Indwelling

In the charred landscapes left behind by the Los Angeles wildfires, a persistent sign of life has transfixed locals: trees. On lots where houses have been reduced to piles of rubble and cars to mangled metal husks, trees rise. These surviving oaks, pines and orange trees are often the only remaining landmarks in a neighborhood, bittersweet reminders of a time before so much tragedy.

The trees’ survival was a curiosity to many. Shouldn’t they have burned alongside homes?

The trees survived because they are filled with water: The roots draw moisture from soil and transport it through branches to its leaves. When the fires erupted in January, trees in Los Angeles had been especially nourished after two previous rainy winters. All that water makes burning a living tree akin to trying to start a campfire with wet logs.

Possible Preaching Angles:

The trees’ survival in the aftermath of wildfire is a living parable of biblical truths: resilience through adversity, the life-giving power of being rooted and nourished, and the hope that endures even when all else is lost. 1) Final Judgment; Judgment Day – Only believers will be able to stand in the day of judgment because we have the indwelling Christ and his righteousness; 2) Endurance; Hope; Perseverance - The Bible often uses the imagery of trees enduring through drought to represent steadfastness and life in the midst of hardship (Psa. 1:2-3; Jer. 17:7-8).

Models who look like Jesus are in high demand in Utah. That’s because for a growing number of people in the state, a picture isn’t complete without Him. They are hiring Jesus look-alikes for family portraits and wedding announcements. Models are showing up to walk with a newly engaged couple through a field, play with young children, and cram in with the family for the annual Christmas card. Some charge between $100 to $200 an hour to pose with children, families, and couples at various locations.

For the sought-after models, the job can be freighted with meaning and responsibility. Lookalikes find that people expect them to embody Jesus in more ways than the hair and beard. Jai Knighton has posed as Jesus a number of times. He says, “portraying Jesus can be tricky.” One person who hired him wanted him to be “the most Christlike person you can be, or people will be able to tell through the photos that it’s not real.” Others were more relaxed, asking him to smile and enjoy himself.

Knighton said he tried to portray Jesus in a way that’s similar to how he is depicted in “The Chosen.” Knighton said, “Stoic Jesus is intimidating. A Jesus who smiles and pats you on the back is much more relatable.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Christians should keep in mind that we represent Christ to those around us. What image of Jesus are you presenting?

Here's the most famous place you've never heard of. It's St. Peter's Church Hall in Liverpool, England. It looks like a typical church gym except for the heavily-timbered cathedral ceiling and missing basketball hoops.

St. Peter's was having a church social with a local music group performing. During a break in the music, Paul, a 15-year-old guest, played songs on the guitar and piano impressing the teen band leader, John. A few weeks later, John Lennon invited Paul McCartney to join the Quarrymen, later known as The Beatles. That first meeting was July 6, 1957 - a historic place and moment in music but nobody knew it.

The Liverpool Museum reflected, "That meeting didn't just change the lives of John and Paul, it was the spark that lit the creative (fuse) on a cultural revolution that would reverberate around the world."

St. Peter's Church Hall is a temple where two music greats met. The stage from the hall is almost an "altar" since it was moved to a museum in Liverpool.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Altar; Worship - Christians also worship at an altar, but it is exclusive to New Testament believers (Heb. 13:10); 2) Temple - The New Testament names three places as the Temple of the living God on earth: 1) The physical body of Christ (Jn. 2:19; Matt. 26:61; Mark 14:58); 2) The church, the body of Christ (1 Cor. 3:16-17); 3) The body of the individual believer (1 Cor. 6:19).

Do you ever wonder why house cats can climb up a tree, but they don't know how to get down the tree? Animal expert and autism advocate Temple Grandin has a theory. She claims, that at some point, mother cats teach kittens how to descend from a tree—just as they teach their young a great many other things that were once thought to be innate cat behavior, including how to hunt, bury their waste, deal with live prey, approach an unknown person or dog, and so forth.

Cats that get stuck in trees, the theory goes, are cats that were taken from their mothers before the lesson about getting out of trees could be taught. That is just a theory, but we do know from scientific studies that a great deal of animal behavior is learned behavior. It's not just instinctual. Scientific studies have been done on all kinds of animals—tigers, wolves, cheetahs, birds, lizards, fish, and even ants— and those studies show that animals learn how to be a particular kind of animal by watching, observing, and imitating their mothers, fathers, or other members of their animal group. They learn by imitation.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the same way, we learn how to follow Jesus by watching and imitating other followers of Jesus.

Sam Allberry writes in an article for the Gospel Coalition:

A friend of mine has a little motto thing on the wall of her office, one of these little sayings that someone has printed out prettily and put a frame around. And it says this: “Those who hear not the music, think the dancer is mad.”

It’s true. If you watch a music video and you take away the volume, it looks ridiculous. There’s a lot of strutting. A lot of pouting. You put the sound back on and it does begin to make a bit of sense.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Jesus is our music, but it is unheard by the world. The world sees our worship, our service, our sanctified lives, our joy, but to them our behavior is “mad.”

Some dads like to build soap box derby cars with their sons. But Sterling Backus and his eleven-year-old son Xander had something more ambitious in mind: a full-scale Lamborghini Aventador.

Xander says he got the idea from driving the car in an Xbox racing game. Backus is a physicist with extensive experience using 3-D printers. He is building the Italian supercar with 3D-printed parts made from specs from a replica toy. Backus said, “These were all individually printed and then glued together.” The Backus clan has been at it for nearly two years, with Xander’s sisters helping to pitch in. The process includes not only printing the pieces, but wrapping them in carbon fiber and coating them with epoxy.

An Aventador SVJ typically costs about $600,000. Their homegrown replica is likely to top out at $20,000, less than the cost of a brand-new full-size sedan. All it will need is a VIN to be street legal.

Backus expects to turn heads at the school drop-off line. But his real motivation is not jealousy, but inspiration--to spark more kids’ interest in math, science, and engineering. Xander said, “You may hate math or … science … and you may not like art, but it all comes together with this one project.”

Potential Preaching Angles: Just as Jesus participated with the Father during the holy act of creation, so we have a chance to participate with God in his activity throughout the world.

In season one, episode eight of the Netflix series, The Crown, a drama following the life of Queen Elizabeth II, the Queen travels to Ceylon on a diplomatic tour. She appoints her sister, Princess Margaret, to be her representative for minor royal engagements. Princess Margaret, who has long been unhappy with her sister's lack of flair as a queen, takes the opportunity to "bring color and personality to the Monarchy." She speaks her own mind, jokes with the press, and belittles other dignitaries. In this scene, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, has come to rebuke the Princess, and relieve her of her duties as a representative. He explains to her that she was not appointed to represent herself.

Here's a condensed conversation from the scene:

Prime Minister Churchill: Your Royal Highness, when you appear in public, performing official duties, you are not you.

Princess Margaret: Of course I'm me.

Prime Minister Churchill: The Crown. That's what they've come to see, not you.

Possible Preaching Angles: In the same way, as a Christ-follower, I do not go out into the world to express my personal views, opinions and agendas; I am Christ's ambassador. Christ. That's who the world has come to see. Not me.

Start 41:12 End 41:41, opens with the Prime Minister speaking to Princess Margaret

To explain how Christ in us now labors to make us more human, not less, pastor/author Rankin Wilbourne used the following illustration:

Consider two superheroes, Batman and Spider-Man. Batman is a rich and strong man with lots of cool gadgets. His superpowers stem from his external possessions. Spider-Man has a few accessories as well, but he is a superhero because of the spider powers he obtained when he was bitten by a radioactive spider. His nature has been changed. Now he has a new power accessible to him, within him.

Christ in you makes you more like Spider-Man than Batman. Something alien to you, from outside of you, has entered into you and changed your nature. You now have power that you did not have before. The trouble with this analogy is that Spider-Man became something more than human, while we instead are being restored to our full humanity. We are becoming more like Christ.

The President of the U.S. has the power to push text messages to just about every smartphone in America, anytime he deems it necessary. Who knew? The Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) system was born of President Bush's frustration with the Federal Emergency Management Agency's response during Hurricane Katrina, and has morphed since. If you've ever received one of these alerts, it was probably about a missing child Amber alert or a severe weather warning.

But buried in the documents describing its function is this fact: The President of the United States can mass-message the entire phone-carrying nation at the same time whenever he deems it necessary. Oddly enough, if you do get a presidential emergency alert and you're on the phone, it won't show up until after you've finished your conversation. I guess the apocalypse can wait?

Preaching Angle: This illustrates the profound truth that God is in instantaneous and personal contact with every believer, at any time, under any circumstances, by his Spirit.

There are heads growing on Tony Dighera's farm, and they're not made of lettuce. They're called "pumpkinsteins," and they look a lot like the Frankenstein creature that actor Boris Karloff made famous more than 80 years ago.

"It's so new, and it's so unique that demand has been off the charts," Dighera said. "A lot of people thought I was nuts. When I first started doing this I think every farmer in the world looked at me like I was a complete lunatic."

Dighera carefully builds a strong mold that encases the pumpkin yet permits air to reach the growing gourd inside. The pumpkin variety has to be just right. They can't be too big or they'll burst from the molds. Too small and the pumpkins won't fill the molds. Dighera still recalls the first time they squeezed that pumpkin head into the mold and it worked. Out came a re-formed (or should we say "de-formed") pumpkin that looked like Frankenstein's head.

Dighera doesn't know whether he has a thriving pumpkinstein until he removes the nuts and bolts from the mold and successfully removes the pumpkin. But don't expect pumpkinsteins to boot jack-o'-lanterns off the porch completely. They're not cheap. It costs 100 bucks to squeeze those pumpkins into a mold and reshape them into a monster.

Possible Preach Angles: Conformity; Renewing the Mind; Worldliness—What is molding your life? Don't let the world press you into its mold. The world constantly pressures the believer to conform to its image.

The title of Christian is a reproach to us if we turn our selves away from him after whom we are named. The name of Jesus is not to be to us like Allah of the Mohammedans or like a talisman or an amulet worn on the arm as an external badge in the symbol of a profession thought to preserve one from evil by some mysterious and unintelligible potency. Instead we should allow the name of Jesus to be engraved deeply on the heart, written there by the finger of God himself in everlasting characters. It is our sure and undoubted title to present peace and future glory.

I know that I have to move from speaking about Jesus to letting him speak within me, from thinking about Jesus to letting him think within me, from acting for and with Jesus to letting him act through me. I know the only way for me to see the world is to see it through his eyes.

Emmanuel, God with us in our nature, in our sorrow, in our lifework, in our punishment, in our grave, and now with us, or rather we with Him, in resurrection, ascension, triumph, and Second Advent splendor.

Good will toward all men is a result of the invasion of the super-natural! A state of good intention with "heartiness and cheerful consent" toward all mankind, if Webster is correct. A state of heart so extraordinary as to be unheard of, except by those who have been hurled out into the place of joyful, utter despair with themselves where they are finally allowing Jesus Christ to be Himself in them!

Some time ago I was biking in Michigan and met another biker who, like myself, was a professor of theology. In the course of our conversation by the side of the road he said something I will never forget: "Bob, all I really want in life is for the Word fo God to take up residence inside of me and form me into Christ-likeness." I think this statement hit me hard because my seminary training in the Bible was never that personal. We were always asking "What does it say?" and seldom if ever made the step into a deep personal application of "How can that truth take up residence in me?"

When I am gone, say nothing about Dr. Carey, speak about Dr. Carey's Savior.

When He comesAt midnight,He does notAsk a tree;A creche,A starA candle—Only me.

Lord, shine in me and so be in me that all with whom I come in contact may know thy presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me but only Jesus.

My four-year-old granddaughter, Amanda, went to the doctor's office with a fever. The doctor looked in her ears and said, "Who's in there? Donald Duck?"

She said, "No." He looked in her nose and said, "Who's in there? Mickey Mouse?"

Again she said, "No." He put his stethoscope on her heart and said, "Who's in there? Barney?"

Amanda replied, "No, Jesus is in my heart. Barney is on my underwear."

To have God do his own work through us, even once, is better than a lifetime of human striving.