I Have Some Questions, Part Two Series

Listen, we started a new series last weekend. I’ve got a question. All of us have questions. You, obviously, have lots of questions. You are inundating me with them. I love it. It’s awesome. This was gonna be a two-week series. This series may last until Jesus comes. I don’t know when that will be. I’m loving it. I just dig this kind of thing.

So this week, we’re gonna deal with afterlife issues. Here’s what I want you to do. Here or in the campuses, warehouse, chapel or wherever you might be, during this service, while I’m speaking, I want you to text in your question about, specifically, heaven, not so much hell. I’ll be talking about that a little bit, but heaven, afterlife, whatever you want there. And then a little bit later in the service, we’re gonna vote on which question you guys want me to tackle, one or two questions. Some of you complained that we don’t vote enough at Seacoast. We’re gonna be Baptists today, baby, and we’re gonna vote. So here’s what you do. Text "afterlife" and then whatever your question is and text it to 99503. Be sure to get "afterlife" at the beginning and that way we will have record of it. They’re gonna pick two or three of the top ones, or three or four of the top ones and then we’ll tell you what we’re gonna do with them in just a few minutes.

Recently, I celebrated a birthday. We always do family things at birthdays and so we had the whole family; kids, grandkids, everybody over to enjoy a good bowl of soup. Not a birthday cake. It’s fast time, so we were eating soup. It was great. I’m loving the fast. Are you loving the fast if you’re doing it? I am. It’s such a spiritually intense time. I’m loving it. Three of us in this room are loving it. The rest of us are hating it and some of us are going, "What are you talking about?"

So we had the kids over. The little granddaughter is 10 months old. She’s starting to motor around. She climbs around on furniture and stuff. I thought, "It’s time for her to walk. Let’s walk --10 months old." So I took her out and she loves grabbing my fingers. I’m pulling her along and I just took her fingers off of mine and left her standing there. You should have seen the look on her face. It’s like, "What is up with this? What are you doing?" I know she doesn’t understand the concepts of love and trust, but if she did, here’s what she was saying, "Do you really love me? Why did you do what you did? I don’t understand this. I thought I could trust you. I’m not sure now." Have you ever felt that way about God?

That’s what some of our questions are asking, especially this weekend. These are gonna be tough ones, I’m telling you. I’m warning you today that these are gonna be tough ones. I said last week that the cool thing about Seacoast is that there are some things that we have got to believe together. There are some absolute fundamentals. Then there is just a whole lot of stuff where we’ve got room to argue, nicely, but to disagree on. You don’t have to agree with me on everything. You have a right to be wrong. That’s my philosophy on life. I think I’m right; you have a right to be wrong.

I hope you take the things we talk about, I hope you take them home and talk about them. I hope you take them to the restaurant and talk about them. I hope you take them to your small group and friends. Talk about them. Discuss them. Debate them. And hopefully, they will spark you to really dig and search, because it’s one thing to have an opinion, it’s another thing -- how can you back it up? What does the Bible say? What does God’s word say?

The questions today go to the heart of trusting God. They really do because here’s what we’re asking with the questions we have today is, "God, do you love me?" Bigger than that -- and can I trust you -- bigger than that is, "God, do you love everybody in the world as much as I do, and can you trust them?" It’s interesting with the questions, and they’re good questions, but we take the high moral ground with these questions. Do you believe that? We’re taking the high moral ground with God Almighty and we’re saying, "God, I love the world. I love people in Africa, India, wherever, all kinds of religions. Do you love them as much as I do?" And hopefully, at the end of the day, we’ll have a response to how much God really does love us and everybody else.