History In The Making: His Work

6.12.20/Nevei Kodesh Broadcast

Story: How many of you have said “I need a vacation!” or maybe “I’m ready to get back to normal!” There is a reason why we’re feeling the need to disconnect and find peace. This is a season of serious discomfort. Instead of retreating from the uncomfortable, what if we leaned in to discover where God is at work?

When I say where is God at work many of your first thoughts were “God at work? Now? In the middle of a year of so much global unrest?”

What if 2020 isn’t cancelled but maybe the most important year of them all?

Just yesterday we were talking about all the historical events that have taken place.

2020 Historical Events:

January 7: Chinese authorities identify the novel coronavirus, then known as 2019-nCoV.

January 20: The first coronavirus case in the US is reported in Washington state.

January 26: Kobe and Gigi Bryant, along with seven other passengers, died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, California.

February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Marquez Arbery, an unarmed 25-year-old African-American man, was fatally shot near Brunswick in Glynn County, Georgia

March 13: Trump declares a national emergency amid the coronavirus pandemic.

March 13, Louisville police officers, executing a search warrant, used a battering ram to crash into the apartment of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old African-American emergency room technician. After a brief confrontation, they fired several shots, striking her at least eight times.

March 16: Dow plunges 2,997 points in the worst drop since 1987 amid coronavirus fears.

March 24: The 2020 Summer Olympics, which were supposed to take place in Tokyo, are postponed until 2021.

May 19th, Apologist Ravi Zacharias died Tuesday, two months after he announced he had been diagnosed with cancer. He was 74.

May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, was killed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest for allegedly using a counterfeit bill.

June 7th, Pastor Jorge Gonzalez passed away after fighting COVID since April. Please pray for comfort for his wife, Vidaid Gonzales, and their three children in this difficult time, specifically, as they grieve in such a time as this.

June 7th, we found out that Pastor Timothy Keller was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. We will pray for his treatment and family during this time.

Intro:

It is undeniable that 2020 has been chaos. We’ve been living in a global crisis and oftentimes we don't know what our response should be. Throughout this History In The Making series we’ve covered many themes. Our hope is always to bring you back to God’s Word and point you to Jesus.

Week 1 - Faith

Week 2 - Hope

Week 3 - Provision

Week 4 - Reconciliation

Week 5 - Empathy

Week 6 - Obedience

Passage: 1 John 4:7-8 CSB

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

Chime in and sing “Beloved, let us love one another. For love is of God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God, for God is love. Beloved, let us love one another… 1 John 4:7-8

Pray:

Title: His Work

Big Idea:

We have to know and experience the heart of God in order to do the work of God.

The Christian life is not about us doing things for God but Him doing His work in and through us.

When we first got married we knew early on we were called to ministry. Which is just a fancy word for loving and serving people full time. We went through a study together called Experiencing God and it has forever shaped our outlook on life and what it looks like to do the work of God.

There are so many questions of what does it look like to be reflectors of God right now, what does it look like to do what He would do. I know so many days I have asked myself how would Jesus respond to our black brothers and sisters, how would Jesus respond to the election? How would Jesus respond to Covid?

We want to challenge you today to take these 7 steps towards experiencing God

Main Points: The 7 Steps Toward Experiencing God

1. Realize God is always at work around you
   1. God has not taken a break in this season. He’s always alive, always present, and always working out his purposes in, around, and through you.
   2. Question: Do you believe that God is at work in this season?
   3. If the answer is “no”, then where did He go? When will He come back? Why did He leave? If the answer is “yes”, then what is He doing? Where is He working? How does He want me to be involved?
   4. Because of the sin of humanity we are in desperate need of reconciliation. God is at work reconciling humanity to Himself through Jesus.
   5. There’s been many days in this season that we have felt tired. Worn down, exhausted, and ready to retreat. And when we take a moment to realize the root of the exhaustion we realize there are so many voices fighting for our attention: media, newspaper, friends, family… it can become so overwhelming that we are looking for the right way to respond and not realizing how God might be calling us to join Him where He is already at work.

Which brings us to the next step.

1. The seven statements that follow are the “Seven Realities” from Henry Blackaby and Claude King, Experiencing God.
2. God pursues a continuing love relationship with you that is real and personal
   1. The first step and continued steps are always going to be toward a love relationship with God. He is the one pursuing you, leaning in to your story, walking with you.
   2. Question: How can we expect to know God’s will, experience God’s power, or hear God’s voice, if we are at a distance to Him?

   3. Story: As I’ve been taking in so much information, I find myself wanting to rationalize and strategize beyond the Holy Spirit.

      1. The same person that wrote the 7 realities told me one time to “Not strategize beyond the Holy Spirit.”
      2. The main takeaway for me is that I need that love relationship with God to give me wisdom, guidance, and direction. Data is helpful, stories are inspiring, history is necessary, but there is no substitute for listening to the voice of God in His Word and prayer.
         4. Question: If you are wrestling with knowing where God is at work, then ask yourself, “What does my relationship with God look like right now?”
      3. God invites you to become involved with Him in His work
         1. God offers forgiveness of our sins, hope of eternity with Him, a relationship, and the power of the Holy Spirit, but it doesn’t stop there… He offers an invitation for us to join Him in His work
         2. This is a humbling and tremendous invitation as children of God. We get to come alongside and be a part of the big things He is doing in our home, in our church, in our community, and around the world.
      4. God speaks by the Holy Spirit through the Bible, prayer, circumstances, and the church to reveal Himself, His purposes, and His ways
         1. Question: How do I know what God wants me to do? You listen to Him through the different ways He speaks.
         2. Question: are you creating space to listen to God?
         3. Every form of hearing from God must align with what God has said in His Word.
         4. God’s voice can happen anytime and anywhere. I’m sure you have heard the analogy of looking for God to spell a word in your Cheerios or maybe in the clouds. I’ve been there. But God doesn’t always speak that way.
      5. God’s invitation for you to work with Him always leads you to a crisis of belief that requires faith and action
         1. When you know what God is doing and how He wants you to be involved in His work, then you have a decision to make.
         2. A decision to choose what you want or choose what the Spirit is calling you to do
         3. Your “yes” will come at a cost… sometimes in your comfort, convenience, time, energy, or money, but your “no” will cost you much more
         4. Story:
      6. You must make major adjustments in your life to join God in what He is doing
         1. A lot of us like to view step 5 and 6 as one step. The first step is the decision of whether or not we’re going to have faith with what God said and the second step is realigning every aspect of our life to fit with what God told us.
         2. Doers of the word and not hearers only (James 1:22).
         3. Adjusting your lives could look like pruning, repentance, eliminating distractions, it could look like establishing values, it could look like setting a budget that aligns with the heart of God.
         4. Adjusting your life around God’s work requires you to lay down your goals, your dreams, your desires, for His mission. This is the call and command of every believer.
      7. You come to know God by experience as you obey Him, and He accomplishes His work through you
         1. Success = Obedience
         2. Story in the car when we were first married.
         3. One yes will lead to more yes and as you keep saying yes even in the uncomfortable you will find that you will experience God more.
         4. Be ok with the uncomfortable. Find where God is at work and join Him.

Illust: It’s Still Heavy

Galatians 6:2 CSB

2 Carry one another’s burdens; in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.

Invitation: