StadiumTV: January 2010

Friday:

Deuteronomy 18:9-11

“Salvation is like buying a car, if we don’t stay committed to paying our bills, we’ll lose it. If we want to keep the car, we have to follow through with our contract, and pay what we owe due to the agreement we made.” When we first enter into salvation, we’re making a contract with God that we are officially handing over our lives to Him so that He can guide us. The unfortunate part is when we enter in to that contract, we don’t read the fine print. We still want to control our lives when the contract requires a surrendering spirit. Then when we become frustrated, we forfeit the entire contract by no longer “paying the bills.” In other words, we stop listening to God, obeying Him, and stop paying attention to His will for us. Jesus never intended the salvation’s prayer to be light and easy, something that sounds good at one time with no follow up. He said, “Follow Me, and you will be saved.” It’s not only saying it with your mouth, but living it out with your life.

Question: What’s your lifestyle like? Is it a life worthy of salvation or something somewhere either close or far off?

Challenge: Go deeper in your intimacy with Christ. How? Read your Word as soon as you wake up, pray continually throughout your day, and focus on others more than yourself.

Saturday:

Genesis 17:12

“It was never the law that was important, it’s why the law was set in place.” Take the instance of driving a car. You’re going 100mph down the highway and you approach a bend in the road that wraps itself around a hill. What you can’t see around the corner is the completely stopped traffic. You finally see the traffic and because of your speed don’t have enough time to slow down. Then, SMACK! Right in to the back of not only the car directly in front of you, but the whole line of cars in front of the one you just hit. Imagine if you were actually going the speed limit, you would have had a lot more time to completely stop, or at least allow the damage to be much less. The speed limit isn’t set in place to make you go as slow as humanly possible so you’re late to destination, but to make sure you end up there! The law is there to protect and others around you. It’s the same idea with God. He directly appoints us to talk or pray with certain people, it’s our choice whether or not to listen to His will. The consequence is a lost soul continuing in his/her ways, not knowing the love of Christ you had to offer them. Secondly, you don’t receive the blessing God had in store for you.

Question: Have you missed an opportunity to tell someone about Christ? What will you do differently to make sure you don’t miss the next chance you get?

Challenge: Look for those opportunities where you can step outside your comfort zone and be obedient to the will of God.

Sunday:

2 Corinthians 3:6

“Jesus didn’t come to the earth just to simply die for your sins.” For a lot of people that grew up in the church this thought is very contrary to the way you were raised. Others who didn’t, this still might come as a surprise. However He did come to release you from your sins, but His sole purpose was to have a relationship with you. He wants to spend quality time with you, because He loves you so much. As much as we desire to be in His presence, He desires to be in ours, if we allow Him to. If Jesus’ only purpose was to come to the earth for you to be saved, then He would have taken you up to Heaven as soon as you had your salvation. So why did He come? His greatest desire for you isn’t for you to be the best at not sinning. It’s for you to simply have a relationship with Him. So then why did He die if He came to have a relationship? Then why did Jesus die for your sins? God is a holy God and He can’t be around sin, but because He is so passionate about loving you, He gave you a way to be with Him.

Question: How often do you spend time growing your relationship with God? How can you take time out of your day to spend more time with Him?

Monday:

Exodus 8:1

How often do we find ourselves trying to win the approval of God? We try to earn the right to pray, talk, or be in the presence of God when God desires to be with you, no matter the circumstance. Just like the Pharisees, we get so caught up in attempting to be perfect that we lose sight of His presence and base our relationship solely on our actions. But how can you have a relationship with someone you don’t talk to? They might think you’re nice because you do things for them, but it gets old after a while because there’s nothing to back it up. Sin is the result of a problem. The problem is a lack of relationship, not a lack of action.

Question: Who do you spend the most time with? Why don’t you spend that much time with God?

Challenge: Get with Him. Be alone, in your quiet place and allow Him to have a conversation with Him before cutting Him off with all your requests. Let Him know how good you think He is, and He’ll show you that He’s greater. Worship Him. That’s all that He asks of you. Give Him your time.

Tuesday:

Galatians 5:16

“If you are living in the Spirit, then it’s impossible to be living in the flesh. If you’re living in the flesh, you can’t be living in the Spirit.” How do you know this is true? Think about it this way, if you’re standing in California, you can’t be standing in Australia at the same time. It’s the same way with God. If you’re living with Him, in the Spirit, you can’t be living in the flesh. God isn’t flesh, and He can’t be something that He’s not. Although when we live in the Spirit we aren’t God, but we are being led by God. If we live in the flesh, we can’t be living with God because in the flesh is where sin is. Living in the Spirit is having an absence of sin. Does that mean we’ll never sin, no. It means we have no desire to sin. The key to staying saved is by living in His presence, and denying your flesh.

Question: Are you living in the Spirit or in your flesh? Decide which one you’ll choose. Trying to live a little bit of both will never do.

Challenge: Weigh out the options of what’s important to you. Is it living in the presence of God and reaping the benefits and blessings, or in your flesh where love is only temporary and where it’s easy, but very lonely.

Pastor Jeremy Johnson

Sermon on: January 20th, 2010

Discussion on: January 21st, 2010

It’s My Life; Now or Never!

If you don’t step out, then your friends and family may not make it. What if someone else’s eternity is dependent on whether or not you realize that your mouth is a weapon?

It’s your life, not your parents life, or anyone else’s life. You make your own choices. No one can steal your life away from you.

God’s looking for a now or never generation. It’s not now or later, or now or sometime in the future... It’s now or never.

We don’t have to wait until we get to heaven to have complete joy. We’re a generation that brings heaven to earth. We silence all of heaven because God desires to hear you worship Him. God is waiting for this generation to start proclaiming that it’s now or never

John 12:23-28

Your life is not just your body. Your life is not determined by what you have, the clothes you wear or what you look like. Maybe it would be if the only thing you had was a body.

Three parts to your life:

1. One part Spirit. (When you die, the only thing that will carry on will be your Spirit.)

2. One part Soul. (Your soul is made up of your mind, will, and emotions. And you’re in charge of these things.)

3. One part Body. (Your Spirit lives inside your body, and you have a soul.)

The enemy, since he can’t attack your body, will attack you through your emotions. Inside your mind is every war that you will ever fight as a human being. He attacks you through your mind because the Bible says that with your mind you will serve the Lord. He loves us so much that He gave us choice, and we can choose whether or not to serve Him.

What you put into your mind will come out of it. If the enemy can put anger into your mind, that anger will eventually have to come out. Whatever you think about enough will come out of your mind, that’s why you have to be careful what you put in your mind.

If you tend to lose your friends, it might be because you have too many buttons to push and no one will ever measure up. We blame others for doing something to you. Which they might have, but it was already in you. They simply pushed a button that was already formed inside of you.

When you stop “feeling” God’s love because you’ve made a lot of mistakes, your emotions say that you don’t want to go to church, they tell you that God can’t love you. If you feel like that, you can know that you’re a threat to the enemy. The more you feel like your mind is taking control, the more you are making a difference.

God’s not looking for your feelings, because your feelings will waiver. He wants your will, because true love is a choice. It’s based on your will.

There is a battlefield inside of your mind. When you give Him your will, He renews your mind. He starts to change what you let your mind control, and you begin to trust Him and His will for you.

You aren’t promised tomorrow, you have one day. Today.

How are you going to use it?

Jesus is asking you to give Him your life. It’s a daily offering. Once you give God your life, and hand over your will to be obedient to Him, your emotions will have to follow up with what your will is doing.

Jeremiah 15:19

Metanoia: “To change one’s mind. If you repent or change your mind.” You have the power to change your mind. With the power of your words you can say you changed your mind, and can do it!

Feelings can be horrible masters, but wonderful servants.

Questions:

1. What are the buttons in your life that set off your emotions? How do you plan on getting rid of them?

2. How has your will been affected by your emotions, and what needs to change?

3. How can you stop listening to your emotions, and listening to your will? What is living in your mind currently that needs to die? How can you kill it?