Rewiring the Think Kink!
Boundin'
I love love love love love love love love love love love lovelove love love love love lovelove love love love love lovelove love love love love lovelove love love love love lovelove love love love love love this short animation by Pixar call Boundin' about a Lamb and a Jackalope. You have to have to watch it.
Check out more information about this short animation by Pixar call Boundin' - http://www.pixar.com/shorts/bdn/index.html or on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09pKpyA6kdc
Sue Carpenter and Carolyn Boyd were guest speaking at our church today and I really appreciated what Sue Carpenter shared on the pulpit. Felt that God was speaking to me through her sermon. Hope it encouraged you too.
Rewiring the Think Kink!
1 Corinthians 1:27
But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.
Introduction:
Whatever happens now will link to the next if God is in it...even if it may not make sense now, if God is in it, it will work itself out.
God chose the FOOLISH to confound the wise; and He chose the WEAK to confound the strong. So it's great news for the foolish and the weak because it means that God is going to use you.Psalm 16:9
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;
my body also will rest secure,
Rejoice always! If you are feeling exhausted, troubled or worried the key is "THEREFORE"
In the Bible when you see the word "therefore", God is usually pointing to the fact that "Because of what i said, therefore..." So, look at what God said before verse 9.
v 7 - I will praise the LORD, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me.
Whose voice are you listening to? Are you listening to God's voice or are you listening to man's voice? Who is instructing your heart? Who have you set before you? If it God?
Galatians 3:3
Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?
When we seek advise outside of God, we see this verse becoming a reality. When we are not seeking after God's leading and way, we are actually training to attain our own set of goals by our own effort instead of God's way and relying on God's strength.
Within the church, we can sometimes get "religious" - we seek an image of Who we believe God should be instead of allowing God to be exactly Who He is.
Sometimes, we can't do to sleep. We are dead tired but something has us thinking and worrying, and we lie tossing and turning but just can't sleep. Do you know that we can receive instructions from God even in our sleep? (v 8)
When that happens, talk to God...PRAY! Sing songs of God. Play them. Ask yourself...
IS THE LORD YOUR FIRST FOCUS?
It's not something natural / in-born within us to place God as the focus in our life but it is sth we need to consciously do. We begin to fall when we take our eyes off Jesus.
Peter was walking on water until he began to take his eyes off God. What is the greatest challenge you are facing right now? Whatever problem we are facing right now, close your eyes and imagine that challenge Then as you are picturing the challenge, call out "Jesus"...place Him in the situation...When you focus on Jesus, everything changes.
Like the lamb in the Jackalope cartoon Bouncin', all it needed was a fresh look at his situation.
How do we come back / REBOUND?
Feelings: 2 Cor 6:11
Frustrations: 2 Cor 1:8
Fears: 1 Cor 2:3
Have you ever come to a point we just don't know what to say.
"The Lord is our sure HOPE"
Paul admitted he was weak and fearful. Vulnerability is not weak. Vulnerability is strengthening. Humility is being honest about our weaknesses.
Isaiah 55:9 -
"As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts."
God doesn't think the way we think ... God works the way God works, not the way we think God works. When we try to do it our own way, we will not succeed.
1 Cor 1:27, Acts 14:15, 2 Cor 4:7, Matt 16:26, 2 Cor 12:5, 7, 9-10
Many times, Paul refers to a "thorn" in his flesh that humbles him - This is Paul's weakness.
There was once a man. At the age of 22, Abraham Lincoln completely failed in business. At 23, he ran for a political seat and did not win. Married the woman he loved but at the age of 26, his wife died. At 27, he had a breakdown because he could not cope, but came back to run for political office at the age of 29. He was defeated again. A few times
Any normal person would have given up by this time.
But at the age of 37, ran for office and was finally elected. Then at age 39, at renomination, he was kicked out. Defeated at age 46, 47, 49!
THEN, at the age of 51, he was elected President of the United States. Some of you may already know who this is - it is none other than Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States and the man who changed USA by abolishing slavery.
Jackie Pullinger is a woman who until today has given her life to reaching out to the drug addicts and riff raffs of the slum areas in Hong Kong...At a young age, she ventured to Hong Kong on her own and set camp in the poorest area of Hong Kong without knowing a word of Cantonese. Today, she has touched many lives with her ministry. In her life, she has seen miraculous deliverance of drug addicts who were miraculous able to be cured of drug addiction without any withdrawal symptoms at all! And to see these very same people go back to drugs a few years later.
Quote: "We love our people whatever they turn out well or not. The successes do not vindicate our ministry nor do the failures/disappointments nullify it".
If you are doing what God ask you to do, even if we keep failing, it does not nullify our ministry. The important thing is that we keep doing what we believe God is leading us to do, not giving up!
Strengths create competition but it is weaknesses that create community. When we open up our hearts to reveal our weaknesses, it is amazing how it draws people together...
Do you want to impress or influence?
We can easily impress people by our appearance in the public but it is only through close encounters one to one that will influence people around us.
When we rebound it is to fulfill:
His MINISTRY - to believers thru you
His MISSION - to non-believers thru you
James 1:23-24 (New International Version)
Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror 24and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.
Stop thinking your way. Did we seek God and ask what God was up to?
Stop only having 1 way of thinking / doing things. We need to go to God first who will transform the way we think.
How? GIVE YOURSELF AS A GIFT TO GOD.
Give yourself fully to God. Place your life...again and again and again and again...into His hands.
When God changes us, we will find it was not the situation that needed to be change but us, because as God changes us, people will react differently to us.
God is waiting for the person to truly hand over our life to Him. Accept God's agenda.
Pray - "Father, i will do what you bless" not "Bless what I do"
Romans 6:13
Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness.
Psalm 44:3
It was not by their sword that they won the land,
nor did their arm bring them victory;
it was your right hand, your arm,
and the light of your face, for you loved them.
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