This Weekend's Message: What Does God Pray for You?

I once had a professor who brought me great joy whenever he would pray. The joy I had was not because he was praying for me; it was because his prayers seemed so different from the prayers to which I was accustomed. For me, prayer often seemed boring and routine. There was the maintenance of thanking God for some stuff (most often food), asking for safety and health, and then maybe sometimes apologizing for sins that I was aware that I had committed. For this professor, though, it was very different. It was as if he was deeply in tune with God. It was reverent, and yet conversational. It was deep and moving, yet very personal. His prayers reflected a life that was deeply connected to God and deeply committed to aligning with what mattered most to God.
           
For all of us, our prayers say something about who we are and what we value. When we pray only in times of crisis, this reveals what we think of God’s role in our lives. When we pray only for safety and health, this reveals what we think is most important. When we have great gaps with no prayer at all, this reveals the importance we place on being connected to God. This is why I am so impacted anytime I am in the presence of someone whose prayers reflect a powerful connection with God.
           
But what about being in the presence of Jesus while He prayed? What would that be like? What would we learn about Him, about God, about what is important, and about ourselves? This Sunday we will get to walk through the longest recorded prayer of Jesus, as He prepared to fulfill His ultimate purpose. Come prepared to learn how Jesus declassifies God through His prayer, and also to learn how His prayer reveals what He values most for all of us.

Dan

This Weekend's Message: Be Known, Making Jesus Known (Back to Church Sunday)

Summer is a time when many of us take the opportunity to change up our routines – to spend time going places, slow down, see new sights, and find refreshment during times of vacations. But with the fall comes a time when routines are re-established – our children go back to school, college students go back to their dorms, vacations are over, and we go back to work. And while church has not stopped this summer, the fall does feel like a time of new beginnings – of starting something new and focusing on something that will make a difference. This Sunday will be an exciting time as we look ahead to what we believe God has for us. You won’t want to miss because we have a special surprise just for you.

Gary

This Weekend's Message: The Wrong Side of History

“The wrong side of history” has become a common phrase in recent cultural and political conversations. It is used to describe people who cling to a way of life, a system of beliefs, or a moral code that is fading out of existence (or at least out of favor). The threat of being on the wrong side of history can seem daunting. It can feel like being an aging, broken-down boxer, while the young up-and-comers begin to take over. All of us want to be the kind of people who, when our grandchildren look back on us, will be viewed as being on the right side of controversial and divisive issues.
           
It can often feel like Christians are on the wrong side of history. In our culture, many Christian beliefs are viewed as unenlightened. Many Christian moral beliefs are viewed as outdated. Many Christian movements can feel like they are fading. At a global level, and at an individual level, it can be intimidating to feel like many Christians are viewed as the aging boxer who refuses to hang up his gloves.
           
If you are a Christian, do you ever struggle to feel that you are on the wrong side of history? If you are not a Christian, do you tend to view Christians as people on the wrong side of history? This Sunday, in some of his last words to His disciples, Jesus gives a different perspective—and a different grid—for understanding what it looks like to be on the right side of history.

Dan

This Weekend's Message: Stay Connected

When was the last time you were about to embark on some task that felt utterly overwhelming? Whether it was a work project, a school assignment, a family problem, or some physical challenge, you probably – at some point – started to wonder if you had what it took. This is what we all wonder when we face something daunting. Do we have what it takes? Is what is inside of us – our intelligence, our skills, our experiences – enough to make us sufficient for what is before us?
           
Many of us feel overwhelmed when we think of what it means to follow Jesus fully. We need the strength to fight against sin, the courage to speak boldly to others, the compassion to sacrifice for those in need, and the love to pour out to those around us. Do we really have what it takes? The answer, according to what Jesus says in John 15, is "No." We don’t have what it takes. But we have access to the one who does.
           
This Sunday we will explore Jesus as the one and only source and we will explore how we stay connected to Him.

Dan

This Weekend's Message: The One That Got Away

If you watch enough baseball, you will occasionally see a pitcher dramatically lose control of one of his pitches. Everything will seem to be normal and then suddenly the pitch will get away from him and sail over the catcher’s head, or past him toward the backstop, or—even worse—directly at the batter. It is dramatic to watch him as he—at one moment—seems to have complete control over where the ball will go, and then as he—the next moment—seems to have no say in the matter.

Have you ever had a situation get away from you? Have you ever—at work or at home or in your personal life—had something that you thought was under control, spin dramatically out of your reach? Have you ever had that helpless feeling that a significant situation had gotten away from you and that you have no power to fix it?

What do we do when a situation gets away from us? And how does the dramatic story of Jesus’ betrayal by Judas help answer this question?

Dan

This Weekend's Message: Washing Up

Some people are uncomfortable receiving gifts from others. Let me just say...I’m not. If someone offers to pay for lunch, if someone opens a door for me, if someone gives me tickets to see the Dodgers, I don’t say, “I couldn’t possibly accept these.” Instead, I say a genuine, “Thank you,” and I accept. I have friends, though, who have a lot of trouble receiving gifts. They feel uncomfortable and feel like they “owe” the gift-giver or that they need to make themselves worthy of the gift. This is not a struggle that I have.

I can brag that I am not too proud to receive gifts from others, but, on the other hand, I am not always as cognizant of ways that I can meet the needs of others. I am a pretty good receiver, but not a great giver. Some people are poor receivers, but they are active givers, constantly seeing the meeting the needs of others.
           
Most of us are good at giving or good at receiving, but very few of us are good at both. We probably, unconsciously, feel like we need to choose. Givers get frustrated with the mooching receivers, and receivers get frustrated with the uptight givers.
           
Does God call us to choose? Does He call us to get up out of our seats and make sure we are giving? Does He call us to rest and relax and simply receive? The answer is that it is not either-or. On Sunday, as we observe Jesus perform one of His most beautiful acts of servanthood, we will see the relationship between giving and receiving.

Dan

This Weekend's Message: Everything to Lose

How much are you willing to lose?

How much are you willing to lose for your career? Your leisure time, your energy, your freedom, your integrity? How much are you willing to lose for your family? Your tastes and preferences, your pride, your anger, your discretionary income? How much are you willing to lose for your health? Your time, your energy, your favorite foods, your mental focus?

How much are you willing to lose for your relationship with Jesus? A little bit of time? A little bit of money? A little Bible reading, a little Christian music, a little volunteer work, a little prayer before meals? If you’re not willing to lose very much for your relationship with Jesus, is it possible that you’re missing out on some amazing gains?

At Life Bible Fellowship Church on Sunday we will talk about what Jesus has to say about what we need to be willing to lose in order to experience the full benefits that He came to bring.

Dan

This Weekend's Message: What Did You Expect?

When I was a kid, I used to hate it when my ears needed to pop. I would try just about anything to get the discomfort to go away, but my options seemed limited. I would yawn. I would try to get any excess wax out of them. I would drink some water. Sometimes, though, none of these tried-and-true methods worked. Then, one day, someone told me to plug my nose and fill my cheeks with air.
           
Imagine hearing that as a kid. It sounded so silly that I thought that the person who said it to me was making fun of me. Eventually, though, I gave it a try. Immediately my ears popped and I said, “I can’t believe that worked!” My problem ended up being solved by a method that I would never have tried, never have conceived, and never would have imagined would be effective.
           
Jesus was an expert in surprising people with His own actions and with the actions He called them to take. This Sunday we will explore a story in which Jesus shatters others’ expectations of Him, and surprises everyone with how He presents Himself. And, in doing this, He also invites us to follow Him into a very surprising solution to the problems that we deeply long for God to resolve.

Dan

This Weekend's Message: Extravagant Worship

Have you ever been given an extravagant gift from someone, but had a difficult time receiving it? Maybe you’ve said to the gift giver, “This is too much, I just can’t accept it.” And then the giver insists and then the two of you argue back and forth for a while, but after some time you relent and finally accept it. 

How does that make you feel and what do you do next?

If you’re like many people, maybe you feel like you must out-give the giver of the gift and do something bigger and better. And so you figure out a way to give back. Or maybe you just try and show your appreciation over and over again to the giver. Or maybe you say nice things or do nice things in an effort to feel worthy of the gift or somehow make up for the extravagant gift you've received. How should we respond when we’ve been given an extravagant gift? 

This week as we worship through music and message, we will look at what it means to bring our extravagant worship to Jesus. We will see Mary bring a very extravagant gift to Jesus and as she brings her gift, we’ll see how others respond and we’ll see how Jesus responds. And in the process we will explore how we can respond as we learn from Mary about the worship we bring to Jesus.

I look forward to seeing you on Sunday. It’s going to be a great morning!

Gary

This Weekend's Message: When God is Too Late

There is a dramatic scene near the beginning of the movie Braveheart. William Wallace’s wife is captured by British soldiers and is about to be executed. As she awaits her own death, she looks beyond herself to the hills. Clearly she is hoping to see her husband come riding in to save her. As her execution grows closer, she looks all the more urgently, hoping to be rescued. Without him intervening, she is sure to die. And William Wallace does arrive, but not until long after her death. He arrives far too late to do anything.

Have you ever been in desperate situation and prayed—I mean really prayed—for God to intervene and keep something terrible from happening? You probably have. And, sadly, sometimes you have probably experienced the disappointment of God not intervening before the tragedy struck. Your faith may have suffered because it seemed that, if God arrived at all, he arrived too late.

On Sunday we will look at a time, a long ago, when Jesus seemed to arrive too late. Many people thought that the story had already ended. But Jesus was only beginning.

Dan

This Weekend's Message: The Good Shepherd

On March 23, 1997, 39 members of a religious group called “Heaven’s Gate” participated in a mass suicide. They had been taught that by taking their own lives and exiting their earthly bodies, they would end up on a space ship that was following the Hale-Bopp Comet. They trusted the teachings enough to take their own lives, believing that in the end their devotion would lead them to a better life.

This sad story illustrates two powerful truths. The first is that we long so deeply for a better life that we are willing to go to great lengths and take great risks to try to get it. The second is that we are all looking for someone to follow. We all want to hitch our wagon to the right person, the right teaching, the right path, the right guide, so that we will be led to a better life. The problem with the members of Heaven’s Gate was not that they trusted someone else too much. It was that they trusted the wrong guide. Because of this, their noble attempt to trust ended in disaster and tragedy.

Who do you trust to guide you? To whom are you looking to lead you to a better life? This Sunday we will walk through a passage in which Jesus offers Himself as the only one who can guide us to life. Though this passage we will see why we should trust Him, and we will also see what it looks like to trust Him.

Dan

This Weekend's Message: Blind Spots

If we find out that our vision is going bad, we take extreme action. We get eye exams. We get glasses or contacts. We have laser eye surgery. We know how important it is to be able to see clearly, and so we act swiftly if we find out that we are having vision problems.

            

The question is this: Are we that passionate and committed to identifying and dealing with our more significant areas of blindness and ignorance? All of us have certain truths that we don’t want to see about ourselves or about the world. When someone brings up our blind spots, most of us shut our eyes, preferring not to know.

            

On Sunday we’ll see Jesus’ power to free us from our blindness. If you are serious about seeing clearly, come and see how the Light of the World opens our eyes.

Dan

This Weekend's Message: Have You Found What You're Looking For?

Bono from the British band U2 sang a song with the following lyrics: "I have climbed the highest mountains - I have run through fields - I have run I have crawled - I have scaled these city walls - But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for." Some believe this song is about a search for the meaning of life. Others believe that this song speaks to man’s inability to find lasting contentment. But whatever the meaning, it is clear that many people in our world have not found what they are searching for and live with a constant state of discontentment.

Is it possible to find lasting contentment? And if it is possible, how and where do we find it?

This week as we complete our two week series called "The Gamble,” we will look at what God says about how to find true contentment.

I hope to see you this Sunday!

Gary

This Weekend's Message: Who Are You Betting On?

Imagine that a group of people go to place bets on who will be next year’s Super Bowl MVP. The first gambler picks Peyton Manning. The next picks Marshawn Lynch. The next picks Aaron Rodgers. Then the final gambler chooses...himself. Although he is not an NFL player, he decides that he would rather bet on himself than on anyone else.

You would think someone like this was crazy, right? It simply is not smart to bet on yourself to accomplish something that is way beyond your reach. It is much better to put your money on someone who has shown that he is capable of getting the job done.

This Sunday we will be presented with a choice. When it comes to our money and our happiness, on whom will we gamble? Will we bet on ourselves, believing that we have the capability of using and managing our money and resources in a way that will bring us our greatest good? Or will we conclude that we are not qualified to accomplish this? Will we instead opt to bet on someone who has shown Himself to be more than able to work all things together for the good of those who trust Him? It is a gamble either way. Who will we bet on?

Dan

This Weekend's Message: Night Vision

When I was used to go to summer camp as a kid, we would have teams compete in a relay race that involved a blindfold and a baseball bat. In the race, we would take turns being blindfolded, and then we would walk up to the baseball bat, stand it up, put our forehead down on the tip of it, and spin around ten times. After spinning, we would then have to run in a straight line to tag-in the next runner so that the relay could continue. As you can imagine, there was a lot of confusion. A lot of people went the wrong way, tripped over obstacles, and took a long time to get where they were going. Being blindfolded would have been enough to make it difficult, but to dizziness made it even more confusing and challenging. It hard to get where you want to go in that condition.

Most of us like to believe that we see the world pretty clearly, and that we are able to get ourselves where we want to go. According to Jesus, however, without him we are walking in darkness. We are blinded and confused, just like a kid who has put on a blindfold and spun around a baseball bat. We are making mistakes about the things around us because we cannot see them. We are injuring ourselves because we are tripping over obstacles. We are wandering around, looking for the right path. We are lost in the darkness, and on our own we cannot find our way.

But Jesus presents himself as the light of the world. He invites us to follow him out of darkness. This Sunday we will experience Jesus’ invitation to follow him, and we will be presented with all the challenges and benefits that go along with this invitation.

Dan

This Weekend's Message: Human Shield

Are you the good cop or the bad cop? Do you interact with people as if what they need most is structure and rules and consequences, or do you interact with people as if what they need most is understanding and sympathy and second chances?           

Typically, we feel like we have to choose one or the other of these modes. We must either be sympathetic to the plight of others and overlook their shortcomings or we must crack the whip and make them take responsibility. This impacts the way we parent, the way we interact in friendships, and even the way we treat ourselves. Do we need to be harder on ourselves or give ourselves more permission and space to figure things out?
           
The most important question of all is not whether you are a good cop or a bad cop. The most important question is whether God is a good cop or a bad cop. Is God’s main strategy to give us rules and direct consequences in order to help us grow and change, or is His strategy to continue to give us more and more chances, being as understanding as He can be?
           
Which one is He? Which one do you want Him to be? This Sunday, we will see Jesus forced to choose between being a good cop or a bad cop. The way He responds reveals a powerful and much-needed truth about how God conducts Himself toward us.

Dan

This Weekend's Message: Choose a Side

“You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

C.S. Lewis wrote those words in his book Mere Christianity in order drive home the point that it is foolish for anyone to have a casual response to Jesus. We can be horrified. We can be amazed. But we can’t shrug our shoulders. Yet many of us, both Christians and non-Christians, respond to Jesus and His call for our lives with casual indifference. This is a problem!

This Sunday we will look at a passage in John’s gospel, and we will see a group of people struggling to decide what they think of Jesus. As we walk through this passage, we will each be compelled to come face to face with Jesus and respond to Him with appropriate gravity.

Dan

This Weekend's Message: Hunger

If you’ve ever dealt with a baby, then you know that babies have only one proven method to communicate:  cry and scream. They do this if they are scared or if they are hurt or if they are lonely. And they also cry and scream when they are hungry. Even when we are as young as a few days old, we feel the need to fill our hunger. Hunger tells us that there is something wrong, something lacking. So we act with urgency and (sometimes) panic in order to fill up, so that we are no longer hungry.

Think of how you feel when you are hungry. Now take a moment to think of when you feel hungry for something other than food. Think of when you are hungry for affection, or hungry for adventure, or hungry for affirmation, or hungry for comfort. Many of us would be willing to deal with some physical hunger as long as these deeper longings were being fulfilled.

We are all hungry, and not just for food. We all know that there is something wrong. Something lacking. Even if we think we know the right way to fill ourselves, we often find our hunger persisting. This Sunday at Life Bible Fellowship Church we will see Jesus address this idea. He affirms that we are all hungry, and then He points us to the one and only way for us to satisfy that hunger and be filled.

Dan

This Weekend's Message: Caught in a Storm

I once had to play music on a cruise ship. It was just a little 3-day Royal Caribbean cruise down to Ensenada, Mexico and back. About 24 minutes into the cruise, the boat began to sway from side to side, which I was told tends to happen on a boat. One hour and 54 minutes into the cruise, the boat was not only swaying, it was pitching up and down like one of those carnival rides that little kids love, but adults tend to be smart enough to avoid. As it turns out, we had “encountered some less than ideal seas.” About 3 hours and 44 minutes into the cruise, I was a shade of green that can only be described as Grinch-like. Every person that passed me in the halls asked if I was okay. My fellow band mates invited me to lay down on the floor backstage, but as they say, the show must go on. So, I spent the next 3 days playing 3 times a day on a stage that was rocking back and forth the way a set of high school bleachers does during a pep rally. My number one goal was not to play well, hit right notes, or even look like I was having a good time; it was to NOT throw up in my saxophone. As a bonus, once we docked, I discovered that just because the cruise was over and I disembarked, does not mean the swaying stops, and I proceeded to be nauseous for an additional day or so.

Needless to say, my career of choice was not going to have anything to do with cruises, or boats...or water for that matter (with the exception of baptisms). Storms are scary things, and storms in life can take a huge toll, especially when we believe we are out there alone. But why do the storms have to happen? Why doesn’t God just take care of things to protect us from having to feel bad? This Sunday we will be looking at the ever-popular, but possibly under-considered, event of Jesus walking on water (John 6:16-21). Was that event just for thrills? Just so Jesus could show off? Or was He Declassifying some things about the nature of God and His interaction with those willing to follow Him?

See ya Sunday! (No barf bags required!)
Jeff

This Weekend's Message: Flashback

One of my college friends did a wonderful and creative thing when he proposed to his girlfriend. When he took her out for the evening, he took her from location to location for several hours. Each location they visited – a restaurant, a park, an outdoor mall – had some significance to their relationship. He took her to the location of their first date, to the location that they officially began their relationship, to the location where he first told her that he loved her, and so on. The familiarity of these places must have made his girlfriend increasingly suspicious that something significant was happening. Each connection with the past suggested that history would repeat itself and something big would happen. And, of course, it did.

This Sunday, we will look at Jesus feeding the five thousand. But this passage is about much more than Jesus simply providing a meal for a multitude. It is about Jesus systematically doing things that were familiar and nostalgic for the people of Israel. Throughout the passage He brings to their minds significant moments in their national history. And He behaves in a way that would have reminded them of one of their most beloved heroes, Moses. Just as big things happened before, something big was happening again.

Dan