Adventure-less Spirituality & Spiritless Adventures (June 23 2013)

Message Title: Adventure-less Spirituality & Spiritless Adventures

There is an arrogance in our Western rugged thinking that enables us to believe more highly of ourselves than we should...

• We know that life is a miracle...i.e. conception, birth, development, intelligence, communication, reproduction, etc....
• Yet we believe that we determine our own destiny...
• The options are ours
• The choice is ours
• The outcome are ours
• The repercussions are ours...
• However, destiny, is Divine and not within our human reach.
• We didn't design it
• We can’t obtain it without God’s help

When we have no subjugation to God we assume a pinnaclized position in life...

Everyone else is beneath us, therefore our subjects...pawns...tools.

What makes God God is that God has the ability to love, develop and even covenant with His subjects, because He is Love.

We actually begin to think that our own wealth, intellect, ingenuity, networks, hard-work, faith or people skills has gotten us success!

When we get to a place where we don’t need God or His people...we’ve become fairly pathetic and very dangerous.

[Rich man built barns...didn’t think he had an obligation to the needy among him, i.e Lazarus]

**We are bought with a price and are no longer our own:

To some this is absurd and they resent God telling them about some “mission”

The truth is that we’re a created being...

• We have talent, etc., however, we are empowered by forces other than our own will.
• Good or Evil

**God doesn’t call us to merely be His puppets

• God calls us to be His partner
• An Adventure!

The Adventure... Living in community and bringing godly order and respect to the world!

Luke 7

1-10: The faith of the Centurion

11-17: Jesus raises the widow’s son

• Jesus was walking with a large crowd
• Funeral procession comes (mother would have led it)
• Jesus stops the procession 
• Jesus feels and addresses the pain of the mother
• Jesus talks to the mother (don’t cry)
• Jesus talks to the pallbearers (put the casket down)
• Jesus talks to they boy (wake up)

→Jesus didn’t take the boy on the road with him

→Jesus didn’t exploit him as his own poster boy

→Jesus gave the boy to his mother...her inheritance**

...For Christ’s miracles were miracles of mercy, and a great act of mercy this was to this widow; ...

18-23 John’s disciples question Jesus for John

• Are you One?
• Jesus tells them... “Show John the evidence...he’ll know.”
• Lame/Blind/Sick/etc.......
• The poor have the gospel preached to them....

Luke 7:24-50 Jesus At the Dinner Party

• Jesus is invited to a religious leader’s party
• Jesus lounges to eat
• A woman of ill-repute walks up behind him and starts to cry...
• The Religious leader is appalled (Is 65 “Holier than thou”)
• Jesus starts to teach while she sobs, and kisses and wipes

• Jesus talks to Simon
• This woman is showing her gratitude
• You show no gratitude
• She’s been transformed
• You’re the same...hence worse than who she was

• “The ones who are forgiven much, love a whole lot!”
• Jesus talks to the women:
• Your sins are forgiven...
• Your faith has saved you.

Matthew 5:20 (CEV)

20 You must obey God’s commands better than the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law obey them. If you don’t, I promise you that you will never get into the kingdom of heaven.

Challenge/Next Steps:

• What derailed your adventure?
• Who told you it wasn’t spiritual enough
• Talk to God, who defends the defenseless, about your role in this adventure
• Our treatment of the poor & disenfranchised shows how we see God and ourselves.
• Our protection of others ensures us of protection from God
• This is the measurement of our faith

Anyone who sets himself up as “religious” by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world. James 1:27 (MSG)