NLLP worship teams cover Coldplay's "Fix You"

Continuing in our teaching series called CONTRASTS this past Sunday, the message was on 1 John 3:11-24. The whole talk can be summarized with these four statements:

• Anger and hate make broken things more broken
• Love brings the power of God to broken situations
• God provides what we need to love when it's difficult to do so
• Only God's love can fix the broken

To help get my message going, our phenomenal worship teams at New Life Lincoln Park performed Coldplay's "Fix You." We have a service at 10am and one at 5pm so it was awesome to hear each team's take on the song. Here they both are:

Mother's Day and AntiChrists and Creepers

This past Sunday was Mother's Day. At church we had a special time during the service celebrating our moms, over 25 in total! Though we gave thank you gifts to all of them, special gifts went to specific moms from the group. The special gifts went to the newest mom (less than 2 week old), the mom who came the furthest to be with us (California), the mom with the most grand-kids (7), and the mom who had been in labor the longest (60 hours!!!!). Go ahead and let that last one set in for a minute: 60 hours in labor. It was summarized perfectly on Sunday by Rick when he said, "I wish we had a Purple Heart to give you." 

For the actual message we continued in our CONTRASTS series going through 1 John. The scripture we went though was 1 John 2:18-27, which isn't the first text anyone would probably pick for mother's day as it is about antichrists. But it was the next part of the letter so I went with it. 

The message was entitled, "Beware of the Creepers" and can be summarized by this image:

If you'd like to listen to it click here or to download it click here.

"If I should have a daughter..." and spoken word poetry

Watching this video would be one of the best investments of your time today:

 

This immediately became one of my favorite TED talks before it was even over.

The poem "B" at the beginning has me wanting to get back home to hug on Baylee and Jaxon. "10 things I know to be true," "10 things I should have learned by now," and everything she communicates around them has me putting aspects of my teaching and leadership back under a microscope. The imagery she crafts in "Hiroshima" make a word that I needed to hear today. 

You need to hear it to.

Watch. This. Video!

Thankfulness for someone who encouraged thought

A great man of God passed away yesterday: Chuck Colson.

There are leaders of the faith who have inspired me, those who have equipped me, those who have encouraged me. But Chuck Colson is a leader who challenged me to think about and understand my faith. And in doing so he inspired, equipped, and encouraged.

The first time I ever heard Chuck Colson I had no idea who he was or that it was him I was listening to. At the beginning of his song, "Heaven in the Real World," Stephen Curtis Chapman had a sound bite of Colson saying this:

"Where is the hope? I meet millions of people who feel demoralized by the decay around us. The hope that each of us has is not in who governs us, or what laws we pass, or what great things we do as a nation. Our hope is in the power of God working through the hearts of people. And that's where our hope is in this country. And that's where our hope is in life." 

His life story is about that hope. His story is a testimony to the powerful grace of God.

If you've never heard of or interacted with the work of Chuck Colson, I highly recommend you do.

Read his obituary press release here.

Read his story here.

Check out his books here. If you want some suggested starting places I'd go with The Faith, How Now Shall We Live, and The Body. 

And check out this video...

The Hearing God messages

This past Sunday at church we wrapped up our Hearing God series. I was so glad we did this series. It was a reminder of important encouraging truths that I know I needed to hear. 

Here are four of the messages if you want to give them a listen (the 2nd week wasn't recorded):

• God speaks
• Discerning the Whisper: listen or download
• Hearing Him in the Silence: listen or download
• Not Living Halfway: listen or download

God Speaks: preaching a message without saying a word

The first message in our new "Hearing God" series this past Sunday lasted 29 minutes. During this time there wasn't a word audibly spoken. It was the quietest I've heard the crowd or the sanctuary. As it was communicated Sunday night, if the message was about God speaking then it seemed best I didn't. So I just stood there, and let Him do the rest.

God speaks. That is the what this message is about. Just click through the slides and you'll hear what everyone heard Sunday:

For those from New Life Lincoln Park who were asking for the notes (or anyone), you can download a PDF of the slides here or the actual PowerPoint here.

Hearing God: Living attentive to the God who speaks

At New Life Lincoln Park this Sunday we are starting a new teaching series called, HEARING GOD: Living attentively to the God who speaks. This is the gist of it:

We've all heard of angels and loud voices resounding from the heavens, but most of us have never actually heard God speak audibly or sat down and talked with an angel over nachos. It seems you can't turn three pages without seeing God talking to someone in the Bible, but does that kind of stuff still happen today? Often people describe the voice of God like a prompting or a whisper, but in a world that shouts for our attention how are we supposed to make out which "voice" belongs to God? In the next five weeks we will be talking about how God speaks into the world today and how we can tune our ears to listen.

If you're in the Chicago area, we'd love for you to join us this Sunday (or any Sunday!). We get together in the morning at 10am and again in the evening at 5pm. For the most part it is the same service at both times, so pick whichever time is best for you. The address is 1110 W. Lill Ave, near DePaul.

Hope to see you there!

DEFIANCE: Turn Your World Upside Down

Today at church we are starting a new teaching series called DEFIANCE: Turn Your World Upside Down. It's going to a great few weeks of digging into the Bible's letter of 1 Thessalonians. 

Here is our explanation of what it's all about:

Our culture invites people into a life of doing whatever you want. People live with no real thought of implication or consequence. To jump in and go with the flow would be pretty easy. But God calls those who follow him to a greater standard. Following Jesus today means going against the flow, because living a holy life flies in the face of our world system. It's anything but easy and yet it's what our returning King calls us to do. So join us for our newest sermon series: DEFIANCE – Turning our world upside down!

One of our incredibly talented artists/video guys in church, Juan Zavaleta, made this awesome teaser video for the series:

Come on out to New Life Lincoln Park as we get this thing rolling: 1110 W Lill, Chicago, IL 60614

Services are at 10am and 5pm (I'll be speaking at the 5pm).

"That was a pile of crap" - a note to preachers/teachers

Every teacher or preacher has that moment when they feel like they didn't do a good job. It doesn't matter if you are just starting out or have been speaking for years - that one Sunday, that one class, that one group will come.  It will be over and you'll feel like you need to apologize to someone.

For me this day came a few weeks ago. An intro to a talk I had come up with didn't go as smooth as had planned, I was getting lost in my notes, and just felt like things weren't flowing very well.

Bono, the blind man, and the 2nd commandment

We are going through the 10 Commandments at church, and I've been fortunate enough to have spoken on the first four of them. It's been an incredible time and a really amazing series.

Last week I saw a sweet video of U2's recent concert in Nashville that reminded me of the power behind the 2nd commandment.

Rock Solid Living

Very excited that we're doing a series on the 10 Commandments this summer at New Life.  I've been wanting to do this for a couple years, so pumped it's happening. 

The 10 Commandments is one of the most important parts of the Bible, and also probably one of the most misunderstood.  This is the paragraph we're using to promote the series:  

iPads, Kindles, and Nooks bring us all the words known to man: novels, histories, poetry, biographies, and so much more.  But the original tablets carried by the prophet Moses brought to us some of the most important words ever written. This summer we'll explore the 10 Commandments. Together we'll discover how real-to-life these ancient words are for today, how they provide a solid foundation for daily life. 

As the church moves through each commandment this summer, I'm going to blog through them week to week (At New Life Lincoln Park I'm going to be speaking the Sundays we cover commandments #1-4).  

The series kicks off this Sunday, so come check it out!

Deeper Teaching/Preaching?

OK - returning to the world of blogging after an insanely crazy end of the semester.  Be forewarned.

I read a good blog post from Pete Wilson where he was asking people what they mean when they say/hear "I want deeper teaching/preaching."

I'm curious myself what people mean by that.

What to you constitutes "deeper teaching"?
What causes you to feel that you need to say, "I want something deeper?"

I'm really interested in this, so lay it on me in the comments box.

Spoiled

If you are one who likes to hear teaching about God, the Bible, and life, then you'll agree after seeing the below list that recently I have been incredibly spoiled.  I've been at three different conferences in the last 8 days.  As the phrase goes, it's been like drinking from a fire hose.

Speaking about Sabbath

I was able to speak at church yesterday and was ecstatic to be able to dive into the topic of "Sabbath & Stress." Here's the link to the message: New Life Sermon Achieve.

There are two things about Sabbath that are not only genuinely special to me but also carry a lot of weight in my understanding of what it means to follow Jesus.

The first is that Sabbath is meant to be a reminder of CREATION & REDEMPTION. Just like celebrating communion is a sign to remind us of what Jesus did on the cross, Sabbath is a sign to remind of us of these two core truths:

CREATION: God is in control, not just of the universe but also of my life.
REDEMPTION: I am not a slave or a machine, my identity is based not in what I can produce but in my relationship with God.

How often do we forget those two things? The significance of CREATION & REDEMPTION should be real to us when we realize that God wants us to remember them WEEKLY!

The second thing about Sabbath is that God gives me permission to take one! God literally wants me to every week take a day when I don't work, when I don't produce or create, and simply exist. God wants me to take a day every week when I focus on connecting with Him, with family, with others, and with creation! How amazing is that! It's not a day about being "bored for the Lord" - it's meant to be the most important day of our week when we celebrate and experience that we're alive!

I told everyone yesterday that I was again the target of God's sense of humor. He always gives me the topics to talk about that I most need to hear. I don't practice Sabbath very well, at least not on a regular basis. But...this message got to me in a real way. Sabbath is going to become a regular thing in the Moss family! It needs to be.

And it needs to be for you as well!

"It doesn't say...anything!"

In my Studying & Teaching the Bible class this morning we were talking about Lesson Aims: which in a nutshell are focused, measurable goals you have for your lesson that are focused on the student and their life change. Basically, what do you want to accomplish in this teaching? An example of a lesson aim: "The students will discover why staying up really late at night is bad for their health by going over statistics and research of sleep patterns & health issues." That just came off the top of my head - probably a Freudian slip that I need to sleep more.

Part way through we began going over examples of "bad aims" and why they were bad. The first was "I want to be a blessing to my class." Everyone got the glaring things: not measurable, focused on the teacher, too vague, etc. During a moment of quiet while they were pondering more critiques, Ben responded, rather matter-of-fact, "It doesn't say anything! I mean, that sounds good but what are you saying? It could be anything!"

It was a pretty funny moment the way he said it, but I also thought that it was so good, simple & brilliant. "I want to be a blessing." Sounds so good, so right - but am I really saying anything at all? Is it possible to use a lot of "church-talk" that sounds really good and sounds like we have it all together in our head and heart - but we really don't? Can we be talking a lot without really saying anything?

Obviously we need to be a blessing to people - but...what does that mean?

So...what does it?