A Heartbeat With Promise For Us Series

His Heartbeat:

A Heartbeat with Promise for Us

March 18th, 2012

INTRODUCTION

On Saturday, July 23, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, PBS's ANTIQUES ROADSHOW Veteran ROADSHOW Asian Arts expert Lark Mason identified a collection of five late 17th- or early 18th-century Chinese carved rhinoceros horn cups. Watch this clip from the Antiques Roadshow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxXsiKYDPEs

I guess I won't have to just depend on social security.

The owner of the five sups remained anonymous since he lived in a very small town in the Midwest. What is amazing is that this man lives with life changing resources that were his but never appropriated for 36 of his life.

It is no doubt that his life will be changed because now he knows he has those resources, but I wonder how his life would have been different if he had known the value of those cups earlier and had appropriated them for his benefit.

One of the concerns for the church today is that it may be filled with Jesus followers who are much like this man. Individuals who possess great resources but realize their value.

We been looking at stories from Jesus life that help us understand how his heart beats for us. We discussed how his heart beats for us to experience more, how his heart bests with a passion for changing our lives, how his heart beats with extravagant love for us. Today I want us to turn our ear to another heart beat of Jesus.

P.S. Jesus Heart Beats with Promise for us.

Promise:

a : a declaration that one will do or refrain from doing something specified

b : a legally binding declaration that gives the person to whom it is made a right to expect or to claim the performance or forbearance of a specified act

Jesus made over 200 promises

Some promises of Jesus relate to the far future when he shall have returned in glory. Others relate to his followers' present life on earth. Some promises seem to relate to both the present and the future.

Many of the promises of Jesus are only conditioned upon faith in him. Some of his promises have other conditions such as obedience, prayer, and humility.

Jesus made most of his promises to all who believe them and fulfill their conditions. But some of his promises seem to have been offered only to particular individuals and groups.

But he makes over 200 of them. They pledges of amazing worth, life changing assurances, yet to perhaps too many they are more like secrets not hidden away but never discovered.

Jesus Heart Beats with promise for us. Today I want to look at four promises in the hopes that they inspire us to dig deeper into him in our quest for more of what he has for us.

T. S. Would you pray with me?

I. Jesus heart beats with the promise of life

John 10:10

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. NIV

I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the father but through him. We get eternal life, saved from our past, we get a future.

Promise of life, not riches, not with out hardship, not without trial, but with satisfaction.

A lot is written about living without regrets.

* Commit Yourself to Proactive Living

* Tolerate Nothing

* Identify Proactive People

* Try New Things

* Get Into Action

The list goes on and on. Jesus says, come to me, come deep into me, taste and see, begin to experience it and I'll make your life satisfying.

He will do it right where you are, as you are. And he will never give up on it, the work he begins in you he will bring to completion.

I think there a very few prefect jobs, perfect families, perfect kids, perfect husbands perfect wives, perfect relationship. But there is a perfect God, who has lived above it all who promises to take our imperfect lives and make them wholly complete satisfying in Him.

Jesus offers himself as the answer for life dissatisfactions.

Application:

Less than satisfied, in some element of your life? There is a resource to be tapped, a promise to claim your right to. Jesus in you I can discover life to the full, I want it, I want all of it.

II. Jesus heart beats with the promise of endless possibility.

Overcoming obstacles is one major aspect of life that every human will have to deal with. Jesus promises that our challenges and obstacles can be overcome with endless possibilities.

Mark 9:16-27

Background

20 So they brought him. When the spirit saw Jesus, it immediately threw the boy into a convulsion. He fell to the ground and rolled around, foaming at the mouth.