New Day Community Church
April 26
  • Greater
  • All Who Are Thirsty
  • Live Like That
  • One Thing Remains (Your Love Never Fails)
  • In the midst of all of this we look to God for help. My son pray’s, “Let the coronavirus die already.”
    Yet, we are still at a stay at home order.
    I am so aware that each of us is experencing this so differently.
    For a brief time I went and worked at Walmart and go to see what it is like to be an essential worker.
    - I observed my fellow co-workers pretty much doing their job like every other job, night, work, home, sleep, with weird changes like walking out in the morning to seeing a line of people waiting to get in.
    I know others in hospitals feeling huge risk and also seeing great displays of emotion, support and the like.
    I also experience what most of you are experiencing in your home everyday.
    Yet in the midst of all of this something is happening, that is serious, vital and most important. It is possibly life changing,

    God is working

    , yes with those great essential workers, and hospital employees to keep going and our culture to help each other but more than that God is working on you, you specifically, whether you are at home again another day or you are a child experiencing distance learning, God is teaching you something and if you learn it, it will bless your life.
    God has this promise for your life -
    Romans 8:28 CSB
    28 We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.
    This is just one of many promises for your life that are at work right now amid stay at home and will be alive when it is all over.
    Pastor Thomas Watson back on August 17, 1662, 110 years before the United States, gives you a word today,

    "The promises (of God) are great supports to faith.

    Faith lives in a promise as the fish lives in the water. The promises are both comforting and quickening, the very breast of the gospel; as the child by breast-feeding gets strength, so faith by suckling from the promises gets strength and revives. The promises of God are flotation devices to keep us from sinking when we come to the waters of affliction.”
    Flotation devices the very nutrients we need as followers of Jesus in the day to day.
    Yet I think the promises of God can be more like jumper cables something we think we know, only to find out that when we need them, we never bothered to know if we have them or how to use them, instead we have non-working faith.
    But there is a fix and it is a perfect time to fix it. J. I. Packer starts to address this fix.
    J. I. Packer writes in his book, knowing God, “ In the days when the Bible was universally acknowledged in the churches as “God’s Word written,” it was clearly understood that the promises recorded in Scripture were the proper, God-given basis for all our life of faith, and that the way to strengthen one’s faith was to focus it upon particular promises that spoke to one’s condition.*

    Strengthen your faith by focusing on particular promises of God to your condition

    Your condition is what you are going through
    The greatest way to be a friend to someone is to know they can always depend on you. God is the greatest friend we have because He is always dependable. He never backs away from His promises.
    God’s promises can always be counted on all you need to do is to know and remember them?
    We have a couple’s group going on Thursday nights on zoom and we are about to do a couple’s checkup where we take a survey of our personality and our relationship skills, it’s going to be great! But I can’t remember my password!!! And because no one is on the support desk right now, I’m not getting a way to fix it.
    Just like my password, the promises of God will work but if we don’t know or remember them, than one we may not know that we can rely on them and we may think something is promised by God, like “being happy” and then be confused and miserable when you see that God is with us when we are sad, happy, blase, whatever your emotion is. The other is you may be miserable thinking God is irrelevant to your life, even though He has a promise you can count on right now but you didn’t know that!
    You see right now, in this huge economic catastrophe, God is all I need, and I know that because of this promise
    Hebrews 13:5–6 CSB
    5 Keep your life free from the love of money. Be satisfied with what you have, for he himself has said, I will never leave you or abandon you. 6 Therefore, we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?
    This is at the hard of what feels like a 1000 sayings in our day like
    “Money can’t buy happiness.”
    But let me take a second and meet some where they are at. Because times are very hard and at the end of the day though I personally didn’t meet anyone upset about getting a stimulus check, I have met many annoyed that they hadn’t received their money yet.
    It seems like this is a nice Bible saying but like many nice sayings they look good on posters but in real life they are meaningless.
    Free from the love of money, just like money can’t buy friends, money’s not that big of a deal, but when someone goes broke or knows their broke and can’t get out, Money’s a huge deal.
    It might seem like I just contradicted the whole first part of my sermon, that we can count on the promises of God.
    What I am about to say is the practical point of the sermon, the thing you can put into your life for the every.
    You see the hard part about reading the Bible sometimes, is we treat the Bible like it is a collection of motivational posters, instead of the living breathing spoken words both ancient and modern speaking to our very souls existence.

    The Bible is not a book of Motivational Posters

    We can dismiss it like we dismiss 1,000 other messages we receive per day. Think of all the advertisements, all the advice, all the words coming at us all the time.
    Reading the Bible like that You are missing out! Friends, in this time of coronavirus we need the power of God, we need to be more aware of God than ever but like a four-year old at a day care we can forget our heavenly father and start focusing on all the toys, noise, and stuff all around us and forget our Heavenly father.
    Here is how we start to take in the power of God’s promises - meditate on the Bible!
    Meditate? Get a yoga mat out and hold the Bible or sit on the Bible?
    No, Many times when Americans think meditation the kind they think of is actually buddhist & Hindu prayer. “Aum,” is an idolatrous calling of another form of spirituality other than the Holy Spirit. Meditation though has a rich, rich unique history with followers of Christ and its much freer.
    In Christian meditation, our goal is not to eliminate ourselves but to understand how we can join God in what He is doing in our world. How can we see his promises coming to life all around us.
    You see this promise that I just read, completely reorients my life. Instead of me asking is it true, I meditate (spend time reading, thinking, asking God to re-do my life and asking because it is true what in my life should change.
    I have to mediate on God’s word often because
    Well, you should never tell a person who is really freaking out, having an emotional disaster to just relax. Ever had someone do that to you, it doesn’t work.
    The person who is freaking out has to have something they learned much earlier to draw on. I’ve seen it over and over, I’ve had students who had no calming mechanism, and then I’ve worked with a team and saw them learning to calm so that the next time they freak out, they don’t have to punch me, but can take the break they need to relax.
    You need more than a break. Your need for financial relief is real but God is also real. He is active in this daily existence with promises you can rely on but the time to learn them is in what the Bible calls meditation
    Psalm 1:2 CSB
    2 Instead, his delight is in the Lord’s instruction, and he meditates on it day and night.
    Psalm 119:15 CSB
    15 I will meditate on your precepts and think about your ways.
    So what do we do?
    Meditation comes from the greek simBALLousa and it comes from negotiating, when you are really trying to come up with a solution, so your looking at a problem from all sides.
    Meditation is taking the time to ask God to show you the whole of scripture. It requires time enough and repeated exposure to the verse. You can add to this, I didn’t. I gave you exactly what I do.

    Read it

    Read it several times, Memorize it - Repeat it

    Imagine it/See the Promises

    See it in your life

    Several friends joined me in making a meditative video, you’ll be surprised maybe that it won’t be relaxing music although their is nothing wrong with playing relaxing music but for this focus on a truth of God, I couldn’t help but feelfexcited and freer as I came to understand the great freedom we have in Christ as we meditated on the verse. The music drives to action. Meditation is God speaking His powerful promises into our lives.

    Enjoy the video

    Nothing can get to you!
    This promise comes with another promise, We’re not lacking in anything we need right now. God will provide it, through work he is given, through others who will provide, and countless other ways I can’t even fathom. We are talking about a God who provided food in the desert and wine when the wedding ran out.
    With a God like that I don’t need to fear!
    Yes my unemployed friend, you have needs. The scripture didn’t say money isn’t important but it said, God will be there for you, He will provide them, not our seeking of wealth or seeking possessions will conquer fear but everlasting joy, that no matter how alone I am quarantineed or how on edge everyone is at work,

    GOD IS YOUR HELPER! Do NOT BE AFRAID!

    ​
    If you have become a follower of Jesus you possess something. God himself. The Holy Spirit. Your helper.
    If you aren’t or don’t know if you are a follower of Jesus.
    It begins with surrender to acceptance of belief. Jesus was God come in the flesh, fully man and fully God, he lived a perfect life and taught us how to follow His ways. Then he died for our sins, everything we have done, everything we will do, His death paid the punishment for those sins. Then he rose again, conquering sin and death. If you accept this belief in your heart and dedicate your life to follow him, than you are saved! You are a follower of Jesus.
    Prayer
    Now you have a God that will never leave nor quit on us.
    Ever quit on someone? I have.
    But God never does.
    God is better than all of us, when the push comes to shove will we focus on our fears, or on sins we have already been forgive for, or will we take Him on his promise?
    ​
    Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations 2049 Go and Cash It!

    Roy McClain tells of a beggar who stopped a lawyer on the street in a large southern city and asked him for a quarter. Taking a long, hard look into the man’s unshaven face, the attorney asked. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” “You should,” came the reply. “I’m your former classmate. Remember, second floor, old Main Hall?”

    “Why, Sam, of course I know you!” Without further question the lawyer wrote a check for $100. “Here, take this and get a new start. I don’t care what’s happened in the past, it’s the future that counts.” And with that he hurried on.

    Tears welled up in the man’s eyes as he walked to a bank nearby. Stopping at the door, he saw through the glass the well-dressed tellers and the spotlessly clean interior. Then he looked at his filthy rags. “They won’t take this from me. They’ll swear that I forged it,” he muttered as he turned away.

    The next day the two men met again. “Why Sam, what did you do with my check? Gamble it away? Drink it up?” “No,” said the beggar as he pulled it out of his dirty shirt pocket and told why he hadn’t cashed it. “Listen, friend,” said the lawyer. “What makes that check good is not your clothes or appearance, but my signature. Go on, cash it!”

    —Dennis J. De Haan

    Will you cash what God gave you?
    The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language Chapter 13

    God is there, ready to help;

    Will you rely on him, than do it, drop the fear
    Let us pray
    Hebrews 13:5–6 CSB
    5 Keep your life free from the love of money. Be satisfied with what you have, for he himself has said, I will never leave you or abandon you. 6 Therefore, we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?
    ​

      • Romans 8:28CSB

      • Hebrews 13:5–6CSB

      • Psalm 1:2CSB

      • Psalm 119:15CSB

      • Hebrews 13:5–6CSB

  • Sweetly Broken

      • 1 John 3.16NRSV

New Day Community Church
newday@newdaystockton.com
2097306322
http://www.newdaystockton.com
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