Who Are We?

Who Are We?

10/15/2004

Introduction… I would like to thank the First Baptist Church of -------for having us here this evening, and I thank the association as well, for allowing me to be a part of this service.

And I want to thank my daughter, Katy, for that beautiful song… She inspires me in the way that she sings, and it inspires me to know that even when we are unable to do certain things in this world in which we live... we know a man who can.

In the 144th psalm, I can just picture King David as he looked heavenward and asked God… What is man that you care for him?

Friends….. Who Are We?

Now, many of you do not know who I am….

I was saved by the grace of God in November 1992, and I surrendered to the ministry in February 1998.

I was with a heavy equipment company for almost 15 years, in which I had been a parts man, a mechanic, and when I left that business to preach I was in management…

The reason I am telling you this to give you the background for what I am about to do…

Many years ago now, an item was placed in one of the offices at this heavy equipment company in Tupelo Mississippi…. And I thought about that item when I started thinking about this message….

So I traveled through Tupelo some time back, and they let me have the item that I want you to see this evening…

Now, I would like to go ahead and ask for your forgiveness in advance, because I am about to do something I have never done before and I may not do it right…

I am not used to having technological items involved when I am preaching… but I have been hearing of the tremendous impact this type of presentation has been having on people, so I wanted to share with you this evening…. for the first time ever in my preaching career, a POWER POINT presentation…

(actually a large poster}

Read Gazelle vs. Lion…

{Every morning in Africa, a Gazelle wakes up.

It must outrun the fastest lion or be killed.

Every morning in Africa a lion wakes up.

It must outrun the slowest Gazelle or stave.

It doesn’t matter weather you are a Lion

or a Gazelle, when the sun comes up,

You better be running.}

Again I ask the question… WHO ARE WE?

I use the term WE quite a bit in the messages I bring… because by the time a preacher is ready to bring a message before the people, God has already dealt with the preacher first…

So, I am not asking who you are tonight… but who are WE!

Now, WE are a lot of things…

We are Americans, Fathers, Parents, Spouses, Pastors,

We are The Rocky Bayou Baptist Association

Teachers, Leaders, business people, workers…

We are Christians.. We are SINNERS…

We are souls… pulled from the very pits of Hell by our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus….

My friends, WE are the Church of America….

But the Church of America… many Christians… many Pastors… many Leaders…. Have accepted or at least capitulated to the ways of this immoral and corrupt society in which we now live…

Friends, WE…. The church in America as a whole…. WE… are living like the Gazelle… we are running away… we are running from evil… we are running in FEAR….. when we should be the LION!

WE should be on the Attack!

In Matthew 16:18 Jesus Himself Says…

18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Now, in that passage of scripture Jesus is not saying that we can DEFEND ourselves against Hell….

Jesus is saying that Hell cannot defend itself against us!

But that’s not how we are living is it?

…………………………………………..

I remember last year at the annual meeting when the committee asked me to bring the message tonight, they told me I had 365 days to prepare….

And I thought… Man, that will be plenty of time….

Yea… that’s why I was still working on this message this afternoon….

I have spent this year, trying to decide just what tonight’s message should be about…

And, I don’t want to bore you or anything, but I just wanted to kind of spend a few minutes and carry you through the process I went through in trying to determine the message for this evening…

We know that wise King Solomon told us that there is nothing new under the sun…

I wont be bringing you anything new tonight, I will not be giving you any new revelations from God… We will just be looking at Gods word, that is relevant for the ages…