Such A Time As This

Such A Time As This

(All my sermons use illustrations found at www.sermoncentral.com and ALL scripture is NIV unless otherwise noted)

If you watch the news, or listen to the radio, actually if you have a pulse, you know that our world has changed, and continues to change everyday.

DO YOU REMEMBER "DO OVERS?"

They were part of the "Good Ole" Days. I know, Let’s play a little game… Everyone raise their hand. Now put it down when you can’t remember what I mention next…

How many of you remember…

90’s – Beanie Babies; Teenie Beanies; Grunge; and the phrase CHA-CHING!!!

80’s – PacMan; the Rubic’s cube; Leg Warmers; the Fraggles TV show.

70’s – 8 track Tapes; platform shoes; and leisure suits.

60’s – LP’s; Troll dolls; and the first lava lamps!

50’s – Wax coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water inside, Hula-hoops, and putting peanuts in your ten-cent 7 oz glass coke bottle before you drank it.

40’s – Party lines on your telephones; and Big Band Music.

All of us can remember the good ole days

When you could happily catch fireflies for an entire evening.

When money issues were handled by whoever was the banker in "Monopoly."

And it wasn’t odd to have two or three "best" friends.

When being old referred to anyone over 20 years of age.

When the net on a tennis court was the perfect height to play volleyball – with no real rules.

Remember when the worst thing you could catch from the opposite sex was "cooties."

How it was magic when dad would "remove" his thumb.

Remember when you were finally tall enough to ride the "big people" rides at the amusement park and when a foot of snow was a dream-come true.

And the best part for me was how you could correct any mistake by yelling, "do over!" Well the good ole days are not done! God gives us a “Do Over”!

SUCH A TIME AS THIS

I truly believe that we Christians are here in the NOW, because there is something we can do about the place where our society finds itself. In the book of Esther a decree was issued to kill all the Jews and Mordecai and Esther could have despaired and decided to keep to their own and save only themselves. Instead they saw that God had placed them in their positions for a purpose, so they seized the moment and acted.

Est 4:13-14 For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father's family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?"

PRAYER

When it is within our reach to save others, we must do so. We cannot withdraw, or wallow in the things we do not have, but we must ask God for direction and ACT! I for one believe that God put our church here “for such a time as this.”

In Bill Gates’ new book Business @ The Speed of Thought, he lays out 11 rules that students do not learn in high school or college, but should.

He argues that our feel-good, politically correct teachings have created a generation of kids with no concept of reality who are set up for failure in the real world.

RULE 1 - Life is not fair; get used to it.

RULE 2 - The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

RULE 3 - You will NOT make 40 thousand dollars a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone, until you earn both a high school and college degree.

RULE 4 - If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure.

RULE 5- Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping, they called it opportunity.

RULE 6 - If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

RULE 7 - Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills; cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents’ generation, try "delousing"

the clothes in your own room.

RULE 8 - Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades; they will let you try as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.