Stewardship and Life Management 2
[This material is to be used in cinjuc=tion with Dr Harry Wendt’s material “In Heavens Name, Why on Earth.”
The 1970’s Bob Dylan on his Slow Train Coming Album, sang a song entitled. “Gotta Serve Somebody”
The song chorus goes like this:
You’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed,
You’re gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord,
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.
In the album Bob sings about his belief in Jesus and how he sees Jesus at work in the world. While there are a few who doubt Bob’s sincerity he is a believer. In a 2009 interview with Bill Flanagan promoting his Christmas LP, ‘Christmas in the Heart’, Flanagan commented on the "heroic performance Dylan gave of "O Little Town of Bethlehem" and that Dylan "delivered the song like a true believer". Dylan replied: "Well, I am a true believer." [Wikipedia].
Now after last week when I started teaching from the Harry Wendt material on Stewardship and Life Management I asked for feedback and discovered that Harry’s material really rang a bell with some but for those who are not into diagrams there was a bit of a struggle with some of them. So I’m going to address the material a bit differently.
The theme I’m looking at today is along the lines of “Worship God alone you are His people” (SBI). I’m going to use Dr Harry’s material. But I’ll do it slightly less like a lecture.
Summing up last week we got to the point where we knew that God had a plan; where all humans would live in harmony worshiping Him for what He has done in for us, our ancestors blew it and sin entered the word, we also heard that God is not lost, we are lost and God comes looking for us! Some don’t want to be found. Also that God owns everything and we are provided with what we need to live. God provided a way for us to have a relationship with Him through Jesus the Servant King.
This week we are going to look at Christianity and what that is about. If you are not a Christian I reckon that this is a good opportunity to have a good look at Christians and see if they’re doing it right. The interesting thing if you intend to give the Christians around you the once over is that the central thing in their lives will become fairly obvious as we spend the next 20 minutes examining this material.
Illustration 2A
In this slide we have a person and he’s looking at the world;
The flowing stuff is what’s important in this bod’s world. Point 3.
They are looking at all this stuff and wondering “How does my relationship with Jesus fit into all this?” or “How do I fit Christianity into all these other things?”
Really the question should be “How does all this stuff fit into my relationship with Christ?”
The guts of the matter is that Christianity is not just an important part of life, “Jesus is to be Lord of all life, not just part of it.”
Point 7:
Point 8:
Point 9: (Read) Now with that in mind, our Vision Statement here at the Corps is ”Living for God, serving all people.” In serving others are we serving God?
Point 10.
Illustration 2B
If we look at this illustration we see that the bod is looking a lot happier as they’ve figured it out.
Illustration 2C
What is Church?
Point 5: In addition, adding to what Dr Harry has said here, we are to look at what we do in life as being God’s calling on our life. If you feel uneasy or out of place in what you are doing in life it could be that God is calling you to be doing something else for the sake of building His kingdom here on Earth.
Dr Harry sums this illustration up by saying in Point 6:
Illustration 2D
The secular world – satan’s church
In point 3: Dr Harry points out that is wrong and dangerous to look at things this way. There is no secular realm. Romans 8:12-14, 1 John 3:8 and Matthew 6:24.
Point 7: Ephesians 6:10-18
Illustration 2E
The Human Body
In this illustration Dr Harry points out that no member of the body, that’s the human body can operate alone that the body as a whole lives together, with individual parts serving the rest, bullet point 2, 3, 4.
Christ’s Body - The Church
Point 1:Ephesians 1:22-23
Point 2:
Point 3: Where are you at, if you have not been part of that community the body of Christ is this a step you want to take, if so etc.
