Monday, June 14, 2010
Five Thoughts After the Sermon
Five Thoughts After the Sermon
By Vermon Pierre, Lead Pastor
Here are five things that I'd like to further highlight from last Sunday's sermon, "Salvation Belongs to the Lord" (Ps 3):
1. How can you increase your trust in the Lord? By focusing your attention more on the Lord and understanding more of his attributes. Increased trust is directly correlated to increased understanding and appreciation of God.
2. Many think glory comes when you come out on top in certain situations. Glory goes to the "winner." However, this true only from a secular perspective. From the eternal divine perspective, glory comes when our trust is put in God. Trust in God brings with it eternal glory and honor and praise (cf Ps 3:3). This is true even if in the world's eyes you are a clear "loser." And fortunately, eternal glory is obviously of much greater value than any temporary glory we might gain during our earthly lives.
3. Crisis provides a one of kind opportunity to really hear from God. It's an occasion for us to see a fuller and richer picture of God and begin to connect the dots between his sovereignty and the events of our lives. Or, on the other hand, crisis is an occasion for us to sink into despair and begin doubting and struggling with things we've never doubted or struggled with before. Our picture of God will become steadily dimmer and unclear and may even fade away altogether.
4. Prayer really is absolutely vital to the life of the persevering believer. Prayer is the means by which you can rise above your circumstances, see them from God's perspective, and then jump back into those circumstances with confidence and assurance because you have seen things from God's eternal vantage point.
5. "And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:12) Salvation belongs exclusively to the Lord, and that salvation is only experienced in relationship to God through Jesus Christ. We must never dismiss, dilute, avoid, or forget this truth.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
[Caveat: I did not hear Sunday's sermon, so....]
Re: #1
This seems obvious but clearly we need to be continually reminded. When Christ remains front and center of our lives, it necessarily follows that our trust in him will increase; the inverse is equally true. What else could our trust do if not grow with our knowledge of Christ's excellencies?
I'm reminded of fragments from Pascal who laments our use of diversion to keep us focused on the mundane. He writes: "We run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us seeing it” (Pensée 166). Diversion is the "greatest of our miseries" (Pensée 414).
Earlier this week while deeply embedded in architecting a logic flow for a process application, I received a call from a good friend who said "Have time for theology question?" I said "ALWAYS!" and moved to an empty conference room where we talked for more than 30 min on the presence and purposes of God. Now THAT is a diversion I can live with!
As a saying goes "The main thing is to keep the main the main thing."
Post a Comment