Sermon Central
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Tacking Against The Wind Series
Contributed by Rick Stacy on Jan 23, 2006 (message contributor)
Summary: 4th in series calling for commitment and stewardship. This message incorporates the five love languages of Gary Chapman and our relationship with God and one another.
Voyage to Eternity
Tacking Against the Wind
New Years Day we looked at the church as the vessel that God designed and created to move us from the rock we live on to a better place.
Paul Kissling shared about TCMI’s ministry two weeks ago and we shared in a memorable experience at the Lord’s table.
Last week we talked about a new course focused on one purpose – living with respect for God.
Today I want to challenge you to take on a difficult challenge…
It’s important. It’s simple. And it is hard.
Valuable Insights… from an article in “Nation’s Business” magazine. It was a list of informal guidelines from an Army colonel to new military officers.
"If it’s stupid but works, it isn’t stupid.”
“If your attack is going extremely well, it’s an ambush.”
“Anything you do can get you shot, including doing nothing.”
“If the enemy is in range, so are you.”
The colonel also said, “The important things are always simple; the simple things are always hard…”
This morning Peter is going to tell us about an important and simple thing God has called us to do.
What makes this important, simple thing hard is that to do it you have to face against the prevailing forces.
Wind is an interesting and powerful phenomenon. You can’t see it but you definitely deal with the force of it in your life. I could tell you a little about the power of wind but I thought that perhaps Rob Dale from
Storm Tracker 6 would do a better job. Rob Dale (a local weatherman), tell us about the power of wind…
Love One Another
22 Now that you have made your souls pure by obeying the truth, you can have true love for your Christian brothers and sisters. So love each other deeply with all your heart.
You are commanded to love one another with all your heart
Love One Another
Important!
Because it is the result of purity
Simple!
Because it comes by obeying the truth
Hard!
Because the prevailing wind is against us
Most of us willingly let the wind determine the direction of our lives. Calling it fate, or circumstance we let the swirling society around us direct our travels through life, where we go and when we go there. To simply go with the wind is far easier that working against the constant pressure.
The winds of desire and personal pleasure are blow in our face when ever the television is on, the radio plays, and we pick up the catalogs, flyers, and offers from the mail box.
The winds of conformity are difficult to struggle against when surrounded by people who want you to go along to get along. It’s just easier to keep quiet.
The winds of fear swirl around us when the news is about the falling stock market, the ailing economy, the latest cost of fuel, and the monthly bills keep getting bigger and bigger.
Trusting God and loving one another in the face of these winds is important, simple, and hard – AND it can be done! We can do it together!
To work your way forward against the wind you must live by some important disciplines
Tacking against the wind is a matter of running at an angle against the wind so that you go sideways in order to make forward progress. It’s simply a matter of physics and it takes some work and skill.
Here’s how… Last week I challenged you in four areas of your life you can give to God.
Each of the areas involves fundamental issues of discipleship… Each is a way you tack against the wind.
1st Tack: Worship
Last week I encouraged you to give an hour in worship every week because when we worship it helps us to refocus our lives and center them on God and his word. Worship helps us become pure. In a word… obeying the command of God to worship purifies the soul… There is something about worship that changes us.
Let’s talk about worship for just a minute or two… The Bible doesn’t give a formal definition of worship. But perhaps we can start by seeing what various words for worship mean.
The English word "worship" comes from two Old English words: weorth, which means "worth," and scipe or ship, which means something like shape or "quality." We can see the Old English word -ship in modern words like friendship and sportsmanship – that’s the quality of being a friend, or the quality of being a good sport.
So worth-ship is the quality of having worth or of being worthy. When we worship, we are saying that God has worth, that he is worthy. Worship means to declare worth, to attribute worth. Or to put it in biblical terms, we praise God. We speak, or sing, about how good and powerful God is.
