FIND FREEDOM

Intro

Good morning! We are so glad that you are here with us this morning! We had an incredible launch weekend last week. We are celebrating this morning that 12 people gave their lives to Christ last week for the first time, and a quite a few of you indicated on your connection card that you were re-dedicating your life to Christ! And thats what its all about!!! Can we just take a moment to celebrate what God is doing here at Generations Church??

Just a housekeeping note....last week we quickly discovered that the parking lot was overflowing and people had to park on the road and down the street. So this week one of our guys pushed the snow all the way back to the hill back there to give us more parking in grass. We also know that the parking lot is an icy mess this morning. It melted all week and then refroze so please, please be careful again as you exit this morning.

One more thing

Walk people through downloading the Church Center App.

Before we jump into our message this morning I want everyone if you have a smart phone take it out. Yes it’s okay to take out your phones in church. Listen, here at Generations Church we want to give you every opportunity to grow in your Christian faith and in your relationship with God. One very practical way to do that is by downloading apps that will help you do that. Its incredible that we live in a day and age where technology can help us stay connected with everything at the church as well as have the entire Bible in the palm of our hands. We would like to encourage you to download two apps that everyone would greatly benefit from. The church center app and the Bible App.

Everything that happens at Generations Church, all our events, our registrations, our calendar, and even our online giving is all available in the Church Center App. so you can have it at the tip of your fingers.

I want you to go to your app store right now.... go on......and search the church center app (Put Picture up)

Everyone find it and when you find it hold your device up in the air.......okay click download. If you want you can download it on your iPad or tablet after church. It will ask for your location and say yes…it will list the churches in our area which use this app…look for Generations Church. It will text you a code to make sure its really you…just enter the code and you will have access to everything. You can add yourself to the church directory if you want…tithe right in the app…register for events etc.

Men you can still register for tonights Bible and Burgers event simply by clicking on registrations there inside the app.

Then there is one more thing we want one to highlight which is one of our values here at Generations Church, and that is serving. At Generations you will here us say we don’t want to sit, soak, and sour, but rather that we want to be the hands and feet of Jesus .

One way that we do that is by having a Saturday Serve opportunity each month where we will be giving you opportunities to serve others in one way or another here in our community.

Our first Saturday serve is happening on February 4th here at the church and we would love for you to come out for an hour or two to help us.

One of the coolest things about this church plant journey is seeing God use different people in different ways! Everything that you see around you has an amazing God story.

The chairs you are sitting on were purchased on Facebook marketplace from an online store in Michigan and right around the time we bought them the Lord brought a guy to our launch team who is a full time over the road truck driver. In God’s sovereignty the Lord brother Bo Schuety to partner with us. Bo scheduled himself to pick eggs up in Indiana and deliver them to Michigan where he was able to pick up these chairs and put them into storage in one of his tractor trailers in Dunkerton.

What we found out was that Bo although he is a truck driver by occupation He is a missionary to his very core. Bo saw so many hurting, empty, people in with great physical needs every would drive so he began collecting toiletries , toothpaste, deodorant, warm socks, stocking hats, mittens, etc and began to give out what he now calls blessing bags. He meets physical needs of people all over the country in order that he can share the life changing message of the gospel.

As I was praying and thinking about about our Saturday serve schedule I thought “Who better to serve, than one of our own partners and friends” so next week we will have collection bins in the lobby as well in here and we want you to overflow these bins with toiletries. We will have a list of items that are needed attached to the bins and then Saturday the 4th we will pack blessing bags with the items and Bo is going to try to be here on Feb 5th so we can present him with the filled blessing bags as well as hear a little bit about how God began this ministry giving his life purpose and making a difference in peoples lives all over the country.

Now…with all that being said let’s turn to the Lord in prayer and ask Him to continue to work in our lives like only He can do.

Prayer

This morning I want to give just a little review for those of you who were unable to be with us last week, as we began a four week series entitled “What’s Next?” and we introduced our mission statement which is this:

“We exist to help people Know God, Find Freedom, Discover Purpose, and Make a Difference.” We talked about the fact that God loves you! He knows you intimately, that contentment is found no where apart from a relationship with Jesus Christ, and that Knowing Jesus is just the beginning of your journey.

This week I read a great descriptive about what it must be like to work at a church, written by a Christian satire writer named Jon Acuff. Since today is my one week anniversary of being a lead pastor I thought I would share this with you so you know what my week looks like. He says

Don’t you wish you worked at a church? That would be such a dream job! My assumption is that other than Sunday it must be like having a long quiet time. You probably get to read the Bible all day long and take breaks in your prayer closet and spend eight hours a day growing your spiritual life. I’m sure the phone rings sometimes, like when someone needs a casserole of hope after a death in the family or a youth group van breaks down. I bet there is an acoustic guitar being played somewhere in the office and when you go to make copies on the printer you’ll hear it and join in a sing-a-long. Is it even a full time job? Seriously other than a few hours on a Sunday morning, what else are you doing? Praying? Worshipping? Holding car washes to raise money for missions trips? What’s that take? Four hours tops? How do you spend the rest of your week? Being loved on I bet! Plus You’ve got an entire congregation full of people that love you unconditionally. Imagine having hundreds of people that are fans of what you do and how you do it. People that are going to wholeheartedly accept what you do and never write mean emails no matter if they disagree with your decisions or not. They are opening thank-you notes and sunshine emails and gift baskets with delicious cheeses and spiced meats all day long! Someday if they ever eliminate my job maybe I’ll get a church job and get to live the sweet life!

Oh Yes….the sweet life.

I have not yet gotten to experience most of that yet, but the truth is that because I am living in obedience to God I am living a fulfilled life of purpose. Next week we will dive into discovering your God given purpose so you’re gonna want to be here for that!

So be sure to invite a friend! And just a side note - We know inviting people to church can be intimidating so we are trying to make it as easy as possible and have printed off some invite cards. Please be sure stop by the welcome center and and take a few and hand them out. Give them to your barista, or drive through friends. Invite everyone you can because at Generations Church it’s all about the Gospel!

If you have your Bible or your favorite Bible app with you today I want to ask you to turn to Ephesians 1:17-19 with me, and here we find the Apostle Paul writing to the new believers there in the church in Ephesus. In chapter one Paul is writing about the incredibly rich blessings we experience by the fact that our sins are forgiven and that we can know God.

I don’t know about you but there should be incredible joy in the fact that you once were lost and a captive and now you are found and you can experience freedom in Christ. This morning we want you to find that Freedom from our sin, from addictions, from fears, pains, anxieties, depression and hopelessness can only come from Christ. Here in Ephesians 1 Paul prays a prayer for the church and this is what he prays.

He says,

“I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, would give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what is the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the mighty working of his strength.”

Paul is praying first that God would give you the spirit of wisdom and divine revelation that you can Know him. There are people that believe God exists but that He has nothing to do with you that God simply created the world, set it spinning and no longer interacts or wants anything to do with us. That simply is not true. Above everything else Paul, and I could insert my name here as well because it is my prayer for you is that you come to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Paul says “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened!” Why? “So that you may know what is the hope of His calling.

We mentioned it last week but you need to understand that coming to Christ is the starting point on this journey, and so many people make that commitment to Know God but they stop there. What people fail to see and believe is that you are not saved simply from Hell when you come to accept the free gift of salvation but you are now an adopted child of the king and everything that He has is now also yours.

That’s why we can be weak and say “I am strong.” We can be poor but can stand and say “I am rich”, we now have the immeasurable greatness of His power because He has purchased our freedom. And in this new year if you know God you can now stand and say “this is the year where my addiction will not define who I am. I will no longer be labeled by my past” I will no longer be labeled by my mistakes, or my failures, my shortcomings, because I am no longer a slave to who I was because my freedom has been bought by the blood of Jesus Christ. And my prayer for you this morning is that you not only Know Him, but that you also know the glorious hope of His calling for your life and that calling on your life starts with the fact that you have been set free from from not only an eternity in Hell but you can now be free from the sins that so easily entangle us!

Some of you are treading water in life right now and you are going under.

VOLUNTEER - Any one here a great swimmer? Come up.....

My family and I spend a lot of time at the pool in the summer. All of our kids are part fish and they are great swimmers and the lifeguards know our kids by name.

How long do you thing you could tread water?

What about now? Add bricks

Many of us are going through life and we are being held down by the chains and heaviness of life that we were never meant to carry. And The first thing you need to know and understand this morning is that

You are called to live in Freedom!

Look what Galatians 5:13-14 “For you were called to be free, brothers and sisters; only don’t use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love. For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement: Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Here in Galatians Paul is writing to new converts and all they have known and all they have been taught was that keeping the law was their spiritual requirement! They were being told by other religious teachers of the law that they had to keep a list of rules and regulations especially circumcision in order to be right with God.

Read along with me in Galatians 5:1-6

Galatians 5:1–6 (NLT)

So Christ has truly set us free. I want to stop here for just a second. If you have been born again, if you have accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior and have a new life in Him are you Free? Yes…You are free from the penalty of sin. You no longer have the death penalty assigned to you as sinner. You no longer have to fear death because when your time comes you will be welcomed into heaven because Jesus himself conquered death.

But this initial freedom is just the beginning and so many people make that initial commitment to Christ and then still live as if they are slaves to their sins. That’s why Paul continues here and says

Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law. Listen! I, Paul, tell you this: If you are counting on circumcision to make you right with God, then Christ will be of no benefit to you. I’ll say it again. If you are trying to find favor with God by being circumcised, you must obey every regulation in the whole law of Moses. For those of who want to know what that would entail, there were 613 regulations and laws that the Jews were required to live by in order to be right with God. Aren’t you glad we aren’t under that anymore. Paul goes on and says... For if you are trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ! You have fallen away from God’s grace. Paul is saying stop trying so hard to keep something that is impossible to keep because Jesus was the fulfillment of the entire law so stop trying to live in a way where you think you can earn your way to heaven! It’s impossible and until you and I come to that realization and trust in the completed work of Christ on the cross you too will remain a slave to the law and to your own self! Paul goes on in verse 5 and says

But we who live by the Spirit eagerly wait to receive by faith the righteousness God has promised to us. For when we place our faith in Christ Jesus, there is no benefit in being circumcised or being uncircumcised. What is important is faith expressing itself in love.

Listen, there is nothing you can add or do to gain salvation. You’re salvation is not dependent on your works, it is a free gift so stop trying to earn it!

So what does that mean? You are called to live in freedom? Well, we know what it means in the physical sense right, but what does it mean in the spiritual sense when the Bible says you and I have been called to Freedom?

I want to give you a Biblical working definition.

Freedom: is the state of liberty that results from not being oppressed or enslaved to sin.”

So in order to find out if we are living in freedom we now need to find out if we are enslaved to any sin? You may be sitting here thinking “man, I’m not in bondage to anything” or “I am not a slave to anything” Really? Let’s see what Jesus says about that.

John 8:34 (NLT)

Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave of sin.

From this verse…who is a slave to sin? Everyone!

So if anyone who sins is a slave to sin how how can we experience true Freedom? And listen, I don’t ever want us to gather here together, throw up some verses on the screen and call it a day. My goal is always to have real & relevant truth which can be applied to your life! So we want to walk away with application steps to make us more like Christ…right!

So I want to give you some real actions you can take home and apply to your life in order for you to live in freedom…you with me?

The first thing we have to do is this. We have to...

Die to Sin!

Romans 6:1–2 (NLT)

Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?

Some of you are treading water right now and you’re starting to swallow water and about to drown and you're blame everyone else for the weight pulling you under but in all reality it is you who is continually adding them and you’re about to drown!

You’re continually adding more consequences of your sin. Listen, If you want to be free from the consequences of sin then you have better come to the place where you hate sin so much that you will kill it and and die to it. You and I must die to our sinful ways daily!

Romans 6:6–11 (NLT)

We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ He’s saying that when we chose to have a relationship with Jesus we crucified ourselves…or our way of living....why? so that sin might lose its power in our lives. Some of you today you have given in to sin so much that it is the power that is controlling your life and pulling you back into slavery! But Paul says We are no longer slaves to sin. For when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin. And since we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him. We are sure of this because Christ was raised from the dead, and he will never die again. Death no longer has any power over him. When he died, he died once to break the power of sin. But now that he lives, he lives for the glory of God. So you also should consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus.

The Power for you and I to overcome sin and to push off those weights pulling us under is the same power that raised Christ from the dead! If you truly want to live a life of freedom you must die to sin!

Secondly you must

2. Live a life of repentance.

We have to despise our sin so much that when we do sin, we immediately confess it and throw off the chains! When you and I sin, which will happen, we can regain our Freedom through confession and receiving forgiveness.

I John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

So much of our anxieties, our fears, our depression, our emotional and relational weights could easily be lifted from us if we would seek forgiveness from the Lord and from the people we have sinned against. It’s amazing what forgiveness can do to turn a marriage around or a relationship problem. And I’ll add that to be successful at any relationship that feels like may be pulling you under, you have to consider others better than yourself and live a life of humility.

And there is only one way that happens …and that is by daily walking

3. Walk in the Spirit

Galatians 5:16–25 (CSB)

I say, then, walk by the Spirit and you will certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you don’t do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and anything similar. I am warning you about these things—as I warned you before—that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Note, this warning is not against the occurrence of sin. The reality is that until the day we die our spirt and our flesh will be in battle with each other. There will be times that our spirit wins and unfortunately there will be times that our flesh wins. What Paul is saying here is that when you are walking in the Spirit you cannot practice these things as a lifestyle! A christian who sins is going to feel guilty and feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Someone walking in the Spirit will practice I John 1:9 and confess and seek forgiveness and make it their aim to not sin in that manner again. Paul is saying if you are living in sin and not confessing , or not dealing with it then most likely you are not a Christian and will not inherit the kingdom of God. He goes on and gives the fruits of those who live and walk in the spirit. He says

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

4. Read, study, and memorize the Word Of God

2 Timothy 3:16-17 “All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

In the Message Paraphrase of Matthew 7:24, Jesus said, “These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on. If you work these words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who built his house on solid rock.”

If we truly want to live for God—to know Him, to find freedom, to discover our purpose, and to make a difference for His glory—then reading His Word is not an option. We must hear what God has to say and apply it to our lives daily.

5. Live in community

Hebrews 10:25 (NLT)

And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.

Listen, You will struggle in living out your faith if it’s just you and God. It’s easy to think that all you need to grow in your relationship with Him is your Bible and prayer but it is incredibly important that you regularly attend church. You and I must make church attendance a priority in our lives. And just as important is building relationships within the church. We are in the process of forming life groups which we hopefully will get up and going soon.

We are putting events together for men, and for woman, and couples, and singles and everything in between!!! Why? Because we know the importance of doing life together in community. It gives us needed accountability. It gives us a place where we can support one another or encourage one another. When one of us is weak we are able to gather around them and help give them strength. When one of us is hurting…we can love on them and held bring healing. We see church as a family where we need each other to be our best!

As we close our our time together today I always want to give you the opportunity to respond to whatever God is talking to you about.