Crisis

“But this I have against you, that you have abandoned your first love. Ephesus was a church involved in a spiritual crisis. It was a church involved in a spiritual crisis. While it was outwardly attractive and strong and aligned doctrinally, inwardly, the crisis was a crisis of the heart.”

“And for me, in recent days, one of the things that I have been reading about and researching has been the fact that we are faced with a tremendous generational crisis in America today. And that crisis is a crisis of loneliness. And strangely, while we are the most connected generation in history, I mean, all you have to do is pull out your phone and in a matter of minutes, you can speak to anyone anywhere in the world.”

“The crisis is real. Now it's time to make the connection. Can we repeat that with me? Christ is capable. The crisis is real. The crisis is real. We need to make a connection. It's only one job. Only one job. But to make a connection is what requires faith.”

“That is representation of the human spiritual condition. So many people are in crisis right now. How many of you know that Christ is capable? But how many of you know and understand that the crisis is real? The crisis is real. You have friends. You have family members. You have people around you that they are spiritually paralyzed. The Bible says that we are dead in our sin and our trespasses according to Ephesians chapter 2 verse 1.”

“Far too many of us only have what I would call a crisis relationship with God. We need the presence of God and we cry out for the presence of God just like when your car breaks down and you push the button and the flashers come on. I'm in a crisis, I need some help. But God wants us not to live in the crisis mode, living with the flashers of those moments where we feel panicked.”

“But this story is a crisis moment. Have you ever been a part of just a crisis? Like you've been somewhere and something just happened and altered everything in the moment, whether it was a seizure, whether it was a car wreck where two cars came crashing together?”

“That crisis is described in the Gospel of John, chapter 3. Jesus said, you must be born again. Birth is a crisis. It's a moment where something happens that is transformative, and a breath is taken, and life is given. And Christianity begins with a crisis moment when you recognize that you are a sinner, that you repent of your sins, that you receive Christ's forgiveness, and that you are born into the family of God.”

“And it's that idea of the crisis that brings forth life that I want to spend some time looking at and talking about today. And so if you have a Bible with you, let me invite you to take it and open it to the book of Exodus, the second book of the Bible, the book of Exodus.”