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<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>God Can Make Something Out of You</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>Some years ago, the
great boxer, Mohammed Ali, was asked by a ghetto youth how he could
quit school and start a boxing career since he had bad grades. Ali
smiled at the young man and said in his poetic fashion: <br>
<br>
"Stay in college and get the knowledge,<br>
And stay there! Til you're through</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>Cause if God can make penicillin out of moldy bread,</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>He can make something out of you."<br>
<br>
This
is the good news of John 3. Because God so loved the world, He SENT His
only son to make something out of us; when we accept Him into our lives
and commit our hearts to Him, then He gives us new life in this world -
and new life in the world to come. <br>
<br>
James W. Moore, Encounters with Christ, <a __removedlink__1985362939__href="http://www.Sermons.com" target="_blank">www.Sermons.com</a></span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>___________________________________</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>We Become His Son</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>There is a story
that comes out of the Bedouin culture. "Bedouin" is the Aramaic name for
"desert dwellers." These people live much as the characters of the Old
Testament did. During a heated argument, according to this story, a
young Bedouin struck and killed a friend of his. Knowing the ancient,
inflexible customs of his people, the young man fled, running across the
desert under the cover of darkness, seeking safety. <br>
<br>
He went to
the black tent of the tribal chief in order to seek his protection. The
old chief took the young Arab in. The chief assured him that he would be
safe until the matter could be settled legally. <br>
<br>
The next day,
the young man's pursuers arrived, demanding the murderer be turned over
to them. They would see that justice would prevail in their own way.
"But I have given my word," protested the chief. <br>
<br>
"But you don't know whom he killed!" they countered. <br>
<br>
"I have given my word," the chief repeated. <br>
<br>
"He
killed your son!" one of them blurted out. The chief was deeply and
visibly shaken with his news. He stood speechless with his head bowed
for a long time. The accused and the accusers as well as curious
onlookers waited breathlessly. What would happen to the young man?
Finally the old man raised his head. "Then he shall become my son," he
informed them, "and everything I have will one day be his." <br>
<br>
The
young man certainly didn't deserve such generosity. And that, of course,
is the point. Love in its purest form is beyond comprehension. No one
can merit it. It is freely given. It is agape, the love of God. Look to
the cross. At the cross we encounter love in its purest form. </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>King Duncan, Collected Sermons, <a shape="rect">www.Sermons.com</a></span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>___________________________</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>Rules for Being Human</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around.</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>2. You will learn
lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called life.
Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons.
You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant and stupid.</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>3. There are no
mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial and error
experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the
process as the experiment that ultimately "works."</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>4. A lesson is
repeated until it is learned. A lesson will be presented to you in
various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you
can then go on to the next lesson.</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>5. Learning lessons
does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain its
lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>6. "There" is no
better than "here." When your "there" has become a "here," you will
simply obtain another "there" that will, again, look better than "here."</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>7. Others are
merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another
person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about
yourself.</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>8. What you make of
life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What
you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>9. Your answers lie inside you. The answers to life's questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>10. You will forget all this.</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>Michael D. Powell, Look, Listen, Love, and Live</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>______________________</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>Judgment and Grace</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>Most preachers have
preacher dreams. I am sure every profession has its own particular
variation. They are often recurring and usually show clearly the
preacher's feelings of inadequacy. Early in my ministry, I used to put
my sermon on the pulpit before worship so it would already be in place
when I got there to preach. The problem with that is the accompanying
dream I would have on many Saturday nights. In my dream, I would step up
to the pulpit and the sermon would not be there. The dream took many
shapes and forms, but it always came down to the missing sermon and me
having nothing to say. Nothing. The dream stopped when I started
carrying my sermon with me. More recently I had a dream that I came by
the church and a wedding was beginning. I suddenly realized I should be
up there performing the wedding, and I was completely unprepared. So you
can see a common thread in these preacherly dreams...unprepared and
unable. It reveals the dark side of us, the part of us that really needs
the grace. It reveals that even if I sing "God Is Love," and "Jesus
Loves Me," there is nevertheless that judgment there that haunts me,
even in my dreams.</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>Sharon Rhodes-Wickett, God's Promises: Judgment and Grace</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>_______________________</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>Complain, Complain, Complain</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>The story is told
of a young man who entered a very strict monastic order. It was so
strict that members were permitted to speak only two words per year to
the abbot. At the end of year one the young man appeared before the
abbot and spoke his two words, "bad food." At the end of the second year
the young man appeared before the abbot and spoke two more words, "hard
bed". At the end of year three he came to the abbot and spoke his last
two words, "I quit." The abbot responded, "Well it is about time.
Complain, complain, complain - that's all you've done since you came
here."</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>We humans are
people of darkness. People who complain, rebel, work against the Kingdom
of God. Death is all we know. Lives filled with the patterns of sin.
However, God does an astonishing thing. He brings the light. He erects a
cross of death that we might look up and live. He leads us out of the
darkness. He loves the world and does not condemn it. He does not
condemn you, if...if you will believe.</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>Brett Blair, <a __removedlink__1985362939__href="http://www.eSermons.com" target="_blank">www.eSermons.com</a></span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>_______________________</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>All It Would Take To Make Me Happy</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>Charles Shultz,
creator and author of the Peanuts cartoon characters often conveyed a
message in his comic strips. In one strip he conveys through Charlie
Brown the need we have to be loved and through Lucy our inability to
love one another.</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>Charlie Brown and Lucy are leaning over the proverbial fence speaking to one another:</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>CB: All it would take to make me happy is to have someone say he likes me.</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>Lucy: Are you sure?</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>CB: Of course I'm sure!</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>Lucy: You mean
you'd be happy if someone merely said he or she likes you? Do you mean
to tell me that someone has it within his or her power to make you happy
merely by doing such a simple thing?</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>CB: Yes! That's exactly what I mean!</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span>Lucy: Well, I don't think that's asking too much...</span></div>
<div style="MARGIN-TOP: 0px; MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px"><span> </span></div>
<div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;"><span>The rest of this illustration and many additiona</span></div>
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