The Adventure Begins/New Discovery Series

Series: Destinations on the Journey of Faith

The Adventure Begins/New Discovery

Proverbs 1:7

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge,

but fools despise wisdom and instruction. (NIV)

Intro: A priest, a minister, and a rabbi were discussing the controversial question: “When does life begin?” The priest said life begins at conception. The minister said it was at “quickening‚” or possibly even birth. The rabbi said life begins when the kids leave home and the family dog dies.

G. Curtis Jones, 1000 Illustrations for Preaching and Teaching (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1986), 212.

A couple of weeks ago I introduced this new series and today we officially get started on this journey.

Review each destination in this journey is just as important as the next…

Each place should be celebrated as a great accomplishment a new frontier of discovery in our journey with an amazing God!!!

I love to travel and see new places…as most of you know I love the coast and the beaches…

Driving to the point where the sea is just within sight…I am just like a kid I am in awe everytime…

I. The Recognition of God

Jesus said in Matt 18:2-3

He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Tell of traveling to world’s fair in bus…

What is the one thing about children that everyone loves…it’s the sense of awe and wonder at something new…children approach new places and things with an innocence and freshness that we as adults often never get back…except when it comes to the first step into a relationship with Jesus…

II. Different ways we arrive at destination one

a. A Sense of Awe

Proverbs 1:7 “The fear [AWE] of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.”

(Slides Fly IN)

Isaiah 6:5

“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

b. A Sense of Need

We often turn to God when we have experienced some sort of pain or discomfort in our lives…

Loss of a job…death of a loved one…diagnosis of illness…divorce/separation…

Basically it is a feeling of being scared or depressed and in these times God becomes very real to us as our source of comfort or encouragement because in the world we feel unloved and often very alone…tell the story of the man at East End just got out of prison…handing out VBS fliers Food Lion parking lot…no kids but a need to be loved and forgiven…

c. A Natural Awareness

Some people begin to search for God through the wonder of the world…

Romans 1:20

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

d. A Search for Greater Meaning in Life

Zacchaeus Luke 19: 1-10

Tax collector very successful in the eyes of the world with riches and position. But the idea of Jesus and the stories of healing and forgiveness had drawn this wee little man to climb a tree just to get a look of Him…But Jesus saw him in the tree and invited himself to have supper in the home of this wee little man who had just enough curiosity about Jesus to climb a tree…when Jesus sat at his table he was convicted of how shallow and wrong his life had been so he pledged to change (repent) his ways and even repay with interest those he had wronged and Jesus summed it all up in

(FLY IN)

Luke 19:9 “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham.”

e. A Sense of Innocence

Again look at the way Jesus talks about the little children in

Matt 18:2-3

He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

In the past four years of service here Leslie and I have seen almost all the children in the Kid’s Church come to know God in with real sense of innocence…how sweet it is to talk to these children and in their words feel their adoration for God and his son Jesus…

III. Stuck/Caged at Destination One

While most of us can remember this wonderful time in our lives other seem to have never left this place in their journey. They become stuck and for various reasons they choose to remain right here…