ABOUT THE MESSAGE

Week #2 of Margin was amazing.  One my favorite quotes from the sermon was “Business does not equal importance, meaningfulness and I added Godliness”.   If you missed the message you can watch it at http://findinggrace.com/messages/

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Join LifeChurch.tv for a time of prayer for Haiti. Tonight at 7pm at the following link.  http://internet.lifechurch.tv/2010/01/night-of-prayer-for-haiti/

Illinois Marathon - We need 30 volunteers to help with an Aid Station on Saturday, May 1st.  You can sign up at the church this coming Sunday.

Housing for University Students - A group of 40 University Students will arrive in Champaign on March 13 and need housing for a couple of nights.   The group will be in Champaign working at our church and in the community.  Your responsibility will primarily be housing.  Some transportation will be needed but the group will have vans rented to take care of the majority of the transportation needs. Please let me know how many students you could house and if you have a preference of male or female.

Grace and Peace,

Jerris

Since Craig’s sermon this past Sunday, have you been thinking about creating margin in your life? One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was “Put God First”. I have found that applies to all areas of my life, especially in a practical sense to my daily schedule. Non-morning people will hate this next part. It is not easy and I am not always successful, but when I get up 15-30 minutes early and devote time to reading my bible and actually asking God to guide my day, a cool thing happens. He actually does! How great is that!

In Mark 1:35, we see that Jesus found time early to be with His Father early in the morning.

“^“Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”

This early morning environment seems to be the time when I am able to “Be Still” before God.

What about you? What environment works best for you to be still before God? Are you creating margin so that God does not get squeezed out of your daily schedule?

This past Sunday, we started the series Margin. Let me just tell you that this series is already kicking my butt…IT IS ONLY WEEK ONE!

Craig used Romans 12:2 as one of the passages on Sunday, and this verse has stuck out and been on my mind all week. Romans 12:2 says, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will.” Do not conform…be transformed. Am I conforming? Am I allowing transformation to take place? Or, am I hindering it?

The past couple of weeks I have been studying a few of the kings mentioned in the Old Testament. There are two that stand out to me and their stories have helped me process the idea of creating Margin in my life. King Ahaz and King Hezekiah were kings of the Nation of Israel. King Ahaz was not a good king. King Ahaz’s story: knew God…forgot about God…started building idols to other gods…defiled the temple…was influenced by pagan people…left the nation of Israel in pretty bad shape. God’s response to this in Isaiah 7 was, “ If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all.” God offered King Ahaz the opportunity to ask God for help and King Ahaz didn’t take it. He was captive to his sin. Flash forward…King Ahaz dies and his son Hezekiah becomes king. The Bible says that King Hezekiah did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. He recognized that his people (and his father) had been unfaithful to the Lord. King Hezekiah worked to make a covenant with God. They worked to purify themselves and to make things right. He allowed God to transform his kingdom and his life.

If you keep reading about Hezekiah you see that he slips up. The bible refers to the nation of Israel as His chosen people. All through the Bible we see that they were chosen to experience the blessing and the fullest life that God had laid out for them. Interesting enough though, when you read the Old Testament you see over and over about how God’s people resisted God’s blessing and seemed to forget about this beautiful covenant relationship with God. God proved Himself faithful over and over. He never left Israel…they seemed to forget about Him. The Old Testament is a roller coaster of conformity and transformation, much like our lives. God has offered us this rich blessing but we get caught up…we get distracted…we get disconnected. One king conformed and the other allowed himself to be transformed. If I examine my life, the margin in my life, am I more like King Ahaz or King Hezekiah?

Romans 12: 1-2, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will. “

We can all be encouraging each other and praying for each other as we are on this journey to create margin in our lives. What a beautiful thing it would be to see what God does with the space we have created.

A couple of Sundays ago we were challenged to think about what “one thing” we feel that God has for us to do.  At first I felt like this was just a really good effort at filling a week with a first of the year sermon before Craig launched into the Margin series that I knew he was very excited about.  I mean you hear so many things at the first of the year about resolutions and making changes and really examining your life. And I know I’ve had so many years where all of that examining didn’t necessarily add up to a whole lot of change throughout the year, so hear was just another talk about the same old topics you expect to hear at the New Year…or was it?

You see there was one key difference in this talk and that was the reminder to set your mind on the things that God has for you to do.  To seek his will for what one thing you would need to focus on so that all other things seem to fall in line behind it.  This dove-tailed beautifully into Margin as we were reminded that we can be so distracted by many good things that we lose sight of the one best thing.  By doing less things and taking time to really seek God’s direction before moving, we reduce a lot of wasted effort chasing hunches about his will.

So my one thing is to build more consistency in my practice of reading his word.  Which has been greatly helped with my reading plan from youversion.com. I am trusting in the Lord that by doing this one simple thing, he will bless my path in 2010 and many years to come. What is your one thing this year? How did you figure that out?

Yesterday’s schedule was a little full, but a what a great day!