Whenever it came time to make a tough decision in 2020, which happened often, we came back to one word. Our word of the year, at Skyline Church, was Model. Whether it meant pivoting to online services, reopening our doors, or keeping our doors open, we have strived to exemplify a Model Church.
Every year, through prayer and seeking the Lord, I choose a word for our church that will help us seek God’s will for our community and church family. While we didn’t know COVID was coming this year, God did! And it’s by His grace alone that we have had a firm footing in the journey of serving our community throughout the 2020 Pandemic. We continuously asked ourselves, what would a model church do. We have kept the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health of our community at the forefront of our decision making. In doing so, God’s church has flourished! Despite all the circumstances, hurdles, and challenges … Skyline Church has welcomed 665 NEW decisions for Jesus Christ … and counting! (If you were one of those, say hi below!) Every number has a name, every name has a story and every story matters to God.
We’re in awe of the work God has done through our church family. For us, becoming followers of Jesus is not just something we do on Easter and Christmas, or even just on Sundays. We exist to help others find and follow Jesus SEVEN days a week. That explains how we’ve seen more than a person a day making a decision to follow Jesus Christ in a year as daunting as 2020.
Every year comes with its highs and lows, but this year stands out exponentially. History books will one day mark people, churches, businesses, and communities just trying to survive in 2020. That is why our word of the year for 2021 is … THRIVE! John 10:10 tells us that, “the thief” (satan) comes only to steal and kill and destroy, but Jesus came that we may have abundant life! We’re believing in that promise FULLY for the year ahead. Faith in Jesus Christ is where we’re meant to thrive, not just survive. And though you may feel like you are just trying to stay afloat and make it through this year, God’s church is standing firm FOR and WITH you. We’re relentlessly dedicated to sharing the truth and relevance of God’s Word for YOUR life!
No matter what 2021 brings, we’re committed to sharing God’s truth with a generation that needs hope to cope. We plan on thriving in the process, not just skating by. So invite your neighbors, co-workers, friends, and family … In the New Testament original language of Greek, those people in your relational network are known as your Oikos. Invite them all! We want everyone to experience God’s goodness, promises, and faithfulness at new levels of authenticity. This is the year for us to rise and THRIVE! You may feel like you don’t have it all together, and that’s okay! No perfect people allowed here! We’re all figuring it out together. This next year will encapsulate new heights, unexplored possibilities, and untapped inspiration. Our word, THRIVE, is going to catapult us into a prosperous year of growth and worship. We believe it! Do you see it?
We’re in a teaching series at Skyline Church that focuses on nine characteristics that God wants to see in growing Christians. These nine characteristics in Galatians are known as the fruits of the spirit. Notice the metaphor “fruit.” The original audience of the Apostle Paul’s writing was an agricultural community. That being said, there are several analogies that are very relevant today as we’re still familiar with basic concepts of agriculture.
Galatians 5:22-23, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”
Backyard Avocado Tree
One key element that I want to emphasize is that like the growth of a fruit tree, fruit does not appear quickly after being planted. I planted avocado trees three years ago and I STILL do not have any avocados. Avocado experts tell me it could be 5 years before that first avocado buds. Likewise, our faith development takes time. Growing in faith is about progress, not perfection. It’s going to take time for you to see evidence of these spiritual characteristics in your life. Slow grow is better than no grow. Don’t get down on yourself when you lack love, joy, peace, or any of the fruits of the spirit.
Today, I want to focus on the first three fruits of the spirit and highlight key elements that we’ve learned in the past three weeks. I’ll link each of the sermons below so you can rewatch, catch up, or share any of the messages in this series.
Love is NOT a feeling. It may affect your feelings, but it is not a feeling. When we’re always looking for an emotional experience, we get let down. Love is not an uncontrollable phenomenon. So often we are looking for things in life that we can control. Who, what, and when you love is something you have control over. After years of counseling couples in their marriages, I’ve heard both husband and wife say, “I fellin love” or “I fellout of love.” There’s a Greek word that explains this perfectly. It’s, bah-lon-Eh. Bologna! You absolutely have control of whether or not you love your spouse. And, by the way, God has given you the choice of whether or not you’re going to love Him. We have control over who we love and who we don’t love. We control when we love and when we don’t love. Colossians 3:14 tells us to “put on love.”
In the original Greek language of the New Testament (seriously this time), this phrase is defined as a willful action. This means YOU have a decision to make in who, when, and how you love! For example, this morning you willfully decided to put on clothes (We are all thankful for that). You didn’t stand in front of your closet and wait to feel the clothes attach themselves to your body. It’s the same idea when we are cultivating the fruit of the Spirit, love, in our life. You decideto put on love. 1 John 3:18 reminds us that love is an action. It’s more than a feeling. Love is how you act. It’s absolutely a choice! If it wasn’t a choice, God would have worded Scripture differently and perhaps said something like, wait for the ocean of emotion and the quiver in your liver and then love, but He didn’t because Love is action.
We live in a world today that is centered on “me, me, me.” But in our message about Joy, we talked about how we can bring joy to others. We know the things that bring us joy, but when joy is truly cultivated in a Christian’s life, the fruit is shown in serving others by bringing them joy. In Scripture, soil is often used as a metaphor for our heart, seeds are a metaphor for the Word of God, and water is a metaphor of life. All are agricultural musts.
However, if you want great fruit, and you want it faster and better than the normal process, you need to add fertilizer. Fertilizer is the necessary nutrients that may not be found in the ground where the fruit tree is planted. What is the fertilizer of our faith growth? Serving. Serving will help you grow faster and display more of the fruits of the Spirit faster and fuller than just coming to church week in and week out. Although those we serve are gaining from our actions, we too are being refueled with the nutrients of fertilizer that make a church community thrive. Serving others in turn grows us in our relationship with God. God has given you gifts and talents to grow His Kingdom. Nothing will give you greater joy than to use your gift to bless someone else. And when you’re using your gifts, it hardly feels like serving because you’re loving what you’re doing. God will absolutely grow you in joy as you bring joy to others through your God-given gifts and abilities.
Think of a person you need to reconcile with—let’s start there. Keep that person in mind. Let’s attack the problem, not the person! Some of you are thinking that is the problem, the person is the problem. But just for a moment, separate the two. Too often we fail to make progress in our conflicts because we are attacking the person. We use language like, “You always…” or “You are such a ….” We are attacking the person. In order to make peace we need to change the focus of the conflict from the person to the problem. Making peace means talking through the issue with the person not talking at the person.
It’s a common misconception that keeping the peace means avoiding the problem. As Christians, we are not called to remain silent when problems surround us. Silence isn’t golden, sometimes it’s just downright yellow. As Christians, we have toplan to make peace! This begs the question—How do we become peacemakers?
Mathew 5:23-24 says we need to go to the person who has a problem with us. That may sound backwards. But as Jesus followers, we should not wait until a conflict comes to us. We need to go to the issue. And, we need to make sure we don’t come in flaming hot. Let’s not forget this fruit of the Spirit already. Philippians 2:4 tells us to focus on the needs of others, not just our own needs. The Bible tells us that if we’re going to have peace, we need to focus on the needs of others. This doesn’t mean you have to be a doormat. Yet, we need to spend some time focusing on the needs of others on a deeper level.
Progress
Not only do all of these fruits of the Spirit require God’s grace, but they take time to produce. Choose just one of these fruits to focus on this week and let me know how it goes. Like the avocado trees in my backyard, sometimes you don’t see fruit right away, but there is activity going on under the surface. These characteristics of the Christian faith are how we display Christ to the world and witness to His work in our lives. Growing fruit is a seven day a week process. That’s why our purpose statement is helping people find and follow Jesus seven days a week.Not just on Christmas and Easter. Not just on Sundays. SEVEN days a week. Remember, it’s about progress, not perfection. Faith development takes time, and slow grow is better than no grow.
As 2008 comes to a close, we’re reminded how much we have to be GRATEFUL for in our lives! This past year has been an amazing, crazy, sometimes scary, but ALWAYS blessed ride for the four of us. So,it’s with true THANKS that we give God all the credit for:
1. Ten years of marriage, as of last September. We’re best friends, love laughing together, drinking our coffee in the morning, going on movie dates or just hanging out on the couch. Being on this church planting journey has brought us so many blessings as we grow together. If the next 10 years are as good as our first 10, then we have a lot to look forward to.
2. Two happy and healthy boys: Riley, 8, loves homeschool,Lego’s, loves all sports (and is really good at all of them, in our unbiased opinion 😉 and is one of the most generous kids you’ll ever meet. He’s been busy spending his birthday money buying EVERYONE he knows Christmas gifts. He puts a lot of thought into what each person would like and can’t wait to wrap everything.
Aidan, 5, loves SpiderMan, Lego’s like his big bro, and wrestling with Dad on the floor of the living room. If there was a comedy club that featured 5 year olds, he’d be headlining (his act would likely center a little too much on bodily functions though). He keeps us laughing with his funny faces and phrases. Although he can be a handful, has a very tender heart and says things to us like, “I love God, do you?”
3. Our church family: The people God’s brought into our lives through Seven San Diego Church are amazing. They bless us with their support, prayer, acts of kindness and encouraging words. We feel privileged to work/serve with all of them. We look forward to a new year of ministry and anticipate what God is going to do.
4. Our parents, and siblings. They have supported us in SO many different ways as we’ve worked to bring the dream of a new church to life. To all of you, we want to say a special THANK YOU. You bless us daily.
5. A Savior, who makes all the above possible. Jesus gives our lives meaning and purpose and He waits to do the same for you! Let us know if you’d like to know more!
Please leave us an update on your own lives, how we can be praying for you in 2009.
Today was a win. A win in community service speak is an event that turns out to do just what one envisions and even more. Over 500 people came today to the Kids Matter Safety Fair. I have an awesome team to work with and they really pulled this off. Jules Sneddon is a huge blessing in getting the Safety Fair to this level of proficiency and effectiveness in our first attempt. We had 14 CHP officers doing the car seat checks. The line of cars was backed up. The fire department came. We had three bounce houses (one huge one with a slide) with kids flying off the walls in all of them. We had hundreds of hot dogs being swallowed by the masses. The Sno Cone machine was buzzing all day (it was 75 degrees and not a cloud in the sky today). The cotton candy was spinning all day. The popcorn was popping all day. The band Monday’s Alibi did a fantastic job. Santa was set up on a Hollywood movie set like area for pictures with kids. Brittany took pictures of the kids, downloaded ’em onto her mac and printed them on a very cool Seven SD Christmas card. Tons of families took advantage of this little perk.
I talked with the mayor at length about Chula Vista and Otay Ranch and how Seven San Diego can partner with the city to make a difference. I met with a Chula Vista council member at length to discuss future developments in Otay Ranch. Great stuff.
Thanks to all of our new team members that joined us to help for this event. Thanks so much for becoming part of the Seven SD family.
Next Saturday we’ve got free Christmas gift wrapping at the Wal-Mart in Otay Ranch and Barnes and Noble and the car wash at Wal-Greens next to Wal-Mart.
We took tons of pictures and videos that will be downloaded shortly. Check back soon and also see our church website at http://www.sevensdchurch.com.
Fear is a great deterrent to God’s promises. We see this over and over in the Word. Most of the things we fear are irrational, they will never come to pass. But, we spend a great deal of energy thinking about a particular fearful situation. Mark Twain once said, “I’ve been through some terrible things in my life…a few of which actually happened.” Someone once wrote: “Two natures beat within my breast, The one is foul, the other blessed. The one I love, the other I hate; The one I feed will dominate.” Don’t feed fear by constantly going over the dread in your mind. Feed on God’s promises (remember there are over 7000 of them in His Word). Listen, yesterday and tomorrow clamor for our attention. Let me encourage you to pay attention to today. Live today in God’s grace, remember He’s thinking of you today, He cares what you’re going through and He has great plans for you. Why not go to Him now, thank Him for his provision, blessings, and thank Him for Christmas.
