Category Archives: North Village Church

Why does Christianity have such a violent death in the cross?

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2 Corinthians 5:21, “21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

It was at the cross that Jesus, who knew no sin, became sin on our behalf. In that moment Jesus becomes sin, our sin. He becomes the liar, the murderer, the thief, the pedophile, the molester, the adulterer, He becomes the wickedness of sin. It isn’t His sin, it is our sin, so that through faith we might become the righteousness of God.

It is at that moment that the eternal weight of sin is laid upon Jesus and it is literally crushing Him to death. People will say, “Couldn’t have God just simply overlooked sin?” If God is so loving and powerful couldn’t He simply forgive?”
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We live in a busy world…

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Most of us ignore taking a day of rest and instead go 100mph, 7 days a week and constantly feel like there is a pressure to do more and get more accomplished. We find it difficult to sit still. We are constantly going from the moment we wake up till we fall asleep because it is hard to rest. If you are a student you could always study more, if you are a parent you could always be a better parent, if you are an employee we can always improve, our marriages could always improve and as a result we have created a culture of busy people. I thought of a few types of busy people to give us some examples:

The Hurried Person: First we have the hurried person. This person is always in a hurry. They talk real fast, they drive fast, and sometimes you will ask them why they are in such a hurry and they will say, “I am not in a hurry, I just have a lot to do.” You know you are talking to a hurried person because while you are talking to them they are always looking around or at their watch at the next thing they have to do.

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Living in rhythm with Jesus

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Over the next 35-days we are going to go through a spiritual journey with our church. During that time we will explore areas such as:

* Fasting / Prayer
* Scripture
* Giving
* Sabbath
* Celebration

During this time our heart will be to draw close to Jesus because we have seen that the church often times struggle with living in rhythm with Jesus. We tend to drift toward harmony and living in rhythm with our culture or drift toward hostility and living out of rhythm with everyone else. When we look to Scripture instead of seeing Jesus drift toward harmony or hostility we see Him drifting toward holiness Our heart is during these 35-days, individually and collectively, we would see us drifting toward His holiness as we live in rhythm with Him.

Jesus is like a good glass of wine

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Stay with me now. When I first started drinking wine I started off with Oak Leaf from Wal-mart. It is $3.00 a bottle. It was convenient, it was cheap, and it tasted okay. It had become familiar and comfortable over time. When we were with friends they would always talk about wine like it was so exciting and my wife and I would just nod in agreement. We didn’t get it. What was so exciting? It was just wine.

Then one day a friend gave me a bottle of Silver Oak. If you have never had a bottle of Silver Oak it is amazing. It was smooth, bold, and full of flavor and scents and it exposed me to taste buds that I didn’t know existed, and now I know what it is like to have a really good glass of wine. Now when my friends talk about wine…I know, I have tasted and I have seen that it is good.

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How do husbands love their wives?

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Ephesians 5 teaches husbands to love their wives and often times we see this in Scripture and we can get easily discouraged because husbands get distracted by work, friends, hobbies, and end up doing a poor job.

We see this echoed in 1 Peter as it calls husbands to love their wives in an understanding way, however, this is going to end in frustration because husbands don’t naturally do this. We naturally treat them like a younger brother and try to wrestle with them, like a co-worker and bark orders at them, like a friend and make sarcastic comments, but we don’t naturally love them and live with them in an understanding way.

It is only when we experience someone loving us and living with us in an understanding way will we be able to share that experience with someone else. How could we possibly give to someone what we haven’t experienced. Therefore, husbands loving their wives starts with Jesus.

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Where does conflict come from?

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7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings. 8 They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 Then the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 He said, “I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid myself.”

In chapter 2 Adam and Eve were in a loving intimate relationship with God and with one another eating fruits and berries, naked, unashamed, and yet after they eat from the tree it says in verse 7 “the eyes of both of them were opened”. Before verse 7 they were in an age of innocence and Satan whispers into their ear that God can’t be trusted, that God is holding something back, God is trying to keep them from experiencing life, which is what Satan whispers into our ear today. He tempts us to do it, try it, God isn’t real, He doesn’t matter, and it will be so much fun!

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Pornography / Sexuality

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Our sexuality is created by God to be a good thing, take place within marriage, serving one another, but in our culture today it has been distorted.

1. How did our sexuality get where it is today?
Scripture teaches us that when we take sexuality out of the fireplace, outside of the marriage, that it will bring pain. This pain started in Genesis 3 when sin enters into human history. In Genesis 2 God looks to Adam and tells him that all of creation is for him to enjoy, but don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Instead of responding in obedience Adam responds in disobedience and sin enters in and it takes all that God created for good and taints, distorts, and corrupts it.

It was created by God to be a good thing and to take place within marriage, however, because of sin the devil has taken it and distorted and corrupted a good thing. God created it for good, and Satan corrupts it. The clearest example of this in our culture today is pornography.

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Talking about sex within marriage?

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Our desire as a church is to have strong marriages and we think if we have healthy sex lives in our marriages it will lead to strong marriages. Maybe talking about your sex life is a normal every day experience for you as a couple…great! Sometimes couples won’t talk about these kinds of things because they feel embarrassed, don’t want to hurt feelings, not sure where to start, so we want to help open some lines of communication to get the ball rolling. Consider this a starting point:

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Biblical Understanding of Sexuality

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Our sexuality is one of those topics that people don’t like to talk about. People will talk about it socially, medically, scientifically, but we tend not to talk about it in our marriages and especially in the church. As a result we are left with a completely negative connotation. If we avoid talking about it we will ultimately create our own conclusions and instead of creating our own conclusions we want to look to Scripture.

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Finding Romance

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When you first meet someone it seems that romance is naturally in the air. So excited to be on a date, hold hands, get to know one another, but sometimes romance can start to fade.

Below are a few points of application to keep the romance alive in your marriage:

Relationship With Jesus: We have to have a relationship with Jesus if we are going to make it in marriage. Until Jesus is central it is going to be an uphill climb. You have two people going in two different directions. We need to start with a relationship with Jesus.

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3.2.1

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One of our goals as a church is that we would be a people who Connect With Others. To help us accomplish this goal we created little cards to challenge and encourage one another.

3 People To Pray For: The first number is 3 and we thought if as a church we were all taking the initiative to pray for 3 people that would be a really powerful experience for our church. It can be a neighbor, it can be a co-worker, a family member, but somebody that you are going to go to battle for spiritually. You notice it doesn’t say when or how often you are going to pray for those people, but it’s our desire that this would be something you keep in your Bible, your purse, your wallet, tape it on your steering wheel as a reminder to pray for others.

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Our Strategy As A Church?

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When it comes to starting a church today in the United States 95% of them do so with a traditional promotional marketing strategy. Which means they come into an area, study the demographics, and market their church accordingly, just like any business would market its self.

When I speak to other new churches they tell me they spend $30-50K on marketing. They send mailers, door hangers, billboards, radio spots, magazine ads, and they come into a community and blitz the community with marketing. There is nothing wrong with marketing, but if our focus is a traditional marketing strategy it will create two road blocks:

• Not Effective: In North Central Austin we called all the churches in a 2-mile radius and of the 200,000 people living in the area less than 10,000 of them are connected to a local church. Many of them have had negative experiences, many of them are jaded, have been hurt, and a door hanger isn’t able to overcome those past experiences. There will be a few, but in our context, it typically won’t work. We have done some traditional marketing, but less than $2K.

• Not Reproducible: The second is that strategy isn’t reproducible for the average Christ follower. The average person isn’t going to call up KISS FM and purchase a radio spot for our church. As a result, the traditional marketing strategy removes the Christ follower from the equation and it isn’t reproducible.

So “What is our marketing strategy?”

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