Messages From God Series

TRANSFORMATIONS

From the beginning of history until the middle of the 1800’s most communication was by letters, flags, signal fires.

It was the invention of the telegraph that by Samuel Morse in 1837 that changed everything. From this simple idea – an electric pulse – our world has become smaller and much more interconnected.

I have witnessed many of these changes. As a child I grew up with a large black telephone on a table in the living room. It was owned by the phone company and there were actually four different homes on the same party line. I’m not sure – it has been a long time – but I’m pretty sure that the ring signal for the Stacy home was one long and one short. You could either dial the number – there were no push buttons – or you could dial 0 and ask the operator to connect you to your party. Oh, there were only 5 numbers to dial, too.

Long distance calls were a huge deal. You would answer the phone and the person calling would immediately identify themselves and then say, “I’m calling long distance.” They did that so you would get the person being called to the phone as quickly as possible. Long distance phone calls were very expensive – usually 5 or even 10 dollars – which in 1956 was a lot of money!

Now we have cell phones with no long distance charges anywhere in the country, voice mail, email, instant messages, and text messages. But I’ve noticed that when it comes to text messages there is a similarity between them and that old long distance phone call.

I’m not too big on texting… so I’ll let Tyler explain how it works.

Messages from God

God: u there?

God: wnt 2 tlk?

God: msg 4 u

How texting and getting messages works – how it demands our attention

Today we want to talk to you about the foundational spiritual discipline of listening to God

Touching God is not that hard. In fact it’s easy. The challenge is taking the time to do it – consistently.

Part of it has to with the importance of changing our understanding of prayer.

Prayer is an almost universal practice. According to George Barna, something in the neighborhood of 94% of people in America pray. But most of our prayers involving asking God to DO something. Our prayers are always do…, bless…, provide…, help…, change… fix… and the requests just go on and on.

Maybe… Just maybe we should be looking at this differently. Think for a moment – we have a God that cares so much about us that he created a beautiful world for us to live in. We have a God that cares so much about us that when we were separated from him by our rebellious and selfish actions He sent his only begotten son to redeem us and make a way for us to come home. We have a God that cares so much about us that He has given us his Holy Spirit to dwell in us and to make us alive eternally. Is it possible… In fact, is it likely that God wants to say something to us? What if God is trying to say something to me?

Most critical piece leading to transformation – the word of God

We want to get you into the word of God – every day.

Two Reasons People Don’t Listen to God

It’s too hard

Don’t do anything hard.

Hard is doing stupid things in your teens and 20’s that you pay for in the 30’s

Hard is making bad value jud

Hard is making a bad marriage

Hard is raising kids without

It’s not hard to read and understand some literature

I don’t believe it

Do you read the newspaper because you believe it? I don’t think so!

Go home and start looking at all the magazines you read. Do you only read them because you believe them? Ten ways to make your man love you! 15 ways to work off that tummy. 100 ways to make a million dollars by the time your 35 years old. I don’t think so!

What about books and movies. Do you

We don’t read magazines because we believe them – we read them because they are interesting and we learn something.

You don’t have to believe it – just read it

The Bible has shaped our world – you owe it to yourself to read it and understand it.

Psalms 119

97 Oh, how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long.

Let me tell you what David said about the Word of God in his life.

Before we start it would be good to point out a few things about David and his time. He wrote this poem hundreds of years after the time of Moses – who wrote the Bible in David’s time. In fact David only had eight books – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Judges, and the book of Job. This is the only literature he had that came from God.