Paul
Your Name (As morning dawns)
We'll See The Goodness Of
–Today is the start of Advent
We celebrate in advance, we see it coming
Janes Family
Isaiah 11
Paul
O Come, O Come Emmanuel
A song of longing
Beautiful Savior (How Great Is Your Love)
–Don’t want to stop being thankful 2 days after Thanksgiving
You Are The Love I Need (waltz)
The Stand (What could I say?) (You stood before creation)
Jon
Genesis 1
Colossians
Philippians
Start out with separating light from darkness
Then land/water, vegetation
Sequence of order in complexity
Tree more advanced than a rock
Now we have animal life
Woman final creation
Amen and it was good
More advanced, complex, beautiful to look upon
Look upon this progression and the thing that strikes me is that we mean something to somebody, to our Creator
Person next to you easy to love, what about the person who cut you off? Family?
Realizing that they had dominion over everything, they tried to find an identity other than God
Began to look for that outside of God’s creation
Things begin to get broken
The soul go bent/broken/splayed/distorted
Now because of this damage we have a self-image crisis
Only want to hit a couple of them
1. What we do for a living
How much value do you have as a human being?
Good at sports? Music? What are you good at? We need to place you in a clique, in a social circle
Compromise some things in order to be loved by other people
2. Trying somebody else’s identity
Hypocrites, split persons
Splitness in you self
No clue to who you are anymore
Where do I fit in
3. Shape of our body
I work out to feel better
As we get older, we still want to attract somebody
Things will break down no matter how hard you pull it back, Kenny Rogers
Young girls with eating disorders because we emphasize body shape
Where do I fit
Religious mask
Colossians 3:1-4
Put up against Genesis 1
Adam hides after sin
Happened then, everlasting
Trying to cover up out of shame
Our life is now hidden with God
When you say yes to Messiah, the authorof Colossians says you are now hidden, you are now a new person
V. 9-10you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.
I want my people to be fully alive/aware humans
Spiritual growth begins to occur
It’s a return to Genesis, a repentance
More advanced, more complex
Bent nature gets us off track
There’s this thing we like to do: people-oleaster
Technical term for that- sin
Your job is the relentless pursuit of what God created you to be
Are you engaged in that?
I don’t want to love half-dead
The progression gets more complex
Don’t you want to be everything God wants you to be?
A lot of us
Philippians 1:6
Our past is propelling us into the future
Every human has a past
Everyone has done things they’re ashamed of
Guilt and shame pushing us, telling us we have no value
Locked into things that have happened
Our past pushes harder and harder
God’s original plan was to be fully alive and fully human
We need you to be you
Spiritual growth is like being pulled forward by the future instead of being pushed by the past
Future pulls you with it’s promise
Something is pulling you into a whole new reality
My past is my story / even my mistakes
God can heal it in you and weave it into our selves
He does not make junk
Being everything God intended you to be
We’ve got to stop putting shame onto people
Hellfire and brimstone messages don’t work
I want to invite you into this journey
No shake or condemnation
There is forgiveness, love
There’s always somebody better at something than you
Christianity is not about conforming to anybody else but Jesus Christ
Fix your eyes on Jesus
Let’s be a people who forgive and love
Engaged in the relentless pursuit of everything God has intended us to be
Paul
Majesty (Here I am)
Jon
I like it when you do it better Dad