God And Salvation Series

So hey there, good to see you and welcome to this place that we call DCC. If you are new here my name is Greg, I’m a part of the team here at DCC, usually up here at this point in the service, but I wasn’t here last weekend. Stacy and I actually spent a big part of the weekend with our oldest daughter Sydney, her husband Keith and my two grandkids Decker and Maverick. They are growing up so fast. I haven’t shown you in a while so let me show you. Here you go. While we were there we learned that Decker has been punching and trying to choke out kids at Day Care. His mom is horrified, in my mind I’m thinking future Navy Seal. So that’s where I was last weekend and as always I’m pumped to be back and we are pumped, jazzed, and thrilled to have you with us this weekend and that is especially true if you are brand new. If that is you we want you to know that regardless of how your story reads, regardless of what you believe or don’t believe, even if your grandkids are not as good looking or as cool or maybe as mean as mine, you are safe and welcome in this place. You really are in a room full of people who are just like you and we hope you feel and experience that in your time here with us today.

ILLUST> Back in February 2015 I traveled with a few of our DCC team over to Southeast Asia to visit our mission partner Exodus Road an organization committed to rescuing children caught in human sex trafficking around the world. So we would grab dinner every night and then head back to the hotel to talk through our plan, pray ourselves up, get the necessary surveillance equipment in place and then head out into the streets at about 10 pm to investigate and hopefully locate victims of human trafficking. The first night, the first hour or so didn’t result in much. It began to feel like we might be wasting our time and then there she was. She was dressed in the same bikini as the other girls in that brothel but something was different. She had braces on and looked to be about 13. She unlike the others stayed close to the mamma son who led her to the dance floor. When she tried to step back the mamma son shoved her back on and pointed to a pole. She grabbed it and stood there looking down at the floor. Some other dancers sitting with the men in front of her put their hands to their faces reminding her to smile. It was obvious that she was terrified and did not want to be there. Everything in me wanted to intervene and rescue her in that moment. We couldn’t. All we could do was gather intel in hopes that she might be rescued at some point in the future. As I watched her I couldn’t help but think of all the churches that refuse to get on board with Exodus Road because sharing the gospel, the good news about Jesus, God’s plan of salvation is not their first priority. Maybe I’m wrong, but in that moment I couldn’t help but think that we seem to be really confused, to have a distorted image of what God really cares about and who He really is.

If you haven’t been here before we are in a series that we are calling Distortion talking about this distorted image that we all tend to have of God. On this journey we’ve talked about the fact that God is not the angry punisher ready to zap us whenever we screw up, that he is not a republican or a democrat, he’s actually not political at all. Then last week Morgan talked about something we don’t often think about when we think about God, the nurturing, caring, comforting mother heart of God. While that’s a bit disruptive, it is something that I have been really navigating personally in my own life and story for the past year or so. It really is life-changing stuff, and I would encourage you to stay in the tension of that. So, today, as we jump back into this I want us to talk about this, God and salvation. We sing a song in church world with a lyric that says our God is a God who saves. While that is true, what if God can’t be contained in the small salvation box that we tend to put him in? What if he is about so much more than just that? That’s what I want us to talk about in the time we have left together today. So, let’s do this…