I was surprised at how moving it was to get to address the church and thank and honor those who have had an influence on me.  I took about three sentences to thank the students and parents of five15 for making pastoring such a joy.  I want to elaborate on that a little bit here.  Here’s what I said:

I’m particularly grateful to the students and parents of five15.  For 4½ years, you have made it a joy to serve you.  I love how eager you are to hear God’s word and how you love to be reminded of the gospel.  THANK YOU.

Here are some specific reasons I love serving five15:

• You love God’s Word.  I love your attentiveness to preaching, and I love hearing about how many of you are reading the Mull or some other Bible reading plan.  Well done!
• You love the gospel.  I hear it when we sing together and when I preach.  You respond to the right things: the Savior’s sacrifice for our many sins.  Well done!
• You love your parents.  I love how so many of you see so much benefit it your parents wisdom and leadership.  So many of our students are humbly pursuing their parents’ influence and help in their lives.  Well done!
• You love to serve the church.  So many of our major outreach events are staffed by so many students!  You set an excellent example in serving the church!  Well done!

So, to all of five15, thank you!  You do indeed make pastoring a joy, and I am convinced that I have the best job in the world.  I’m turning off comments on this post, because I don’t want this to turn into, “no, thank YOU.”

five15,  I thank God for you and I love building the church with you.

1. Who do we pray to?
2. What do we pray for?
3. What will be the result?

I really enjoyed Merritt’s story-telling ability, but more than that, I was inspired to pray more and to ask for more. I particularly liked how Merritt showed us specific things to pray for in verses 16-19: that 1) we would be strengthened with more power, 2) be rooted & grounded in God’s love, 3) that we would know more of God’s love and 4) be filled with the fullness of God.

How do you think this message will help you pray?

We are like Alexander Selkirk in this way: it is easy for us to become comfortable in a world that isn’t our home. By giving, we leave behind the riches of this age (which we can’t keep anyway) and gain riches in the life to come. This is what missionary Jim Elliot meant when he said:

“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

One of the things I love about these verse is that they teach us to enjoy what God the gifts God has given us.  (Sound like Ecclesiastes 3:9-13?) The materialistic age we live in teaches us to be discontent with what we have, preventing us from enjoying the many wonders that God has given us. From internal combustion engines to plastic to cell phones to food preservatives, we have a lot to enjoy and to thank God for.

Seeing this also frees us up to be “generous and ready to share.” I said this on Sunday, but I have to say again that I am so proud of five15 for the generous giving to Rancho 3M. More than $5300! That’s amazing. Well done.

There is a wonderful promise attached to that: by doing good and being generous, we can store up treasure for ourselves as a good foundation for the future.

I hope you are making plans now for giving to the Go Forward Fund. I have heard some people say that young people can’t give because they don’t have any money. But I read a report this week that said the average teenager in our country has more than $1500 in expendable income per year — more than most adults. Most of that income gets spent on clothes, movies, iPods and music, cell phones, eating out, and so on. None of that is bad. But ask God what lifestyle changes God might be calling you to. Here are some ideas that I read yesterday about changes that we could make to free up the funds to give more:

• I’m going to give the contents of my spare change jar.
• I’m going to give ½ of all unexpected money I receive this year.
• I’m going to sell stuff I don’t use on e-bay and give whatever I make.
• I’m going to give ½ of what I earn babysitting.
• I’m going to pass up 3 Starbucks drinks a month and give whatever I save.
• I’m going to give my tax refund.
• I’m going to cancel cable for the year and give what I save.
• I’m going to cut my husband’s hair at home and we’ll give what he would have paid for a barber. (I’m not going to let him cut mine.)
• I’m going to donate stock I own.
• I’m going to… (Get practical)

Talk to your parents this week about what participating in the Go Forward Fund might look like for you.

Yesterday Mark wrapped up our series of messages on the Trinity by helping us think about Trinitarian Christian Living.  He showed us that God’s triune nature shapes the way we live in at least three ways:

1. God’s triune nature shapes the way we relate to God in prayer.
2. God’s triune nature shapes the way we relate to others in community.
3. God’s triune nature shapes the way we relate in marriage.

Ok, I realize that the third point doesn’t apply so much to the students in five15, but for most of you, it will.  For now, maybe it is best for us to focus on the first point.  I’ve found that paying attention to how I address God in prayer has a profound affect on my prayers by giving me confidence and clarity.  The best way to learn to do this is to study the prayers that are recorded for us in the Bible.  Here are a couple of my favorite examples.  Nehemiah started his prayer like this:

“And I said, ‘O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open, to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel your servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Even I and my father’s house have sinned.’”  (Neh. 1:5-6)

Look at the way Daniel keeps referring to God in powerful ways throughout this excerpt of his prayer:

“I prayed to the Lord my God and made confession, saying, ‘O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and rules. We have not listened to your servants the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and to all the people of the land. To you, O Lord, belongs righteousness, but to us open shame, as at this day, to the men of Judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and to all Israel, those who are near and those who are far away, in all the lands to which you have driven them, because of the treachery that they have committed against you. To us, O Lord, belongs open shame, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against you.  To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God by walking in his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets.’” (Daniel 9:4-10)

And of course the guys in Manskool have memorized Revelation 1:5b-6,

“To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen”

Are there other verses that have helped you to address God rightly? 

So yesterday I got to preach about the second person of the Trinity: the Majesty of the Son.  This was one of the hardest messages I’ve done; what words could I possibly use to describe the glory and majesty and mystery of the Trinity.  Basically, my message yesterday me saying, “Hey, I’m going to go worship the Triune God, wanna come with?”

We looked at Matthew 3:13-17 and reviewed three important ideas:

1. God is a Trinity
2. The Son is Fully God
3. The Doctrine of the Trinity Leads Us To Worship

Here are some of the quotations that I ran across in my preparation that I couldn’t use:

“No sooner do I conceive of the one than I am illumined by the splendour of the three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the one.  When I think of any one of the three I think of him as the whole, and my eyes are filled, and the greater part of what I am thinking escapes me.  I cannot grasp the greatness of that one so as to attribute a greater greatness to the rest.  When I contemplate the three together, I see but one torch, and cannot divide or measure out the undivided light.”  Gregory Nazianzen, Orations on Holy Baptism, 40.41

“Just about everything that matters in Christianity hangs on God’s three-in-oneness.”  Bruce Milne, Know the Truth, 78.

“The next thing less than the infinite is infinitely less.”  J. Gresham Machen, quoted in Stephen Nichols, For Us and For Our Salvation, 60.

“For who even of slight intelligence does not understand that, as nurses commonly do with infants, God is wont in a measure to “lisp” in speaking to us?  Thus such forms of speaking do not so much express clearly what God is like as accommodate the knowledge of him to our slight capacity.”  John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, Vol 1, p. 120.

Yesterday, Vince helped us think about the first member of the Trinity: God the Father.  Three helpful points:

1. The Father is Fully God
2. The Father is Supreme in the Godhead
3. The Father is Our Father

I quote really encouraged me:

“To be right with God the Judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is a greater.”  J.I. Packer, Knowing God, 207.

To many people think about God the Father in light of their own experience with their human father.  This is backwards.  God the Father is a perfect, loving, compassionate Father who “so loved the world, he sent his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”  Truths like this should lead us to worship with all our might!

“The Trinity… confronts us with perhaps the most difficult thought that the human mind has ever been asked to handle. It is not easy; but it is true.” J.I. Packer, Concise Theology, p. 40.

How’s that for a good place to start our series of messages on the Trinity? Mark gave us five good reasons to study The Majesty of the Three in One God:

5. Error
4. Evangelism
3. Relationships
2. Worship
1. The Gospel

Even though the word Trinity is not used in the Bible, there is ample Biblical data that to support this Trinitarian affirmation:

There is one God who exists eternally in three Persons; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; each person is fully God.

Stay tuned over the next five weeks for more messages on the Trinity.

1. Grace produces humility.
2. Grace prepares us for suffering.

I thought the humility section of the message may be most important for us, for the temptations to pride abound. We need “rare, unguarded moments of total honesty” in which re recognize that everything we have is a gift from God. Through the apostle Paul we have these three divinely-inspired questions:

1. Who sees anything different in you? (In other words, what makes you different from anyone else?)
2. What do you have that you did not receive?
3. If you received it, why do you boast as though you did not receive it?

We will do well to take these questions into our week. If you can identify a specific area in which you are tempted to be proud (athletics, academics, opinions, etc.), these questions will serve to deflate our pride and help us to grow in humility.

If you are interested, here are the quotations from the message:

“This is an invitation to experience one of those rare, unguarded moments of total honesty, where in the presence of the eternal God one recognizes that everything – absolutely everything – that one ‘has’ is a gift.” Gordon Fee

“O believer, learn to reject pride, seeing that you have no ground for it. Whatever you are, you have nothing to make you proud. The more you have, the more you are in debt to God; and you should not be proud of that which renders you a debtor. Consider your origin; look back to what you were. Consider what you will have been but for divine grace. Look upon yourself as you are now. Doesn’t your conscience reproach you? Don’t your thousand wanderings stand before you, and tell you that you are unworthy to be called His son or daughter? And if He has made you anything, aren’t you taught thereby that it is grace which has made you to differ? Great believer, you would have been a great sinner if God had not made you to differ. O you who are valiant for truth, you would have been as valiant for error if grace had not laid hold upon you. Therefore, don’t be proud, though you have a large estate – a wide domain of grace, once you did not have a single thing to call your own except your sin and misery. Oh! strange infatuation, that you, who have borrowed everything, should think of exalting yourself….” Charles Spurgeon

“One cannot boast about being a worthy recipient of grace.” David Garland

“The Christian life is not a fast track to glory but a slow, arduous path that takes one through suffering. The suffering so visible in the lives of the apostles is not some tedious detour for an elite volunteer corps but the main highway for all Christians. By contrasting the cross-centered lifestyles of the apostles with the Corinthians vainglory. Paul hopes to supplant their egotism with the wisdom of the cross.” David Garland

1. True friendship starts with love
2. True friendship is cultivated through sacrifice
3. True friendship points to Christ

We started the message with a friendship quiz. Here are the five true/false questions that made it on the quiz, plus a bunch of other myths that I compiled but wasn’t able to use.

1. The most important thing about a friend is that we have a good time together.
2. I should have a “best” friend.
3. Virtual friendship is the same as face-to-face friendship.
4. I don’t have friends because no one has befriended with me.
5. My friends don’t influence me.
6. You know you’ve found a friend because you “click”.
7. It’s ok that most of my friends are of the opposite sex because they really understand me and I relate to them better.
8. Most men don’t need close friendships with other men.
9. My friends really care about me, so I can tell them things I don’t tell my parents.
10. For parents: My friends are not in my caregroup so I don’t need to get help from my caregroup.
11. A friend is someone who is easy to be with. They don’t get on my case about stuff.
12. My friends are not in my caregroup so I don’t have to get help from my caregroup.
13. My friends don’t tell anyone what I’ve told them… Therefore, my secrets are safe with them.
14. My friends don’t gossip… Therefore, my conversations with them about my parents and others are redemptive.
15. My friends advice is good, even though they are the same age as me

What friendship myths would you add to this list?

“My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.” 1 John 2:1-6

From these verses, Vince helped us see that sin is the obstacle to obedience and Jesus Christ has shown us the way of obedience. We are now called to live as forgiven sinners.

Vince explained that there are some common excuses we give for not obeying:

• “I don’t feel like it.” This is what we say when we focus on our subjective feelings rather than the objective truth of the Word of God.
• “Everyone else is doing it.” This excuse reveals that we have the wrong standard, letting ourselves off the hook because we are looking at others rather than at Jesus.
• “It’s just too hard. I just can’t do it.” Actually, this statement is right, but it can’t be used as an excuse for sin. We need God’s grace and help to obey, so let’s cry out for it in prayer and go get that help from parents and the church.
• “I’m under grace now, I don’t have to obey.” This excuse shows that someone doesn’t understand what grace is or how it works. Through salvation, we’ve been given the power now to obey, not the freedom to disobey.
• “God loves me and wants me to be happy!” OR: “God will forgive me!” That’s only half the truth. Happiness is found in obeying. Forgiveness comes when we repent. Forgiveness is a promise God offers to us, not an excuse for sin.

Vince summed up his message with these words from Martin Luther:

“This life, therefore,
is not righteousness but growth in righteousness,
not health but healing,
not being but becoming,
not rest but exercise.
We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it;
the process is not yet finished but it is going on.
This is not the end but it is the road;
all does not yet gleam in glory but all is being purified.”

Talk to your parents about this message. Ask them:

• How am I making excuses for my sin? Where do you see me letting myself off the hook?
• Where do I need to obey the commands of God more carefully?
• Confess any areas of sin in which you have not been obeying God.