Dare To Dream God's Dream For Lost People

“Dare To Dream God’s Dream For Lost People”

Subject: Why we need to confront our ungodly prejudices that cause us to ignore certain people and write them off.

Complement: in order to embrace more people and tell them about Jesus !

Preaching Idea: I need to see with God’s eyes in order to dream God’s dream

INTRODUCTION: this series is about “Daring to Dream”! what an exciting life it is in partnership with God! He has called us to partner with him in the building of his church! There is nothing more exciting or more rewarding than that!

Now I want to ask you a question today. What kind of people make you uncomfortable? What kind of people do you avoid? This may give us a clue about how we hinder our dreaming.

Every one of us knows someone like that… we may tend to avoid or ignore people who…

? People who swear a lot

? People who smoke

? People who smell

? People who complain

? People who do weird things with their hair

? People who place strange objects in their noses…ears…tongues…

? Bikers

? Authority figures

? Poor people…or rich people

? Educated people

? Computer geeks

Some of us even have memorized bible verses that justify us in avoiding such people: like don’t cast your pearls before swine…come out from among them and be separate …touch not the unclean thing.

When we avoid people …we say to them, “you’re not important to me”

One of the ways we justify our attitude toward these people is by sticking a label on them. Once the label is on, our mind is made up. Case closed.

We find labels on clothing? these labels MAKE A STATEMENT. WE ARE VERY LABEL CONSCIOUS CULTURE--- GAP...OLD NAVY…CALVIN KLEIN…sometimes we also label people…here are some labels Christians use to ignore people

*LABELS:

• PRO-CHOICE LABEL

• PRO-GAY RIGHTS

• NEW AGE

• LIBERAL

• CALVINIST

• ADD-attention deficient disorder

• …autistic…

• schizophrenic …

These labels often hurt people because they show a limited view of a person…often biased and unfair.

LABELS: It seems that more than ever the compulsion today is to identify, to reduce someone to what is on the label... Roman Catholics are not Christians… Protestants cannot understand Holy Communion. People who write for children are second-class and cannot write for adults. And the list could go on and on and on. We are pigeon-holed and labeled …

I recently inherited a new neighbor. I have to resist the tendency to put a label on him. He is a really hyper and loud personality, its hard to get more than two words in. He drinks, he races (loud) motorcycles. His dog has been doing his business on my grass.

IN THE EARLY DAYS OF THE CHURCH, GENTILES WERE LABELED…AS UNCLEAN AND OUTSIDE THE BOUNDARIES OF GOD’S MERCY…PETER KNEW SOMETHING ABOUT THAT BECAUSE OF HIS LEADERSHIP ROLE.

Read text: Acts 10: 9-20 {“do not hesitate to go with them for I have sent them”}

TRANSITION STATEMENT: what if Peter himself was here…what story would he tell?

Biblical Situation : I am Peter, a fisherman, and I have a limited view of life, and people and God.

My name is Peter. I’m a no nonsense kind of guy. I fish. That’s what I have done all my life. My father was a fisherman. Fisherman a straight forward people. Black is black and white is white. Don’t play games with me; just tell me straight. I make up my mind quick about people and situations. If I like you I like you. If I don’t like you—tough luck. I don’t like Romans and I don’t like Gentiles. Sorry if that bothers you. That’s just the way it is. So, I like to put labels on people: as I see it there are only two kinds of people in the world, Jews and Gentiles. Labels are not all bad…they have a useful function, where I come from you need to know who your dealing with. So I find labels both practical and convenient. As a Jewish man everyday I thank God that I’m not a woman and I’m not a Gentile. That’s so good---who would want to be a woman these days, they have it so tough, they are like property, and many men mistreat women—even by our standards. And gentiles, you must be kidding. They can’t be trusted I tell you. I don’t even talk to Gentiles; our tradition tells not to associate with gentiles. We become unclean and when we are unclean we can’t participate in worship of Yahweh. So I avoid gentiles. Well it wasn’t always that way; Jews and gentiles used to respect each other; but after the Babylonian exile things changed; we were treated so harshly by the Babylonians that a great rift grew between us.