Author: nick

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John Rambo: The Last Blood

I just saw John Rambo, the last of the Rambo films. This was the best action movie I have ever seen! I won’t give everything away, but the last main battle scene is so sweet…to quote a movie critic, “Jesus will weep – and you will cheer!” Overall, great movie, but I would say the movie is about 15 minutes too short, coming in at 1 hour and 45 minutes, but I can say that Sylvester Stallone ended the series of John Rambo right.

I am a Rambo fan and always will be. If you are not, you may not like this movie, yet it does have a good story, it shows a perfect picture of the sufferings of the Burmese people on an everyday basis…Nicki even said it was good! Go See it and if you need someone to go with you, call me!

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Life: Message Series

I came up with a 3 session/week series for the winter retreat that I just spoke for, here are the main points or thoughts for each of the sessions. I may put everything up on the resource sharing site for PDYM, but I am not good at providing outlines for other speakers…I have my own note style, but here is the main thoughts:Session/Week 1 – Life: Stories (** This was created around a situation where the students from this group live in a small community and just faced the murder of one of their school mates **)

I. Life Stories are not Perfect:
* Main thought focuses on life’s struggles…pain…hurt…wounds, etc.
(Psalm 31:9, 10, 12) David lays out his true feelings to God…he feels shattered, forgotten, left for dead, etc. (1 Corinthians 11:23-27) Paul points out his struggles in his life and ministry)

I created this picture as a Power Point Slide as I pointed out how the game of LIFE tries to simulate the real thing on a board and that it is the “perfect world” we all make plans in our lives,
a lot of times it looks like the picture: graduate, make a lot of money, become famous, find that hot babe or gorgeous dude, buy a hue fancy house, a sports car, and live happily ever after…but since Life is not perfect its not like the game.

II. Life Stories are not Predictable:
* Main Thought: We get caught off guard with Life’s struggles. At times we do not see them coming and they have an effect on our lives. (I.E. Death)

III. Life Stories Can Have Alternate Endings:
* Main Thought – We can allow the issues of life to control us or we can do like David did and put our full trust in God (Psalm 31:14)

Session/Week 2 – Life: Connections *Main Thought: We were created to Connect- Its a natural desire and instinct.

Connection Point 1: Connection to Christ
(James 1:18; Ephesians 1:5; Galatians 4:7)
* Main Thought: We are connected by love – Its what holds us.

Connection Point 2: Connection to Community
(Romans 12:5; 1 John 1:3; 1 John 3:18-19; Acts 2:44)
* Main Thought: We are connected to love – Its what reveals us.

** Video Suggestion: Together Team Hoyt or Other

Session/Week 3 – Life: Passions
I. Exchange Passions
*Main Thought: Christ exchanges our old passions for new passions
Psalm 37:4, Galatians 2:19-20, Ezekiel 36:26

II. Clarity in Passions
* Main Thought: God created us to be passionate, and he desires that we live a life of passion after him…this can be done in various different ways. Buddhism teaches to live a life absent of all passion, but Christ came to make us passionate.

I did a run through of Jeremiah and showed how God prepared Jeremiah for a mission, something he could be passionate about (Jeremiah 1:4-5), how Jeremiah doubted the gifts and talents God gave him (vs 6) and how God clarified to Jeremiah what he had prepared him for and that he was with him…and then he equipped him (vs. 7-9) I then showed how despite oppression and opposition (Jeremiah 20:1-2) Jeremiah had become so passionate and so on fire for the mission God had prepared him for, he could not help but to live out that passion (Jeremiah 20:8-9); (Hebrew 12:29 – God consumes our lives with his passion). The final thought was that it took Jeremiah obeying and trusting for him to fully live out his life of passion, once he did that God consumed him with the new passion he gave him.

** Video Suggestion: He Is – used this to set up the thought that we cannot be passionate for a God that we do not understand who he is in our lives.

**Note: Like I said I am not great at sharing my personal notes and thought on messages, I have no problem communicating them, but providing them for others is tough, I hope you are not confused! 🙂

My email is on the side bar if you would like any further information on the series or if you want the graphics, etc.

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Is Your Worship Like Camel Sex?

I just started studying Jeremiah…here is section of scripture that stood out to me this morning:

Jeremiah 2:23-25
You say, ‘That’not true!
I haven’t worshiped the images of Baal!’
But how can you say that?
Go and look in any valley in the land!
Face the awful sins you have done.
You are like a restless female camel
desperately searching for a mate.
You are like a wild donkey,
sniffing the wind at mating time.
Who can restrain her lust?
Those who desire her don’t need to search,
for she goes running to them!
When will you stop running?
When will you stop panting after other gods?
But you say, ‘Save your breath.
I’m in love with these foreign gods,
and I can’t stop loving them now!’

Most of us would strongly deny that we worship anything but God, yet if we take an inventory of our life and we take a serious look at where we spend our time and what we spend it doing we would see that we allow other ‘idols’ to get the attention that our God should be receiving. Maybe that idol is money…not necessarily that you have a lot of it, but the opposite, you feel like you don’t have enough, so you spend your time worrying about how the bills are going to get paid, how you are going to get out of the deep debt you are in, or you spend all of your free time working extra jobs to make up that which you lack, all the while the very one who provides everything to us, goes without notice, He gets ignored, and we wonder why our lives are a total wreck. It could be loneliness; we seek out anything that will give us a temporary fix, something that will make us feel accepted and valued just for a little while…yet the God of all creation…the one who created us to love us and to care for us, and to make us a part of His family gets put to the side, yet we never fill that void because we ignore the only one that has the power to fill it.

I love how the verse describes Israel’s desire to seek after and worship other gods as an animal seeks to mate when it is in heat. Are we not the same way? Do we not seek after pleasures in our own lives, anything to fill the void of loneliness, anything to fill the time? The fact is we are just like Israel was in the time that Jeremiah went to send them God’s message…we love our pleasures, we love our stuff, we love and we worship everything besides our glorious God, we exchange it for worthless idols! We are nothing more than animals in heat seeking our next partner. What would happen if those who call themselves Christians would love God first? What would happen if we decided to love God with all of our hearts, our souls, and our minds?