Making Room to Dance

Description
It was our wedding day… …and I was so excited! There was something I was really looking forward to on that day… …something that I was never really allowed to do before. The day my soon-to-be-wife and I would enter into a sacred covenant with each other before God and the witnesses present, and I was really looking forward to doing this one thing.

This one thing is very special, extremely intimate, something that was meant to be sacred and holy a righteous communion between lovers. But the world has—twisted it, tainted it, made it an evil… what was originally intended for good disgusting reviling. But it is good!!

IT is = dancing!

• Dancing works great… just you and the lover of your soul that is, until someone, or something, cuts in.
• Dancing works great… just you and the lover of your soul that is until the song changes.

For in the divine dance with Jesus we find harmony because our eyes are fixed on him.

Blessed Are You? The Be-attitudes

Description
The list of “blesseds” is especially unique. They refer to those who are written off by society… lost causes… unworthy. Jesus is driving home a theme:

God’s hand lifting up those cast down and casting down those lifted up in the human scheme.

What are the Be-attitudes about? The Beatitudes are simply about those, who from the human point of view, are regarded as most hopeless, most beyond all possibility of God’s blessing or even interest, and exhibiting them as enjoying God’s touch and abundant provision from the kingdom of heaven.

What is Jesus doing with the Be-attitudes? Jesus is proclaiming blessing to those who are written off, the lost causes, the unworthy. And in Luke, he proclaims woes to those who are regarded as well off.

Jesus is opening the kingdom of God to everyone!

Is It In You?

Description
“Idolatry, whether ancient or modern, is the futile attempt to look to anyone or anything other than the one true Creator and Provider” (Scott Hafemann in 2001).

“Idolatry is worshiping anything that ought to be used, or using anything that is meant to be worshiped” (Augustine).

Paul traveled the Greek world in Acts 17 and he met with people in Thessalonica, Berea, and Athens, and shared the message of Jesus with them along the way.

A Wild Man

Description
John the Baptist was a wild man. The wilderness was his home. Camel’s hair and leather were his clothing. And locust and wild honey was his dinner. He was a wild man. John was a wild man with a wild message and people were drawn to it…

Now some of you may be saying: “I can relate to this wild man thing, but, Jesus?! Wild?! C’mon… no way. I remember him is Sunday school on the flannel graph. He’s meek and mild and BORING! He is in the pictures with the long flowing hair, the lamb and the lion laying next to him, and children dancing around him.”

The Lion of Judah is not a tame lion, but He’s good. The problem is His Bride is not so good, and so He makes her nervous. When she’s afraid, she tries to tame Him, and make Him safe, controlled, and predictable.

Credit
Much of the inspiration for this message came from Rev. Peter Hiett, in a message he preached called The Wild Man. A number of things were contextualized for Hayward, but the core essence of the message came from Rev. Hiett. It’s much like Jamal in Finding Forester when he needed some inspiration, his mentor gave him one of his literary pieces and told him to start from there, and when he found his own words, to go keep going.

This was the first sermon that I preached at Hayward Wesleyan Church. I had no idea what I was doing. Starting with the core concept of Rev. Hiett’s message really helped me gain my preaching legs (so-to-speak). It helped me to find the particular voice that God has used in the years since this first message.