“Chapter
2013, Page 6 of 365” By Bob Heirtzler January 6th,
2013 Today’s message is the past,
present, and future, and Parrish already started it. Sonya already shared earlier in the service about
it. The prayer was totally awesome that
Sister Jennifer prayed; it was just right along with the message. She doesn’t know what I was planning
today. All the music today fit perfectly
with the establishing of this year. I was thinking about the past, just to
go over 2012, we all went through Christmas, New Year’s, Thanksgiving,
Veteran’s Day, Halloween, Labor Day, Memorial Day, Easter, and I know not to
forget Valentine’s Day, President’s Day, and all the other holidays of last
year, but we also went through all of our birthdays, and anniversaries; we went
through many victories when God answered prayer, and, of course, many
aggravations, many “Where is God?” moments, many trials, and tests, and decisions,
and ups and downs, but here we are here today: the present. God got us here today. So far, some of us have already
dedicated something to do this year for God, sort of like a New Year’s
resolution, but we know that God wants us to do something every day for Him. I work with people that made those
resolutions and I’m determined to help them make it. One wants to quit smoking, one wants to quit
drinking… and they told me about that, and that was theirs, and I’m going to
help them with that, the best way I can.
Without stepping on toes, but just to encourage them along the way. I also realize that God was in
everything that we went through last year.
He was there. Everything. It was like the bright light was always on
with Him. Things that we did in
darkness, He saw; things that we did in the light, He saw; everything. Things you read or didn’t read. Every prayer; God saw. Now we’re standing here today on the firm
Word of His Grace and His love, and we’re standing solid on God. Last year’s blessings and victories in God
brought us to today, but we still need new ones for today. We can’t depend on the past, because those
are of the past, and we have to have new ones every day. Jesus said in the
Lord’s prayer: I heard someone talk about the Glory
Days. I remember when I was a kid, my
dad took me into the barber shop, and sat in the chair, and that’s when the old
guys sitting around in a circle, smoking their pipes (that was when smoking was
allowed) or their cigars, and talk about the good old days, and it used to be
nice in the good old days. My dad posed
a question to them, “What are you going to do about changing it now?” They didn’t know what to say. My dad said, “If you’re just going to talk
about the past, how’s that going to help you out today?” My dad just said that, you know, and it stuck
with me. I go into restaurants and we
all go into restaurants, or we go into our workplaces, and we see the old
people talking about, “I liked it better when…”
“…when this person was in charge,” or “…when this thing used to
happen.” People are still dwelling on
those moments. They don’t want to let
go, and move forward. Does that make any
sense. In the song, “Glory Days” (I don’t
remember who the singer is), in the music video, it talks about how this guy
used to pitch a ball, and he can’t do that anymore. That’s the only part I remember out of the
video. That’s the only moment of glory
he has was that time, and that has nothing to do with today. He always had to think back to that moment to
get encouraged by it, but he had nothing for today. I was thinking about Paul; he talked
about his glory days, and most of our scriptures re from Philippians chapter 3
today. This is about Paul’s glory
days. He could have bragged about this;
let’s find out if he did. As we read on here, he says: Philippians
3:9-11 … not having mine own
righteousness, which is of the law… He realized he had to let go of his
past to reach for the high calling, to reach for the prize, to reach for Jesus. Some of us had a religious background before
we got saved; we didn’t want to let go.
We’ve got to let go of all of our teachings. I was raised to believe that there were three
Gods; I had to realize that there was not three Gods. I realize that there’s just one. I used to talk to Jesus to talk to His dad to
talk to my dad not to give me a spanking.
That conversation never happened, though, because I always got the
spanking. That’s the way I was raised,
though. I used to keep the Holy Ghost as
far away as possible, though, because I did not like ghosts. I’ve seen things that I can’t explain, and I
stay as far away from that as possible.
When I realized that Jesus was God, and the Holy Ghost, wow! I read the Bible for years but never saw it
in the Word. Someone just sat down and
shared that with me. The hardest scripture for me was
Philippians 3:12-14: Philippians
3:12-14 …I press toward the mark for
the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. We have to press forward this
year. We have to press forward to find
what God really wants us to do. God laid
it on my heart to get thicker in the Word, get stronger in the Word. I have an opportunity—I work with seventy
people; it’s about to be a thousand people on May 1st, because our
offices are moving. I’m going to have a
bigger fishing pond. All kinds of
fishing. I want to be ready for that
day, but I’m not going to wait until April 30th to do it. I’ve already started. I like what Parish had everyone do,
talk about our future. I really what he
said that a lot of us are sharing what we want this year in God. A song came into my mind that you hear a lot
at ice-skating rinks and roller rinks:
The Hokey Pokey. “You put your
right foot in; you put your right foot out, you put your right foot in and you
shake it all about.” I’m not going to do
the Hokey Pokey, no. God wants us to put
our right foot in. He does not want us
to take it back out. He wants us to put
our right foot in, followed by the left foot.
Followed by the right foot. And
followed by the left foot. And keep
moving forward in God. God has done so
much for us, church. Up to this point in
our lives; from the day we got saved, from the day we got birthed. Every one of us have been born, and up until
this day, God has kept us from evil, kept us from harm, and blessed our
families. We owe it to God to give it
back to Him. As Pastor Paine said, I
want to make it to Heaven, running through that gate a bloody mess. I’ve thought about that; every battle that we
fight, you know? We’ve got to fight all
the way to the end. I’ve got a couple of quotes. I saw this movie, “Cowboys and Aliens,” and I
got a couple of quotes out of it: One
was, “God don’t care who you were, son, He only cares who you are.” God don’t care about our past, right? He just wants to know where we’re at
today. We ask God to forgive us of
things that came up that He already forgave us before. That’s Satan preying on our minds. You’ve got to acknowledge that; you’ve got to
let it go. Wait a minute, I was forgiven
of that, you know? The other quote was,
“Whether you end up in Heaven or Hell isn't God's plan, it's your own.” I said, “Yeah, God wants me to make it to
Heaven, but it’s still my choice.” I
want to make it to Heaven. What I like is, what does fellowship
do for us? Someone mentioned that we’re
a fellowship group, that means we need to fellowship. Philippians
3:15-16 … let us mind the same thing. The fellowship groups that we have
throughout the week, when we break out the Word of God, it’s important that we
think the same thing. If a brother or a
sister comes and they’re thinking some other thing, that’s a good time to sit
down and go over what the Word of God says.
Let the word of God speak. I’ve
been corrected so many times. I thought
the wise men showed up the night Jesus was born in the stable, then I realized,
they showed up, later on, in a house (Matthew 2:11). For years I thought the wise men showed up in
the manger scene, you know; I didn’t realize that they came to a house. That’s a good thing to know. It also mentions in 1 Corinthians
1:10: 1 Corinthians
1:10 …be perfectly joined together in
the same mind… Here again, the same mind,
again. We need to be on the same
page. Wasn’t there a couple in the Book
of Acts, Priscilla and Aquila, that had to sit down with Apollos and show him a
more perfect way? (Acts 18:24-26) Some
of us might think one way or the other; it happens, you know? It really happens when you sit by yourself
and don’t get fellowship. That’s why
it’s important to have fellowship, so we can learn together, just like the
example of the wise men. Was I wrong
with what I was saying? I thought I was right all those years. But, now, I was set in the right way. God has a calling on us, church, in 2013, to
be stronger. To be more like Jesus and
less religious. To let go of the
religious past, and to be more Christian.
Sometimes we hang onto thing that, well, God doesn’t really care about
that. God does care about where we stand
today; where we are today. On December
31st, 2013, where are we going to be? It really depends upon us. Some are going to excel through this; some
might not excel at all. We need to walk
in the light, and fellowship with one another, so that the blood of Jesus cleanses
us from all sins. 1 John 1:5-7 …the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth
us from all sin. I thought about verse seven, here we
are in the light, and some of us might sin.
That’s why we have a prayer meeting, to get things right. We can pray with somebody that God would
cleanse us from the sin. They don’t need
to know what our sins are; we don’t have to share with each other that, just,
“Hey Brother Malcolm, I really messed up and I need prayer right now.” Or Brother Jesse, or Sister Jennifer,
anybody. “I need prayer, I’ve got to get
this right, now.” We’ve got to keep to
that fellowship. I really appreciate
Brother Greg Greshen’s texts each week, and Brother Mike Alford’s; and others
that just text a Scripture to me, it seems that they just come at exactly the
right time. Brother Parrish shares a
little greeting sometimes. It’s right on
time, you know? 1 Timothy 1:12 …He counted me faithful, putting me
into the ministry; God put us into this ministry. We have to have ministry in our ministry, and
our ministry is where we go every day. On
a daily basis, that’s our ministry.
Whatever job you have, whatever grocery store you go into, whatever
coffee shop you drink at or gas station.
Maybe this year will be the year that you don’t go through the
drive-thru and actually go in and meet people.
That might be a good thing.
That’s what I’m going to do, meet the people that’s behind the voice,
you know? Maybe you’re not getting
anywhere that certain place you go, so go somewhere else. If you’re getting gas at this one particular
spot, and you’re not getting anywhere with people there, then maybe go
somewhere else. I ran into a brother
yesterday, and it really encouraged me. We
just saw each other for a minute, said “Hi,” and went on about our business,
but that was enough to really encourage me. We had a breakfast last week, and
there was a brother there that has not been around in years. He came in and he was
just lit up. A lot of people were there,
and not everybody spoke to him, but they all brought God. Brother Parrish gathered a few people around
and had a prayer with him; he was bawling his eyes out by the end of that
prayer. God’s got a calling on his life;
it might be on the shelf right now, but it’s there. God wants to use you here you’re at. I’m thankful to be here today; I’m thankful
for a pastor that shared the Word of God with me (over a game of checkers actually). I had never seen the Scriptures opened up
that way before in my life. I’m thankful
for this ministry; I’m thankful for our leadership--I’m thankful for our
founding pastor, I’m thankful for Pastor Paine, our general pastor, I’m
thankful for Pastor Wilson, our fellowship pastor, and Brother Kenneth, our fellowship
leader, who wanted so much to be with us today, but he’s on the Air Force base
today, but his wife and daughter are with us today. I’m thankful for all of you being here today. It’s encouraging to see each other and to lift
each other up. You know, I’ve called and
asked for prayer from some of you, and no one has ever told me no. That’s just awesome. 2 Timothy 4:5 …make full proof of thy ministry. Sermon notes by Pete Shepherd |
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