Sermons About Purity
Be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil.
Feb. 15, 2009 Sunday AM message by Pastor Rae Orozco - "Be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil"
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Assurance, Intercession, and Purity
Do any of you know people that are amazingly self-assured? Their confidence just overflows when you are around them. Sometimes being around them can be encouraging, and quite honestly, some times it can be intimidating. Maybe they have the effect on you that you try your best to be at your sharpest, wittiest, and most intelligent when you are interacting with them. Either way, everyone in the room senses their confidence. A lot of athletes are like that. When the game is on the line, they want the ball in their hands. When the Super Bowl is on the line, they want the ball thrown their way. They want to stand at the plate at the bottom of the 9th with the bases loaded. Moments like that are what many kids dream of and play out in the backyard every day. I had that moment my very first organized baseball game. I may have told you guys this story before, but it bears telling again. I was in 4th grade in my very first little league game. I had not stepped onto the field the entire time. My uniform would not even need cleaning. It was the bottom of the ninth, we were down, there were 2 men on base, and my coach decides to put me in as a pinch hitter. I watched the last two pitches whiz by, I struck out, and we lost the game. I handled that like many other 9 year olds do by crying my eyes out. Fast forward 20 years later, and the exact same situation came up. I was playing church softball, it was the playoffs, and I step up with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth. It was not lost on me at that last time that I was in the same situation, and the last time I was there I didn't come through. However, this time, I hit a bloop single that brought in two runners, and we won the game. Winning the game was enough to erase most of the pain of the 4th grade, but I was pretty sure that I was never going to be any team's go to guy on the baseball field. No matter whether you are confident or not, built into self-assurance or self-confidence is this attitude that sounds like the expression, "If it is going to be, it is up to me." There is a sense in some folks, right or wrong, that they just know if something needs to get done, they know they can count on themselves. Though this issue wavers back and forth between confidence and pride, it got me thinking about confidence and assurance in God. If I asked many of you, "Is God powerful enough to do anything?" I think many if not most of you would say, "Yes." "Is he powerful enough to create, heal, call things into existence by His very word?? I think most of you would say yes. But if I asked you if He was powerful enough to keep your salvation secure and in the process assure you that your salvation is real, I don't know if I would get as many affirmations. For some reason, we think God is powerful enough to do anything He wants in the material world, but when it comes to our heart, salvation, and assurance of that salvation, we think God either cannot or has chosen not to make us secure with Him. This Sunday, at Sovereign King, I want to remove that doubt today. Rather, John in this last sermon from 1 John wants to. John is going to use language like "knowing we believe" and "knowing you have eternal life" and "having confidence" in God. He is going to talk about what the life looks like that has confidence in God and what God has done.
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Death by Degree
The gift of sexuality is one of the most powerful forces in our lives for both pleasure and pain. Like fire, sexuality, in its proper place, is both powerful and beneficial. But out of control, it can also become a destructive force. Satan is able to use sexual sin in a devastating "one-two" punch in our lives. First, we are tempted to move away from God's ideal, into sin. After we sin, Satan then turns the mirror on us to condemn and ridicule us. As your pastor, my hope and prayer for you is that you would step into the fullness of sexual healing and fulfillment. That your desire to walk with Jesus Christ, and to be used by Him, would not be compromised because of hidden sin in your life.
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The Great Things of God
Since arriving in Garner to plant Sovereign King Church, I have had what I will call a holy despair. Let me explain that because "holy" and "despair" seem to be contradictory. You see, I don't want when it is all said and done, for Sovereign King to launch and have everything we need (buildings, youth ministries, great music, etc), and God not do something great among us. It is quite possible for us to have a great building, an incredible ministry to all ages and stages of life and have rocking, professional level music, and we never come close to sniffing great things for God. When I look into the coming year, I see a bunch of those things becoming reality. This will be the year Sovereign King will become financially self-sufficient, and we will begin looking towards greater platforms for ministry. More than likely, we will not finish 2009 in the same building that we are in now. I imagine we will build on the efforts of Children's Church and the events we did this past summer, and our children's/youth activities will flourish and become much more consistent. And the temptation of our hearts when all of those things happen is to think that we have arrived, that the goal has been accomplished, God has blessed us, and the central struggle is over. Do not, and I repeat, do not give in that type of thinking. If we have those things, and I pray we do, that does not mean that God is doing great things with us. And I pray and plead to God and to you for great things. We are in dangerous territory because at least in our culture, those very good things (financially stability, good facilities, great music) can actually be enemies of great things because we see them, we grow complacent, and lose our desire for the great things of God. This week, as we return to the book of I John, I want us to ask, "What do the great things of God look like?"
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Light
Because this light was God in the flesh, and because He came into the world to give us life through fellowship and to destroy the darkness in our world by taking away our sins on the cross (the moment of ultimate darkness) we are compelled to preach the gospel and raid the darkness.
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Sacred Sex
Sex is an awesome gift when used as God instructs, but terribly destructive when misused or abused.
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Baptist Distinctives: Two Ordinances, Regenerate Church Membership & Purity of the Local Church
Matthew 28:18-20
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