Living from the Inside Out

Blue skies and a beautiful summer day. Chuck Vanderscheuren welcomed us and led the first portion of the service.

Announcements
Gail announced a Fish Fry  is slated for the 17th of September, noon to five. Volunteers welcome to help with this event.
The Bloodmobile will be coming that same day...  Eat Fish, Give Blood.
The church director is being updated. See Nancy to verify your information.
Pastor Terry White is excited to be coming to minister to our church family as interim pastor. He feels like he's coming home. He will begin the last week of August.

The quartet ushered us into worship with a beautiful rendition of The Midnight Cry. After an opening prayer by guest preacher Jeff Hagen the quartet then sang Dallas Holm's "I'll Rise Again." A time of worship, the offering, and a time of prayer followed, and then Jeff Hagen was invited to speak.

Living from the Inside Out

Our speaker brought a baseball to show us as an object lesson. He asked if we knew what was inside a baseball. Underneath the leather coating there tightly wound layers of different material, of yarn, twine and felt... but it's very core is a solid ball. He then asked what was at Paul's core? What is at our core?

Paul's letter to the Philippians was written while he was imprisoned in Rome. Paul recognized that challenging times served to drive our roots deeper into Christ to draw more strength. James also underscored the same when he wrote "Count it all joy when you encounter various trials" because testing produces patience and deepens us.

Testing forces us to draw on God's resources. In Phil 3:10-11 Paul writes about his desire, "that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead."

He followers by declaring, "I press on to the goal..." (see verses 12-16)

In Philippians 2 Paul points to Jesus as our model, He who stepped down from Heaven to accept being humbled even to the point of death on a cross.

About Jesus, the Gospel writer John wrote, "In Him was light, and this light was the light of men."

Paul himself has seen this light, and embraced it and is devoted to sharing this light.

Jeff Hagen noted that people are like trees, and we need deep roots. Trials deepen our roots, as does meditating on the Word of God.

In conclusion, here's the question. Do we want to transcend our circumstances and change the people around us? It is dependent on our learning how to deepen ourselves with intentionality.

He ended  with Paul's prayer in Ephesians 3:
14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, 17 and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God.

20 Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.