Purpose In The Process

Title: Purpose in the Process (Timeless Truths Wk 1)

Text: Galatians 5:16-26

Bottom Line: There is a reason and purpose why God doesn't change us overnight. There's Purpose in the Process.

Intro

Welcome to our first service at our new permanent, temporary location!

Where are all my 1st service people at? How about 2nd service?

Now I a bone to pick… Ever since i’ve gotten here I’ve noticed a big difference between 1st and 2nd… Whenever I told a joke at the 9am service everyone would laugh. But when I told the same joke at 11am service maybe a chuckle, maybe… So one one the things I’m excited for is for you normal 2nd service people to learn to loosen up a bit.

I’m guessing as you look around you probably see a lot of faces that you do not recognize. This is a great opportunity to get to know some people that you would otherwise maybe not see regularly. So while we are here I rather than glaring at that person for the other service that’s sitting in your seat, go meet some new people!

To go along with our new location we are going to be starting a new series.

You probably do not know this about me but I love growing things. I like looking flowers, growing my own veggies. Well maybe I should say I like having a nice garden, but sometimes the effort required not so much… And I’ve been like this since birth, my mom is a huge gardener, her backyard is amazing and since I was little it’s always getting featured in some kind of magazine.

I even have a picture of me when I was 4 featured in an article with my mom… (show picture) I know, I know, I was a good looking kid.

But I’ve grown up around gardening and growing things… So when we moved here and we bought a townhouse with a small backyard I figured I would start a vertical garden. That way I could hold more stuff and take up less space. Now what I should have done was hop on the internet and find a blueprint. What I did do was grab a wooden pallet and just start building with absolutely no plan. In my mind I would have this amazing looking, rustic vertical garden. That everyone would think wow… That guy knows what he’s doing. That was not the case…

My no plan, plan ended up costing me as I constantly ran into problem after problem and was constantly undoing my work so I could make progress. Eventually I just basically had to toss the pallet and just used 2x4s and plywood. Moral of the story is start with a better plan…

So this spring I filled my garden up with dirt and planted a variety of veggies and herbs. (show picture Keep up until next one)

But this is were my lack of foresight again came into play, again… Because I decided that the recommend distance to plant the plants away from each other was more of a guideline that I could adjust.

So I packed the plants in as tight as I thought I could. And I thought this would work since they were so small…

This worked for about a month. Until they grew and grew and grew. And then they started to look like this… (next picture)

That’s the last picture I took. But the tomato plant on the left ended growing over top the fence and way over the tomato cage support. What you need to know is this happened because I’m such a good gardener and not because of lack of planning.… Fast forward another week It ended up choking out several of my other plants and then in a wind storm was snapped in half. We got a few tomatoes but it was never quite the same after that…

Gardening takes planing and work to maintain. I was good at one, but not at the other. If you’ve ever gardened maybe you’ve experienced this. You have to have a plan and you have to execute the plan.

I think many our relationships with God is kinda like that story I just described… We start with this grandiose idea of how much we are going to grow our relationship with God, but with no real plan we just wing it. And a few months later we realize that didn’t work so we move on.

And what we want to do in this series is we want to look at specific ways that we can grow. How can we in practical ways, connect with God through pray, rest, worship, fasting. If you’ve been around church you’ve probably heard these referred to as spiritual disciplines. In reality these disciplines are actually timeless practices that have been around for many many years.