Sermon Tone Analysis

Today is special.

Today we celebrate communion.

We begin again with a fresh understanding of God’s grace.

In the last year we have seen some incredible things in our family here.

Big things.

God things.

And we have been through some hard things.

Some world shattering things.

Some - I just need to be at the feet of Jesus because everything else is chaos things.

We are blessed to be able to be there.

As a church in the last year we have been through some stuff.

We have seen and done some stuff.

We did some things we have never done before that I have thought - we need to do that a lot more often!

And we have done some things this year that I have lamented over, I never want to do that again...

Each year as we come to this first Sunday, I come back to Philippians 3:12-15

I believe this passage of scripture is a good place to start the year, especially for us.

Because many of us have been believers for a long time.

We have been church folks for a long time.

And in that - we get stagnant.

The Apostle Paul, having known who God was from the what we know as the old testament… having his own experience and appointment with Jesus the Christ on the Road to Damascus… having found company with the disciples that walked with Jesus, planted churches himself, shared the gospel countless times himself, worked himself over… that apostle Paul… wrote to this church in Philippi and said…

I don’t think I have all of this figured out.

I don’t think I am doing all of this perfectly.

I’m Not settling for who I have been, what I have done, where I have gone.

I don’t think - even after everything else, that I have taken hold of this.

Paul was there.

He wanted to express that he didn’t have it all figured out - and that is where we should be also.

As believers though, we tend to go the other way.

We get stagnant and lethargic.

We set goals for ourselves in every other aspect of our lives.

Better job - More money.

Health - we are going to lose those 15 pounds this year for sure!

Relationships - Going to work on that this year - I’m going to talk nicely to my wife at least 3 times each month - I am going to be a better parent.

And yet our walk with the lord is.... good enough?

If we do set goals for our christian life - they end up being just like that gym membership we keep buying every year - Going to read the bible in a year - only to fall off January 15th.

What are we supposed to do?

Consider Jesus.