Message in Prep for Sabbatical and update on the year
Notes
Transcript
Good morning church
What a year we have had thus far
Our idea or vision for the year is simple
Church it is to put action to our faith
To live our faith out for others to see
Our verses for this year are
16 Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
To be in the word so much that we can’t help but be different
To allow the scriptures to wash over us
For that to happen we must be reading them
I heard someone say The Bible was never meant to just be read and studied
Rather the Word of God is meant to read and studied and applied to our daily lives
I read this devo the other day and thought how much it applied
Nigel Richards is widely regarded as the best Scrabble player to have ever taken part in a tournament. Originally from Christchurch, New Zealand, Richards won numerous World Championships beginning in 2007 as well as several American championships and tournaments in other countries. In 2015 he decided to take on a different challenge. For the first time, Richards entered a non-English tournament, competing in the French Championship. He spent weeks before the tournament memorizing the official French Scrabble dictionary. Nigel Richards won the 2015 French Championship—despite not speaking French. He memorized how to spell the words, but he didn’t know what they meant.
An unsaved person can read, study, and even memorize the Bible, but knowing the words is not the same thing as understanding and applying them. As children of God, we have the Holy Spirit to help us learn, not just the words of Scripture, but what they mean and how they apply to our lives.
As children of God we have the Holy Spirit to help us in this matter of knowing what Scripture means and how to apply it!!!
Church I have heard from a few of you about this
You have been reading your Bibles and are loving it
You have been challenged to read the Bible
You have questions upon questions because you have been reading and it is absolutely amazing
Then we must be applying to our daily lives
Church that is the first step in the process of putting action to your faith
Now that you are reading it
James calls us to put it into action
22 But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.
You can no longer sit idly by
Because you have read it
But rather you are compelled to put what you have been reading into action
So church as we come to about the half way point in the year
I would challenged you to take a stock
To see how you are doing personally into putting your faith into action
To take an honest look and see how you are reading Scripture and how you are applying it to your live
Does your life and the actions of your life reflect what you say you believe about the Bible
At this point talk cheap
Be honest do you believe what you have read in the Bible
And does you life reflect that
And church if there are things in your life that need to change pray and ask God help me to change this
Or change this inside me
Pray and ask God to make you more like Him
Now church please listen
This is not a one Sunday and things change in your life
This is not time to panic and become overwhelmed
This is time to take a breath and pray
God make me more like you and less like me
And
Understand putting action to your faith will take time
1 Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
Let us run the race with endurance
An endurance race is a long distance race
That is not a sprint
I ran distance races
I am not a sprinter
To walk with God is not a sprint but an endurance race
So church I want your be encouraged as we come to about the half way point
To focus on putting your faith into action
To continue to Gods word and then apply it to your daily life
As you do that watch and see what God is going to do
One of the ways I will be putting my faith into action is to rest
I told you a while back that in June I would be taking a sabbatical
Well June is here and for the next month I am going to be on sabbatical
I am going to rest
Something I don’t do well
I don’t think I have every rested well
I am a home body and think home vacations are amazing expect I never get them because like you probably they are always filled with something todo
Something always has to be done if not in the event of an emergency or to just be ahead so that you can rest but you are never ahead enough to rest
Those are my thoughts
So as we move to the Pastor taking a sabbatical let me explain how we got here
This sermon or the idea actually started a long while ago
I had gone to a conference and heard Andy Addis talk about Sabbatical
I left thinking there is no way in the world I could ever do that
Then I began to flirt with the idea of man that would be nice
I began to talk with friends and leaders about the possibility of taking a sabbatical
To rest to recharge
I finally got around to reading Andy’s book and really started to dwell on somethings
First
We are commanded to keep a sabbath
If you have been in church for any sort of time you know that
8 “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. 11 “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.
We are commanded to keep a sabbath
A Sabbath is a day of rest, God says you can work 6 days but I know humans
Humans will need a day of rest ever 6 days
We know this
We have read this and we have preached this
This is one of those commands that deal with this relationship between God and you
And we see it play out in the effect it has on the people around us in this way
When we don’t have a sabbath we don’t rest physically or mentally or spiritually
We are disobeying God
When that is happening we tend to get crabby with people around us
So we need to rest
We know we need a sabbath and yet we have gotten so comfortable in disobeying God about that we are shocked when pastors burn out
Where sabbaths are neglected all religion sensibly goes to decay.
Matthew Henry (Nonconformist Biblical Exegete)
I struggle to have a sabbath
This is not a blame to the church but I am just being transparent
As a by vocational pastor it is a lot more work to find time to take a sabbath
Sunday’s are not a sabbath for pastors
So I am working on applying that to my life
One of the ways I am applying or attempting to apply it is to work to get my sermons done to have Saturday with the family
Or to take a day during the week to not do any church work
One of the ways is sometimes we have family worship time where we put some worship music on the TV and just relax worshipping God
Then as I read that book another thing I was dwelling on was the fact I needed a sabbath
It was like I know we are supposed to keep the sabbath and it is designed for rest
And then it hit me, I needed a time of rest and refreshing
People ask me all the time how are you doing
My usual answer to them is I am tired
Its not the tired that a nap can fix but its the constant going going going
I understand I have done that to myself and so I needed to fix it
19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20 For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.
A sabbath is a rest both physical and spiritual rest
Keeping the sabbath is good for us and we should keep it
It is good for our bodies to rest we need rest
So to take care of myself and my family we need rest and as pastor we need time away
I began to talk about this to the leadership Last June
I would like to schedule breaks in my preaching and to look at taking a sabbatical
We started to talk more and more about it and I confirmed with with them of June of last year about taking a sabbatical
They were on board for it and viewed it as a huge positive for me and for my family and for the church
I believe that if the Pastor is healthy that helps lead to a healthy church and if the pastor is not healthy that leads to a not healthy church
Not saying I am not healthy but I am tired and so to help ensure the church stays healthy I am taking a sabbatical a time of rest and study and refreshing
I also understand the that the pastor needs a break and the church needs to hear other voices from the pulpit and not just anyone but someone who is called to preach
The thought behind the sabbatical is to set it up for every so many years the staff takes one
The idea is that Erick and Lydia would take a sabbatical in the next few years
And that it would be set up as a regular thing for the church for whoever God calls to serve next at Maranatha
So how does this sabbatical look for the church
So for the the month of June I will not be doing any pastorly duties
Jess and Eric will be taking over those duties from emails and phone calls
On the personal side some of my time away will be taking my family on vacation and other times I will be getting away to rest
There will be reading and resting and fishing
It will be a time of refreshing as well
4 ‘But I have this against you, that you have left your first love.
I believe this can be viewed as a warning for people who have not left their first love
DON’T LEAVE YOUR FRIST LOVE
I want you to know that I still very much love Jesus
I still very much love Maranatha and want to serve here till God calls me to not
To ensure that I can do that I need to rest
And that is the purpose of this sabbatical
Church I want to ensure I dont loose the passion and love I have for Jesus and preaching and his people
To ensure that sometimes we need a break
So it is not a vacation but a time of rest, study, and refreshing
We will get the opportunity to go to church as church goers and not as pastor
It is the simple things in life
So as we come to a close
The invitation is a to do business with God
If you need to speak with someone there will be someone down here to speak with you
Or if you simply need to spend time in prayer at the alter
Please respond obediently
The alter is open
