Sermon Tone Analysis

OVERFLOW

Week 1

November 13, 2022

Greet

Welcome

First Time

PRAY

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

GOD’S PLANS ARE NOT DEPENDENT ON MEN.

If you’re worried today about what God can do depending on what who is in power remember: GOD’S PLANS ARE NOT DEPENDENT ON MEN.

SCRIPTURE MUST THE LENS OF OUR LIFE.

The Bible illuminates who God is.

The stories of his faithfulness, power, the miracles of Christ are not recorded to excite wonder, they exist to reveal who God is.

In doing so we’ll endeavor to be bold and courageous to do what he has called us to do.

RENEW YOUR MIND DAILY

The world has one way of living, but God has a different way for you to live.

Since you have lived the way the world has lived for so long, your mind needs to be renewed, rewired, and retrained.

AND THIS IS A DAILY PRACTICE.

SO, we’re going to have to build up new pathways in our brains through reading God’s word, praying and spending time in his presence, and then building new God-honoring habits.

As we do so, our minds will be renewed.

And I believe in an anxious chaotic world we will experience and be people of peace.

Our peace comes from him.

Our assurance comes from him.

There’s nothing that our God can’t do.

As we come into the busiest time of all of our year, we have to remember the importance of daily renewing our minds.

I walk around stores hearing the Christmas music already playing and hearing the song It’s the most wonderful of the year, and for so many of us, it’s the most stressful time of the year.

You’re going to overextend yourself physically

You might be spending more money than you want to

You might have to go to family get-togethers and sit across the dinner table from “that cousin or that uncle” you know the one who blows up the whole dinner by arguing about stuff none of you can control, or really even fully understand.

So many of us … our schedules are getting busier and busier, and we’re going faster and faster every single week until the end of the year.

Overwhelmed—Anxious all have do—Enough hours day.

Squeeze more—Fastest line—Busy multitask restroom—Buz.

For some the holidays we’re not just rushed—Occasionally/Often disappointed in life?

Something’s missing?

I’m just too busy.

Busy—No time what love—Who love.

What if I told you: The greatest enemy to the life you want may be the life that you’re living.

The pace you’re going, the things that you’re giving your time and attention to.

The things that are pulling at you, and people, and add the holidays to it, and you feel like you’re going to burst, and you wonder how am I going to do it all and keep my salvation, my sanity, my relationships intact?

I’ve got one word for you:

Here’s how you can change the cycle

REST.

In the middle of chaos, you’re going to rest.

As we jump in today, we’re going to look at a few different pieces of scripture, but we’re going to start in Hebrews 4.

And this notion of rest is what the writer of Hebrews is stressing to his readers in Chapter 4

Hebrews 4

Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it.

2 For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened.

The writer begins chapter four with the word Therefore: The idea is carried on without pause from Hebrews 3, that unbelief kept the generation that escaped Egypt from entering Canaan.

The promise remains of entering His rest, and we can enter into that rest by faith.

Unbelief will make us fall short of the rest God has for us.

But there’s still the opportunity for salvation.

If you remember, we talked about how God waited out an entire generation of Israelites following their exodus from Egypt because their hearts were not toward him.

They were disobedient, and they did not root themselves in God.

Moses took too long up on the mountain talking to God at one point, that the people asked Aaron to take all of their jewelry to make a golden calf statue.

THEY MADE IT.

WITH THEIR OWN JEWELRY.

There was no power in it.

But they were afraid, and were looking for something to anchor themselves to, and because they weren’t anchoring themselves to God, they make these kinds of decisions.

The truth is, your soul is looking for something to anchor to as well.

And if you don’t intentionally anchor yourself to God, you will go about this life anchoring yourself to anything else you can find that will pacify what you feel.

YOUR LIFE WILL DRIFT WITHOUT AN ANCHOR.

I think it’s magnified in the holiday season, but it’s true at all times.

Here’s the deal:

Your heart is broken from a relationship – instead of anchoring to God and allowing him to heal you, you become a serial dater.

You’re insecure about what you bring to the table so rather than anchoring yourself to God and allowing him to affirm your value, you find your value or lack thereof in your career or material success.

Maybe you don’t want to deal with shame or hurt from the past, and rather than anchoring yourself to God, and allowing him to heal your shame, you anchor yourself to a substance or an unhealthy habit…

But the effectiveness of that thing begins to wane, and you find yourself drifting… constantly running, working, and looking for a place to anchor your soul…

Where we place our trust matters, not just for eternity, but for everyday.

The rest that we’re talking about is not just eternal rest, but everyday rest.

3 For we who have believed enter that rest, as he has said,

“As I swore in my wrath,

‘They shall not enter my rest,’”

although his works were finished from the foundation of the world.

4 For he has somewhere spoken of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all his works.”

5 And again in this passage he said,

“They shall not enter my rest.”

6 Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, 7 again he appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted,

“Today, if you hear his voice,

do not harden your hearts.”

8 For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on.

9 So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, 10 for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.

Wow.

I think some of us need to take these words that were quoted from David, that David wrote over 3000 years ago…

“Today, if you hear his voice,

do not harden your hearts.”

DON’T WAIT TO REST.

What you’re doing will be more effective, and more inspired on the other side of resting.

If you hear the voice of God.

Take it seriously, be obedient, what he has for you is so much better than what you have for you.

The quicker we get that into our bones, the better off we’ll be.

But in order to hear his voice, so often we need to come to a place of rest, so that we can slow down and hear it.

This rest we’re talking about is in a person – in Jesus Christ, more than in doctrines and ideas.

It’s spending time with Jesus.

It’s not just the absence of work or duties, but the priority of communion with God.

I think about my children in this passage.

If you meet a troubled, crying child and try to comfort them and give them rest using ideas and logic, it won’t do much good.

But when their parent comes, the child is relieved, they feel safety, and are able to continue on.

The same is true for us.

There are so many ideas… so many methods… so many processes of rest, but the reality is true rest for your soul is found in one person.

JESUS.