-A Few Thoughts from Yesterday at REVO-

We started out 2012 with a few new things at REVO.  We moved to a new location to ensure the room for future growth through multiple services, and we started the iMarriage rGroup at 6:00, which is a six week precursor to the launching of our second worship experience!  We also started a new teaching series called, "The Empty Chair."  I wanted to pass on some of the main points to challenge you and remind you of God's heart for The Empty Chair from Luke 15:1-10.

-Each chair symbolizes a person, and the empty chair stands for the person that is not here in church.  It stands for potential, a person disenfranchised with the church, Christianity, and religion.

-Jesus often hung out with people that wouldn't have been sociably acceptable company for the typical religious person.  Why?  Because Jesus has a heart for people that are far from him and don't know him.

-Jesus makes it clear that the passion and heart of the Father is towards the ones that are lost and far from Him, not the self-righteous, prideful, religious people.

-When Jesus makes the analogy of the lost sheep and the lost coin, it honors the lost, challenges the disciples, and ticks off the religious.

-What causes a party to break out in heaven?  When one person that doesn't know Jesus repents of their sin, turns towards God, and starts a relationship with Jesus.  Now, shouldn't the church promote, strive for, and celebrate the same thing?

The point of the message was that The Empty Chair is incredibly important to God, and that care and urgency must be matched by the Church and by followers of Jesus.  Here are the three ideas I wanted people to remember to support the point of the message:

1. God takes the initiative to go to great lengths to bring back to Himself those who are estranged from Him.
-I love the fact that God pursues us, and I'll never forget that I was once lost and empty and God sent Jesus out to rescue me.  That totally flips the ideology that God is some big religious bully waiting on you to mess up so he can laugh at you and expects you to come crawling back to Him after you fail.

2. Reclaiming such people should lead to joyous celebration.
-We celebrate when people's lives are changed!  We party at our baptism services!  We embrace the "party hard" mentality from this passage, and that's just the way we roll.  And honestly, if live change doesn't get you fired up, then you probably aren't going to like REVO.

3. The faithfulness of the majority never excuses us from ignoring anyone who still remains distant from God.
-Regardless of how many people gave their life to Jesus last year, regardless of how many people got baptized, regardless of the incredible stories of life change that we experienced, the mission is not done.  The job is not complete.  As long as their are empty chairs in this city, we're still going to be relentless about turning our time, energy, and resources to finding the lost sheep and the lost coin.

The first sermon of the new series in a new year in a new location mentioned the most important chair.  The thing that God is most passionate about and the idea that jumpstarts the party in heaven, is when the empty chair is no longer empty.