food and the honeymoon, that’s it. The flowers yep those are nice, the dresses yes honey those are great, the color of the tuxes yes honey sound great. The venue, yes honey I will be there. Joseph was being robbed of his plans too. Tara and I planned to be married for a few years before we were going to think about children, she was pregnant on our first anniversary. We had plans, God’s were way better. God’s plan is always plan A and whether you realize it now or years from now your plans are always plan B. They say if you want to truly make God laugh tell Him your plans. Well, the reason they say that is that God has a plan for all of us, your days are mapped out before you were conceived so Your plans are always subject to change. God changed Mary and Joseph’s plans and they changed the fate for every human being for an eternity. Think about just how long that bump in the road had been planned out by God. If the genealogies in the Bible from creation until Jesus was born there would have been over 4,000 years accounted for. Unfortunately the genealogies are not complete meaning we lose a lot of years here and there, and well that means much longer than 4,000 years. John 1 tells us in the beginning was the Word(Jesus) and the word was with God and the word was God. So Jesus sat on go for well over 4,000 years. This bump in the road was planned that far in advance. Many of the things that surprise us were planned out decades before they surprise us. Think about how much was riding on that bump on the road. Now, not every bump in the road is going to be life altering, but this one was and your next one just may be as well. God unfolded all of eternity in the simple change of plans for one virgin and one fiancée. All of it, every detail was foretold hundreds and hundreds of years in advance. So next time your plans don’t work out, you hit a bump in the road or face a major change of plans know that it’s God’s plan A coming to life.

My greatest day recently

So in most of the ministries that I lead we do a small group session entitled High/low. In this category you share your high for the past week and your low for the past week. I haven't had enough people to do my small group the past few Sundays but I want to share my high and my low anyway. I apologize now most of you have heard this story as I have shared it with anyone who would listen. I have driven to meet many of you who I know would want to share in it so that I could tell you in person. This is what it is all about, but first my low. My low is most definitely the power wheel. We bought and put together what was probably the most anticipated gift in Gatlin Christmas history, Christmas morning arrived and we watch Brae run into the living room. She climbed up into the seat of her new truck and buckled her seat belt. We cranked it up and turned the radio on for her and then it happened. We couldn't get her to do anything but turn the steering wheel back and forth so I just lightly tapped the gas pedal sending her forward and into a chair, not hard but suddenly. From that moment on she has not gone near it. My high will probably be my high for a while. Saturday, December 19th I had a wedding to perform and it was a wedding that was for someone who meant a lot to us and our family. I was looking forward to it, had it all put together and I was just chilling with the girls anticipating the wedding ceremony. About mid morning I got a call from Mr Ricky Nix who sells firewood out in front of the church most days. He had someone who wanted to talk to me, I told him I would stop by on my way to the wedding. Well, I stopped by and met a man by the name of Tony. He was walking from Tallahassee to Miami, his mother had just passed away and he was headed back home from her funeral. Well, as he walked he passed our new sign and the word Freedom had jumped out at him. He decided then and there that what he needed was to hand all of his guilt, all of his burdens and all of his shame to God. I drove him to McDonalds and we had a quick lunch, we talked and he prayed and accepted Christ. His eyes were teary and he looked at me and said now pastor, I have to get baptized, and I have to do it now. I don't want to wait I don't want to spend another day having not been baptized in obedience to God's plan for me and my life. Here is where it got tricky, when we put up our new sign(which caught his attention) we tore down the old one. In the tear down we had to shut down our pump, well and that is what we use to fill our baptismal. It was very cold and windy that day and I wasn't real interested in jumping into the Atlantic or a swimming pool. So as I drove the wedding I called a friend, Mason Reigger and asked him if he knew of a warm body of water I could do a baptism in. He called back soon after and told me there was water in their baptismal at Anastasia Baptist Church and the heater would have the water warm in a few hours. I drove back by and broke the news to Tony and he was overjoyed. I went home, changed clothes and then went back and picked him up and took him to get new clothes. We purchased a new pair of pants, some new shoes and a few new shirts for his trip back home the following day. He refused to accept a bus ticket and said he prefers walking so I respected that. We then went to Anastasia and met up with Mason, he let us into the baptismal and Tony and I began to get ready. We prayed together one more time and then he told me he wanted to be baptized in the clothes he was wearing. He wanted the full effect of laying down his old life and rising again a new creation ready to live his life for Christ and in CHrist. So we agreed to do it that way. He took his shoes off and then his socks and continued to get ready while I stepped into a stall and changed into a bathing suit and t shirt. To my surprise when I stepped out of the bathroom stall there stood a man in his jeans, t shirt and wouldn't you know he was wearing a Jacket softball t shirt. The very T shirts we had made for the girls to wear when I was still coaching softball about 7 years ago at St Augustine High. I remember praying after the first day of practice that God would take my coaching, my passion for softball and sports and use me to impact his kingdom. Tony had no idea where he had received the t shirt, it was way too small and I will try to post it here when I finish up typing. That day God tied it all together for me, the sign at Freedom stopped him in his tracks, a simple lunch at McDonalds and sharing the Gospel made Him long for it more. Then, a baptism in a shirt that I prayed to be used all wrapped up in God's great gift to me this past Christmas season. Moments like these are what it is all about and I thank God for that suttle reminder. I mean sure I want to impact our city for Christ, I want to preach to more bodies than pews and I want to do some great mission work. But for one day, my day stood still so that one guy passing through could know the fullness of what God had planned in the original Christmas story and thousands of years before, I will take it!

#lessofme

Sunday December 27 Less of me Several years ago I was doing some college ministry at Flagler College. I got talked into going to a college event in Orlando for students called Sonburst. Well, the leader at that time of our local Intervarsity Fellowship asked me to drive a group. I drove them there, a young lady named Amy, one named Mindy and one named Lindsay all tagged along and rode to Orlando with me. Lindsay rode shotgun and as we drove thru Orlando towards the Hotel where the event took place we ended up driving past Goodwill. Linz was star struck, she looked over and said can we please, please please stop by there on our way back home? That is the biggest Goodwill I have ever seen. I had seen this excitement driving past the Bass Pro Shop in Orlando, the huge two story McDonalds in Orlando but never Goodwill. Well, as luck would have it I wanted to try my hand at having an intern that year and I let the leader of the youth ministry class know about it. She sent me Lindsay, Linz is still a huge part of my life and actually visited just a few weeks ago with her husband and now three children. Linz’s name was Linz van meter, I started calling her Linz van and the name stuck. She helped out with our ministries for a year or two and was a huge part of things going well in my youth ministries those years. Well, Linz van had an older car, she practically lived in it. She would go to thrift stores and buy old ties and sew them together to make bags. She sold the bags and worked a few jobs to pay for her necessities. She wore clothes from Goodwill, she never matched socks so that if one had a hole in it she wouldn’t be forced to retire them both and it just saved time getting ready in the morning. Linz van went on a mission trip to Africa for a summer and when she came back she told us she was done living the way she had. She was telling me that she had to sell all of her things, her car her clothes and all of it because she was living in excess. I laughed, no way I could look at her and think that for a moment. But, a real experience with God in a poor and broken country changed her. With the help of Amber and her family we were able to convince her she was not living in excess lol. #lessofme I have made less of me my movement for the future. I know that times change, people change and usually people change because they are influenced in some way. Either by good or by bad. But I want you to think about your church, I want you to think about your God, I want you to think about your life and put less of you in it. It’s going to be tricky but let’s break down the things I just listed above. John 3:30 I must decrease, He must increase. 1. Your church Alright Jeff, how can church be any less about me. I don’t preach, I don’t teach a small group, I don’t give that much what could I possibly do to make church less about me? Church needs to be less about you, and more about God. God designed the church in Acts to be how he reached the world and your role in reaching the lost world is going to come thru your role at the church. Also, your church attendance far too often is made about you, bettering you, hearing what you want to hear or what you need to hear. Have you ever thought about it this way: Who is encouraged by you being at church that day? For starters God is. God is encouraged because you were designed to worship God, and worshiping with your church family is part of that design. Next, your pastor certainly is. I know what you could be doing, I know what distractions there are out there and I am thankful when you choose to be here with us. I feed off of your energy and your attendance whether I want to admit it or not. The people in the pew in front of you, the pew behind you and the area you sit in are encouraged by you being there. The people you shake hands with, the people you laugh with, the people you go to lunch with afterwards are all encouraged by your presence. Many of them, count on your attendance at church. Studies show that a person needs to connect with 7 people in a church to want to stay. That makes it a whole lot less about the pastor now doesn’t it. They connect with people, not a person and not a place. Think about it this way, when close friends call or text and ask if you want to go out to dinner, you spend time deciding where. Then you show up and it is not about the food or the restaurant at all. It is 100% about the people you are there with. Why is church any different? 2. Your God In what ways can you make your relationship with God less about you and more about Him. In what ways can you spend more time thanking and listening than requesting? I won’t dive too deeply into this, but I will say this God doesn’t need you. Not for a second, but He is willing to use you and that to me is pretty cool. God can breathe into every person on earth His grace, hope and love but instead he uses us to dispense that good news and we should be excited and humbled by the chance to do so. I cannot tell you how many times I sit down with a couple and discuss their marriage or do counselling with them and it all ends up that the marriage is on the rocks not because of what one of them have done so much but their attitudes towards it. I shared this at Thanksgiving most relationships that are in peril are depreciating because there is no appreciation. So many, many times I end up telling them they need to make their marriage less about themselves and more about their partner. That is what marriage is, it’s no longer thinking of yourself it is making decisions that effect the marriage and the relationship. Well, your relationship with God I can guarantee you will improve if you make it less about you. Psalms tells us to Be still and know that He is God. How often are you still, I mean really, truly still? We listen in conversations to answer instead of to hear. How true is that with God? We talk to him and talk to him and pray and cry out for him and then we give him no time to talk to us in return. 3. Your life Your life can be summed up into three basic areas. Your time, now we have to go to work, school and things like that but what do you do with the rest of the time? Who does it belong to? Your talents and abilities - God has given all of us an ability that is unique and needed within the church. and Your finances - your finances, how are they used, who do they ultimately belong to? Are you a saver or a spender? Spenders many times find their self worth in the things they are able to aquire. Savers many times find their security in life in the amount of money they are able to put away. Nothing wrong with being either way, except that if your finances belong to God then you give Him what is rightfully His, the FIRST 10% and spend or save the rest. This firmly places your trust and your security where it belongs, in God. I will give you a test later to break each of these down. At work I have to do sign in sheets for every class I speak in. Well, I tell them as I start passing it around first name last initial please. Please, please, please no last names. Every time, the sign in sheet starts out with first name last initials then it slowly goes to including last names. And once one kid puts their last name, they all follow suit. Sadly, they sign the same sign in sheet each time I am there, and the last names start at a different place each time. Sometimes kids who did it correctly the first 3 or 4 or 5 times put their last name the 6, 7 or 8th time I am there. Why? Because they are following suit. Likewise one person, one member of a church family not listening, not growing, not attending or attending for the wrong reason can throw the whole family off track. So my challenge to you today is this. #lessofme what does that mean for you. How do you take John the Baptist’s words and apply them to your life. If he lived in the wilderness, interacted with literally no one, wore animal skins and ate bugs and realized he needed to decrease how much more do we need to? I am giving you my word that Freedom is going to be less about me. I am going to assure you that you will see and hear from me less and less. I am going to lead this movement and I am going to charge in wide open. I am starting it out by letting Justin preach next Sunday while my family and I get away for the weekend. I am going to have some guest speakers, I am wanting to even do some Sundays where you guys share about your faith or your walk with God. I want to play doctor with you for just a minute. If you are like me when you get sick or have something wrong you first research it on the web. Then, you decide if you need to go to the doctor or not. When I finally decide I need to go see the doctor I walk through the door having rehearsed all of the questions and answers that will be needed. I sit down, when the doctor walks in he/she starts asking me questions. One by one I answer them like a champ, like a college exam I studied all night for. THen, the doctor asks me a question I didn't prepare for, then another one and somehow some way those questions will lead up to what the problem is. Not only that, they remind me why I am a pastor and not a doctor. So today, this morning I want to help you figure out if you are living the less of me lifestyle. 1. What is first in your decisions? (with your time, talents or finances what comes first) 2. Does God get the first and best of your time, your talents and your finances? 3. Do you think of yourself as an owner or a steward when it comes to your time, talents and finances?