OOPS, I DID IT AGAIN PART 4

This weekend was part 4 of our series on breaking bad habits. This weeks title:

AN OUNCE OF HUMILITY GOES A LONG WAY.

Here's an introductory summary of what we talked about:

By now, if you’ve been in this series, you should be well aware that sometimes you make mistakes... and sometimes, some of them are habitual. The pattern we find ourselves stuck in is usually... though we don’t like it.... called an addiction.

Truth is, we all have addictions. Some of us are addicted to procrastination. For others it might be pessimism or anger or gossip or lust or porn or food or hatred or judgementalism or drugs or video games or money or myspace or __________. But no matter what our addiction we know at least 3 things about it:

1. They are habits that we recognize as unwanted, but are hard to change.

2. They do not change until we humbly come to grips with the truth that they are a controlling problem and that we are totally done with continuing in them.

3. They not only hurt us, but they hurt others too.

... that last one is a doozy. We like to believe that our problems are just that... OURS and they don’t affect others. Problem is... it’s not true. Our decisions- both good and bad- impact those around us.... Today we’re going to examine how and what we should do about those downstream from our poor choices.

THESE THOUGHTS RUN PARALLEL TO STEPS 7 AND 8 OF THE 12 STEPS TO RECOVERY:

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.


FROM THERE, WE LOOK AT THE STORY OF ZACCHAEUS IN LUKE 19:1-10. WE GAVE SOME BACKGROUND INTO WHY THE ROLE OF CHIEF TAX COLLECTOR WAS SO HATED AND HOW IT IS THAT ZACCHAEUS GOT TO BE SO WEALTHY, THEN WE MADE THESE OBSERVATIONS ABOUT ZACCHEUS:

• He wants to be with Jesus
• He intentionally makes a move towards Jesus.
• He responds immediately to Jesus’ words.
• Neither his response, nor the response of Jesus is popular with the society around them.

WE TALKED ABOUT HOW THESE ARE ALSO TRUE OF US WHEN WE WANT TO SEE GOD BRING ABOUT REAL CHANGE IN US. WE ALSO NOTICED THAT ZACCHAEUS' RESPONSE TO JESUS HAD SOME BACKGROUND TO IT. HE HAD OBVIOUSLY BEEN THINKING ABOUT HIS OWN LIFE BEFORE MEETING JESUS, THUS THE REPENTANCE. THEREFORE, WE TOO NEED TO:

1. Examine myself first. (matt 7:1-5)
   
2. Humbly confess my own failures. (James 4:6-10)

(we then gave students a time to examine themselves and confess some sins on cards during a 4 song worship set and place them in baskets up front under a cross. Lots of students did this. It was in part, a response to this song we also played that morning by a secular band that we made some observations about their lyrics and this song from)



AFTER WORSHIP, WE MADE THESE TWO OBSERVATIONS:

When I become aware of my own sin I need to:

• Seek to fix relationships I've wounded with my own sin. Here we noted that Zacchaeus does what is physically necessary to reflect his inner spiritual change. (Rom 12:16-18, Matt 5:23-24)
  

When someone who is aware of their own sin, seeks forgiveness from me:

• Forgive those who have hurt me. Here we noted that Jesus responded to Zacchaeus by giving what is spiritually necessary in response to his physical life change. (Matt 6:14-15)