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Today is the first Sunday of a six week sermon series called, Blessing others. The genesis of this series was the Property Celebration that we had a week and a half ago. At that celebration I shared that the next focus for our congregation will be to bless the people who live near the property that the Presbytery purchased for us. At Chain of Lakes New Church we want to be a community of people who are passionate about blessing others. This is who we arewe want to be disciples who make an impact or bless the world. However we cant share what we dont know that we have. Its almost impossible for each of us to bless others unless weve experienced blessing. Paradoxically blessing others begins with an awareness of how we are blessed by God. In this series Im going to share six gifts or really blessings that God has given to us. Each Sunday Ill share the gift and then share some ways we can share this gift with others. Today were looking at the gift of Salvation. I want to encourage you to get out this brochure that is in the bulletin. I particularly want to encourage you to use this devotion this week. The Bible has one storylineits the story of Gods love for us as individuals and as a world. One way this love is shared in the Bible is through salvation. The Bible begins in Genesis with a vision of salvation and it ends in Revelation with a vision of salvation. You have the opportunity to read that this week. I strongly urge you to use the devotion. You also have a place to take notes and a place for prayer requests. What is salvation? One way to think of salvation is deliverance. When God delivers an individual or a group of people from a terrible or difficult situation God saves that individual or group. This deliverance can happen during our lifetime and it can happen when we die. Salvation or deliverance is not constricted by time. This deliverance is a gift; it originates with God, and it is powerful.

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The Bible is full of stories of deliverance or salvation. One is the story of the exodus in the Old Testament. Exodus is the second book of the Bible. Remember at the start of Exodus there were a large number of Israelites in Egypt. How were the Israelites being treated? What did the Israelites do to God? They groaned under their slavery. Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God. God hear their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them. Exodus 2:23-25 God sent Moses to rescue or deliver the people. Moses was an instrument of salvation. We probably remember what happened. The Pharaoh who was the king of Egypt let the people leave Egypt. So the Israelites left. Then the Pharaoh or king had a change of heart. He gathered his chariots and came after the Israelites. The Israelites were trapped. On one side of them was the Red Sea and on the other side was the advancing chariots of Pharaoh and his armies. The Israelites were destined to die and fail. They were at the end of the rope. When we are at the end of our rope is often when God saves us. I think this happens sometimes because God wants to let us know who does the saving. God opened up the Red Sea so that the Israelites could walk through it. As soon as the last Israelite made it to dry land the water tumbled down on Pharaoh and all the chariots. The Israelites were saved. As soon as the Israelites were saved Moses sister Miriam led a group who sang praises to God. They danced with tambourine and dancing. They sang to the Lord. Part of their song was this. The Lord is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation; this is my God, and I will praise him, my fathers God, and I will exalt him. Exodus 15:2 Often we think that salvation is something that Jesus gave to uswhich it is. Salvation is more than a New Testament idea. Whenever a group of people or an individual is delivered from a situation that has no way out that person is saved.

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Salvation is Gods intent for all of us. God wants each of us to experience wholeness and healing. God wants us to experience peace. This is the vision that God had for the world when God created Eden. This is the vision that God shared with the world in the last story of the Bible in Revelation. This is the vision that God has for our new churchChain of Lakes New Church, which is the same vision that God has for every congregation. God wants us to experience wholeness, healing and peace. This salvation or deliverance is a gift from God. God gives us this giftwe dont earn it or even deserve it. Its hard for us to accept that salvation is given so freely by God. We humans want to earn it. We want to make a long list of conditions to receive salvation. God freely gives this gift to us. All we have to do is receive it. Like at Christmas when we open up our gifts, God wants us to open up or receive the the gift of salvation and receive its power. We believe that the continuation of the deliverance that God gave to the Israelites is through Jesus Christ. Jesus came to give us life and to give it abundantly. We celebrate that we receive salvation through Christ. Today when we come to the table we celebrate this wonderful gift of salvation. We receive salvation when we receive Jesus as our Lord and Savior. This is our eternal salvation. We also receive salvation or deliverance during our lives here on earth. I believe there is a connection between our own prayer life and the deliverance or salvation God wants to give us. Let me give an example. This past Sunday our worship team hired Kristel Peters as our new Music Leader. Kristel is going to start with us on September 23. I am very excited about her coming to Chain of Lakes as our Music Leader. I think that she is going to help us praise God through music, I think you are

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going to love her, and I think she could be with us for a very long time. She has tremendous potential. Hiring her was the result of a lot of prayer. We went through two hiring processes this past summer for a Music Leader. You might remember the first. In May our worship team had four candidates for the position and we had all of them lead music at a worship service. When we got to the point of interviewing them they all fell away. They each had a personal reason that led them to withdraw as a candidate. That was disappointing. Part of the disappointment is we were starting all over again. I know how hard it is to find quality candidates to apply for the position. At the time I was reading the book the Circle Maker by Mark Batterson. Betty Long led a group of women who did a four-week video series. The book is about prayer. He wrote a chapter the persistence of prayer that touched me. I decided that I was going to pray 15 minutes a day until we hired a quality candidate. I was going to put my complete faith in God that God was going to bring us a candidate who would elevate our music ministry. Mark Batterson wrote this comment, Pray as if it depends on God; work as if it depends on us. I decided that I was going to work as hard as I could on this project of hiring a Music Leader and then pray as hard as I could that God was going to do something special. We got to work. Our worship team did everything we could think of to spread the word about this position. I prayed every day for 15 minuteson my knees. After a month of praying I got a feeling that God was going to do something special. I was in Florida at the New Church Development conference and the first deadline for applications was coming up. I prayed that God would bring us some candidates that week. I had no rational explanation that we would have people apply. Guess what happened the final week of applicationstwo people applied.

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Our worship team got together for the first time on a Sunday morning at the Lovell Office. We had five candidates. The group cut the number of candidates down to three. I asked the group what we would do if we had some more people apply. They said we should look at them. I liked the candidates we had. This might have been a time to stop praying. We didnt need God anymore. Sometimes we might find ourselves in a situation where life is goig okay and it doesnt seem that we need to pray anymore. I thought about not praying, but I had made a promise to God. I kept praying. Over the course of that next week we received three more applications for the position. When we did the final interviews guess which three we interviewedthose three. We didnt even interview the first group of candidates who applied. The final three candidates didnt apply until we had been advertising the position for five weeksafter I had been on my knees in prayer every day for 15 minutes a day. In a way I think God was testing us to see if we were serious about our prayers. On the Monday after that Sunday meeting we received Kristels application. I immediately E-mailed her and asked if I could do an interview that week. She said she was available. Twenty four hours after receiving her application I was talking to her on the phone. I asked her how she found about the position. Kristel lived in Bemidji and was moving to the Twin Cities. She said that a friend of hers had been to Caribous coffee and found a flyer in the coffee shop. She Emailed Kristel about the position. K said it looked interesting so she applied. So a woman who lived over 200 miles away got an E-mail from a friend about a flyer in a coffee shop. Do you think that any of us orchestrated that? Thats a God thing. I believe that is God rewarding a group of people who were praying like their life depended on it. I believe that we wouldnt have hired Kristel is we hadnt been praying like we were.

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This story is not about us or about me. This is a spiritual story of a God who so wants to deliver us into life and wholeness. God delivered us. God did something that none of us could have orchestrated. This is salvation. If you are in a situation where you dont know what to do, I say pray for 15 minutes a day. If you cant physically get on your knees, find a place and just pray. I believe that God rewards persistent and passionate prayers. I believe that God sometimes delivers us from situations in ways that we cannot imagine. That is salvation. Let me wrap up with by briefly looking at what happens after deathour eternal life. Here again salvation is about deliverance. Through Jesus Christ God delivers us from death. You and I cannot do anything about this. None of us, obviously is capable of living forever. Only God can do that for us. The Scriptures are clear that when we receive Jesus as our Lord and Savior we receive eternal life. Our lives do not end when we die. Nothing can separate us from the love of God. You and I are blessed. I want everyone at Chain of Lakes New Church to have the assurance of eternal life. I want all of us to have confidence that we are going to live forever. If someone came up to you and asked youdo you have assurance that you will receive salvation after you die, what would say? I hope that all of us would have the assurance of eternal life, and our assurance comes not because of our own goodness, but because of the gift of salvation that God shares with us. I want to encourage us to freely and with humility to share with others our salvation. Yesterday I officiated at a wedding. The family lives in the north Metro. I got to know them because they are related to a woman in the Plainview congregation I served. At the reception a

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woman was talking about her three children. One of her daughters is getting married in January and this mother said shes always dreamed of her daughters wedding. I said, your dream is coming true. She said something like if I live that long this dream will come true. But if I dont make it, I know where Ill be. I loved hearing her say that. I partly loved it because I knew when she said it I would be sharing this story with you. She didnt say this with arrogance or pride. She had a quiet confidence about her own salvation. She wasnt afraid to share her quiet and humble confidence. This is what I want for everyone in our new church. I want all of us to have the quiet and humble confidence of our eternal salvation. When we receive Jesus as our Lord and Savior this gift is opened for us. How does this lead us to bless others? It is so much easier to bless another person when we experience the blessings of God. When our hearts burn with love because of what God has done for us then we can freely bless others. When we are confident in our eternal fate we can go out of our way to be a blessing. We can take risks. We have nothing to lose to be a blessing. When

we come to the Table today, may all of us have our own hearts burning with love for God because we have been delivered. May we go out of our way to share this blessing with others.