Today's Sermon:

"Power to Change"

I. Having Been Raised with Christ We Choose to .....

- Vs. 1-4

It will now be seen, perhaps, why it is that the heart keeps by its present affections with so much tenacity when the attempt is to do them away by a mere process of extirpation. It will not consent to be so desolated. The strong man, whose dwelling-place is there, may be compelled to give way to another occupier, but unless another, stronger than he, has power to dispossess and to succeed him, he will keep his present lodgement inviolable. The heart would revolt against its own emptiness…

It is not enough, then, to argue the folly of an existing affection. In a word, if the way to disengage the heart from the positive love of one great and ascendant object is to fasten it in positive love to another, then it is not by exposing the worthlessness of the former, but by addressing to the mental eye the worth and excellence of the latter, that all old things are to be done away, and all things are to become new…The only way to dispossess [the heart] of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one.-Thomas Chalmers, “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection”

II. Having Been Raised with Christ We Choose to ....

- Vs. 5-14

The Spirit of God worked on me as I lay in that bed. An image formed in my mind. The image of the cross—Christ on the cross. It blotted out everything else in my mind. This Jesus knew what I had suffered. He understood. And He cared. Because He had experienced it all Himself…He was arrested and falsely accused. Like me, He went through an unjust trial. He also faced a lynch mob and got beaten. But even more than that, He was nailed to rough wooden planks and killed. Killed like a common criminal. At the crucial moment, it seemed to Jesus that even God Himself had deserted Him. The suffering was so great, He cried out in agony. He was dying. But when He looked at that mob who had lynched Him, He didn’t hate them. He loved them. He forgave them. And He prayed God to forgive them. “Father, forgive these people, for they don’t know what they are doing.”…On that bed, full of bruises and stitches—God made it true in me. He washed my hatred away and replaced it with a love for the white man in rural Mississippi. I felt strong again. Stronger than ever. What doesn’t destroy me makes me stronger. I know it’s true. Because it happened to me.-John Perkins

III. Having Been Raised with Christ We Choose to ...

- Vs. 15

“A rich self has a distinct attitude toward the past, the present, and the future. It surveys the past with gratitude for what it has received, not with annoyance for what it has not received or about how little it has been given. A rich self lives in the present with contentment. Rather than never having enough of anything except for the burdens others place on it, it is “always having enough for everything.” It still strives, but it strives out of satisfied fullness, not out of the emptiness of craving. A rich self looks toward the future with trust. It gives rather than holding things back in fear of coming out too short, because it believes God’s promise that God will take care of it. Finite and endangered, a rich self still gives, because its life is “hidden with Christ” in the infinite, unassailable, and utterly generous God, the Lord of the present, the past, and the future.-Miroslav Volf, Free of Charge