Word Keeper

How You Live (Turn Up the Music)

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This is the last sermon in the One Month to Live series. The last four weeks wee looked at four principles from the last year of Jesus’ life:

1. Live Passionately
2. Love Completely
3. Learn Humbly
4. Leave Boldly

This week, we look at how to live with no regrets. Of course, the ubest way to have a no regrets life is to follow the principles that were exhibited in the life of Jesus, and we’re going to look at how Paul lived with no regrets too. … Here’s three snapshots from Paul’s life.

Acts 20:17-27 – Here, Paul is probably in his 50′s and feels called to go Jerusalem even though he’s sure he’ll be persecuted there. Before he leaves, he calls the leaders of the church of Ephesus to come meet with him so he can say goodbye because he thinks he’ll never see them again. … Paul is able to say that say that he has no regrets about his life and that he lived with passion. Then he says he has no regrets about his witness. Then we see in verse 24 that Paul is determined to finish strong, and this an amazing verse and I hope that we all may say it throughout our lives. It doesn’t matter as much how you start, but what does matter is how you finish in life. Finish strong. Finish the race and complete the task. … Paul thinks he won’t be coming back to Ephesus, but you don’t know for sure when you will die. We think Paul made it back to Ephesus. … Strive to make this declaration: “I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of all men.” … The wording in this probably comes from Ezekiel 33 where God says, “Since he heard the sound of the trumpet but did not take warning, his blood will be on his own head. If he had taken warning, he would have saved himself. But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet to warn the people and the sword comes and takes the life of one of them, that man will be taken away because of his sin, but I will hold the watchman accountable for his blood.”

… Then Paul goes to Jerusalem and is arrested and brought to trial before the Sanhedrin, the same group that condemned Jesus to the cross, and probably thought he was about to die. But God had other plans for Paul and told Paul that Paul would be His witness in Rome. After a couple years in prison in Caesarea, Paul got a trial and appealed to Rome. They started on a ship to Rome, and the ship wrecked. They finally made it to Rome where Paul was in prison for two more years. Only this time it was under house arrest. He could send and receive letters and have guests. This is when he probably wrote a few of his letters we have in our Bible, one of those being Philippians. …

Philippians 1:20-25 – Pray this prayer: “I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.” … Christ can either be shoved out or exalted in your body by the way you talk, the way you act. … Paul isn’t sure whether he should pray to get out of house arrest or to depart to be with Christ. He is torn between wanting to help the churches and wanting to go to Heaven. But no matter what, he desires for Christ to be exalted in his body. He feels that he is needed on Earth to help grow the church more, but he desires to be with Christ. He becomes determined he should pray to live and he does live.

… Paul gets released and makes a fourth missionary journey. He even goes back to Ephesus, the people he said goodbye to. At the end of the journey, Paul is arrested and imprisoned in Rome once again. Only this time is a little different. He’s not under house arrest. He’s in a cold dungeon and Nero is emperor. Rome is in trouble and Nero blames the Christians. Paul writes II Timothy. He knows he’s about to depart to Heaven. …

2 Timothy 4:6-8 – Paul alludes to his life like it is a sacrifice to God. He had poured his life out to God. … Make this promise: “I will fight the good fight, I will finish the race, I will keep the Faith.” There’s spiritual warfare going on everywhere. Fight the good fight. The Christian life is a marathon. Run through the tape. Stay faithful to God.

The key to living with regrets is to finish strong. … When Paul comes to the end of his life, he doesn’t look back on his accomplishments. He looks at his faithfulness. … It’s more important how you finish than how you start. Paul started out killing Christians. He could have lived a life of guilt and not done anything, but he didn’t. He had a rough start, but God forgave him. … Living with no regrets doesn’t mean you don’t make mistakes or nothing you would change. It means you come to the end of your life having done everything you could and asking forgiveness for your sins. … Here’s a little baseball story. On opening day in 1954, the Cincinnati Reds played the Milwaukee Braves. Two rookies started that game. One for Cincinnati, the other for Milwaukee. For Cincinnati, Jim Greengrass hit four doubles in his first game and Cincinnati won 9-8. Everyone got excited about this new player. You probably never heard of Jim Greengrass. But you may have heard of the left fielder who started for Milwaukee. Henry Aaron went 0-5 that day. Henry (Hank) Aaron went on to set the record for home-runs, surpassing Babe Ruth’s record. … You may have had a rough start, but you can finish strong.

Jason One Month to Live, religion, Series, Sunday Sermon

So, this is really late, and I’m sorry about that. – I’ll post the Wednesday Worship tomorrow, Thursday.

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Legacy

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How will you be remembered? What will your obituary say? Most people don’t get to read their obituary, but Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, had the chance to read what people wrote about him when they thought he was dead. It wasn’t very nice. They called him “the merchant of death.” Nobel did not like what he read and set out to change his legacy. How did he intend to do this? By founding the Nobel Peace Prizes according to his will. Now, most people were probably unaware that the man that the Nobel Peace Prizes are after created dynamite, and that is because he set out to change his legacy.

The past three weeks, we looked at principles from the end of Jesus’ life. The first was to Live Completely. The second was to Love Completely. The third was to Learn Humbly. And now we look at the fourth, to Leave Boldly.

What can you do to leave a legacy on Earth and gain a reward in Heaven? Learn from the example of Jesus during His last year on Earth (Luke 9-18). The key verse is Luke 9:51. …

Jesus started His ministry at age 30 and we think it lasted just three years because of the Passover feasts mentioned by John. The first year was the early Judean ministry, and a year of obscurity where He went into the desert for forty days and then was preaching but He hadn’t yet gathered His disciples. The second year was His great Galilean ministry, where He called His disciples to follow Him and spoke to large crowds and performed many miracles. The third, Jesus know His time is coming when He will crucified. So what does Jesus do? He “resolutely set out for Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). … Jesus knew He was going to die in Jerusalem, but He was determined. He did not head straight towards Jerusalem; He took an indirect path to Jerusalem, but was always getting closer to it. He’s zoning in on Jerusalem. … So, what does Jesus do?

1. Invest your life in people.
   1. Make time for growing Christians (Luke 9:10, 18, 28). … In the last year of His ministry, Jesus turned His attention to His disciples; instead of going around, constantly speaking to large groups, He spent more time with His disciples. … When you invest time in growing Christians, you invest in eternity.
   2. Make time for lost people (Luke 15:1-7). … Jesus was criticized by the Pharisees for spending time with tax collectors and sinners. … Spending time with lost people can help bring them to Christ, which should be a priority in our lives. One of the most important things you can ever do is help bring someone to Christ. It’s another investment in eternity.
   3. Make time for Children (Luke 18:15-16). … Quite frankly, today’s children are the future. Spending time with children, guiding them through life, teaching them morals, and just being a good example for them is how we can influence the future of the world. … An investment in the future and in eternity.
   4. Make time for hurting people (Luke 18:35-42). … Jesus’ priority was the spiritual needs of people, but He still had time to help those who were physically challenged.
2. Assign spiritual things a higher priority than physical things (Luke 10:38-42). … Mary listened to Jesus while Martha was worried about everything else. Martha got upset, but Jesus explained that listening to Him was/is more important than all the little things. … How many days did you not check FaceBook this month? Now, how many days did you not read your Bible this month? Yeah, if you’re like me, there’s a big difference between those two numbers. For those of you who don’t do FaceBook, but do sports, how many games of your favorite team (or your team, if you play a sport) have you missed? How many weeks of church have you missed? … When you look at your calendar, your schedule, are you assigning a higher priority to the spiritual or the physical? Are you leaving a legacy that will last?
3. Exchange material resources for spiritual wealth (Luke 16:1-11). … Jesus tells a strange parable. It’s the story of a dishonest man, and Jesus commends him, not for his dishonesty, but for his shrewdness. He used that under his care to gain an advantage for himself. … Jesus says we need to have a pure shrewdness. We should exchange the wealth we gather on Earth to gain rewards in Heaven. … It’s like when you get ready to go to another country and you exchange money of your currency at the airport for money of the currency of wherever you are going. You can’t use the foreign currency where you are now, but you have it for when you get to your destination. … You can’t take worldly wealth with you too Heaven, but you can exchange it for Heavenly rewards by investing in the Kingdom. Many of us don’t have anything that our great-grandparents passed on. So all this stuff we work so hard to obtain on Earth, probably won’t last three generations beyond us. It’s going to be somebody else’s or it’s going to be gone. … If you’re going to lose it all, why not just invest in the Kingdom and receive Heavenly reward in exchange? Leave a legacy on Earth and gain rewards in Heaven by investing in the Kingdom of God.

“One Solitary Life” is an awesome illustration that depicts the life of Jesus and the impact He has had on the entire world.

Jason One Month to Live, religion, Series, Sunday Sermon

O, Calvary’s Lamb

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Audio currently unavailable

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So far in this “One Month to Live” series, we’ve looked at two principles from the final days of Jesus. The first one was to live passionately. The second was to love completely. Today we will learn to learn humbly.

If you break an arm, you learn there’s a lot that you cannot do with only one arm. As  result, you often have to swallow your pride and ask for help for something you normally do on your own. … I’ve been blessed enough to have never broken a bone, but I also have Cerebral Palsy and can’t do a lot of things with my hands. I can, however, do a lot of stuff with my feet. And because I can do so much with my feet, I can be pretty prideful, but there are those times everyday when I have to swallow my pride and ask for help to do something that is trivial for most people. I think that as a result, I have learned how to humble myself when I need to. But I really should be humble all the time. I, all of us actually, need to learn humbly.

Hebrews 5:7-9; 2:10; Philippians 2:3-11; Mark 14:32-36; Luke 22:44

Hebrews 5:7 : Did God answer Jesus’ prayer when He was suffering? … Yes, God answered Jesus’ prayer, But God answered in a different way than Jesus’ human-element wanted God to answer. God answered in a way that benefit everyone, not just Jesus. … As humans, we don’t see the big picture, but God does and He knows what’s best for us.

Hebrews 5:8 : How did Jesus learn obedience through suffering? … Jesus knew it was God’s will and that He had to it.

Hebrews 5:9; 2:10 : How was Jesus made perfect through suffering? … The process of Jesus becoming the perfect savior was completed through suffering. If Jesus had  never suffered, then He wouldn’t be the perfect savior because He wouldn’t have experienced everything we, as humans, experience. … We can never be perfect, but we can try. … Often, when we suffer in one area, another area becomes stronger. For example: A blind man can’t see and must rely on his hearing and feel to let him know what is around him. The blind man’s hearing awareness becomes so good that he recognizes how certain people sound when they walk and his smelling becomes so sensitive that he can tell who is around him just by the smell.

Philippians 2:3-11 : The barrier that keeps us from learning life lessons in adversity is pride.

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This is part of the small group video we watched for this week. It’s an interview with Nick Vujicic, a man with no arms and no legs, but a great personality. Here’s part 1 and part 2 of the interview. I really think you should watch this. It’s amazing.

Jason One Month to Live, religion, Series, Sunday Sermon

This one’s a little late because I guess I just wasn’t thinking yesterday morning.

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How You Live (Turn Up the Music)

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When asked, “what would you do if you knew you had one month to live?” most people respond by saying something about relationships, usually spending more time with family. People don’t usually leave a message about sports or work when they’re dieing, but they do leave an “I love you/him/her” message. … When you come to the end of your life, if you have regrets, it is most likely that those regrets will be in the area of relationships. … If we want to live a no regrets life, let’s change how we live in regard to our relationships. Extend forgiveness. Express love. Overlook faults. Reconcile where there’s division. … Come to the end of your life having loved completely.

Now let’s look at two biblical examples of men coming to the end of their lives and see how they handled relationships.

David is a negative example of what to do at the end of life. 1 Kings 2:1-9. David knew he was about to die, so he called his son, Solomon to him and gave him instructions. Verses 1-4 are good directions, but then in verses 5-6, he tells his son to kill Joab, the son of Zeruiah. Then verse 7 is good advice again. But verses 8-9 aren’t so good as he tells Solomon to kill Shimei, the son of Gera. … In regard to his relationships, David died harboring bitterness, resentment, unforgiveness, and seeking revenge.

In contrast, we have Jesus. John 13:1-5. Jesus knew He was about to die; “the time had come.” What did Jesus at the end of His life? He showed the full extent of His love. … What can we learn from Jesus life? Last week we learned to live passionately, now we learn to love completely. …  He focused on His relationships with His disciples. He shows his love by serving them. He washed their feet, a servant’s job. He already knew Judas was going to betray Him, but He washed his feet anyway. He also knows that Matthew is going to run and dessert Him and that Peter is going to deny knowing Him, but He washed their feet anyway. … A bit different than David. … Then He tells His disciples to love on another as He loved them (John 13:34-35). … The next day, Jesus shows the full extent of His love in another way, when He died on the cross (1 John 3:16).

Which do you want to be like when you come to the end of your life? David or Jesus? You’re becoming, now, the person you will be at the end of your life. So start becoming like the one you want to be like, now. And your greatest joy or your greatest regret at the end of your life will likely be in regard to relationships. Start making sure your relationships are right, now, so you come to the end of your life with satisfaction and joy.

What can you do now so that you will end your life with satisfaction and regarding your relationships? … 1. Express your love and gratitude as Jesus did. 2. Offer and ask forgiveness (Ephesians 4:32). 3. Overlook offenses and accept one another (Proverbs 19:11; Romans 15:7; 1 Peter 4:8).

Lee Atwater was a Republican consultant in the 1980′s who was known for his aggressive campaig tactics: bullying, dirty tricks, personal attacks. … He gained notoriety in 1980 when as a consultant for a Republican congressional candidate who was being challenged by the Democrat, Tom Turnipseed. Atwater knew that Turnipseed had some electric-shock therapy as a teenager because of depression and suicidal thoughts. Atwater arranged for a “reporter” to ask a question about Turnipseed’s psychotic treatment. In response, Atwater said that Turnipseed “got hooked up to jumper cables.” This became known as the “jumper cable episode” and Turnipseed the lost the election. Atwater went on to work in the Reagen Administration and the George H.W. Bush Administration where he gained notoriety again in 1988. Bush was running against Dukakis, who was ahead, and Atwater linked Willie Horton’s release to Dukakis. Bush won the election. Next year, Atwater became chairman of the Republican Nation Committee. … In 1990, at a fund raiser for Senator Phil Gramm, Atwater collapsed. Doctors discovered that he had arare and aggressive  form of brain cancer, Atwater fought cancer just as he fought everything else in life. He tried different types of radiation, but nothing worked. … Something else happened to Atwater too. He found Jesus. His life changed. He didn’t hate anyone. He had good feelings towards other people. … He wrote letters to politicians he opposed during campaigns, apologizing for the cruelty of his campaign tactics. He apologized to Turnipseed for the “jumper cable episode” and to Duakakis for the “naked cruelty” of the 1988 campaign.

Jason One Month to Live, religion, Series, Sunday Sermon

I don’t have the audio for this one yet… So my notes, might not line up as well with the audio when I add it.

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Worship: I Go to the Rock

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Last week, we introduced the “One Month to Live” concept, and this week, we’ll look at the first principle.

The first principle in the “One Month to Live” series is Live Passionately.

What does it mean to live passionately? More importantly, think about what it specifically means for you to live passionately.

Let’s look at three episodes from the life of Jesus that reveal His passion as well as the passion He instilled in those around Him.

Mark 1:14-20 – Dream big. Be radical. Take calculated risks. … When the disciples were called by Jesus, they immediately followed Him. “At once.” These disciples were fishermen, and probably had a steady, probably not booming, income, but they left the security of fishing to follow this man who simply called, “come, follow me.” That seems pretty radical to me, definitely a risk. I mean, they had no guarantee of income or even food. All they knew was that Jesus was supposedly the man John the Baptist had been preaching about. Perhaps they already knew him though, I don’t know. Anyways, the disciples showed what radical discipleship is. It’s leaving everything you know to follow something/someone you believe in. … Walt Disney dreamed big. He founded Disney, created Disneyland, and not to mention all the cartoons and characters he created, such as Mickey Mouse. I imagine it all started with a dream, a pencil, and piece of paper. He turned that big dream into a huge success.

Mark 1:35-39; 2:13-18 – Focus on your God-given purpose in life. Don’t let other people determine the agenda for your life. … Jesus would go off to pray by Himself every morning, and sometimes the disciples thought He should really be doing something with the crowd, Jesus knew He needed to pray and did not let anyone decide what He should or should not do. … In bull riding, when a rider falls off the bull, rodeo clowns distract the bull so the rider can get away. I think we can make a comparison to life here. You’re the bull, and the rider is some bad habit you have, so you do your hardest to get it off your back. Finally it falls of. And you go in for the kill, but then you get distracted by brightly clothed rodeo clowns, other sins, and forget about killing the rider…. Don’t let the rodeo clowns distract you, but also don’t let another rider on your back.

Mark 2:1-5 – Sacrifice less important things in order to do more important things. … Here we see the story of four friends helping a paralytic. Jesus was preaching from inside a house and all the windows and doorways were blocked. The four friends tried carried their paralyzed friend to Jesus so Jesus could him, but all the entrances were blocked. So they went to the roof and made a whole in the roof to lower the paralytic through. They sacrificed their energy, time, and a roof all to help their friend.

So I come back to the question. What would it mean for you to Live Pasionately?

Jason One Month to Live, religion, Series, Sunday Sermon

This is the Air I Breathe

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People who come to the end of their life often do the important things and leave other things undone. Tim McGraw has a song called “Live Like You’re Dying” that depicts a man living his last days. Part of the lyrics are “And I loved deeper, And I spoke sweeter, And I gave forgiveness I’ve been denying.”

What would you do if you only had one month to live?

Four principles from the life of Jesus. He knew when He would die. How did He live?

1. Live Passionately
2. Love Completely
3. Learn Humbly
4. Leave Boldly

We’ll be looking at one of these each of the next four weeks, but today is the introduction.

Psalm 139:16 – God has already determined how many days you will live. … The problem is that we don’t know how many days we’re going to live. … In France, André-François Raffray made a deal with Jeanne Calment. Raffray agreed to pay Calment  about $500 a month until she died in exchange for her apartment when she died. He payed a total of $180,000 before he died. Calment outlived the person who was looking forward to living in here apartment after she died. She lived to be 122. … We don’t know how long we’ll live. … In the assassination attempt on President Reagen in 1981, Reagan’s press secretary, James Brady was shot. Frank Reynolds announced that Brady had died. Brady, although in critical condition, was alive. Two years later, Frank Reynolds died and James Brady is still alive today.

Let’s look at two prayers in the Psalms.

Psalm 39:4-8 – David prayed, “Show me my life’s end and the number of my days.” What does this mean? … David is asking God to remind him how brief his life is. … The span of our lives is nothing compared to God, like a breath on a cold day. … the busyness of our lives is on vain. We build up wealth that we don’t know who will get it. it will be someone else’s when we die. … Our hope is in God. … We don’t need to sin with the way we use our time. There is no need for us to be foolish.

Psalm 90:1-12 – Gos is eternal. … Man’s life is brief. … Moses prayed, “Teach us to number our days aright.” What does this mean? … Moses is also asking God, “teach us to realize that life is brief so we can gain a heart of wisdom.” … Maybe this also means, we should live in the present, not the future and not the past. … We should do the important things, not all the little dated things on the calendar.

Here’s a story about the devil: The devil asked three young demons what their strategy was to decieve humans. The first on said, “I’ll tell them there is no God.” Satan shook his head and said, “they know there’s a God.” The second one said, I’ll them there is no Hell.” The devil replied, “deep in their hearts they know there is justice, consequences;they know there’s a Hell.” The third demon said, “I’ll them there is no hurry.” Satan grinned; he said, “go. You’ll destroy them by them the thousands.”

Jason One Month to Live, religion, Series, Sunday Sermon