Bulletins - New Day Community Church (Stockton, CA)

Glorious Day (Living He Loved Me)
All Who Are Thirsty
Good Good Father
How Great Is Our God
Picture of the Bay Area Skies 11 Am
Coronavirus, Riots, and now these fires so the question starts to come is the end of the world, is the what the Bible talks about.
A friend began a preaching series stating
If it’s the End of the World why are you so scared?
It’s a worthwhile question
I’m always surprised by those who think some unique catastrophe or thing happening in space, or war is the sign of the end of the world. Even that horrible, this obsession like the Bible is describing some secret puzzle so you can figure it out.
It doesn’t.
Matthew 24:36 CSB
36 “Now concerning that day and hour no one knows—neither the angels of heaven nor the Son—except the Father alone.
Clear. NO ONE.
Arnold Schwarzenegger made a stupid movie where he stopped the end of the world by defeating the devil in a church.
We can’t stop it, we can’t start it, but when it happens it will be glorious
It is possible that the reason we are afraid is that we are too comfortable with what we have in the hear and the now.
Is it that we are too comfortable and too focused on the current here and now?
Jesus told a story of servants not being ready for their master to return to the house
Luke 12:40 CSB
40 You also be ready, because the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”
You see we aren’t supposed to be seeking our easiest life. Jesus never said seek the happiest life for yourself.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is very clear:
Matthew 4:17 CSB
17 From then on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
A kingdom was wherever the authority of the King extended too. Usually through His armies
Jesus was saying MY KINGDOM, GOD is HERE now is the time to repent and follow.
He stated it is this is so important it’s worth selling everything for
Matthew 13:45–46 CSB
45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls. 46 When he found one priceless pearl, he went and sold everything he had and bought it.

In comparison to what you would do for the Kingdom everything else is hatred
Luke 14:25–27 The Message
25 One day when large groups of people were walking along with him, Jesus turned and told them, 26 “Anyone who comes to me but refuses to let go of father, mother, spouse, children, brothers, sisters—yes, even one’s own self!—can’t be my disciple. 27 Anyone who won’t shoulder his own cross and follow behind me can’t be my disciple.
Luke 14:25–27 CSB
25 Now great crowds were traveling with him. So he turned and said to them, 26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, and even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.
But in this time of unknowable extremism, fear, and political fervor don’t see what’s been described as important is not that imortant and what we have decided to fight about goes away at the end of time.
The same God who called on you to tell you to cast your cares on him for his burden is light, this is the same saying seek the Kingdom of God.
See today there are many fighting for a future that of either not losing what they have or gaining what they do not have.
People selling books, getting your views, and your votes, but right in your house is people to love as Christ loves the church
But Right next door to you is someone who has no one to pray to or with
Right in your heart is an opportunity to trust God with your pain and anger and forgive those who hurt you
Right at your work is a person to show God’s kindness and joy to,
Right in your family is someone who needs you to have self-control.
Don’t fear what’s going to be destroyed anyway
Upcoming pain is real, fearful
Our friend Chaplain Roger, at this point, has been told by one doctor that his cancer is inoperable. Simply he will die from this cancer.
The pain of death, and change is something Roger and I have talked a lot about over the years. We have worked together to help others go through it.
I’m hurting for him, for Belinda, for Megan, for all of us who love him.
It always hurts and in that I understand why people would be afraid of the end of the world.
See because it might be the end of the world or just the end of you.
When Jesus was facing his death, knowing that Judas had betrayed him
Garden of Gethsamene
Matthew 26:39 CSB
39 Going a little farther, he fell facedown and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
Not I what I want to happen but what you want God.
This is what it means to seek the Kingdom of God.
With real legitimate fears, with real anxiety, to respond with faith backed up by action. Not what I want God but whatever you want.
To know that even in the process of dying or ending, God is still at work and his plan
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.
Some of you know what I wrote about the anniversary we all experienced this week of September 11, 2001
Holding CHarlotte
One who was pregnant wondering like me how she could bring a child into this kind of world
I was touched by one mom who was giving birth to children between the towers falling
one who learned she was pregnant, boarded a plane
Thousands died over the years in wars and battles. We should mourn those and pay even more attention to the suffering that occurs in the world before it affects us personally
Yet as we see the world today,
we don’t need soldiers in airports or on our bridges as we acted like we did on that day
we have not lost all of our freedoms or been taken over by Islam
If anything we have only let our fear of loss take us away from our real goal of not seeking the Kingdom of God
You know what else September 11 was an anniversary of?
It has been six months since the World Health Organization delared the world was in a pandemic. (sept . 19 will be six months since Ca stay at home order)
For many of you lost a lot of income
In 8 more days it will be six months since we worshipped inside together.
This is not the new normal
Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Linton Wells. Here’s how it begins:
If you had been a security policy-maker in the world's greatest power in 1900, you would have been a Brit, looking warily at your age-old enemy, France.
By 1910, you would be allied with France and your enemy would be Germany.
By 1920, World War I would have been fought and won, and you'd be engaged in a naval arms race with your erstwhile allies, the U.S. and Japan.
By 1930, naval arms limitation treaties were in effect, the Great Depression was underway, and the defense planning standard said "no war for ten years."
Nine years later World War II had begun.
We don’t know what the future holds and so what does that mean for right now
Consider please asking yourself at this time
what are you really seeking? What are you scared of losing? Are you going to lose it inevitably?
No one is an expert at pandemic faith living
But there are three things you can always do
Love God - do not turn your back on what you know God would have you do
Love others - bring encouragement, generosity, responsibility, kindness, to others
Increase your faith - Seek the Kingdom of God

Romans 5:3–6 CSB
3 And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, 4 endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. 5 This hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. 6 For while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.
Christ died for you, there is no pandemic, no terrorist attack, no cancerous death that can ever defeat the Kingdom of God and the blessings Christ is bringing into your life and our world.
- - John 11:45–49CSB
- - Matthew 5:3CSB
- - John 11:49–52CSB
- - John 11:53CSB
- - Matthew 6:21CSB
Live Like That
- - 1 John 3.16NRSV
Today we are going to get muddy
See it is good to hear sermon’s that look like our beautiful green grass
God loves you so much he died for you
We are to love our neighbors as ourselves
Do good, obey God and flee from sin
Then there’s loving God
when things are going wrong
Loving your neighbor
when they are annoying
when they support everything that’s wrong
Fleeing from sin
when doing right means not following a rule that is a right rule
when everyone who tells me what is right is doing wrong.
Roger Williams III died last Thursday morning with his beloved wife, right by his side.
This is not Roger’s memorial service but this is God’s moment as a church family for me to tell you what God is saying to us right now for us.
I knew Roger since I was 15. Roger showed me what it’s like to have a personal relationship with God that would endure periods of sin, failing to answer every questions , doing the greatest acts of love of neighbor, and being destroyed by those who walk with God. This is a contradiction. Why would doing good also come with so much hardship. This doesn’t make sense. Because it’s real life. A real life of faith goes beyond the lawn, to see the mud that makes the lawn.
There are many scriptures in the Bible that I can’t make neat and easy to go ok I see what God was doing there. Because the Bible is about real life. God is in our real life not an ideal tv world or won that makes all people happy. God understands right where you are right now.
I want to share one of those with you church, because this is a message for you today to not worry that your faith isn’t lawn, but is made up of muddy difficulties and for us to be
willing to let God be greater than my own ability to make sense of it all.
God is bigger than our ability to understand. Faith begins with my understanding, Jesus comes to us humans as both God and man. He comes as a man. Just like us. But isn’t like us, there is more to Him than we will understand. Our faith starts there and keeps going into what we learn but than it goes farther. God will tell His beautiful story in the midst of our lives as we follow Him.
My scripture is that bizarre contradiction of God speaking to tell the world of his plan through a huge hypocrite.
After Jesus raised his best friend Lazarus from being dead for four days. Those who held political and religious power were scared.
John 11:45–49 CSB
45 Therefore, many of the Jews who came to Mary and saw what he did believed in him. 46 But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. 47 So the chief priests and the Pharisees convened the Sanhedrin and were saying, “What are we going to do since this man is doing many signs? 48 If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” 49 One of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all!
These men, the Pharisees who had been selected by their teachers for their intelligence, family’s respect among the people, in other words their fame, and were regarded by the people as being the closest to God because they studied the Bible all the time
Yes, they failed to see God right in front of them
Ever Felt like If You studied the Bible More than God would finally use you to bless others and matter to God?
I met Roger in a wonderful church
We studied the Bible a lot
We had these great Christmas and Easter pageants
We went to many places
The church destroyed itself as people attacked each other in response to the sin of a former pastor, then rallied to save their favorite pastor willing to attack anyone who disagreed, and then worked hard to fire Roger. Gossip and fighting, immorality, it all came out of the people who taught me about God.
If you don’t get it, sometimes the people who are most respected by church people can also be the people who most miss how to love God and love neighbor. We can most miss how to have lawn while we work in the mud.
Matthew 5:3 CSB
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.
Humility allows you to see the mud and know that maybe you don’t need to know how the grass forms but the grass is coming
And sometimes those who have the most respect are the least humble because we people often admire those who speak well, are prideful, well educated or able, beautiful, but God is bigger than our prejudices and pride.
This is tough,
John 11:49–52 CSB
49 One of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all! 50 You’re not considering that it is to your advantage that one man should die for the people rather than the whole nation perish.” 51 He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, 52 and not for the nation only, but also to unite the scattered children of God.
This man, the one who is to be closest to God speaks the words of God. It’s all true. One man, who is God would die for all of his people and actually the whole word. Jesus would die for your sins. The Jewish people would continue.

John 11:53 CSB
53 So from that day on they plotted to kill him.
But at the same time the generations to follow these men will lose all of their political power and they themselves will be the instruments to kill God.
Here it is, the greatest message, Jesus will unite all of the scattered children of God. We know this to be true. Those who claim Jesus as their God, people from all over the world, on every continent, in hundreds of languages across much of time, are united by the Holy Spirit, God himself.
While at the same time this message came amongst people plotting to commit murder.
This story is very muddy.
God does not want us to plot to commit murder.
Life and faith are not simple, they aren’t always so easy.
Jesus after resurrecting on that Easter Sunday, first appeared to a woman whose only other mention is that Jesus drove demons out of her and they she was one of many others who supported Jesus from their possessions.
His best friends were fisherman, regular guys
But he also was buried in the tomb of a rich man
Nothing about the people’s outer abilities determined if God would bless the world through them. Yet their spiritual humility would help them see the God. Nothing about people’s spiritual health determined if God would use them to bless the world. God spoke through a murder and religious leader who cared more about power than seeing God himself right in front of him.

So many times Roger and I came face to face with the hypocrisy of the church and it often hurt us badly. We even hurt each other badly. It was very muddy.
Back in 2000 - 2001 We tried to start a new church together. It was super cool
For a time Roger and I were getting invited to conferences to speak, having magazine articles written about us, but yet feeling as if very few people were coming to know the Lord.
but we reached so few and during those times we fought.
This frustration caused me to attack and see if I could go do better
It caused us to separate for a time but when the world came crashing down on me. Roger was the one who helped, who listened, and who came in between.
I have learned that
only God causes the lawn to come up out of the mud.
You see Roger and I battled with hypocrisy among Christian leaders and people in our souls and also at times to peoples faces, Roger much more than I, but we also wanted to serve Christ and experience the power of the resurrection which comes as we love others as Christ loves us. And people are muddy, our fears of being hurt are very muddy, our lack of faith is muddy, our prayers were muddy too.
That separation caused us to go looking for places of genuine opportunity to serve Jesus. Roger became a chaplain ministering to the sick and dying. I am here among you in a small church, ministering in t-shirt and jeans, and working among autistic children during the week.
Years later Roger would come to serve as Chaplain here in Stockton and bless this church and many of you. Because we knew that when it got muddy, the pain of death, the hardship of disability, the chaos of addiction, the tragedy of poverty it was so much easier to see what God would have us do, love generously.
Whenever you went to st. Joseph’s I called Roger and he would visit you, then as you allowed, call me and keep me updated every day. He would do his very best to make sure each of you had everything you need. He was willing to watch children, willing to buy almost anything, willing to give things you hadn’t even thought of desiring.
At the same time, the ugliness of dealing with the hypocrisy in our world as well as loving our enemy hurt Roger tremendously and disconneced him from us. The Presidency of Trump angered him especially the support of Christian leaders who overlooked the President’s immorality and disunity.
Our world is very muddy.
Hear me my left-leaning liberal friends God is in the midst of our politics and God is bigger than our politics.
Hear me my right-leaning conservative friends God is in the midst of our politics and God is bigger than our politics.
Hear me those who get confused and want out of any political discussion. GOD is in politics and I’m glad you can see it isn’t clear all the time but God is in the muddy and making it into lawn.
For me, I desire a church where a republican, MAGA hat wearing person, is loved. I know and hope you are watching and know that I love you as Christ loves you.
I desire a church where a person such as Roger can worship and be loved in spirit and in truth. I never knew how to warn him so let me try and warn you.
The High Priest was a tool of God as was the Roman Cesar but what mattered was the carpenter from Galilee, the fisherman who walked with him, the women who used to be sick, the church that gathered in the upper room.
Walk humbly and stay connected to God and His people.
One of Roger and my last deep conversations was that He loves New Day. He never stopped loving New Day. He regretted not being here and connecting with you and his disconnection had nothing to do with you. It had everything to do with the things that I have called today, the mud.
Last Sunday night, late, I was in bed getting ready to go to sleep, I got a ring at my doorbell. I had no idea who was there only to discover it was Roger. Belinda told me later that what he was about to do was so important to him that when she tried to stop him, he grabbed his keys, and in immense pain and while taking pain meds, he drove, she tried to stop him but couldn’t so she hopped in the car and went with him to my house. What was so important?
Roger handed me a tithe check for New Day.
My friends that’s not something I talk about much. Our financial support of the church. But this was much, much, much more than money.
Roger knew the verse
Matthew 6:21 CSB
21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
My friends Roger loved you. His heart was here and he was very sorry the mud kept him away.

My friends stop worrying that you can’t figure out how to be happy, how to deal with people, how to know all the Bible answers, how to be respected. I’m telling you I suck as a pastor. I’m really muddy.
But when we together, love God and make this place a house of prayer, and love each other with generosity that makes people stop in awe, and love others with kindness, honesty, forgiveness, and self-sacrifice when we are gone we will know God used it all to grow a new heaven and a new earth a place of beauty.
Out of the muddy comes a beautiful lawn.
Repent, Get your butt back to church, orient your hearts to God, and to loving each other. and get your mind on Christ wherever you are so you can keep following in faith in the mud.

If it’s the End of the World why are you so scared?

Upcoming pain is real, fearful

what are you really seeking? What are you scared of losing? Are you going to lose it inevitably?

Love God - do not turn your back on what you know God would have you do

Love others - bring encouragement, generosity, responsibility, kindness, to others

Increase your faith - Seek the Kingdom of God

John 11:45–49CSB

Matthew 5:3CSB

John 11:49–52CSB

John 11:53CSB

Matthew 6:21CSB

1 John 3.16NRSV

Today we are going to get muddy

willing to let God be greater than my own ability to make sense of it all.

Ever Felt like If You studied the Bible More than God would finally use you to bless others and matter to God?

Humility allows you to see the mud and know that maybe you don’t need to know how the grass forms but the grass is coming

So many times Roger and I came face to face with the hypocrisy of the church and it often hurt us badly. We even hurt each other badly. It was very muddy.

only God causes the lawn to come up out of the mud.

Walk humbly and stay connected to God and His people.