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Listen to Sunday’s message by Pastor Phil Olsen

God has designed us for more. However, it is possible to live our lives with less and never know there is more to be had. God designed us for more, but it is of critical importance that we understand in our pursuit for more we can end up with the mess of less, if in our quest for more we pursue the wrong things. This misguided pursuit was the reason for the fall.

We see in Genesis 3 Adam and Eve go after the more and get the mess of less because they listened to the serpent. We fight this same serpent today, and his goal is to misguide our desires. The first thing he always wants to convince us of is that we are missing out. Despite all that God has given us to enjoy in this life within His law, we become easily convinced its not enough, and that we’re missing out. Understand this: The pursuit of more begins with the understanding of something greater and mess of less begins with a complaint of not enough.

When you listen to what the enemy says long enough you’ll begin believe him. You’ll believe him when he says you’re missing out and from missing out we begin to believe that God is holding out. We think that if God was really loving then we wouldn’t be where we are or experiencing whatever pain we are. Its almost as if we blame God for the fall. If we’re honest, what we’re mad about is that God hasn’t saved us from ourselves. He made us powerful enough to screw up our lives and we followed suit. Yet in His mercy, He is still passionate to give us more. All we need to do is release our fear of less, that has only driven us to complain and covet.

From missing out, we begin to believe God’s holding out, and from holding out we move into checking out- checking out what we can’t have. What is Eve doing sitting at this tree staring at it when she has an ENTIRE WORLD to look at!?! The problem with checking out is it eliminates all other views in our life and destroys our vision for what God has for us - everything that is good in our life becomes corroded.

In our world we’ve made good evil and evil good, just as Isaiah says. We think what God wants for us is boring and what the world offers us is exciting. When we look at the tree of good and evil what does that represent? A simple way of phrasing it would be the tree of success and failure. If we look at what Adam and Eve had accomplished thus far we would see that everything had succeeded. In other words God had given them success all He was withholding was failure! God doesn’t want us to experience failure! Yet all the while we’re checking out we’re simply pining for failure! And if we continue checking out eventually we’ll take the bait and we’ll get taken out by our failure.

Instantly the more that God intends for us becomes the mess of less. Scripture says Adam and Eve realized they were naked and made coverings for themselves whereas before it says they were naked and felt no shame. They went from utter confidence in full exposure to utter fear and total shamefulness. Where there was once freedom to roam the garden they were holed up, hidden in a corner. Peace was replaced with anxiety, love was replaced with fear, the beauty of relationship was replaced by broken relationships, the more was replaced by the mess of less.

More by its very definition is something you don’t have, so in order to get it you must look to somebody. The question is, who? How you answer that will determine whether you get the more or the mess of less.

Listen to Sunday’s message by Pastor Phil Olsen

This week we heard from our own Pastor Phil, whose one prayer for the church is Father, make us impactful. How much does God desire His church to make impact? We can look at the behavior of Jesus during His ministry to get a sense of that. On one hand Jesus was tender and caring, on the the other he’s aggressive and angry. One instance He’s forgiving a woman caught sleeping with a married man, letting her off, and in another He’s cursing the religious leaders. Is Jesus schizophrenic? Why is this?

God made a covenant with the nation of Israel through Abraham to bless them so that they would be a blessing to the world, and that His name would be praised because of them. But, instead the Israelites were disobedient and were not faithful to God and therefore God’s name was tarnished on the earth and blasphemed among the other nations. Israel intended for blessing, yet produced blasphemy. This is what Jesus’ anger was directed at. People who knew the truth and were supposed to reveal God were making it about themselves and keeping people from knowing God! People designed for impact squandering the truth in selfishness. For this reason Jesus said “Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.”

Are we a conduit of His grace as He designed us to be or a cause for people to reject Him like the Pharisees were? The same plans God had for Israel, He has for the Church. He has given us control of the course of history. We have been given the authority and power to change the world. The Church is His only plan. We are the hope of the world. He has created us for impact. We may think God is crazy…that He needs another plan, but thats for us to determine. He’s already chosen us, not to be the Savior - that’s Jesus - but to be the conduits of the power and message of the Savior.

The church needs to exist for more than itself, for more than its own transformation, not squandering the truth in selfishness like the Pharisees that Jesus cursed. It was created to have cultural and world impact. What are we here for if all we’re gonna do is talk about how awful the world is and how its going to hell, yet do nothing about it when we have the one real Answer, the one true Hope. To not share the truth; to not be a part of this incredible plan would be the biggest blunder, the greatest error.

We are God’s love letter to the world. Paul says is like this: “You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” So what makes the existence of mere religion so distasteful for to our God? Because it is truth written on stone instead of hearts, and that coldness kills. But the warmth of God’s letter written on our hearts gives life.

If we are to be a church of impact, then we have to be people who display God’s grace written in our hearts in our daily activities, bringing life to those around us.

Listen to Sunday’s message.

Sunday we heard from Ed Young, Pastor of Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas.

Acts 20:7-9 is the first instance of someone sleeping in church!  Sleep is funny, because you don’t know you’re asleep until we wake up.  The truth is a lot of us are sleeping in church.  We may not be asleep physically, but maybe we’re asleep spiritually.

Ephesians 5:14 tells us to wake up! If we’re sleeping then we can’t understand the will of God and therefore we can’t understand life and we end up sleepwalking through life, unaware of what God wants to do in our life.  If we’re sleepwalking through life, we’re gonna end up walking into a cesspool of sin, even if we’re in church and hanging out with the right people.

Some are asleep to knowing Christ.  They may be on a performance or religion track trying to earn their way into heaven.  The problem is we will always fall short, and scripture makes that clear.  The good news is Jesus has already done all the work!  Our admission into heaven and a relationship with God has been paid by Jesus’ death on the cross.  Are we on the do track or the done track?

Some are asleep to growing.  Satan loves to sing lullabies to Christians.  He wants us to be comfortable, to stay complacent and never experience all the great things God has for us.  He also knows that a Christian fully alive  and growing is a threat to him! So he sings:

“Rockabye believer in the tree top, snoozing will cause you’re growth to stop. Ignore the alarm and stay in bed, you’ll never reach your potential you sleepy head.”

They may be a believer and thats about it.  Wake up! God has an amazing plan for each and every one of our lives that would blow our minds, but we’ll miss it if we’re asleep!  Wake up and start growing by reading God’s word, obeying, and serving in your local church.

Some of us are asleep to sowing. Scripture says we reap what we sow and if we’re sleeping we’re not gonna do much reaping!  We have time to leverage and do great things in God’s Kingdom, but the only time we’re guaranteed is now.  We are to sow all we have according to the law of the harvest that scripture lays out.  The law of the harvest is we are to sow the first and God will bless the rest.  We give the first day of our week to church and God will bless the rest, we give the first 10% of our finances and God will bless the rest. So many are asleep just to attending church and then they wonder why are lives are chaos!?!  The weekend getaway and gonna fix it, the hunting/fishing trip aint gonna fix it, God has given you a place to meet with and hear from Him through His local church.  All of us one day will stand before God and when He asks you what you did with His church some of you will say you slept through it!  We’re to sow our time and talent by serving in your local church. God has given us our gifts to glorify Him and impact the lives of others for Jesus.  We are to sow our money by tithing.  Many choose to sleep to tithing, and when we choose that we place our finances under curse.  If we sow the first God will bless the rest.  Its our choice! We need to wake up!

Listen to Sunday’s message from Pastor Furtick.

Sunday we heard from Pastor Steven Furtick of Elevation Church in Charlotte, NC. His prayer for the Church is Lord, make us audacious. Elevation Church was started on the faith of 19 people moving to Charlotte. In just a little over 2 years God has grown it to over 3,500 in weekly attendance! Pastor Furtick believes one of the reasons God has blessed them is because of their audacity. They know it isn’t because of wisdom, experience, or money! They simply were foolish enough to believe that anything is possible with God!

1 Samuel 14:1-7 highlights an audacious moment in scripture when Jonathan, son of the king of Israel, and his armor bearer decided to take on the entire Philistine army. With one sword between the two of them, they saw God move mightily on their behalf as a result of their audacity. The first thing we see in this scripture is that it was a new day, or a new time. Jonathan had been a failure in his past, but we see that doesn’t hold him back, he knows its a new day and he moves out in faith. We believe it’s a new day for the church and it’s time for us to forget our past and move forward in unity into the things God has for us.

Jonathan proceeds to deliver a motivational speech to his armor bearer in which he makes the statement “Nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few.” What a great promise! It’s so true, however he precedes this statement with one not so motivating in nature. “Perhaps the Lord will act in our behalf.” You have to wonder what he was doing talking about perhaps in that situation. However in life we all face a perhaps. In fact, many churches are facing a perhaps in their circumstances, including Cross Connection. In light of God’s promise we all have to face a perhaps, but the truth is:

God’s promise is bigger than our perhaps!

This is the truth that enables us to pursue God with bold faith. God’s sovereignty enables our audacity. God is looking to bless audacity. The question is: Will we believe that His promise is bigger than our perhaps and move out into the things He is calling us to do with audacious faith? YES!

Over 1000 churches.  One prayer.  The Church stands together like never before. From every continent and every corner, together lifting up the name of the one true God, Jesus Christ.  What would you pray if God would answer one prayer for the Church at large?

During this series we will hear pastors from all over answer this question.  We see the unprecedented unity of the Church during the One Prayer series as an opportunity to make lasting impact on the globe.

Joining together and using technology to advance the gospel like never before, this is truly an exciting time in the history of the Church!  We have the chance in these coming weeks to both make history and change the future. Cross Connection Church is proud to be a part of One Prayer.

Listen to Sunday’s message by Pastor Craig Groschel of LifeChurch.tv

There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to one hope when you were called— one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. -Ephesians 4:4-6

It’s no secret that the Church has not been unified in the recent past.  It seems we’ve spent the last couple hundred years splitting and dividing over minute issues such as music, seats vs. pews etc… That’s never what God desired.  In fact Jesus prayed for all of us before He went to the cross for us that we would be one.

20“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: 23I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. -John 17:19-23

WOW!!  We’ve missed it.  We’re not doing a good job.  You know, we’re always asking Jesus to answer our prayers…what if we became the answer to His prayer?  What would it take to unify believers? What would it take to unify the church?  Scripture gives us 3 things:

1. One Enemy- Other churches are not the enemy.  We’re not in competition against each other.  We’re at war with our common enemy, Satan.  He wants to bring division in the church.  We need to unite in our fight against him by becoming one.

2. One heart- Not one style or one philosophy.  Unity is NOT the same as uniformity. The strength of our unity is in our uniqueness. One heart for Jesus.

3. One purpose - Jesus gave us our purpose in Matthew 28:19.  He said “go make disciples of all nations…”  A literal Greek translation of the word “church” is called out ones. We are the church, and the church does not exist for the us, we exist for the world.

Listen to Sunday’s message by Pastor Phil Olsen

This weekend we took communion. It was an interactive, very visual and more liturgical service than a normal weekend. It was a very powerful time and many walked away changed by the presence of God and a new understanding of what He has done for us.

Christianity is not a religion. Religions are man-made theologies on how we can get to God. Christianity understands that this (man getting to God) is not possible, and that therefore, God came to us. This is the gospel message.

We can’t impress God. We can’t prove ourselves to Him or worthy of His love or help. The truth is we can’t outweigh our bad with good. Just as if you got pulled over by a cop for running a stop sign. No amount of good driving and stops at stop signs negates or pays for what you did. We understand this, but somehow we don’t understand that we it comes to our sin. Bad must be paid for or forgiven. No one can do enough good to make their way to God. This is clearly spoken in Romans 3:10-20.

Bottom line we’re in trouble…and thats where God comes in. So our relationship with God begins not with our defense, but with our confession.

Here are some other scriptures we read as we walked through forgiveness and communion.

Isaiah 53:1-12 ; Psalm 103:10-12 ; 1 John 1:5-9

Listen to Sunday’s message by Pastor Phil Olsen

Fair is in the eye of the beholder. Is it fair when he gets the raise when you know you’ve worked as hard as them? Is it fair when you pay for others lack of discipline because they can’t show up to a meeting on time and the rest of your schedule is thrown off? Thats not fair. How about God dying for His people to pay for their mistakes and them still rejecting Him to His face. The guilty condemning and crucifying the innocent. Is that fair? Yet that God still continues to love and pursue those people…us. What do we do about that? God has turned fair on its head. How can we pay back God? How do we show Him gratitude? Jesus says in Matthew 10:8 “Freely you have received, freely give.” Give the life God gave you away. God has turned fair on its head. Apart from giving yourself away, we can’t experience the life God wants for us.

But the world is not fair. It’s been said, “no good deed goes unpunished.” It’s easier to be always out for your own in this world. God turned fair on its head. It won’t be easy and you will certainly run into some problems, but it’s the only way to live. God has given you everything you own, and He owns everything you don’t. Life may not seem fair, it will try to take all you have, but you have the ability to trust in the God that created life and turn fair on its head, by giving what you have been given away.

Life is not fair until you walk with the Almighty, because when you walk with God you realize what can be taken unfairly doesn’t even compare to what cannot be taken. Your money can be and will be taken from you unfairly, but the life that God gives you through His son Jesus, cannot be taken. “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” The most powerful stance in this life is not a clenched fist, but an open hand.

We have the change to turn fair on its head. We can give our life away. We can give our finances away. But won’t the world take advantage of us? Maybe. They did with Jesus. They crucified Him, but He had already given His life away and in the process saved the entire human race.

When you give you:

• Break control. What you trust, you will serve, and what you serve controls you. Give it away and you break control and change your trust.
• Point your heart. Giving shifts our perspective. If you want to know where your heart is, look at your checkbook. What Jesus says is true.
• Release impact. Break the fascination with fair, and discover the freedom of impact

Listen to Sunday’s message by Pastor Phil Olsen

Many times we think life is all about what you can get out of it…I mean what else is there right? God has much more for us than that, He’s created us for much more than that. He wants to move us from mere existence to purposeful existence. And when it comes to living out God’s will for our life, God wants to burn 4 words into our hearts: I CAN DO THAT.

God has given us the right and the ability through Christ to change from living life for what we can get out of it, to investing for what He can do through us. Yet many times we get mixed up and we bring our old way of extracting meaning and value from the people and things around us into our relationship with God and we simply expect Him to bless us in that same pursuit. (read that again) Is that you? Other times we treat our forgiveness as just a second chance and now we really have to get our life together because it’s for God now, but the reason Jesus had to come was because you couldn’t get your life together on your own. Only God can change you, and He will if you let Him.

Both those lifestyles (extracting meaning, and get our act togehter) are far from what God intends for us and prevent us from being able to live on purpose, from being able to live for Him. He wants to infuse us with His Holy Spirit, His life, His righteousness, and His heart. We have to move to a place of surrender to let Him begin that infusing process. Living God’s will is not a change of quantity, or the number of good deeds we do, but rather its a change of quality. It’s and overhaul, it’s a change of our source we live out of and the eyes we see through.

Similar to Oceans 11, God wants us to unite as a church where the impact the team makes is larger than any 1 person could make. He wants to use what He’s given you…as we’ve said over and over that past couple months, “what’s in your hand,” “what do you have in your house” etc… The difference between a dream and reality is working what you got. That simple. YOU CAN DO THAT.

When Jesus called His first deciples in Matthew 4, it wasn’t about their qualification, but it was about their willingness. Notice also that they left their nets immediately and followed Him. We live under the curse of “one day” in our culture. All of our dreams will happen “one day.” Yet nothing ever happens. You can’t control tomorrow, only today. So it starts today and it starts with what you got.

Drop yesterday (regrets), drop tomorrow (one day), drop pessimism (can’t be you), drop perfectionism (trying to get your life together), drop the pursuit of the world (living life for what you can get out of it), and start putting what you got into action.

Listen to \”Invite: Open Up Your Eyes\” by Hunter Wright

The Local Church is the hope of the world. God has called us, the church, to be on mission to change the world. Scripture says that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church, it will stand forever! What else can we pour our time, energies, and finances into that more worthy? Nothing. There is a world in desperate need of the love, hope and grace of God and it has been entrusted to the church to share that with the world. We have been charged to tell the world…to invite them in.

We studied the passage of the Good Samaritan. In this passage we see Jesus challenging a Jewish lawyer on many levels to “DO” the law, not to just know it. Jesus challenges us to more than just knowing about God, but being in a relationship with Him, not just attending church but being actively involved and inviting people to come with you.  The lawyer responds in pride and justifies himself, looking to find a definition of “neighbor” that fits his lifestyle. Many of us do the same thing.  We ask God what the clause is on us loving others, sharing our faith, and on inviting those we rub shoulders with. We excuse ourselves saying that we aren’t “gifted” in that area or that it’s not politically correct to talk about religion, or that faith is private (its personal, but it’s NEVER private, or its not real). However, Jesus stands against all those and tells us we are designed to love everyone around us. There is no coincidence in our relationships. We are perfectly positioned on purpose to be used by God. The problem with our excusing ourselves is we dismiss the Holy Spirit and disqualify ourselves from experiencing God and being used by Him.

Inviting people with us to church is not an option, its a command. Jesus says twice, “do this,” and “go and do.” We are to actively pursue others. This is how we were designed to live. It’s not about Cross Connection, it’s about God’s Kingdom. We are created to love God and love others. When we don’t do BOTH of those we are living outside of our created design! In other words, you won’t be satisfied with life! Jesus tells us here that loving God and loving others are inseparable.  How we respond to those around us and how we walk with God are directly connected. If you’re not concerned about the eternity of those around you, you may want to asses your relationship with God. Many of us think we love God, but we actually just love ourselves and don’t want to go to hell so we accept Christ. That’s not a relationship.

This passage shows a man who was mugged, beaten, and left for dead on the side of the road. The truth is there are people all around us that are half dead. The world/ the enemy, has mugged, beaten, and left them for dead. The question is, do we have the eyes to see them? We need to ask God to open up our eyes. Do we have the heart to help them and invite them. We need to repent, and ask God to help us.

The encouraging news is that it doesn’t depend on us. Jesus is the one who saves, and He is the one who gives us both the desire and the ability to love those around us. However, it does require us. God has limited Himself to working through us, on purpose. He desires for us to be a part of what He is doing! That is incredibly loving of Him, and when we experience what its like to be used by God we’ll never step away from being His hands and feet again. When you experience someone you invite to church having their lives and eternity changed, you’ll never excuse yourself or be deterred again!

We kicked off our series “Meet The Family” this week, utilizing a families of classic TV theme.  Here is the trailer we used for this week.

The truth is its not an innocent time period anymore.  The days of the Cleavers have passed.  The is more problems and more pressure, and the world seems to be falling apart.  So what does that mean for us?  Now more than ever the Chuch of Jesus Christ needs to step up and be what it was created to be.

Its time each of us to truly discover our calling and begin to live it out.  Its a risk to do this.  You have to step out of living the life you know and that will create turmoil and opposition in your life, but if you avoid the risk you avoid the impact. It’s possible to fake it and just go through the motions just like in the video, but if  you go through the motions, you’ll come out just as dirty - nothing will change.  If we get serious, God will get serious and we will see Him move on our behalf.

God is clear in His word that He is no respecter of persons.  In other words, your prayers and your life have just the same opportunity for impact as anyone else! The only difference that lies between you and Billy Graham is the amount of commitment you have to God and His kingdom.  So how do we achieve impact?  How do we see God’s will done in our midst?  Prayer.

How do we pray in a way that moves the heart of God.  We need a change of perspective. Everyone who ever reaches beyond the natural and experiences the supernatural in their life has a change of perspective.  A change from praying for their desires to praying for God’s will.  The perspective shift begins with a realization that His ways and His thoughts are higher than yours and that His plans make your greatest plans look like a pipe dream!  We have to break from our stinkin’ thinkin’ and bow to His plan.  If you want the supernatural you have to drop the natural.

The degree of change of your perspective is the degree of impact your life will make.

Besides a change in perspective we need a faith infusion. Many people believe God can do anything, but few believe He will do anything.  If you don’t have that level of faith and confidence in your prayers, then you ares just going through the motions.  God is interested in you.  God is listening to you…are you asking?

We also need boldness.  Boldness will bring perseverance and and perseverance will bring things that one simple ask won’t.  Why?  Because God wants you to journey with Him in the process. He wants to get ahold of your heart, and He wants to know how bad do you want His will?  Will you join Him in the battle?

The final thing is we need to risk selflessness by praying according to His will.  This means praying according to His character - what is good and what is right.  It also means praying honestly, probing the true desires of your heart for His will.