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This week we revisited the root of Rhythm and God’s plan for the Rhythm he instilled in us. There was the garden, then the fall, and now we’re finding our way back as he reconciles us and draws us near. Everything is there in the podcast including an illustration we haven’t used in a while.
Brandon
It’s so easy in this world to get caught up in “things”, to get to the point that we are blinded by what we think we have. Our education, our cars, our own small worlds that seem so important to us. When we’re teenagers, we think that every little thing is going to have such a huge impact on our lives that we spend most of our time focused on the drama surrounding us. When we’re in college, it’s about friends, freedom, and new experiences. Sometimes this can lead to a more broad view of the world, sometimes this can just serve to put more blinders on our eyes. We think we’re rich, we think we’re smart, we think we’ve got it all together. But we’re wrong.
God has it all together. If we get our riches from Him, then we are truly rich. But these riches will not look like the riches the world tells us we should have. It may even look a bit like poverty, and the world will not understand these riches. Our worldly wisdom can only extend so far until we are blinded, but God wants to give us salve for our eyes so that we can see! For a while now, I’ve been praying that I could see the truth in things. Not for my own gain, for my own understanding, but so that I could effectively talk with people and help to further the Kingdom. This ability can only come from God, nothing we can learn or strive to do on our own can give us the ability to see.
To get through our thick skins, sometimes God has to take some drastic measures and pretty much yell at us to get our attention. To get our eyes off of the shiny things of this world and onto the everlasting things of Him, sometimes it takes some discipline. But God disciplines those that He loves. If He didn’t love us, He could just let us continue in our sinful ways and live any way we choose (and yeah, we would choose sin, every time). We are not such holy beings that we would choose Him and live righteously without any discipline whatsoever.
Oswald Chambers put it well when he said, “Never allow anything that divides or destroys the oneness of your life with Christ to remain in your life without facing it. Beware of allowing the influence of your friends or your circumstances to divide your life. This only serves to sap your strength and slow your spiritual growth. Beware of anything that can split your oneness with Him, causing you to see yourself as separate from Him. Nothing is as important as staying right spiritually. And the only solution is a very simple one— “Come to Me . . . .” [Matt 11:28] The intellectual, moral, and spiritual depth of our reality as a person is tested and measured by these words. Yet in every detail of our lives where we are found not to be real, we would rather dispute the findings than come to Jesus.”
Shanna
Hey guys,
Hope your week is going well! Let me tell you guys about rhythm this week in case you missed out. Craig brought a POWERFUL message from the last letter of the seven in Revelation. It’s a pretty familiar passage but we got to hear it from a whole new point of view. The confrontation on this church was that they were not living lives for or against the Lord, they were riding the middle and living completely lukewarm – Where God would vomit us out of his mouth out of sickness that we cause Him. We choose to be selfish about our ‘christianity’ and enjoy raising our hands and worshiping at service but then do exactly what we want during the week, causing our testimony of faith to be worthless, and making our God look bad. We are losing people to the enemy every day as we chose to live like this. Where did we get to thinking that we could hide our sins from the God who made us? And where did we stop caring about advancing the Kingdom on friday night the same way we would on Sundays?
Following this message we had four songs we sang in response and it was a STRONG night of worship as people sought out confession and repentance. The spirit was moving in the room and it was one our coolest rhythm’s this summer in my mind. I surrender all wasa song we ended up singing twice to sink that message into our heads during the responsive time.
What a cool week, but what is our response going to be this weekend? Was it just a decent worship service, or was this really a turning point in our lives?? I know that I had to step back after last night and reexamine where I am at. I hope you can find the heart to do the same for yourself.
1 John 1:9 – If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from
ALL UNRIGHTEOUSNESS.
See you guys next week.
Kevin
The lights through the sanctuary are dim… the chords of the first song ring out in the air… faces are lifted, hands are raised, eyes are closed. The joyful sound of voices fills the air. Ahh, worship. (Or at least one form of it.) Such a beautiful thing… and last night was no exception! The crowd was a bit smaller than usual, but that did nothing to deter the spirits of those there to praise our amazing God.
We were then on to the 6th church in Revelation: Philadelphia. The literally-translated city of “Brotherly Love” (in Greek). Not a large city, not overly wealthy, not really known for anything special, certainly not a bold-lettered city on a map… It was an average place that happened to be located along a major trade route… very much like our lovely little city of Roanoke. (Norfolk Western, anyone?)
The people of Philadelphia, much like the city itself, aren’t very interesting. This letter to the church in Philadelphia, however, is a bit unique compared to the other letters John transcribes. This letter is a description of what Jesus has done (and is doing and will continue to do). He is reminding the people (along with all His readers) that He is with them and is in total control regardless of how mundane or tiresome life becomes. He realizes we’re going through crap, but if we stay strong and stick with Him, the end results will be worth our struggles.
I know this isn’t generally what we want to hear; we want our problems to go away and to win the lottery and have the guy or girl we like fall for us… Sometimes, it just doesn’t seem like enough to push through and just deal… but Jesus promises us we’re not alone, that He knows what’s going on, and that Heaven will be worth it all… and that has to be enough.
Just something to think about…
PJ
Glad to be back together, we dove into the letter to the Church at Sardis last night. The church is also known as the dead church because of a reference to having a living name with no life. Seems to be a growing trend today and instead of becoming aware of the situation as Christians, we grow secure in the numbers of dead churches or Christians and since there’s a lot of people doing it, it no longer seems to be an issue.
You see God on many occasions designates Himself as the One who operates the church through its leaders by the power of the Holy Spirit. What we find with the Church at Sardis is that they were moving because God acknowledges their actions, but they were doing so without the Holy Spirit. The once powerful and flourishing church had grown secure and began to allow sin to infiltrate the church first by tolerating it and eventually by embracing it. An interesting correlation between the city of Sardis and the church is that twice the city was conquered and both times because the people had become so secure that they left the town unguarded forsaking the possibility of an enemy attack.
As a group of believers today, we have grown into a comfortability of our religious routines and our weekly meetings and forget that the enemy continues to seek to destroy us. So the call to the church is this…
•Be watchful
•Strengthen the things that are left.
•Remember the salvation given to us.
•Hold fast to sound doctrine
•Repent
We all fall and we all struggle with things but God says that those who “have not defiled their garments” will “walk with [Him] in white; for they are worthy”. As long as we fervently pray and seek God’s righteousness acknowledging our shortcomings, then God will continue to bless His people. My prayer for us this week is that as a diverse group of collegiates from different backgrounds, we would unite around the truth and salvation that comes in Jesus Christ alone, that it might overwhelm us into action for the glory of the only One worthy.
Blessings,
Brandon
Rhythm meets Thursday nights at 8 PM at Lakeside Baptist Church. Get Directions.
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