Bridging the Gap from what I know to what I Do 3
Bridging the Gap from what I know to what I Do 3 – nv 6/1/08am
OS: 1 Bridging the gap in the score –
I. Thus far – Bridging the Gap
A. WHAT- There is a gap between what we know and what we do
1. Problem - flesh
2. Remember Paul in Romans 7 – I do what I don’t want to do, …
B. WHY
1. Your actions are guided by who you are, not what you know.
2. Your actions are first decided by your choice of Master.
C. IDENTITY
II. HOW?
A. Romans 8, in context with 5:12 and following.
B. Spirit - Chapter 8 – Spirit (21 times)
C. The Spirit, above all else is the key to the tension, providing hope, strength, and assurance.
III. Can you imagine closing the gap?
A. See yourself in the winner’s circle. World Series Ring
B. God wants you to close the gap
C. Vision – how would it change your family, …, work, health
TS] Practical, but do not overlook the depth of Romans 8. HOW?
I. 2 Get rid of the pressure. (8:1-2)
A. Pressure can sometimes be good, but usually undue pressure causes things to explode.
1. Pressure to fit a mold that God didn’t create.
2. The mold is Jesus. (8:29)
B. Confidence! If Jesus came back right now are you sure …
1. Jesus paid the price – God considers you to have met the demands of the law through Christ’s obedience.
2. What sin can His blood not cleanse in your life?
TS] Remember!!! – The focus is Christ. His blood not yours! Relationship – He is the vine and we are the branches. HOW?
II. 3 Change the way you think (8:5)
A. Think spiritually rather than fleshly - You start every day thinking Lord what do you want from me today?
1. “I want some time for me too.”
2. All of life is from God. We sometimes have a strange misconception about God’s expectations as if the only time we were pleasing to Him is when we are in bible study, preaching on the corner, or inviting a neighbor to church.
B. Compartmentalization – God, Christianity is all inclusive – Remember Relationship
1. 4 James 1:17, Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.
2. 1 Corinthians 4:6, For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?
C. Joy/Christianity (God wants to be all of life – “in you” 4 in 9-11)
1. Paul – short, crooked nose, stern? NOT – Joy, joy, joy all through his writings.
2. Jesus – often at parties. (Levi/Zacchaeus/Wedding/etc.)
D. Changing the way you think is the determining factor – The power is there but we are to focus.
TS] The reason – Love the Lord your God – HOW?
III. 5 Never Give Up. (8:31-33)
A. I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I want to be. I am not what I hope to be. But still, I am not what I used to be. And by the grace of God, I am what I am. - John Newton
B. God still loves you no matter what
6 A young girl grows up on a cherry orchard just above Traverse City, Michigan. Today 10/6/97
Her parents, a bit old-fashioned, tend to overreact to her nose ring, the music she listens to, and the length of her skirts. They ground her a few times, and she seethes inside. "I hate you!" she screams at her father when he knocks on the door of her room after an argument, and that night she acts on a plan she has mentally rehearsed scores of times. She runs away. She has visited Detroit only once before, on a bus trip with her church youth group to watch the Tigers play. Because newspapers in Traverse City report in lurid detail the gangs, drugs, and violence in downtown Detroit, she concludes that is probably the last place her parents will look for her. California, maybe, or Florida, but not Detroit. Her second day there she meets a man who drives the biggest car she’s ever seen. He offers her a ride, buys her lunch, arranges a place for her to stay. He gives her some pills that make her feel better than she’s ever felt before. She was right all along, she decides: her parents were keeping her from all the fun. The good life continues for a month, two months, a year. The man with the big car--she calls him "Boss"--teaches her a few things about men. She has a brief scare when she sees her picture printed on the back of a milk carton with the headline, "Have you seen this child?" But by now she has blond hair, and with all the makeup and body-piercing jewelry she wears, nobody would mistake her for a child. Besides, most of her friends are runaways, and nobody squeals in Detroit. After a year, the first sallow signs of illness appear, and it amazes her how fast the boss turns mean. "These days, we can’t mess around," he growls, and before she knows it she’s out on the street without a penny to her name. When winter blows in she finds herself sleeping on metal grates outside the big department stores. "Sleeping" is the wrong word--a teenage girl at night in downtown Detroit can never relax her guard. Dark bands circle her eyes. Her cough worsens. One night, as she lies awake listening for footsteps, all of a sudden everything about her life looks different. She no longer feels like a woman of the world. She feels like a little girl, lost in a cold and frightening city. She begins to whimper. Her pockets are empty and she’s hungry. She needs a fix. She pulls her legs tight underneath her and shivers under the newspapers she’s piled atop her coat. Something jolts a synapse of memory and a single image fills her mind: of May in Traverse City, when a million cherry trees bloom at once, with her golden retriever dashing through the rows and rows of blossomy trees in chase of a tennis ball. God, why did I leave, she says to herself, and pain stabs at her heart. My dog back home eats better than I do now. She’s sobbing, and she knows in a flash that more than anything else in the world she wants to go home. Three straight phone calls, three straight connections with the answering machine. She hangs up without leaving a message the first two times, but the third time she says, "Dad, Mom, it’s me. I was wondering about maybe coming home. I’m catching a bus up your way, and it’ll get there about midnight tomorrow. If you’re not there, well, I guess I’ll just stay on the bus until it hits Canada." It takes about seven hours for a bus to make all the stops between Detroit and Traverse City, and during that time she realizes the flaws in her plan. What if her parents are out of town and miss the message? Shouldn’t she have waited another day or so until she could talk to them? Even if they are home, they probably wrote her off as dead long ago. She should have given them some time to overcome the shock. Her thoughts bounce back and forth between those worries and the speech she is preparing for her father. "Dad, I’m sorry. I know I was wrong. It’s not your fault, it’s all mine. Dad, can you forgive me?" She says the words over and over, her throat tightening even as she rehearses them. She hasn’t apologized to anyone in years. The bus has been driving with lights on since Bay City. Tiny snowflakes hit the road, and the asphalt steams. She’s forgotten how dark it gets at night out here. A deer darts across the road and the bus swerves. Every so often, a billboard, a sign posting the mileage to Traverse City. Oh, God. When the bus finally rolls into the station, its air brakes hissing in protest, the driver announces in a crackly voice over the microphone, "Fifteen minutes, folks. That’s all we have here." Fifteen minutes to decide her life. She checks herself in a compact mirror, smoothes her hair, and licks the lipstick off her teeth. She looks at the tobacco stains on her fingertips, and wonders if her parents will notice - if they’re there. She walks into the terminal not knowing what to expect, and not one of the thousand scenes that have played out in her mind prepare her for what she sees. There, in the concrete-walls-and-plastic-chairs bus terminal in Traverse City, Michigan, stands a group of 40 brothers and sisters and great-aunts and uncles and cousins and a grandmother and great-grandmother to boot. They are all wearing ridiculous-looking party hats and blowing noisemakers, and taped across the entire wall of the terminal is a computer-generated banner that reads "Welcome home!" Out of the crowd of well-wishers breaks her dad. She looks through tears and begins the memorized speech, "Dad, I’m sorry. I know . . . " He interrupts her. "Hush, child. We’ve got no time for that. No time for apologies. You’ll be late for the party. A banquet’s waiting for you at home." A story by Phillip Yancy found in Christianity