Finding Your Way Back Home…. AGAIN
Opening:
1. I was taking time to read again the Word last evening and the freshness of the word just washed over me and then I realized it had been awhile since I had actually held the word in my hands and was reading.
I needed to again come back to center and re-align my life spiritually
2. God is mysteriously teaching me thru a man I don’t even know is a Christian.
Ken, the window tint man told me to slow down, chip away slowly at the work, it will all get done.
He was sweeping the parking lot outside his door with a broom when I came flying by and I told him he can use my electric blower. He said he likes to just sweep.
3. I believe God wants me… I believe God wants you… to just come back to that which is most important…
a. Take no thought but for that which is of utmost importance
Must read Luke 12:13-34
A. Its time to come back to the heart of worship to what really matters.
Matt Redman
The song dates back to the late 1990s, born from a period of apathy within Matt’s home church, in Watford, England. Matt’s home congregation was struggling to find meaning spiritually in worship with music at the time.
“There was a dynamic missing, so the pastor did a pretty brave thing,” he recalls. “He decided to get rid of the sound system and band for a season, and we gathered together with just our voices. His point was that we’d lost our way in worship, and the way to get back to the heart would be to strip everything away.”
Reminding his church family to be producers in worship, not just consumers, the pastor, Mike Pilavachi, asked, “When you come through the doors on a Sunday, what are you bringing as your offering to God?”
Matt says the question initially led to some embarrassing silence, but eventually people broke into a cappella songs and heartfelt prayers, encountering God in a fresh way.
“Before long, we reintroduced the musicians and sound system, as we’d gained a new perspective that worship is all about Jesus, and the song ‘The Heart of Worship’ simply describes what occurred.”
When the music fades, all is stripped away, and I simply come / Longing just to bring something that’s of worth that will bless your heart… / I’m coming back to the heart of worship, and it’s all about You, Jesus
B. I been around and something is missing in Christendom today. Something is missing in my life and yours…
1. I believe it is a heart that just worships God for who he is…
C. How many of us have left home spiritually as it were? Doing your own thing…. Going your own way?
1. Must read Luke 15:1-24
2. Play when God ran off the internet
3. What’s stopping you from coming back again?
b. Guilt and shame
1. Guilt works like an inescapable video-tape machine that refuses to forget the mistakes we’ve made… Jesus alone can push the erase button the tape, erase it & eject it forever.
A Pastor shares the following account:
We were doing a baptism service. We had a large, wooden cross on the stage.
We told people before they came up to the platform to be baptized to take a piece of paper, write down a few of the worst sins they’ve committed, fold the paper, and then come and pin it to the cross, because the Bible says our sins are nailed to the cross with Jesus.
One woman wrote. I STILL remember my worst shame & fear
I wrote it on the paper as tiny as I could, that awful sin I had committed as a youth.
I was so scared someone would open the paper and read it and find out it was me. I wanted to get up and walk out of the auditorium &
Never come back, the guilt and fear were that strong.
When my turn came, I walked toward the cross, and I pinned the paper there.
I was directed to a pastor to be baptized. He looked me straight in the eyes, and I thought for sure that he was going to read this terrible secret I kept from everybody for so long.
But instead, I felt like God was telling me, I love you. It’s okay. You’ve been forgiven. I felt so much love for me, a terrible sinner. It’s the first time I ever really felt forgiveness and unconditional love. It was unbelievable, indescribable.
Jesus stands ready to help you put your life back together, this morning.
Account of Peter denying Christ in Luke 22:54-62
Mark 16:6-8, And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him.
But go your way, tell his disciples (and Peter)… Mark 16:7
Let Peter know above all the others, my heart is for him
