TMAC LIVE

#EmptyHandsGrace

“Our hands are empty because we're poor in a different way. We come with no merit or righteousness or earning of a place in heaven or anything like that. We've got nothing to bring to the table where God's gonna look and say, yeah, you you deserve to be up here in glory with... We've got nothing. Our hands are empty. But empty hands are the ones that can receive a gift. Empty hands are the ones that can receive grace.”

#JesusSaves

“Jesus did love God. He did love his neighbor. He gave all for obedience to the Father, even stretching out his arm on the cross in order to save his sinful neighbors for the love of God and the love of us. Jesus gave and he is here stretching out his arms for us, inviting us in. And that is the most important thing.”

#JesusSaves

“Jesus did love God. He did love his neighbor. He gave all for obedience to the Father, even stretching out his arm on the cross in order to save his sinful neighbors for the love of God and the love of us. Jesus gave and he is here stretching out his arms for us, inviting us in. And that is the most important thing.”

#HeavenlyCitizenship

“Well, you, church, you are a colony of heaven that God has planted right here in Florida. You are citizens of heaven. And so what God wants us to be doing is to be conducting ourselves in such a way that this is a heavenly community that reflects the the heavenly ways of doing things in our relationships, in our interactions, in how we handle things. We're supposed to be doing God's will right here in Florida just as it is done in heaven. That's why Jesus teaches us to pray that way. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven because we're citizens of heaven. We're supposed to be a colony of heaven right here.”

#RepentanceInAction

“Genuine repentance is not merely a matter of words or thoughts in our head or feelings that that we feel for a moment. Genuine repentance expresses itself in changed living. Not yet perfect living, but changed living. It's one thing to say, I believe God is king. I believe God is in charge. It's another thing to live as as that is real to you and real in you.”

#DeathbedConversion

“Have you ever watched a basketball game on TV and your team is down by, like, one point, and there are, like, eight seconds left in the game, and y'all have got the ball? But it seems like they're passing it and dribbling it around for way too long. And finally, finally, someone takes a shot and swish. Your team takes the lead, and there's, like, half a second left on the clock. You know? Just made it. I saw a joke this week that was kind of like that. It said, angels in heaven erupt in cheers as man accepts Christ on his deathbed with just point four seconds left on the clock of his life.”

#ForgiveDontExcuse

“that's so important. They're not pretending it's not such a big deal. I think one mistake that well meaning Christians sometimes make about forgiveness is they think it does mean excusing someone's sin. And where excusing says, ah, it really wasn't so bad. It's not a big deal. I'm not gonna worry about it. Forgiveness says, it was so bad. It was wrong and wicked, and it it it did hurt, I forgive you.”

#IronSharpensIron

“When we got married, we got this, block of kitchen knives, and and in that block, there's this steel rod. And every now and again, I take that rod, and I rub it up and down the edges of those knives, and there is scraping, and there is friction, and that is precisely what keeps those knives sharp. That's the image there as iron sharpens iron. So one person sharpens another. God intended us to live in community with one another so that we could help one another gross. We could help one another be sharp.”

#StormTheGates

“But notice what Jesus says. The gates of hell will not prevail against you. You know, enemy armies don't come at you with their gates. Gates are used for defense. The image Jesus has in mind is his church taking the fight to the enemy, storming the kingdom of darkness, snatching souls out of his clutches. That's the image Jesus has in mind rather than the other way around.”

#StormTheGates

“And for many years, I read that as a kind of a promise from Jesus that, like, no matter how bad things might get, the church on earth is still gonna be here, still gonna be doing ministry. That is true. But notice what Jesus says. The gates of hell will not prevail against you. You know, enemy armies don't come at you with their gates. Gates are used for defense. The image Jesus has in mind is his church taking the fight to the enemy, storming the kingdom of darkness, snatching souls out of his clutches. That's the image Jesus has in mind rather than the other way round.”

#DivineTiming

“``Hold on. The Lord may have his own reasons holding us in that moment waiting that we can't see yet. Many of the early church fathers and their commentaries on this passage agree that one of the reasons that Jesus doesn't answer the woman and and seems to ignore her request at first is because he is creating an opportunity on purpose because he understands how she's gonna respond. He's creating an opportunity for her to respond in faith and for everyone else to see it and celebrate it, and that that's important.”

#ResurrectionVictory

“``When Christ who is fully man but also fully God allows himself to sink into the abyss and darkness of death, something utterly unexpected then happened. An ancient liturgy of the church says the risen Christ trampled death by death. By going into death, he exploded it with his own divine life. His unending, uninvincible life blew death open like a little paper firecracker being blown open by the gunpowder. And at first, they look at the cross and it looks utterly terrible. Something horrible is about to happen or is happening, the death of the Messiah, but it's actually the savior doing his work, surprising his people.”

#SatisfiedInJesus

“When Jesus fed the multitude in Matthew 14 verse 20 says, they all ate, and I love this, and were satisfied. They all ate and they were satisfied. That is what Jesus does that no other relationship can do. No other friend, no other teacher, no lover, no guru, no one else but Jesus. Satisfies our deepest need which is to be in right relationship with our father, with our God who made us.”

#SeekWhatMatters

“``Now Socrates, keep coming back to I think about Socrates, you know what he's famous for is the Socratic method. Right? He would ask people questions. Is how he would expose their ignorance, but also hopefully how he would encourage them to learn something. Someone else who's famous for asking questions is Jesus Christ. In fact, I love this. Have you ever noticed in John's gospel, the very first words recorded out of the mouth of Jesus Christ are a question. And it is this question, what are you seeking? It's the very first thing Jesus says in John's gospel. What do you really want? What is it that you treasure? That you're going after? That you're willing to strive after, even sacrifice for? What is it you really really want? Do you want wisdom? Do you want help walking in the high way? The high road? What does it you really want?”

#LeaveItToGod

“``No matter how good the intentions may have been, you try to, in our own strength, bring this fallen world up to heaven, that path always ends in hell every single time. The Lord tells us plainly, yes, there will be weeds. There will be evil works mixed in among the good works in this world. And yes, you should do what you can to alleviate injustice and to rectify it wherever you see it, but don't think that you can just, in your own strength, do it all or make it perfect. But there is someone who can, and that's where the story is headed.”

#ThirstForJesus

“``Are you thirsty? Are you hungry? Are you blind? Are you just just rolled over with with with hurt or with need or or you just are not satisfied and everything's going great and you're like, why am I not satisfied? Learn from this blind beggar. Jesus, son of David, fulfiller of all God's promises. You're the one, the only one who can give me what I really need. Have mercy on me. God promises renewal. He promises to satisfy our deep desires. And and this promise is something that no achievement of ours, no toy that we could buy, no drug, no romance in this dying age, none of these things can really satisfy that need, that hunger. But God can, the eternal God can. And that promise comes to focus on Jesus.”

#TrustHisHigherWays

“Even when we've gone through, we think, just the worst, and maybe we have, And everything looks wrong and we're asking God, why has this happened? Why have you allowed me to go through this and we don't know? And we ask our priest and his best answer is, I have no idea. God says, you can still trust me because my ways are higher. And I have a plan for you. And I am working even the worst calamities you can imagine for good. Not that they are good, but I can work them for good. That's what he does when the most innocent man who ever lived was tortured to death on a cross. My ways are higher than your ways. You can trust me.”

#RestInHisArms

“``I think that is a great image of what Jesus is promising us. That little child rocking to sleep, falling asleep on daddy's shoulder, resting, secure, happy, embraced in the arms of the father. I think it's a perfect image. Resting in the arms of the father who's stronger and wiser than that little one. And it's an image of happiness, it's an image of joy, of peace, of rest. Deep rest. That's a joyous rest for your souls that Jesus promises. And who's this promise for? Who's this rest gonna be for? Who's gonna receive it? Here again what Jesus says in verse 28, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. The invitation is open to all. In verse 27, Jesus said, no one knows the father except the son and anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him. And we might think, well who is that? Who does he who does he choose? And the answer is anyone who genuinely responds with faith to the wide open invitation, come to me. It's for all of you. Please come to me. All are invited and this fulfills the word of the Psalm. Psalm one forty five verse nine. The Lord is good to all. His mercy is over all that he has made.”

#HospitalityWelcomesAll

“All of those are good things. They're worth celebrating and it's precisely because they're good that we can confuse them for the highest possible good, which by definition can only be God. And it's only when we put the Lord first, will all these other things, all these other relationships, all these other loves and priorities be in their right order? Only then will they really work the way God intends when they are loved under”

#HopeNotTheEnd

“We may face them as people with hope, who know that this is not the end of the story. This is not the end of our story. Suffering does not get the last word, not with Jesus. And that changes everything. We are walking with a God who still does wondrous things and at the last will resurrect his entire creation and make all things new.”

#ChasedByGrace

“And so Wayne starts picking through this pile of junk and he finds his backpack with the bible that his mother gave him. And he opens it and he sees the note that she wrote to him before she died long ago about how this was the greatest love letter. About how Jesus loved him and wanted to embrace him and forgive him and give him a whole new life. And Wayne says, I just collapsed sobbing on the ground. And I thought if God's gonna chase me this hard and this far, maybe I should stop running. And that was the beginning of a whole new life for Wayne.”

#GodSeesMasterpiece

“We see that blank canvas. God looks into our life and he sees a masterpiece. We see an ugly black lump of coal and God sees a diamond in the rough. We see a Jacob, the deceiver. God sees an Israel. We see Simon. God sees Peter. We see Saul of Tarsus and God sees the apostle Paul. God looks into your life and he sees you, not as you are, but as you were originally created and designed to be.”

#JesusIsGodInMiracles

“And then Jesus shows up. He comes to the people of Israel, the children of Abraham who know that there is only one God. He comes saying and doing things that actually only God could rightfully or do. He goes around forgiving sins as in Mark two which only God can forgive sins. He gives sight to the blind which Psalm a 146 verse eight says that the Lord the God of Israel would do. He walks on water. In the book of Job, it says actually the living God is the one who treads upon or tramples down the waves in Job chapter nine verse eight.”

#PrimalVocation

“Now why is that important? You might remember just a few weeks ago on Mother's Day we talked about this. When God first created mankind in his own image back in Genesis one, he tells them in verse 28, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. God tells Noah and his family in Genesis nine the same thing in verse seven. When God is initiating this kind of relaunch of the human family, the beginning of a new creation you might say, after passing through the waters of the flood. God is clear. He wants creatures who bear his image to take the knowledge of God and the worship of God to every corner of his creation. That's part of our primal calling, our primal vocation.”

#JesusIsLordEverywhere

“How can we show that and experience that and and celebrate that everywhere? That's what we're for. And remind ourselves and everyone else, even on the internet, remind ourselves and everyone else that Jesus is Lord and all of this is from him and for him and when we get that right, it's beautiful and everything falls into place.”

#LiturgicalWorship

“pattern of worship here is based not just on what we think is gonna be exciting, like when the pastor drove the motorcycle down the center aisle at the megachurch a number of years ago, not what we think is gonna be trendy or cool, but our worship here is based on what we see in the Bible, what is taught about worship, the way God's covenant people do worship, and the way that that's been understood and expressed by the universal church across the ages. The way we worship, and this is a buzzword you'll often hear in Anglican churches, is liturgical We use the liturgy and that comes from two Greek words. It means the work of the people or the public service”

#LiveTheJesusStory

“What story are you living in? Are you living your life in a way that fits with that story so that others will see it? They'll not just hear it in what you say, but they'll see it in how you are. That's our call. Does our life fit? Do our attitudes, do our words, the way we interact with others fit with the story of Jesus who came to us in humility, who in faithfulness gave all, even died on a cross, praying for the very ones who were crucifying him, and then in that submission, in that humility, God exalted him and and showed that he is the truth. That's our story that we get to celebrate, rehearse, and share today and rejoice in. Let's pray.”

#GoodShepherdWins

“Remember, we have the good shepherd, and he is bigger than all the thieves. He has already won the victory over them. Are you taking those things to the Lord in prayer? Are you asking for his strength to overcome? Are you even paying attention to see what they are? Like, I keep doing this thing. I don't like it. Have you asked why? What's going on in there? What's going on in here? Have you called on the good shepherd to beat back the predators, to beat back the thieves, and to fill you with his own abundant life. Because if you do, he will, and your cup will overflow.”

#BodyOfChrist

“Our relationship to God is deeply personal and intimate, but it's not therefore like privatized or totally individualistic. We're in relationship with God, in community with other people who are in relationship with God. In the New Testament, it kinda makes this point with this great image of the body, you see this in Romans twelve and first Corinthians 12, and Paul talks about the different members of the body. They're all related to the head who is Jesus Christ. That's how each of us relates to him. He's our head, he's our king, he's our Lord.”

#EyewitnessTestimony

“Thomas doesn't have proof that Christ is risen, but he certainly has evidence. He has the testimony of the women and the other 10 apostles who were all telling him the exact same thing. Thomas, man, I'm telling you, we have seen the Lord. And if it was only one or two people that Thomas knew were kinda ditzy sometimes, maybe he could brush that off, but it's one person after another after another, people he has known for years, he knows them to be truth tellers, he knows that they're serious people and they're all telling him the same thing.”

#ResurrectionMorning

“At sunrise on the first day of a new week, something new happened. A whole new life, a whole new creation was opened up for us as Jesus got up and walked out of the tomb. They couldn't find his body because it wasn't there. Death itself, undone, overthrown. Whatever it is you're afraid of, whatever fears or anxieties you carry around that maybe motivate you to make some really bad decisions like Pharaoh or like the Israelites sometimes, whatever those things are, Jesus has faced it.”

#WeCrucifiedHim

“That's why all of us read those words in the passion narrative, let him be crucified. It's not just Peter that denies Christ. It's not just Judas or the crowds or the chief priests of the Jews or the Romans who reject and dishonor Christ or press a crown of thorns into his head. In our different ways, it is all of us too. It's me. It's you. We turn on him, and he carries a cross for all of our sins.”

#CompassionOfChrist

“But what does he do first? First, he comes to his people whom he loves, who are hurting, and first he weeps with them, joins them in the dark. I think that is so so important. You know, are a lot of philosophies and religions out there that believe in God or a God or higher power or something like that, but only Jesus does this. Only Jesus comes to his people in the midst of their brokenness and weeps with us. Only Jesus. And when that happens, in that weeping, we might call it weakness, the astonishing love and glory of God is revealed to us right there when Jesus wept.”

#LifeAintFair

“The disciples are perplexed. We don't know Jesus. What should we make about this? And Jesus understands that actually the reality is far darker than they think because it's not only bad people or people who we think deserve it that experience tragedy and pain and loss and heartbreak. Life, as my mom used to always say, life's not fair, and it's not been fair to this guy. Horribly evil things happen to otherwise faithful people.”

#JesusFindsTheLost

“Jesus marches into the darkness to find those who are lost. He crosses gender, racial, moral boundaries separate, exclude, and demean. He ventures into Samaria aware that he's not welcomed there by the Samaritans and that he will be contaminated by the unclean, mixed race people there. Jesus sees beyond our labels, our ancient hostilities, even beyond what religious teachers said was the truth.”

#NewCreationLife

“God wants to pour a entirely new life, his own holy spirit into us and make us new, new creatures, and only he can do that, and it does mean the death of the old in order to embrace the new. The great Christian writer CS Lewis wrote that God became man to turn creatures into sons. Not simply to produce better men of the old kind, but to produce a new kind of man. It's not like teaching a horse to jump better and better, but like turning a horse into a winged creature.”

#standingonthepromises

“Instead, he responds each time by quoting the scripture. It is written, man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Verse four, In response to Satan's muddying the waters and injecting confusion or attempting to, Jesus declares that the clear word of God, what he heard at his baptism and what he has read in the word in the bible, that is what he is standing on. He is standing on the promises.”

#BeStillAndWait

“we read here in Exodus 24 verse 12, the Lord said to Moses, come up to me on the mountain and wait there. Some translations say stay. One translation says just be there. Just be there. Just wait. That I may give you the tablets of stone with the law and the commandment which I have written. Come up here and wait. Just be. Just stay a while.”

#ThroneOfTheCross

“And on and on. And of course, we can never separate the kingdom of God that Jesus comes to proclaim from his cross. It is through the cross of Jesus Christ that he establishes his kingdom. Yeah. Of all the unusual ironic things, Jesus, his throne is the cross. It's the cross. He takes the shame and the and the the disaster of the cross and he turns it into the victory of God. But in so doing, Jesus establishes his kingdom among us.”

#JusticeAndMercyTogether

“``But with God, the God of the bible, stern justice and kind mercy are together, always together. Justice that upholds truth and the right order of things so that people can flourish is joined with kind mercy for sinners who fall short and repent. You see this again and again in different ways throughout the bible. John chapter one which we read at Christmas time, tells us that Jesus Christ came among us filled with grace and truth.”

#UnityInLove

“``Because when Christians are united in love, we become an icon of the living holy trinity, the father and the son forever united in love in the holy spirit's love. If you want the world to believe, if you want the world to see the living God in the life of the church and be drawn in, then unity is essential.”

#AbideWithJesus

“``But it means they wanna go to where Jesus is. Right? They wanna spend some time with Jesus. They wanna learn from the great teacher, the great rabbi. They wanna know what he has to bring them. And I think that question, Rabbi, where are you staying? Might be bigger than we realize. It might even be bigger than they realize. The word that's translated there as where are you staying to stay. It's a word that John's gospel uses frequently, and in most places it's translated as abide. Where are you abiding Jesus?”

#ClothedInChrist

“``In baptism, the promise that we're clothed with Christ means that when the father looks upon us, what does he see? Not our filthy rags, but he sees the splendor of Christ. And as he looks on us, we are united to Christ, we're in him. He says to each and every one of us, you're my child. And with you, I am delighted. I'm delighted with you. You're mine forever.”

#StewardYourGifts

“So do all the kings and rulers of the earth, even presidents and prime ministers and and leaders around the world today. Every one of us actually is going to give an account before this king of how we have lived and how we have stewarded the gifts god gave to us. There's a political as well as a personal edge to this gospel.”

#KingStoopsToServe

“There are lots of philosophies and religions in this world that understand there must be some kind of God, some kind of highest power that kind of sets everything else in order that we all depend upon but only the Christian gospel tells us that the Lord God Almighty, the King of all things, stooped low, really low, in order to come and be with us.”

#SteadfastInGod

“As James is encouraging the Christian believers to wait in this kind of way, with these kinds of habits and practices, he reminds them of the steadfastness of Job and of the other prophets in the Old Testament who waited patiently, even through times of suffering and adversity. And ultimately, he says, that kind of steadfastness is rooted in the character of God. That's what he says in verse 11. You've seen the steadfastness of Job and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful. It's because he's compassionate and merciful and good that I can rely on him. I can wait for him to fulfill his good purposes in me.”

#KingdomComingRepent

“``The kingdom is coming, what do you need to do then? To get ready, you need, he says, to repent. If you're going to experience God's blessed shalom, we have to stop rebelling against him. We have to let him actually rule over us and be our king and stop trying to be our own king or our own queen living as we see fit. We have to surrender to him, lay down our arms and allow him to reign and we do that as we submit to his word which he has spoken to us.”

#WakeUpToLight

“``There’s an urgency in our reading this morning. It’s for us to wake up. That the time is near to rid ourselves of darkness and put on the armor of light. And when we know Jesus Christ and live into his life and resurrection, we have the power to turn the world upside down. To radically change ourselves and the world by loving one another with kindness, patience, and understanding.”

#LetGoAndTrust

“``But here's the thing: God is a God, the living God can redeem even our darkest and lowest and most painful moments and bring unexpected good out of bad. God shames the cruel mockery of sinners by making the crucifixion of Jesus, this mock enthronement, an actual enthronement of the world's true king. It's this totally surprising miracle of God's grace that shows how God can work. What does God's kingship look like? It looks like this, what you see in Luke 23.”

#GodWorksThroughUs

“Our work is one of the ways that God’s will is done on earth as in heaven. Sometimes we tend to over-spiritualize things and we think, oh, that’s way up there or it’s all invisible, but God works through people—not just the work that we call religious work.”

#WorshipPriorities

“I believe there’s actually a much stronger, a much more beautiful, a much more solid hope that we actually can cling to to overcome death itself and to have a life that is abundantly welling up beyond the limits of our mortality in this world. I believe in the resurrection of Jesus. As I say every Sunday up here.”

#YearningForJesus

“In seminary, my Old Testament professor used to say, we should never confuse familiarity with understanding. He talked about his wife. He also talked about the Bible. He said, you know, a lot of times we think we understand someone or something just because we're familiar with it and that ain't always so. Never confuse familiarity with understanding.”

#ClothedInChrist

“We sinners, we don't have any righteousness of our own to boast in or present before God. We receive Christ's righteousness as a gift. In Galatians 3, it talks about being clothed with Christ in our baptism when we believe in him. And so, this is a reminder of that.”

#UsedAndBlessed

“Fortunately, and I mean this with all of my heart, God chooses to use Jacob, to use and to bless messed up people. Let me hear an amen. And if you don't believe it, look in the mirror. When I look closely at the heroes of the faith from scripture, I'm scandalized, frankly. There were some rogues who are the patriarchs of our faith. Abraham was a bit of a coward, making his beautiful wife pretend to be a sister so that the rulers in Canaan would not kill him in order to get to her. King Saul, perverted the law and toyed with the occult. King David was an adulterer and a murderer. Paul was a religious fanatic who persecuted and killed Christians. Simon the Zealot was likely an assassin. Matthew was a pariah, a traitor and an enemy sympathizer as a tax collector for Rome. James and John had such terrible tempers, they were nicknamed the Sons of Thunder. I could go on and on, but you get the picture. God somehow loves and inexplicably uses broken, sinful people. And let's be honest, guys, we're all a hot mess. God accepts us as we are. But praise be to God, he doesn't leave us like he found us.”

#CallToSacrificialFaith

“I wonder sometimes I wonder if maybe we should put signs like that out in front of our churches that say something along those same lines, like, come with us and die to yourself. Come join us and carry your cross. Come follow Christ. It will mean suffering and tribulation, even enemies and eternal glory in case of success.”

#FaithIsGrowth

“First of all, it shows that faith is not simply all or nothing. It's either on or it's off. It's there or it's not. Faith is something that can grow. It can increase and it can decrease. It can move and expand. Faith is more like that. And that does mean if your faith isn't as strong as it used to be, that doesn't mean you've lost it altogether, but it means you need to be renewed. And you can be renewed. Your faith can grow stronger again.”

#IdolatrySilencesGod

“The law of God was designed to show them how to treat one another with fairness, how to treat one another with respect. In other words, it was designed to guide people by the hand towards the love of neighbor and love of God. But these people, they don't care about any of that because their hearts are so full of the love of money they don't have time or attention for anything else or anyone else.”

#gracechangesanyone

“Like the shepherd or the woman in these parables, God searches high and low and turns over every stone looking for what is lost, looking for the ones who are lost. Like the shepherd who leaves the 99 to go searching for the one. God even takes risks to search for even one sinner who's lost. I've always wondered about that. I don't know if it makes a lot of good business sense for a first century shepherd to leave 99 sheep and go looking for one. Maybe he's got really good sheep, dogs or hired hands. I don't know. But I think the point for us is that in his extravagant, we might even say crazy love for us, our Lord goes to any length, even to a cross to bring the lost ones back home.”

#JesusReignsFreedom

“And it didn't happen in spite of what the Bible teaches. It happened because of what the Bible teaches. It happened because the gospel of Jesus changed people, changed hearts, changed families, changed communities, and even whole societies because it's true. Because the gospel brings the real power of God to really set people free.”

#humilityforgrowth

“While ancient pagan societies celebrated and valued strength and might and dominance over others, the early Christians were kind of weird because they said, actually humility is a holy virtue that God wants to cultivate in our lives. Humility is essential for our growth as Christians. It's essential for our effectiveness in mission to the world. And it's even essential for our very salvation.”