All In | Week Four | Sermon Notes
ALL IN | Week Four
We are going ALL IN! A decision that changes everything. This could be the moment that changes your life forever! The right direction tomorrow begins with the right decision today.
If you are just getting back to church in 2014, we want to welcome you to go All In with us! Come and Follow Christ with us!
We are accustomed to “Following” – social media. I’m in. I’m out. I’m in. I’m out. I “like you” because you might could help me out.
Following Christ is completely different.
I have Decided To Follow Jesus – The lyrics are based on the last words of a man in Assam, north-east India, who along with his family was converted to Christianity in the middle of the 19th century through the efforts of a Welsh missionary. He was called to renounce his faith by the village chief. His response, “I have decided to follow Jesus”. In response to threats to his family, he continued, “Though no one joins me, still I will follow.” After his wife was executed for her faith, he was being led to his death, the man declared, “The cross before me, the world behind me.” This display of faith is reported to have led to the conversion of the chief and others in the village.
Mark 8:34 If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross (Luke added the word ‘Daily’) and follow me. 35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. 36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? 37 For what can a man give in return for his soul? 38 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
We are a big church with a lot of people on different parts of the faith journey. We continually want you to take this following seriously.
As a pastor, it’s my job to show you what it looks like. Where ever you are…find yourself and take the next step.
When you loose your life, you will find it. If you continue to save your life, you will loose it.
Rick Warren broke down the steps like this:
- Crowd – “Come and See”
first appeal from Jesus was to the “crowd” – everybody come and see. Free coffee, take care of your kids, hangout, low commitment. Jesus did the same thing. Jesus first message to Peter was ‘come and see’. He filled his boat full of fish! Jesus was appealing to the crowd (miracles).
Take a few months if you need to. To see if this is what you want to do, don’t give, don’t serve. Just come see. THEN, there is a point when the next step is join:
- Congregation– “Come and Join”
- First: Join JESUS! I want to be in the family of God! Follow him. Trust in His good news.
- Second: Join PSM. When you join Jesus it is natural to join a church! Let me just say something that most pastors probably wont say. “I know you are not always going to be here.” My job is not to get you to stay at PromiseLand San Marcos. You are going to move, die, change churches, whatever. My job is not to keep you here. My job is to outline the way while you are here. So, here is the point, if you are here, JOIN UP. This is not a lifelong commitment, but it is a commitment. While I am here in San Marcos, I will be a part of a local congregation. Learn from, be accountable to, serve in, give to. At some point, join up with the group and be a part. Next week is 101.
- Committed – “Come and Grow”
Salvation and joining a church is not the end of the line, it is the beginning of the journey!
Maybe that means to start reading the Bible on regular basis. Go on the City and find a daily reading schedule.
Join a PromiseGroup.
Dig into the 21 day prayer and fasting thing. If you don’t know how to pray, then just come and watch others pray. Get a prayer guide and let us show you.
We are inviting you to go to the next level. Jump in on the Growth Track 101, Essentials 201, Discover 301
Why the Sermon Series Theme?
Our team often decorates each sermon series with a theme of some sort. Why?
Short Answer: Jesus did it.
Long Answer: At PromiseLand, we are very intentional about reaching all types of people in the congregation. Everyone from first timers to old timers listen in the audience. Every one of them have a ‘gate keeper’ in their brain that tells them, “Don’t listen to this. You have already heard it before.” Doctors have studied “Broca’s area” of the brain and have determined it is “the theater critic of the imagination, the part of the human mind that anticipates and ignores the predictable.” Basically, if your brain predicts that it has heard the information already, then it quits listening and begins thinking on other more interesting things. (read more about that here)
Our job as speakers is to break through the Broca area of the brain and let people know that they haven’t heard this before OR you have never heard it like this.
So this is what our team does in sermon prep:
ALL IN Week 3 | Sermon Notes
ALL IN | Week Three
This is the most practical message I have ever taught! If you are going ALL IN, then you will immediately be presented with REAL life decisions on HOW to make it work.
Going ALL IN is going to involve REAL life decisions. Hard decisions! Lifestyle Changes.
YOU CAN DO IT. YOU CAN DIE. YOU CAN CHANGE YOUR FUTURE, by changing your heart and habits today!
One of the first places where going ALL IN affects you is in your finances.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO YOUR FINANCES WHEN YOU ARE “ALL IN WITH THE ALL IN ALL”?
MYTH: My Money is Separate from my Faith
TRUTH: No One can Serve Two Masters
Mammon uses money to get ahold of people’s hearts. It promises everything that only God can provide.
Matthew 6:24“No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
”How many of you are the main provider in your home?” (none of you should be…)
MYTH: I am the Provider for my Home.
TRUTH: God Owns Everything
Genesis 2:15 The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it.
Leviticus 25:23 The land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants.
Psalms 24:1 The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.
Romans 11:36 For from him and through him and to him are all things …
Embrace your position as a steward
If you are ALL IN for the ALL in ALL, then God is the ALL in ALL. You aren’t!
God is our provider.
Tony Morgan Coaching Network
I was a part of Tony Morgan’s Coaching Network in 2012. What a great experience! He interviewed me last week about it:
How Our Coaching Network Helped PromiseLand Church Get Unstuck
Over the holidays, we connected withRobin Steele to talk about his experience in our leadership coaching network. Robin is the lead pastor of Promiseland Church in San Marcos, TX. The church was launched in 2003 with 30 people and over the last 10 years they have grown to 1,000 members in their main location and have opened two other campuses.
TONY: What caused you to consider participating in a coaching network?
ROBIN: My friend, Joe Sangl, highly recommended the network. He was coaching me through some church finance hurdles and thought I could benefit from your overall leadership approach.
TONY: What were your greatest takeaways from the coaching network?
ROBIN: Working through the book, Necessary Endings with you and the rest of the group was huge to me. There was also a great segment on “Leaders vs Doers” that completely reshaped my thinking on volunteers.
TONY: How did the coaching network help your church get unstuck?
ROBIN: I changed the way I work with my staff and we have changed the way we communicate to our church. We have implemented the coaching network discussion style into our staff meetings. We have also simplified our mass communication and promotion processes. (No more giant inflatable blue monkeys).
TONY: What would you say to a leader who is considering joining a coaching network?
ROBIN: I highly recommend the experience. You did a great job of helping us discover our next steps. I distinctively remember bringing up a specific staff issue and instead of leaping to a quick conclusion or giving me generic advice, you led me to make my own conclusions and helped me confirm my clear path for going forward. The camaraderie and learning style of the group was awesome. Leaders spend thousands of dollars at conferences but this hands-on/personal approach brought lasting change to our church.
Our next coaching networks will begin in April 2014. We have room for you. Clickhere for more information.
The other side of adoption…
Powerful message of going All In!
As I was reading a Christmas devotional about Christ coming to redeem those under the law through our adoption (Galatians 4), I was struck by the other faith in adoption.
For much of our adoption story, we have focused on one side of it – ours. We were the ones who felt called. We saved and raised money. We left home to go to a foreign place. We struggled. We wrestled. We believed. We loved. We pursued. We fought. We won. We adopted our daughters. It was the biggest test of our faith that we have ever experienced, and our lives will literally never be the same. It’s easy for us to talk about our faith in our adoption process, but in one sense that didn’t even matter.
On the other side of our story are two sisters who had lived in an institution for the better part of…
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Robin Steele 