Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Brainstorming Help

Today has been a "start working on messages in the future" day...so I've been sitting here with my Bible open, reading texts and theological texts and thinking through some rough outlines. (THIS is what I got into ministry for!) Anyway...I'm stuck. I'm thinking about a New Community talk that is a week away. The title is "Living the Word." The idea is that we're doing this series this fall where we're saying that God will do amazing things in our lives when we live the word, listen to the whispers of the Spirit and live the walk. Tim and Cal will have led this section with talks about loving the word of God and learning the word of God. I'm really stuck...I know that I need to get to a place to challenge people to incorporate the phrase "what does the Bible say?" into their lives, but that's not enough for a whole sermon. So, I'm asking for some help. Anything come to mind? When you think about living under the authority of the word of God, what questions or challenges come to mind? thanks for your help!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dr. James McDonald wrote a book called, "God wrote a Book" and it is about how important the word of God is to our lives as Christians. I have the CDs of the sermons the book is based on. I'll bring it tonight to the "think tank".

Anonymous said...

I actually own that book if you want it Charlie.

Brandon J. Brown said...

Ideas:
#1 What about the times where Jesus says let him who has ears listen... It could be applied to reading the Bible to... let him who can read...read... let him who has the book read the book... and then tied back to volition... Not reading is like telling God you dont care what he things or says...

#2 Maybe get some duct tape and take a picture of someones mouth being shut... then talk about how not reading the Bible is like trying to duct tape Jesus mouth shut...

#3... pull out a bunch of letters from when you were dating.... talk about how your life would be different if you had never read them?

#4 Start ripping pages out of the Bible... explain that this is not a whole lot different than not reading them... (weak idea... but there is no bad ideas in brainstorming....)

#5 Your brother told a story about the Bible once in a chapel at moody... something about an old bible teacher talking about "this book"... it was cool...

#6... talk about 1 John 1... failing to read the bible is like refusing to listen to the eyewitnesses in a trial...

And I am done.... there is my 5 minutes of brainstorming

John Bussone said...

Start with a different presupposition.
Do Christians need the Scriptures to grow in Christ since Christ Himself is already living inside of them and God has already written the Law of Christ upon their hearts and has also given them the desire to live out both New Covenant Laws (see 1John).

FreeBazyn said...

might not hurt to mention that reading the Bible is different than reading books about the Bible/Christianity/Leadership/Church/insert popular genre of christian publishing here/etc.

and I think anytime you can slip in a "word to your mother" or simply a "word," you will be golden.

And maybe, for me, it can be frustrating when I find something I hear so many different interpretations for or I see what seems to be a complete paradox in the Scriptures. When you really start to look at them, the Scriptures can be horribly confusing and scary. So perhaps we could all use some encouragement to not throw the baby out with the bathwater, to embrace the mystery and the need for an intimate knowledge of the Word...or something like that.

And since I've added my 2 Kc (czech crowns) worth, then please keep me posted on how it all turns out. :)

Anonymous said...

When I think about what it means to live under the authority of the Word, I now think of freedom. And I think about the Word being Christ Himself. And I think of Ps. 119:32 & Gal. 5:1 & others like that.

Maybe, with the foundation of looking to Scripture for how to live already being laid by others, you could take the "freedom angle" & try to unpack what it looks like for a Christ-follower to live in a dynamic grace-based relationship with THE Word.

And try to figure out if freedom & obedience are the same thing - "freebedience"? - or separate or intertwined or 1 doesn't exist w/o the other or whatever, & what all that looks like. There's my brainstorm. Good luck!

charlesdean2 said...

Thanks everyone!
I'm going to come back to working on this over the weekend, and you've given me some stuff to start going on!