Posts tagged pete wilson

I thank God for Pete Wilson

Feb01
2011 12 Comments Written by Jason

I almost didn’t write this post because I thought people would immediately dismiss it as “sucking up.” Isn’t it sad that the biggest thought in my head after the feeling I needed to write this be that people would dismiss praise as my having an ulterior motive for giving it?

As you can see, I decided to post it anyway.  If someone wants to dismiss it, I really don’t care.

We attend Cross Point Church in Nashville.  It’s a very fast growing church and much larger than churches our family attended in the past.   Ordinarily, we wouldn’t have gone within a mile of a church that size because READ MORE »

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2010 in review: Top 5 Pete Wilson Sermons

Dec26
2010 4 Comments Written by Jason

We’re blessed to attend a church with a fantastic lead/teaching/hairstyle expert pastor in Pete Wilson.  (Hair pictured at right.)   Pete’s sincerity, honesty and authenticity is what caught our attention when we were ready to say we’d had enough of churches.  Turns out the guy was a pretty good communicator of the truth of the Gospel as well.  (Also wrote a pretty cool book.)

I joked toward the end of last year that I hadn’t heard a bad sermon from Pete to that point.  That record isn’t intact any longer (ha ha) but Pete is simply the best pastor I’ve sat under for any significant length of time.  So I wanted to share a bit of the Wilsony goodness we get almost weekly at Cross Point.

I hadn’t intended to mention only sermons from three of the year’s series but it just turned out that way.  It was honestly very hard for me to cut the list down to five but I thought ten sermons at once might be a little much for all of us. :)

So without further ado, here are the Top 5 Pete Wilson Sermons for 2010:

5. THIS IS OUR GOD – GOD IS GOOD

Two of the most important questions you will ever ask are: 1.  What do I think about God? and 2. What do you think God thinks about you?  If your answers end up in line with the truth of the Scriptures, it can change your life.

4. EMPTY PROMISES – ADDICTED TO APPROVAL

If you’re someone who’s struggled with a life of mediocrity, then you need to hear this.  I’ve struggled with it and Pete gave some good advice in this sermon.  Plus, the graphics on the backdrop look like they came from the same folks who did the graphics for VH1′s “Behind The Music.”

3. SHATTERED DREAMS – WAITING ON GOD

One of the ways that God reattaches our hope to Him is through crisis.  As someone who has known a lot of crises over the last decade, I could relate to what Pete shared in this sermon.

2. EMPTY PROMISES – THE SEDUCTION OF ACHIEVEMENT

We all have a longing in our hearts to do something more…to achieve something…to leave a lasting impact.   Pete hit me hard with this lesson because this is by far one of my biggest struggles.

1. THIS IS OUR GOD – GOD IS FAITHFUL

When Pete was thinking about this series, he asked people to comment on his blog about what one word came to mind when they thought about God.   The first word that came to my mind was “faithfulness.”  So I posted it.  Pete worked it in.

The irony is that I didn’t get to hear this sermon live because I wasn’t at church that Sunday.  This was in the midst of my season of my faith hanging on my a thin strand and just feeling like I couldn’t trust God any longer.  Like He had abandoned me.  I had several people message me to get my butt to church for the 6pm service to hear this and I didn’t go.  I listened to it when it came online because my wife and friend AJ kept after me to listen to it.

Prepare to be blown away.  In the midst of my anger at God and feeling of not wanting to be around Him, this shook me.

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Is God really enough for you?

Sep28
2010 Leave a Comment Written by Jason

There’s a reason that my pastor Pete Wilson is considered one of the guys on top of the Christian leadership wave that will move us into the next thirty plus years.  It’s because in his simple, humble way Pete has the ability to deliver truth in his sermons that could stun a team of oxen in their tracks. (It’s ok…I can brag about him.  He doesn’t read this blog. :) )

There isn’t a Sunday where I don’t take away something from Pete’s sermon (click here to hear some of Pete’s sermons) and there’s been something he said months ago that has stuck in my head.  Pete said that even if God gave us nothing else we still owed Him everything.  He’s right, of course, if God gives me nothing He gave me everything when He had Christ die on the cross for the forgiveness of my sins.

However, the more I think about it, [more]the more I realize that I don’t completely rest in the place of saying that if I were to receive nothing else from God I would be content.  I pray, I strive to reach that place but at the end of the day there are a few things that always stick out as desires that if I never received them it would bother me.

As much as I want to have that “super Christian” faith and say that I’m content with only what I have I can’t do it.  (Well, I could do it, but I’d be lying.)  I want to be more than I am right now.  It’s not that I’m not grateful for what I have in my life because I realize the blessings I have been given but there’s a longing within me for much more.  I can’t reach the place of complete rest and satisfaction in where I am.

The knowledge of being in that place sometimes tempts me to really beat myself over the head with it.  When doors don’t open, when attempts to step out result in being hit by a bus, when I look at situations and realize it’s not the blessing I thought was arriving I begin to look within myself and wonder if the reason none of those things happened was because I wasn’t completely content in the things that I have in my life.

Of course, I know that’s not the case but that temptation to condemn myself is always there.  I’m sure I’m not alone in having to wrestle with that.

I look around the internet and I read many blogs.  I see the struggles their writers face.  And I wonder…

Can they say they’re fully satisfied with God if He never gives them the wife/husband they so clearly want so badly?

Can they say they’re fully satisfied with God if He never gives them the child they desperately want?

Can they say they’re fully satisfied with God if He never opens the door to the career field they think is the desire of their heart?

Can they say they’re fully satisfied with God if He never brings them back into full-time work in the foreign mission field?

There are so many things in the hearts of so many of His children that seem at times to be causing us to be less than completely content in what He’s doing in our lives…and putting us in a place where we can focus more on what’s not happening rather than what is happening.  We’re standing as best we can and we’re seeking God with all our hearts but there’s still that longing that causes feelings of dissatisfaction.  And so we pray for each other, we encourage each other and we try to live out Galatians 6:2 and bear each other’s burdens.

Maybe…someday…we can reach that point where we can truly say that if God doesn’t give us our hopes or dreams that we’re completely at peace with where He has us.

Are you really in a place where if God gave you nothing else you would have complete peace?

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