Sermons About Expectations
Declaration of (in) Dependence Part 25
Coping with problems ultimately comes down to our perspective. Granted, if someone has no hope in Jesus Christ and their only hope rests in their own strengths and abilities, despair seems pretty appropriate. But knowing the promises of God and the fulfillment of those promises in Jesus Christ, despair for the believer is a matter of perspective. With Christ, all things are possible. With Christ, all hope is gone. When we lose that perspective (all hope because of Christ), we fall into despair – a state in which many people are living in at this moment. Francis Chan in his book “Crazy/Love” does a good job of helping us find that perspective. Imagine that you are an extra in a movie. There is a crowded scene where you stand with about a hundred other folks, and once your day day of shooting is done, the back of your head accounts for about 2 seconds of screen time. Now, this is not a huge debut for your movie career, but the back of your head makes 2 seconds of screen time among another 100 folks, so I guess you are in showbiz. So in light of your debut, you rent out a local movie theater and invite all of your friends and family. You tell them that they are invited to see the movie made about your life. Of course everyone shows up excited, but once they realize that the back of your head makes up about two seconds of screen time and you have billed the movie as the movie of your life, they all think your crazy. Obviously your perspective is skewed at the least and you are crazy at the worst. Unfortunately, as Chan notes, this perspective most of us take before God. In the grand scheme of God’s work and the unfurling of His plan and character, we make up about 2 seconds of head time, yet we yell and scream that this world and this life is about us. We shake our fists and God and yell, “How dare you do this!” We yell, “Why have you done this to me? I’ve been faithful.” Most folks lose perspective that this world is the unfurling of God’s eternal plan to bring glory to Himself and not to cater to our whims. The hope though in the midst of that is that God is pledged Himself to you in love so much so that He gave His only son, Jesus Christ, so that you might be with Him both now and in eternity. So in light of that, our perspective should change. Yes, God cares about you and is about your well-being, but it is His plan at work, it is His glory, and His movie if you will. Finding our selves in it instead of trying to make God fit into ours corrects our perspective. When it comes down to it, God is only going to meet His expectations and not going to conform to yours, mine, or anyone else’s. The question is, can you worship that God? Big Picture Question: How is a God who meets His own expectations more worthy of praise than a god that meets your expectations?
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Mandates and Expectations
The church has certain mandates from God. When we obey those mandates, we can expect certain reinforcements from God.
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Hope for the Hopeless
This message comes to answer the question, "What do we do with failures?" First, what do we do with the failures in our own lives? What do we do with our inability to see victory over certain sins in our lives, or those areas where we feel like we are being controlled rather then being in control? It also comes to address the question, What do we do with those people in our lives who seem to consistently let us down? What do we do with the people that we feel like giving up on? For most of us, one of the most common responses to failure is giving up, quitting. However, Jesus came to give hope to the hopeless. Our God is a God of hope, and gave us hope by sending his only son to earth to give his life on the cross for his people.
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Growing Up
Growing up and the first purpose of prayer is relationship with God. There is no higher purpose or pleasure that you and I will know.
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One-Trick Pony
The crowd that gathered to cheer as Jesus entered Jerusalem for the last time had a lot of expectations — expectations that Jesus had no intention of fulfilling.
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Expectations Management
This sermon was preached at Christ Memorial Church in Williston, VT. Here Chris was asked to preach in the midst of sermon series on the parables of Jesus. This sermon was on the parable of the wheat and tares and Chris demonstrates that the main thrust of the passage is to help us with our expectations of the Kingdom of God.
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When My Circumstances Work Out Right
I. In Bad Circumstances, See What God is Doing (v12-14) II. In Mixed Circumstances, Be Careful of Your Expectations (v15-18) III. In Future Circumstances, Remember Your Purpose (v19-26)
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When My Circumstances Work Out Right
From his prison cell, Paul looks at his situation and shows us that happiness doesn’t have to be based on our circumstances. His bad, mixed, and future circumstances actually fill him with happiness because he has allowed the gospel and his passion to inform how he responds.
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Easter - The Way of the Resurrection
When the women went to the tomb to treat Jesus' body with spices, they had certain expectations about their Lord: they expected Him to be dead, His body to be in the tomb. How surprised they were! We often have expectations of Jesus that He loves to dash. We also depend on "Bail-me-out" Jesus when we reap the consequences of poor choices, or we look to "Safe" Jesus and strip Him of His divinity. Listen to Pastor Tim Kelly's special Easter message on the miracle of Christ's Resurrection.
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