Upside Down, Week 1 Recap

This month, we are doing a series called, "Upside Down." This series is based on the reason for the season...celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Everything about the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ was Upside Down from what the world is like. The world lives with a "me first" mindset, but Christ lived with an others first mindset. So during this month, we are going to celebrate this amazing holiday by living like Christ and putting others first. Each week, we will be talking about a different mission.

Week 1: Serving the World
Week 2: Serving the Community
Week 3: Serving our friends/family

Jesus did all of these things perfectly when he was on earth and so we are going to emulate Christ in that each week, we will have a different tangible way to serve others.

THIS WEEK: Serving the World
Last night, we talked about how Christ died for the world. He didn't just die for some people, for Americans, for those who love him, but he died for the world. (John 3:16, Mark 16:15)

The problem
There are 16,348 people groups in the world.
6,647 have never heard the good news of Jesus Christ (that's 40% and 2.7 billion people).

The Solution
The Solution is found in a relationship with Jesus Christ. So if we know Christ, we are the solution. Christ commanded us to go and tell the world.

Our Mission
India is in the top 10 nations with the most unreached people groups (87% of their country is unreached).
Our church partners with the India Gospel League (IGL) whose mission is to share the gospel with India. They have missionaries there, share the gospel, train pastors (some HCC pastors have trained their pastors), and send them out to spread the good news.
One of the ways they ask people to help is by giving money so that a pastor can be supported and sent out to an unreached village to share the gospel.
It's $1200 to send a pastor to a village to live for a year to share the gospel with the village and start up a church. It's also just $700 to build a small structure for the church to start meeting in that village. That's $1,900.

We are asking that each student make a small sacrifice to make an eternal impact on the country of India. If 100 students give up 1 Christmas gift worth $20, and instead have their parents give them the $20 to support this pastor, we would have all we need to impact a whole village for Christ. What an amazing cause!

Please encourage your students in this! It needs to be their sacrifice, otherwise, we are not really putting others first.

Parent Surveys

Hey parents,
Would you take a couple minutes and complete these 3 surveys? It will only take 2-3 minutes total. This is to benefit the new parent group that has started called, "Block Watch." It's a group whose purpose is to join parents together in an effort to help protect our kids from the dangers of technology and equip them to make the right decisions. Just click on the surveys below to take them.
Thanks for your time!

Survey 1
Survey 2
Survey 3

Joshua, part 3

We had a great night last night which was our final night in the series called, "Joshua." We finished with a student, Jordan, an 8th grade boy, giving his testimony, what God has been doing in his life, and then giving the challenge to students. It was powerful because it was peer to peer. Here is the basic outline from last night.

Review Crossing the Jordan River
Joshua was obedient even when it didn't make a lot of sense. Joshua resolved that he would be obedient to God no matter what. If he would have listened to his friends on this, he may never have been used to do such an amazing thing. We do the same thing. We make our friends our authority and we are obedient to them. If this is the case, God can't use us in the same way.

Review Battle of Jericho
Joshua was obedient again when God had him go to battle in a very unorthodox and illogical way by walking around the walls of Jericho, blowing trumpets, and yelling. Yet again, Joshua didn't listen to what was logical or normal or acceptable, but instead obeyed God. This obedience allowed him to be a part of something amazing. It's the same with us. If we stop listening to what the world calls normal and start obeying God, he is going to use us to do amazing things for him.

SIDE NOTE: Obedience sometimes sounds really boring and uncool, but look how God used Joshua's obedience to make him a part of something so crazy, so unbelievable, so cool. God can do the same today. Example I gave: The 3rd leading cause of teen death is suicide. Many teen suicides are a result of not having friends, feeling unloved, ignored. God's command to us is to love others. If we would be obedient to that command and love those who feel unloved, we could LITERALLY SAVE THEIR LIFE!

Joshua's Farewell
At the end of Joshua's life, he gave a challenge to look at all that God has done for the people of Isreal and worship him. His challenge is to choose whom you will serve? Joshua's response was, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." That was the final challenge for students last night. Who will you choose to serve today?

Joshua, week 2 Recap

This is the 2nd week of our Joshua series. We are taking a journey through some of the major events of Joshua's life and how God used Joshua to accomplish some pretty amazing things for the Israelites.

This week, I told the story of Joshua and the battle of Jericho. The only problem is that it wasn't a typical battle. Joshua was told by God to take his men and march around the city for 6 days, blowing trumpets and yelling loudly. Then on the 7th day, he was supposed to march his guys around the walls 7 times, blow the trumpets, and yell, and then the walls of the city would collpase.

Joshua was obedient to God even when obeying him meant doing something totally different from normal (marching around the city and yelling). Joshua did this because his ultimate authority was God. If Joshua would have done what was culturally and socially acceptable and normal, God would have never done such an amazing thing in his life. But God was his authority which meant that God used Joshua's obedience to do something amazing for His people.

We talked about how it's the same type of thing with us. We tend to do things because they world says they are normal. We do things becuase they are culturally or socially normal, but obedience to God is more important than doing the normal thing.

THE CHALLENGE: Is obedience to God more important than being normal? Or is being normal more important than obedience to God?

Joshua, part 1

Our newest series started last night called "Joshua." You can probably guess that it's a series based on Joshua from the Bible. As a matter of fact, there is a whole book dedicated to his leadership of the Israelites. There is so much to learn from Joshua about obedience to the ultimate authority. That's what this series is focused on. Here are some key points from last night...

1. Background on Joshua
We started off with a little background on Joshua and how he arose as a leader for God's people. He was Moses aide, one of the 12 guys who were sent to check out the promised land and report back, and then God chose him as the leader to take Moses place once he died. His mission was to take his people in the promised land.

2. Crossing The Jordan River
Since his mission was to cross the Jordan River, I told the miraculous story of how Joshua led the whole nation of Israel across just by being obedient to God. The waters parted and the nation walked through.

3. God's Authority vs. Friend's Authority
If Joshua would have listened to others, they would have had all sorts of ideas on how to get over to the promised land, but Joshua was obedient to God and saw him as his ultimate authority. That led him to being someone who was used by God to do something amazing. It's the same with us. We look to our friends for approval, but why?

4. If God is your ultimate authority, who can stand against you
God told Joshua that no one will be able to stand against you if you obey me. Obedience to God as our ultimate authority allows God to use us to do amazing things for Him. Why are we afraid when we have God?

The Real Deal, part 3

The title of this message is CIRCUMSTANTIAL FAITH. it's the last message in our series called THE REAL DEAL. This series is all about what it means to have authentic faith in God.

The last 2 weeks, we talked about how and why we can trust God by going over a pledge from God's Word that we called, THE EDGE PLEDGE. It goes like this.

1. God is who He says He is.
2. God can do what He says He can do.
3. I am who God says I am.
4. I can do all things through Christ.

This week, we talked about living this pledge out or actually believing these sayings to be true to the point that it changes the way you live.

The hardest time to ever trust God is when the world around you comes crashing down, or when things are not going well.

Proverbs 3:5-6, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.

Our own understand of THE EDGE PLEDGE is much different than God's understanding.

Job's Example: Job is the best example of someone who experienced terrible tragedy in his life and never lost his faith in God.

God's word never says that we will have an easy, problem free, stress free life filled with wealth, health, and success in everything we do. That's just not true. However, it doesn't matter what happens in our lives, we have to hold onto the truth of God's Word which we stated in THE EDGE PLEDGE.

This sums up what I spoke on last night.

If you ever want to know more or have questions, you can find the full talk on itunes if you search "Edge Talk Podcast." Also, let me know if you have more questions to follow up.

The Real Deal (part 2)

The Real Deal series continued last night with the last 2 parts of the Edge Pledge. As a reminder, the first 2 portions of The Edge Pledge from last week are...

1. God is who He says He is.
2. God can do what He says He can do.

The next part is what we talked about last night...

3. I am who God says I am.
4. I can do all things through Christ.

The Real Deal series is based on believing that God is someone we can trust. It's only then that we can be the kind of authentic Christian that God wants us to be. We broke down each of these statements last night.

Last week we talked about the fact that God is who He says He is and can do what says He can do. If we truly believe this than we have to believe what God has to say in His word about who we are.

I AM WHO GOD SAYS I AM

Who does God say that we are if we know Christ?
1 John 3:1
Ephesians 1:3-8
We are blessed, chosen, adopted, redeemed, and forgiven.

I CAN DO ALL THINGS THROUGH CHRIST

Philippians 4:13
It means that we only do things through His strength. The only way we can accomplish anything is by his power, by his strength, and by his love.

We will experience fear and failure, but we can never let those things define us because only God is the one who tells us the truth about who we are if we know Him as Savior.

THE EDGE PLEDGE

1. God is who He says He is.
2. God can do what He says He can do.
3. I am who God says I am.
4. I can do all things through Christ.

For the full audio of my talk, you can download it on itunes. It's called "Edge Talks"