Christian Life Center Sermons
Web Site: Christian Life Center
Total Sermons: 67
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Becoming the Missional Church
Acts 2:41-47 Missional? What does that mean? If you take a noun and add –al to the end you get an adjective! So you and your adversary have and adversarial relationship. So to be a missionary in your community means that you live missionally. We have spent 5 of the last 6 times I have had the privilege of speaking to you talking about what it means to be a missionary in our own town. For far too long the church in America has failed to think missionally. We have assumed that if they were interested in church they would attend. We have assumed that our neighbors had friends and relatives around better suited to meet their needs. We have assumed that our community knows where we are and will find us if they are in need. But when we look at our Missionary God we don’t see him waiting for us to reach out or waiting for our friends to serve us. We see him coming, sending, serving, reaching and pursuing. So what has been the big idea of these five sermons and what is the big idea behind Missiology (the study of missions) and missional thinking? For us this is the big idea : We are a community of servants sent by God to allow Jesus to pursue our neighbors, family, friends, and coworkers through us. Now let us look at what this looks like when an entire church is committed to being on mission with Jesus!
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Missiology 401: Sent Following Jesus
Matthew 28:18-20 John 20:21 Matthew 9:9-13 As Christians we have purpose that drives us in everything that we say do and think. That purpose was given to us by Jesus as he was about to ascend back to the Father for the most of the rest of eternity. We are given a mission. As we discussed in the first sermon in this series we are sent by Jesus. We are sent to our own cul-de-sac with a message. In our second and message we discussed over the course of two Sundays that we were sent for the purpose of serving our neighbors friends relatives and co-workers and enemies! Then in the third message we discussed the fact that we cannot effectively live out our mission if we are not all involved and vested in the work of the ministry in our own context. We are a body and cannot “go it alone†no super-Christians no commandos for Jesus we are weak and incapable apart from depending on Jesus and those around us! Today we are going to look at some specific instances from the life of Jesus. I hope that we will see that the point of Christianity isn’t gathering in a place on a day but that it is to GO and follow Jesus as He reaches out to those around us through us!
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A Decision to be Made
Acts 1:15-26 Our text opens with the Apostle Peter taking the lead among the apostles. His failure and disgrace behind him, this natural leader steps to the front and deals with the empty position left in the twelve by the treachery and suicide of Judas Iscariot. Apparently Peter has been reading his Bible and connecting the prophecies of the Old Testament with their present situation. He addresses the group by quoting Scripture revealing both the prophecy Jesus’ betrayal by Judas (Psalm 41:9) and the imprecatory Scripture (Psalm 69:25; Psalm 109:8) that laid the foundation for his decision to replace Judas in the Twelve. This text not only offers us a complete history of the the betrayer of Jesus Christ but also offers us an incredible example of the beauty and integrity of the Word of God. This decision on the part of the disciples has been the subject of much debate. Should they have waited for the Holy Spirit’s gifting before they made the decision? While the question still remains we do know this. The disciples followed the directives of the Word of God and bathed their decision process with prayer. This is the great lesson that we can learn from this historical account.
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The Ascension of Jesus Christ
Acts 1:9-11 Our text today is an historical account of the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is the most detailed account, the Ascension of Christ. The Ascension of Jesus Christ means that we now have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous. We have a Mediator in Heaven, a great High Priest, who is touched with the feelings of our infirmities and One who is willing and able to minister on our behalf. As the old hymn puts it Lifted up was He to die, It is finished, was His cry, Now in Heaven exalted high, Hallelujah! What a Saviour. Hallelujah! What a Saviour Philip P. Bliss
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The Promise of the Father
It was the Apostle John who best remembered and almost alone recorded, in his Gospel, the Lords long conversations concerning €œthe Promise of the Father€Â. John records the very words of Jesus who said I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter that He (the Holy Spirit) may abide with you forever.
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Missiology 301: Sent in Community
The idea of Community is becoming a “buzz†word in our society and in the Church. People talk about wanting to experience “Authentic Relational Community.†In the first sermon in this series we talked about the fact that we are called by God into our cul-de-sacs as a mission field as much as missionaries are called to Africa or Europe as a mission field. We also studied in the second sermon in this series how we are sent to serve those around us. Not serving them for the sake of the redemption of our social structure, but to serve them for the opportunity to share Jesus and His Love with them. Now we come to this idea of being sent in community. Or to say it another way we are sent as a unit. Or to put it in Pauline and Biblical terms we are the “Body of Christ†We are sent together as a family and as a whole to reach out to that Community in which we live. We are here for the betterment of the City. Not the Redemption. Only God can redeem our messed up world. We are only here to live in Loving Authentic Relational Community so that we may have an opportunity to invite those outside the City of CLC in the City of Belle Fourche in to our City of Christian Community and Transparency.
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