Sermon Tone Analysis

Grace and Wounds

Well y’all we made it!

We are here at Snowblast 19/20!

Let me tell you, this trip got here so fast!

To me yesterday was Dec 1st and now today is the 30th and stuff happened in between it’s all really just a blur!

But its all good!

We are here now!

We all have plans of how we want this week to go.

If you are freshmen, you are wondering what the heck is this trip and to be honest, you don’t really know what you got yourself into.

The Sophomores, You now are not rookies to snowblast, but you are not experts yet either.

Juniors, I think you are taking more in, you may have had some past dating experiences that have made you wise, or maybe bitter towards dating, maybe a little baggage as well.

And the seniors, you want to hold on to every single moment, because you don’t know when the next time you will be here is?

You want to soak it all up and do as much as you can and learn and ask all of your questions.

Because next year at this time you will have a semester of college under your belt, or maybe you have a job that could be a career?

The next year you will change the most out of everyone here.

It is exciting, and scary, and the future is scary,

Now all the juniors are like oh my goodness— that is me next year and you won’t hear another thing I probably say.

The truth is we all have expectations and we all assume different things.

I hope that you expect this week to be awesome, because we do have a fun and exciting week planned out.

But i want to just say this before we start, you get out of this week, what you put into it.

If you participate, and are engaged, then you will get a ton out of this weekend.

If you are a bump on a log, and isolate yourself guess what this week is going to suck for you.

And here is the deal, sometimes you may need to get away for a few, thats fine we will check on you and see how you are doing, and ask if there is anything we can help with.

But don’t stay in that funk, be active, have fun, and enjoy this lovely trip we call SNOWBLAST!

Let’s Pray then the worship team is going to lead us in singing out to our glorious creator God Almighty.

PRAY

Message:

So in planning out snowblast we want to cover so much yet we have so little time.

So we came up with we wanted to study Ruth.

Which we are going to be jumping into that tomorrow.

Which I am super excited for that.

But our first night together, we wanted something a little different.

You see we could come up here and talk all about our earthly relationships and learn a ton, decide to never date again and go home.

We would share in lots of laughs and memories it would be great.

Yet something would be missing.

The most important aspect of our relationships is our relationship with God.

This matters the most.

Our vertical relationship matters more then all of our horizontal relationships.

This is not a joke, this is real, life.

Your relationship with God matters the most.

If you leave here without looking at your relationship with God and diving more into that, then we as leaders would have done our job, which is it point you to Jesus.

*If you walk away from here without knowing where you stand with God, then we have failed you.

We do not want to fail you.

So tonight we are going to be looking at a story you probably have heard before, Called Jesus and the Samaritan woman.

Now I ask that you have a personal Bible with you, because, Expeditions rule is no cell phones.

So maybe you forgot your in the cabin, that is fine, please bring it tomorrow, with a notepad and pen.

If you forgot any of those things, you should tell me and I will make sure that you get those things before tomorrow.

So we are going to open up to tonight.

As you are flipping there, let me telling about a saying I heard at Hy-Vee a lot.

Before I started to really pack on some weight at work, I would have customers say, you can never trust a skinny baker.

If you were asking someone a

You have all have seen my track Zach Photo, you know I was a little stick sure, and I really didn’t start to fill out until the last couple of years.

So the heart behind what they are saying is, because of your appearance, we can’t trust you.

You don’t eat enough of the product to tell us that this is good.

HOWEVER, I ate back there all the time, If my dad was here, he would tell you.

Yet based on how I looked people didn’t think that I was going to be helpful for them.

We all do this to some extent.

I am not going to ask parenting advice from any of the students here because one you don’t have kids, but even if you did they would be young, and you most likely would only have one .

You want to know that you can trust the person.

You want to know that they are leading you straight.

Now here is the deal.

I have seen this picture of Jesus often, and for awhile this is how i pictured Jesus.

He is pretty, delicate, flowing, glowing, angelic, and spiritual spiritual.

Anybody else?

Or is it just me?

I see a few of you.

This image of Jesus, if we are honest he doesn’t seem to helpful.

Here is what I mean by this, If Jesus is clean, elegant and more like he is floating carefree and not on the ground in the brokenness, in the muk in the dirt, where it hurts— then We can learn some principles about him but how do we take those principles and put them on the ground where I am?

If Jesus is beautiful, delicate, and floating above us and he is not in the blood, in the dirt, in the grim with us then I am not sure that He is any help to us.

And the writer of John gives us a picture of Jesus right in the middle of the grim, and the broken, and the messiness that we find ourselves in today.

He is on the ground.

HE IS WITH US.

Emmauel

Right, we just talked about this at parents night.

God with us.

Back in the Garden God was present.

To God being present with is people in the tabernacle, and then in the temple, to where Jesus puts on flesh and dwells among us, to when the Holy Spirit comes inside the apostles at Pentecost so that HE CAN DWELL WITH US!

AND one day, Jesus is going to be coming back and it will be GOD WITH US FOREVER AND EVER!

This image of Jesus, if we are honest he doesn’t seem to helpful.

This is the story of the Bible.

John the writer here, wants us to have picture of God’s grace, which was not for those who had their act together, not those who pretend they have it all figured out.

But it is right into our wounds, our hurt and our pain that is what John after in this story and that is where Jesus wants to be at with you tonight.

So let go ahead and read

I think in Christianity today we see pictures of Jesus that looks like this, and in our minds think he can’t help me in my messy, broken, world.

How does this dude know what I am dealing with?

I mean if this is the image we get when we are praying, and we don’t think that Jesus

John 4:1

Do not forget verse 4 as that is a pretty important verse that we will be coming back too.

I just want to pause for a moment.

Here is the deal, I think we all have this image of Jesus in our mind, but not very many of us have this image of Jesus.

Where it says that Jesus was wearied from his Journey.

Jesus was doing this:

Hands on his knees, gasping for air, just going, please I just need to sit down!

He was sweaty and he was dirty, he wasn’t just floating around all over the place like some spiritual guru.

He was tired and he was worn out!

oh and by the way it was NOON, the highest point of the sun, he was virtually in the middle of the desert and it was hot, and it was noon.

Okay lets read on:

John 4:7-

We are going to skip this conversation with the disciples, not because it is not important but we are looking at more how Jesus interacts with this woman.

John