This series has been phenomenal! Every weekend has challenged “checkmark belief” and led us into transformational encounters with God that have decreased the gap between what we believe and how we live — and this weekend was no exception! Our sex lives are one of the primary “Keep Out” areas in our relationship with God, but this weekend, we got a crystal clear picture of the blessing and leadership God wants to offer us, especially in our bedrooms.

Thanks to Assistant Pastor Justin McCarty for bringing such a great message! Here are a few of Justin’s reflections on the weekend:

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I loved that our church is a place where we can talk about sex frankly and openly. If not the church, where else are people actually going to get God’s perspective and leadership as it relates to sex? This weekend proved to be another important week for hundreds of Questers. I’ve heard stories of so many people, especially married couples, that have had long overdue conversations about the state of their sex lives and are taking steps to follow God in what means to surrender and submit to his leadership about sex. I know there’s a general buzz around the topic of sex (especially when you say some of the words that I said in church today!) but there was more too it — God showed up in a powerful way in the 4th week of this seismic series.

Here are a few key lines and ringing thoughts that seem like invaluable takeaways:

- The Bible is unabashed in its celebration of sex! Sex was intended as a good gift from the God who created us. He is not squeamish or judgmental about our desire for sex. He created us that way and knows how sex works best!

- Sex is like gasoline. Outside its proper context, it’s explosively dangerous and volatile. But in its proper context (the commitment of marriage), it’s high octane fuel in the engine of our relationship.

- When we gave our lives to Christ, we surrendered “doing what is right in our own eyes.” No matter how good it feels, no matter how right it may seem to us – if it’s not right in God’s eyes, it’s not best for us.

- The picture of my little boy Wyatt crying at the gate of his bedroom proved to be a stunningly accurate picture of how we tend to relate to God’s leadership of our sex lives. We perceive punishment when He is actually protecting us from dangers that we don’t understand.

- One of my favorite lines from the whole talk: “No matter what you’ve done or how far you’ve gone, you are not disqualified from wholeness.” The cross of Jesus Christ offers us redemption and healing for our guilt and shame – we can trust Him to make all things new, even in our sex lives!

- I loved getting to point people to our freedom and recovery ministry, The Mat, that meets every Friday night. Just this past week, 471 people turned out for the annual Mat Chili Cook Off! If you need help, you are not alone! Hundreds are experiencing the freedom that God designed them for — if you need help, humble yourself and be there this Friday night! Find out more at questcommunity.com/ministries/the-mat

- Concluding the service with a clear word to married couples was another highlight: “A boring sex life does not honor God!” He designed us to serve and satisfy our spouse sexually – and it’s a good thing! Just in case you missed it, here was the key action step for husbands and wives:

Husbands: Create an environment where your wife can’t keep her hands off you by loving her singularly, romancing her and pursuing her!

Wives: Create an environment where sex is like a buffet – lots of variety and plenty of return trips!

I love our church! And I love that God is eager for us to experience the wholeness, healing and vitality that is meant to be a part of our sex lives. Here’s to all you married folks out there – enjoy the gift and live out an orthopraxy that’s beyond belief!!

Aren’t you loving this series, “I Believe in God, But…?” This week, Don’t Cross Me hit a nerve for many: an unedited, un-tempered look at the indisputable fact that God wants an All-Access Pass to our lives. He wants it all…our hearts, our minds, our hobbies, our marriages, our kids…our money. When we try to welcome Him into some areas of our lives and block Him from others, we become divided and unstable, and we often don’t know why.

Many of us look at our lives and see a lack of power, fruit, passion, victory…so we pray for God to do something, to fix the problem. This weekend was a reality check: breakthrough and blessing will come when submission and surrender take place. When Christ-followers give Jesus access, He transforms us in ways we could never have dreamed possible!

Here are three critical questions we studied this weekend. Spend great time fleshing these out with Jesus:

Three Critical Questions:

1. Why does God want total access to my life?

• A. You are designed for it. God made u to love you, to be near Him. He wants to bless you, guide you, comfort you, and the way that works is for us to receive His love and grow in intimacy. That only happens if our lives are in proper order. Put simply: when we live recognizing that there is One God and One Lord, and We’re not Him. He doesn’t want to just be the Lord of all. He wants to be YOUR Lord.

• B. It’s best for you. You were made to rest in the leadership of another. Not only did God design us to follow Him, He crafted us so that in doing so we would be at our best by resting in His leadership and worshipping Him alone!  What that means is that when He’s at the center of your life with complete access and total freedom to lead, He has the power to move in and transform every area of your life! It’s acknowledging that He’s God, He knows what is best for you and you do not!

2. Why wouldn’t I want Him to have total access to my life?

• A. Pride – On some level most of us think we can handle life on our own, maybe in some ways even do a better job than God. From the earliest pages of the Bible and the story Adam until now, we nurture pride, we esteem self-reliance and independence. “I’ve got this…I can handle my life. I believe in God, sure…and I’ll take His help, but I’m good.” In the OT there is an indicting little phrase that was used to describe the tragic lives of those who worshipped pride and not God. It says they “Did what was right in their own eyes.” That doesn’t have to be you!

• B. Protection – We’ve been hurt, and in our pain we’ve learn patterns of protecting ourselves from pain, from people and from God. So, without ever saying it perhaps, we begin to pick and chose the areas we’ll place under the Lordship of Jesus. And in the others, we tell God KEEP OUT. But that leaves us trying to share the throne with God…with a divided, torn heart. We want God to hear and answer our prayers…and He longs to heal us, provide for us, protect us, bless us… but as C.S. Lewis once said, “He cannot bless us unless he has us. When we try to keep within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death…There’s no bargaining with Him.” He always wants what’s best for you!

3. So How Can I be Whole Again?

• A.   Admit - Just like the 1^st step in AA, admit that you are powerless and your life has become unmanageable with you as your own lord. Admit that you need His help if you’re ever going to be whole again.
• B.   Humble yourself - Ask God to forgive you for rejecting His leadership in your life…for treating as common that which is priceless.
• C.   Surrender and submit to Him - DAILY. When you humble yourself, He doesn’t shame you, He embraces you…healing begins & breakthrough starts.

What a beautiful weekend! As we continued our new series, “I Believe in God, But…,” we tackled the discrepancy between faith and worry. If more than 90% of Americans believe in God, then why does worry kick our tail so much of the time?

So many people are weighed down by worry when it doesn’t serve us at all! It can’t change what has happened in the past and it doesn’t predict what will happen in the future. It’s time to fight back! I love that over and over again in Jesus’ most famous sermon of all time, He tells us “do not worry!” It’s not a suggestion. It’s a command!

The reality is simply this: 1. Life is hard 2. Worry is suffocating…and 3. True faith can’t survive in the gap where worry thrives.

Jesus offers us unbelievable peace if we’ll choose to trust Him and actively leave our worries at the cross. The peace that Jesus gives – true peace that displaces worry in your heart – is of supernatural origin. It’s not a man-made peace that comes as the by-product of a problem free life. It’s the peace that ONLY Jesus gives and is only experienced IN HIM!

Listen to these great verses:

“I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the Peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid.” – John 14:27

“I have told you all this so that you may have Peace in Me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” – John 16:33

• Worry says, “You’re all alone with no one to help. You are on your own.” Jesus says, “I am the maker of heaven and earth, and I am watching over you.” (Read Psalm 121 again as a reminder!)
• “Worry does not empty tomorrow of it’s sorrow, it empties today of it’s strength.” – Corrie Ten Boom
• Worry will take as much rope as you give it & before long, you’ll be tied in knots with the rope you supplied.
• We don’t introduce ourselves and say, “I’m a liar…I’m a thief…or I’m a big-time luster,” but for some reason we act like it’s okay to identify ourselves as “a worrier.”
• Worry is the opponent of trust!
• When we listen to worry, we don’t listen to Jesus who alone can give supernatural peace!

Vision Weekend is a perfect launching pad for the year…not just for our church, but for our lives, our growth, our transformation. One of the key reasons we kick off the year with Vision Weekend is because it’s fresh, there’s an air of optimism and possibility, and there’s this clean stretch of road in front of us…asking God, “So what do have for us this year?”

There’s a universal sense that people want a better year than last year…even if last year was good. Everyone wants an advancing year. And I love this series, “I Believe in God, But…”, because we all want to be single-minded, with what we say and what we do going together.

While we’re quick to spot hypocrisy in others, when we’re honest, we recognize it in ourselves too. This series will deal with the gap, the discrepancy between what we believe and the way we live. Don’t you want that? I do! I love that we’re all going to see the hypocrisy gap closed in our lives!

Here are some of the ringing lines from the weekend…

• God will not bless the life of casual belief that is meant to be authentic faith where He changes you to be like Him from the inside out.
• God never wanted to be a checkmark on a list. He never campaigned for your vote.
• Jesus Christ died on the cross to win your heart. He gave up His own life to become the Ruler of yours!
• God loves us too much to bless a check-mark, impostor-style belief in Him.
• The world doesn’t need to see perfect people but people that mean it!

What are you longing for?

What is it that you’re hoping for in your life? Your marriage? Your family? Have you given up hope or is it right there in front of you? This week our kids are counting down the seconds (and nanoseconds) waiting for Christmas morning to arrive.

For millennia, the people of God hoped and longed for God to fulfill His promise. They longed for the day when God would come Himself and dwell among us, when Immanuel would come and the Messiah would be born. They longed for the day when God’s ultimate promise would be fulfilled.

And one night in a little obscure village on the other side of the world, it was.

That first Christmas, the ultimate promise of God was fulfilled when He sent us the best He had, not just some slouch, but His Son…the Messiah. God ALWAYS keeps His promises.

It’s unbelievable that He’d make us any promise at all! He gives us life and the air we breathe…He’s not obligated to promise us anything. He just loves us that much. And in 2 Corinthians 1:20 says this, “no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ.”

This weekend at Quest we spent time looking back at the promise of Isaiah 9. (Remarkable!)  Jesus entered the world as a helpless baby, but He is our…

• Wonderful Counselor… the One who knows tomorrow, knows every word, every thought before formed. Knows the events of our lives, knows the date of our death. Knows when sun will shine & when rain will come down in torrents. He won’t just show us the way, He IS the way.
• Mighty God…the God who not only has the power to calm the storms in our lives and help us through to the other side, but the only One with the power to forgive our sin and restore us to Himself.
• Everlasting Father… the Father who always cares, who’s always present, who always provides, protects & draws us near. He is head over heels in love with you and He loves to meet your needs…sometimes disciplining and convicting, always adoring and embracing. You are dearly loved by the Most High God.
• Prince of Peace…the One who longs to spill His peace into us so that the peace of Christ will rule in our hearts.

I pray this Christmas you’ll experience the promise of God as His faithful promises are fulfilled in your life. Jesus will always be true in your life and He is here to counsel you, show Himself strong in your life, re-parent you and give you peace. Have a great Christmas week reflecting on how much you’re loved by the God who left heaven to be WITH you…the only One who has ever loved you perfectly.

Therapists and theologians alike agree that there is one ingredient in the recipe of life that humans can’t live without…at least not for very long…HOPE. We can live without wealth, fame or acclaim. We can be plain, have below-average intelligence, lack direction and have no purpose in life, but “when hope is lost, the heart is crushed.” (Prov 13:12)

For all of those struggling for hope, a baby’s cry was the signal of heaven that an irrepressible hope had been born. Hope was poured out on the shepherds 2000 years ago and on us just days ago as we looked at Jesus: Our Hope at our Christmas Baptism services.

Here are a few things that stood out:

• Hopelessness is rampant. When we think “this will go one forever & will never change” we begin to experience a Hope Shortage and start to isolate ourselves, magnify negative circumstances, and embrace self-pity. But God loved us too much to leave us there!

• Over time people in a hope shortage begin to develop Spiritual Amnesia: we overlook God’s blessings in our lives…forget His work in our past…distrust His faithful promises for the future. God’s remedy? To REMEMBER!

• There is a distinct relationship between recalling God’s work in your life and having hope for the challenges ahead. When we begin to remember Jesus’ character, His heart and His enduring love, then hope begins to swell in our hearts…eventually overflowing w/confident hope from Jesus! (Romans 15:13)

• In Luke 2, the shepherds were stunned out of a hope shortage by a series of events that would change them forever. They experienced a hope infusion we still talk about two millennia later. There is a phrase in verse 2:8 that does a good job describing the lives of shepherds, “outside the village.” They were not well thought of. They were poor, uneducated, mostly forgotten men…and God sends His messengers to these guys, of all people! He entrusts the GOOD NEWS the world had been waiting for…to them!

• Make no mistake: The Miracle of Christmas is that it’s for those on the outside!

• If you’ve ever felt on the outside…you’ve met your match. Take it from the shepherds. God took time to visit them in remarkable way…they were worth visiting. If God loves you, you are loved. If you’re valued by Him, then you’re valuable!

• I was so proud of all of you who were baptized – both those of you who courageously shared the good news through your stories, and all of you who were spontaneously baptized at the conclusion of our worship experiences!

• Seeing hope stirred up all weekend and finally born on the faces of so many of you who who once and for all asked Jesus into your hearts…there’s nothing like it in the WORLD! Congratulations!

• WAY TO GO leading out in Being Christmas, Questers! We received 751 red bags filled with gifts for Millcreek and Bridgeport Elementary Schools!!! I wish you all could see their faces when they receive these unexpected gifts! WELL DONE! Keep stepping into the challenge to finish 2011 with fully funded ministries. What we saw this weekend is why we do what we do – and it all happens through your support!

• Listen to these great words in 1 Samuel 2:8b – “He rekindles burned-out lives with fresh hope, restoring dignity and respect to their lives.” God can rekindle hope in your life. Why not take Him up on it this Christmas?

This was a different kind of a weekend at Quest. We were in challenging territory as we took a ‘no-holds-barred’ look at the real Jesus – the One who always stirred things up. In the same way, this weekend stirred things up for many of us as we looked at why Jesus is so polarizing.

Jesus not just a kind, gentle compassionate moral teacher. He was not very well-liked. He was not well-behaved or well-received. He drew crowds, but He also repelled them. By the end of His life, He was not overly popular, or even very successful by the world’s standards…few followed Him. Fewer still stood by Him. He was not predictable, safe or manageable. Jesus was far more like His cousin John-the-Baptist than like the religious leaders of His day. A wild-man, rather than a comfortable cleric. If you look up the word polarizing in the dictionary, it says it is something that causes opposing points of view…then it shows Jesus picture. He always kept things on edge. If you encountered the real Jesus, I’m not sure you’d want Him in your life group or in your homes. I’m not sure you’d want to hire Him or want Him in the seat next to you when you’re worshiping. Jesus was raw. Jesus was polarizing. THEN & NOW.

When Simeon encountered Him as a baby 2000 years ago he said this about Jesus, ““This child is destined to cause many in Israel to fall, but he will be a joy to many others. He has been sent as a sign from God, but many will oppose him. As a result, the deepest thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.” (Luke 2:34-35)

Jesus always stirred it up and it’s been said that it’s often in the places we’re stirred up that we experience the most spiritual transformation. I think that’s true. I encourage you to spend some time here.

Jesus dismissed the spiritual gray in the world. He turned the lights on and evicted the haze of spiritual confusion. He was crystal clear in every conversation, in every encounter. He is God’s dividing line of clarity in the world.

Through What He Said (turn the other cheek, bless those who persecute you, your sins are forgiven!)… What He Did (healing the blind, feeding the 1000s, turning the temple tables upside down, confronting the religious leaders!)… and What He Claimed (I am the WAY, the TRUTH & the LIFE…no one comes to the Father except through ME), Jesus was determined that we would not miss Him…that we would not confuse Him with just a soft-spoken, mild-mannered moral teacher. Jesus was fierce and strong and bold. He drew crowds and He repelled them. He took on the sin of the whole world and He defeated death itself. Jesus is like no one else in the world!

Whatever other pictures you’ve had of your “fake jesus,” whether it’s…

• Happiness jesus… (here to meet your needs, do as you’d like & make your life happy)
• Homespun jesus (a jesus you’ve crafted out of what your grandmother always told you mixed in with your own ideas)
• Fix-Me jesus… (a genie always ready to come fix you up & make you all better)
• Green jesus… (more concerned with saving the planet than rescuing people)
• Right Wing jesus… (who shockingly always votes republican & who always agrees with you)
• Co-dependenant jesus… (who perpetuates your emotional brokenness)

I want to challenge you to become so discontent with the “fake jesus” you’ve crafted to meet your needs that you would pitch him forever. Whoever he is, if he’s not the Jesus we read about in the pages of scripture, he is an imposter and he will ultimately leave you disappointed or disillusioned.

The real Jesus is the only One strong enough to confront death and free you from it’s power. He is the only One who can heal your heart and make you whole. He is the only One through whom we receive forgiveness of our sins. He is the One who heals marriages, breaks addictions, restores families, makes stingy people generous and unfaithful people faithful. I pray you’ll consider the real JESUS on His own terms.

Jesus didn’t come to repair you & make you happy. He came to redeem you & make you whole. The question is: do you want happiness or wholeness? If it’s wholeness, you’ll come to Jesus on His terms…as He really is. If it’s happiness, you’ll manipulate, emasculate and shrink him until it’s til not Jesus at all. It’s your choice…happiness for a day or wholeness for a lifetime.

I pray you’ll choose wholeness. I pray you’ll choose the real Jesus.