Endurance: Maintained Momentum (Series Conclusion)

Momentum Wrap-Up

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Images: Cycle of Broken Momentum

✔Review of Momentum

• Momentum is God’s pace invading our human journey

• Momentum isn’t our own good behavior catching up with us...it’s God’s wind at our backs and God’s wind at the back of those He’s partnered us with.

• M = P*V. The equation illustrates that momentum is directly proportional to an object's mass and directly proportional to the object's velocity.

• Any object with momentum is going to be hard to stop. It is necessary to apply a force against its motion for a given period of time. 
• The more momentum that an object has, the harder that it is to stop. Thus, it would require a greater amount of force or a longer amount of time or both to bring such an object to a halt. 
• As the force acts upon the object for a given amount of time, the object's velocity is changed; and hence, the object's momentum is changed.

Sermon Title: Endurance: Maintained Momentum!

Key Phrase: Only Obedience Can Break the Cycle of Disobedience

Key Scripture: Judges 2:6-15: Disobedience and Defeat (Judges 17:6; Judges 21:25)

Endure means to last!

✔Judges: Book of lost momentum...in a time that God wants them to Have It.

Children of Israel would do well under good leadership, but as soon as the good leader died they would go back to their old ways.

Judges 17:6  In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit.

1. Romans 15:4
   For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.
2. Romans 15:5
   May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had,
   
3. 2 Corinthians 6:4
   Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships and distresses;
   
4. 1 Thessalonians 1:3
   We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
   
5. Revelation 14:12
   This calls for patient endurance on the part of the people of God who keep his commands and remain faithful to Jesus.
   

1. 2 Timothy 2:12
   if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us;
2. Hebrews 12:7
   Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father?
   

Next Steps Challenges: 

• Commit yourself to understanding scripture by studying it
• Commit yourself to living by bible principles
• In doing so, you are made spiritual fit which is necessary for maintaining stamina for endurance. (God never pulls the plug on His own momentum!)

Still Mometum Sermon Notes

Sermon Title: Still Momentum

Scriptural Text: Psalm 46.10 & Mark 1:9-13 NIV

Background Text: Deuteronomy 4:35; 1 Kings 18:39; Psalm 100:3; Isaiah 37:16; Isaiah 37:20; Isaiah 43:11; Isaiah 45:21; Ezekiel 36:23 

Sermon Point #1

Jesus was whisked off into the wilderness right after the most affirming moment of His adult life. He faced temptation in three ares:

1. Temptation of self-sufficiency
2. Temptation to live a reckless life (God knows my heart)
3. Quick easy fixes that painless

Sermon Point #2

What God gives us is so powerful & Heavenly that He has to make sure it doesn’t corrupt us.

Sermon Point #3 

Jesus’ challenge was to leave the wilderness with:

• A sense of calling when there is no audible affirmation
• A sense of God’s closeness when life is hard
• A knowledge of truth when the enemy is attempting to pervert scripture

Challenge Questions & Next Steps:

• Why does the Spirit lead us into the wilderness?
• How are you most tempted to busy yourself when God is trying communicate with you?

→Don’t assume that a season of isolation and testing means that God has abandoned you.

→Read and pray the background scriptures to hear God’s plea with humans to allow Him to be in control of their lives. Listen for God’s call to you in these scriptures. Answer when He calls out to you.

Background Scripture Text for: Still Momentum

Deuteronomy 4:35; 1 Kings 18:39; Psalm 100:3; Isaiah 37:16; Isaiah 37:20; Isaiah 43:11; Isaiah 45:21; Ezekiel 36:23 (New International Version)

Deuteronomy 4:35

³⁵ You were shown these things so that you might know that the Lord is God; besides him there is no other.⁽A⁾

1 Kings 18:39

³⁹ When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate⁽A⁾ and cried, “The Lord—he is God! The Lord—he is God!”⁽B⁾

Psalm 100:3

³ Know that the Lord is God.⁽A⁾
    It is he who made us,⁽B⁾ and we are his^[a^];
    we are his people,⁽C⁾ the sheep of his pasture.⁽D⁾

Isaiah 37:16

¹⁶ “Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, enthroned⁽A⁾ between the cherubim,⁽B⁾ you alone are God⁽C⁾ over all the kingdoms⁽D⁾ of the earth. You have made heaven and earth.⁽E⁾

Isaiah 37:20

²⁰ Now, Lord our God, deliver⁽A⁾ us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth⁽B⁾ may know that you, Lord, are the only God.^[a^](C⁾”

Isaiah 43:11

¹¹ I, even I, am the Lord,⁽A⁾
    and apart from me there is no savior.⁽B⁾

Isaiah 45:21

²¹ Declare what is to be, present it—
    let them take counsel together.
Who foretold⁽A⁾ this long ago,
    who declared it from the distant past?⁽B⁾
Was it not I, the Lord?
    And there is no God apart from me,⁽C⁾
a righteous God⁽D⁾ and a Savior;⁽E⁾
    there is none but me.

Ezekiel 36:23

²³ I will show the holiness of my great name,⁽A⁾ which has been profaned⁽B⁾ among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord,⁽C⁾ declares the Sovereign Lord, when I am proved holy⁽D⁾ through you before their eyes.⁽E⁾

God @Work: Cultural Shift (Momentum!)

God @ Work: Cultural Shifts
Judges 6:25-25; 7:1-9

Sustained Momentum (= A *Movement) will require a culture shift.

*=When momentum is personalized, systematized & decentralized in multiple sectors at the individual level. Momentum usually starts at the top and seeps throughout the masses & then becomes grassroots efforts that seeps out to various sectors of society.

This means that normative attitudes, expectations and methodology with which things are done must not only be avoided...they must be destroyed.

*Normative= Ideal standard or model

*Culture = a particular form or stage of civilization, as that of a certain nation or period: Greek culture; Development or improvement of the mind by education or training; The behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group: the youth culture; the drug culture.

Brennan Manning, acclaimed author and Catholic Priest, once told an audience that I sat in:

“In order to grow in intimacy with and knowledge of God, one must toss out everything they think they know about God!” ~Brennan Manning

Jesus said: Put me before mother/father; Love your enemies; Serve to be great; Take up your cross daily & bear it. (These things counter cultural for us.)

Normal life that is full of either pain and greed
Introduction of Jesus
Spiritual bliss
Call to obedience
Reaction of friends/family
Interruption of Jesus
Reassessment of Jesus, faith and self-motivation
Repeat call to obedience
The newer, flexible and more in-tuned you & an accurate perception of Jesus...and self.
Momentum CANNOT be maintained (by definition). It is unleashed & decentralized
Creation of a movement (Perpetual momentum)

Meets you; Shows you something you really want; Allows you to try to attain it on your own; Proves that you cannot get it on your own; You either decide you no longer want it or that you’ll get it by your own strength...either method is a form of “death!” This “death” to the false sense of self-sufficiency creates the awareness of the need for something and Someone greater to take control of matters; We now call Jesus (We choose Him and His methods and His perfect will)!! He hears...and we’ve just hit the tipping point of momentum.

This is a Holy moment!

(I-VII are merely the tipping point...pre-momentum)

When God IS @ Work He & the Work need to be acknowledged because the Eternal God, Who, has always been invisible to the human eye, has chosen the reveal power, authority, compassion and strategy for transformation, openly.

If we are not careful we’ll miss the true miracle and moral of the story.

It’ll be like holding on to a perfect apple and beholding it’s beauty so tightly that you forget to apply its seed back to the ground...soon the apple will disintegrate and you will have lost the only opportunity for more....planting of the healthy seed!

When culture is shifted significantly...God often instructs His followers to build an altar or God changes or allows the person’s name be changed i.e. Sarai, Abram, Gideon... in order to perpetuate the momentum into a movement!


Scriptural insights: (Judges 7)
You have too men (send the frightened men home); 22K left after God sifts.
Still too many...send the men to the water and I’ll instruct you..keep 300
I’ll save you with the 300 men
Gideon overheard the dream of his enemies...God overcomes your opposition
Obey (blowing trumpets, breaking jars, and shouting to God!)
God joined forces to destroy HIS enemies (see Numbers 25)

Challenge:
Ask God for a doggy bag? Learn to do this at home.
Discern what “cultural shift” needs to happen in your mind and heart so that you can experience God’s momentum and help to start a movement around you.