Our Beliefs, Our Convictions As Christians, And As Nazarenes Series

Our Beliefs, Our Convictions as Christians and as Nazarenes

Pastor Glenn Newton 3-5-00

Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do,

you will save both yourself and your hearers. 1 Timothy 4:16

2 Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke

and encourage--with great patience and careful instruction. 3 For the time

will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their

own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say

what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from

the truth and turn aside to myths. 2 Timothy 4:3

Tomorrow in the mail you are going to receive a cashiers check, make out to you

for the amount of $15,000.00, with only one stipulation, you must invest it for one year in

mutual funds - the Stock Market. You have received this check, it’s real, but the only way

you can use it for your own advantage, is you must invest it into a mutual fund of your

choice for at least 12 months before you can sell out for the cash.

What are you going to do? I don’t know if you know this or not, but you can lose

a lot of money in mutual funds............... of coarse the opposite is also true, you can make

a lot of money in mutual funds. So the Question is How are you going to invest your

Money?

If your like me, you may know a little about Mutual funds, but not enough to

know where to invest $15,000!!!! How do you know where to find the Sure thing? How

can you invest and feel confident that you have chosen a wise fund.

Somebody, tell me what would be the first thing you would do?

Call a broker? Try to learn more about investing? Call someone you could Trust to give

you Solid advice?

For most of us, who don’t keep up on Mutual Funds, what’s hot and what’s not in

the Stock Market, We would have to go through a process of filtering through all the

scams, all the companies that are fly by night who would gladly take your $15,000 for a

small fee. You see, there’s alot of crookedness out there today, and finding the truth

would take some effort on our part, but we could do it.

Let me ask you this. How many of you would just decide to pick a Mutual Fund

because the name sounded kind of flashy, so you would be willing to invest your 15,000

because of their name and just let it ride and hope for the best? Anyone?

Maybe you see a funny TV commercial and decide that that must be the right

mutual fund because they make great commercials, so you will trust them with your

15,000.? Anybody? You guys just aren’t very trusting are you?

You see the fact is we don’t want to take something of such great value and just risk it on

something that we don’t feel confident about. I don’t know about you, but before I

invested my money I would want to have some conviction in my heart that I have studied,

I have done some research, and I have made a wise choice based on what I truly believe is

the best. I imagine that would be the same process you would go through.

You see the All-Mighty Dollar has great value in our lives ............. most likely it has too

much value.

This morning I believe that we have in our possession something of great value, a

value so great that money is worthless in comparison, what we have is our Spiritual Life,

our Faith.

If you will agree with me that our Lives are of great value and our Faith is of great

value, then I ask you How are you Investing It?

This morning I believe that as a Christian, I should have strong Convictions about

what I believe, and why I believe it, and I can defend these things with Scripture and with

Experience and Reason.

This is not only True as a Christian in general, but this is True as a Nazarene. If

you are a member of our church, you have aligned yourself with our banner, you have

hopefully given yourself and your resources to it’s work, then without exception, you

should know What the Church of the Nazarene Believes, and You should Know Why we

believe it, and in a culture that disregards absolute truth, you Need to know how to defend

what The Church of the Nazarene Stands for. Can I hear a Amen?

The Church of the Nazarene was born because of Men and Women who had