New Life Assembly

The "I'm taking the lazy way out of writing" Monday Reflections

"Welcome back," to me.  Yes, I know it's been three weeks since I wrote a Monday reflection.  Yes, I know I could make a bunch of excuses but none of them would satisfy me, so I'll save them for another time.  Instead I'm going to take what I consider the easy way out of writing a Monday reflection and just toss out some random, semi-connected thoughts from the last couple of weeks:

• I'll start with yesterday morning's service at New Life.  We had the highest attendance by far since I've been there, mostly because one of our High School students, Mark Griffith, was giving the message and he had invited just about the whole town of Narragansett to come.  Mark did a great job teaching the message, and I'm hopeful that this was a moment in the history of New Life that we'll look back on as a launching point of sorts for what God wants to do in the future.
• I didn't grow up in a liturgical tradition, so we never "gave up" anything for Lent as kids - I always looked at it as a Catholic tradition.  But this year as I was reflecting on my own life, I decided that for Lent I was going to give up caffeine.  I have been a pretty hefty coffee drinker for quite some time, and I was starting to feel like my dependence on caffeine was greater than my dependence on God.  The headache the first couple of days was a killer, but I have to say that I'm finding my awareness of God's presence in my life to be stronge than it was, which has resulted in a greater awareness of my daily choices to please and honor God.
• In connection with that, I've been thinking a lot about the work that God wants to accomplish here at New Life, and yesterday at our prayer night I shared that I'm convinced no great work God has ever done has occurred without repentance and confession on the part of his people.  When we confess our self-sufficiency, pride, and rebellion, God responds with grace, mercy, and his sufficiency for us.  
• Among the biggest takeaways for me from the Big Game series we've been running was a one-liner that Nick Fatato shared in his message called "Halftime".  He said that he had often thought of putting up a sign in his front yard that reads, "The Joneses Win".  As a person who struggles with the temptation to find my significance and worth in the stuff I have, I found this to be incredibly powerful and helpful.
• With that said, I haven't taught for 3 weeks, and I am totally itching to get back this weekend.  It also helps that the passage for this week totally grabbed my attention when I first read it a month ago, and I've been waiting to preach it.  
• Also this weekend I'll have a first time experience as I'll be speaking for a Chi Alpha students retreat up in Boston.  The Chi Alpha directors are part of Common Church in Boston, where I've spoken a few times in the past, and I was really honored that they asked me to come and be a part of this event.  I'm looking forward to connecting with the students on a personal level as well as hopefully putting together some helpful content.

That's all for now - hope to see you Sunday!

 

Big Game: Coaching for Victory

This week's message focused on the Big Game decisions made by those in the generation over 50 - will you choose to pass on the wisdom you've gained to the next generation?

Podcast:  Download 09 Big Game - Coaching for Victory

Big Game: Halftime

This week our special guest, Nick Fatato, shares about making decisions at the halftime of our life, helping us move from seeking success to seeking significance with our lives.

Podcast:  Download 08 Big Game - Halftime

Big Game: Review

This week's message by Jason Ferando focused on the idea that some of the biggest decisions of your life will come as a young adult; a personal relationship and total dependence with God will give you the foundation for wisdom and meaning in your life now and in the future.

Podcast:  Download 07 Big Game - Review

PDF: Download Big Game Review

The "Deja Vu All Over Again" Monday Morning Reflections

Yogi Berra once famously proclaimed, after watching Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris hit back-to-back home runs: "It's deja vu all over again."  New England Patriots fans everywhere this Monday morning are probably feeling exactly like that.  Four years ago they lost in heartbreaking fashion to Eli Manning and the New York Giants, and some of the similarities were eerie - the improbable catch by a wide receiver (David Tyree in 2008, Brandon Manningham in 2012); the game sealing ball going through the hands of a normally sure-handed Patriots player (Asante Samuel in 2008, Wes Welker in 2012). 

Yesterday at New Life we kicked off a new series that will run for five weeks that was themed around the idea of a big game.  Our thought was that there are thousands of decisions that we will make throughout our lives that will have major impact on the person that we become.  Those decisions will never play out on a stage with 170 million people watching, but that doesn't mean that our decisions are any less significant.  In fact, they are more significant than any decision made in a football game, no matter how important that game seems at the time.

Of all those decisions, the one we talked about yesterday is the most significant.  Very simply the most critical call any of us will ever make in our lives is whether or not we will respond to Jesus' call for us to come and follow him.  We looked at a pretty well known passage from Romans 10, where Paul writes about the decision that God set in front of Israel in the first covenant, and in front of us in the second covenant. 

It is essentially a decision between the choice to keep trying to save ourselves by works of our own righteousness, or to accept that we cannot save ourselves, cannot make ourselves "good enough" for God's standard and so accept his grace, mercy and offer of life extended to us.  In the first covenant, God asked the nation of Israel to obey his laws wholeheartedly, not just as a ritual obligation, but they made a mess of that situation.  In the second covenant, God sent Jesus into the world to be the sacrifice for sin once and for all, and to invite us to give our lives wholeheartedly to him in faith - confessing with our mouths that Jesus is Lord and believing with our hearts that God raised him from the dead.

This is a simple message, but it is by no means easy.  It is simple to say that one must confess this with his mouth and believe this with his heart and he will find salvation.  It is not easy, on a practical level, to confess that Jesus is Lord; not when so many forces around us would war against that confession, would tell us that Jesus was a good teacher and a moral man, but was not "Lord" in any sense of the word.  To believe in your heart that God raised Christ from the dead is simple, but also not easy, because it requires that we suspend our disbelief, and accept the possibility that something happened with Jesus that had never happened before and has never been repeated since. 

But if faith arises in our hearts to that end, then salvation comes to rescue us from ourselves.  As I said yesterday, this is the biggest decision that you will ever make - whether or not you will in faith believe who Jesus is and in faith confess it.  Because that is true, I will never rush anyone to make that decision when they're not ready, but I do know that when the opportunity presents itself, I should make clear the choice before us. 

Next week we'll start looking at how we make decisions in different phases and stages of our lives, so I hope you and a friend will pull yourselves out of the Patriots-induced depression and join us next Sunday at 10:30!

Big Game: Critical Call

This week we began our Big Game series with a message reminding us that our lifetime we will make many major decisions, but the most critical call is whether or not we will choose to follow Jesus.

Podcast:  Download 05 Big Game - Critical Call

PDF:  Download Critical Call