Less Of Me, More Of Him Intro Series

LESS OF ME . . . MORE OF HIM

(All my sermons us illustrations found on www.sermoncentral.com and all scripture is NIV unless otherwise noted)

(This series of sermons, is a complete re-write of another series I wrote years ago called, When We Move Out God Moves In)

Many years ago, a good friend of mine, Pastor Rick Dunn, of Dallas, GA. Was going to fly out to the little church I was preaching at In the U.P. of Michigan and do Revival for me. At the very last minute some serious health issues came up with his wife and he was unable to attend. This presented me with the task of writing and preaching 5 sermons and VERY little time to make this happen. I was fairly new to the ministry and did not have a lot of material already written, so I asked, Rick, (A.K.A. BUBBA) what he was going to preach on, he told me he was going to preach a series of sermon entitled “When We Move Out . . . God Moves In” I wrote a series of sermons with such a title and have preached them in various locations throughout the years. Today, however, I have a completely different outlook on this subject and so have written, (actually writing) a NEW series and I am going to call them. LESS OF ME . . . MORE OF HIM. That is the concept John the Baptist gave us in the Gospel of Mark 1:7-8, And this was his message: "After me will come one more powerful than I, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. 8 I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

PRAYER

John’s message is one we must take to heart today and understand that life must be LESS about us and MORE about Him. If people would see that the reason God is not moving and working in our lives, our churches, and our country, the way He CAN, is because we have allowed our world to turn us into a people that believe it is ALL about us, and therefore there is NO room for Him. A people unwilling to give up the things that are truly important to us, and therefore we give God no room to truly work in our lives.

Now, it is not just our world, there are numerous examples in the Bible of people unwilling to EMPTY themselves, in order that they might have ALL God has to offer them.

The young man that had great wealth, went away because he was unwilling to give up his wealth to follow Jesus.

Nicodemus of the Pharisees and the Jewish Ruling council, came to Jesus in the night, because he was a proud man that did not want to give up his stature to follow Christ.

Peter could have walked all over the Sea of Galilee, but he allowed doubt to choke out God’s place and because he did not trust God, he sank.

We see examples of those that stopped following Jesus because the times got hard and therefore it was ALL about them and with no room to work, God let them go their own way.

This week and in the weeks to follow we are going to talk about the things that keep us from having an Almighty and powerful God work in our lives, our church and our world. We will look at how greed keeps God from blessings our lives. We will look at how pride keeps God from directing our steps. We will look at how being comfortable keeps God from expanding our church. We will look at how are personalities keep us from being united. We will look at how our doubt and laziness could keep us from crossing the finish line that God REALLY wants to see us cross. It is my hope, prayer and desire to see this series of sermons teach us to empty ourselves that we may in turn be filled with Christ and His Holy Spirit.

God wants us to think about the needs of others and not so much about ourselves, Paul told the church at Philippi the same thing we need to hear today:

Phil 2:1-4 If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

It is NOT about us, it is about doing for others and in turn we do for Christ who told us, “Whatever you have done for this least brother of mine, you have done for me.”