Tuesday, August 5, 2014

DESPERATION: "Desperate Measures"

Here are the notes from the message Sunday at New Life Community Church.  If you desire to listen to this message, you may do so by going to our website at www.newlifesite.com.  God bless!


Desperation, Part 1                                                      Sunday, August 3, 2014
“Desperate Measures”

Just completed series Turning Points:
1. Turning Points for our Nation
2. Turning Points for the Family
3. Turning Points for the Church
4. Turning Points for You

We need an encounter with God the Holy Spirit.  We need a touch from His presence.  We need to be built on God’s Word.  We need to have a burning passion for people.

28 “And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.  Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.  29 Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.  30 I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke.  31 The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord32 And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved; for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be deliverance, as the Lord has said, even among the survivors whom the Lord calls.  Joel 2:28-32 (NIV)

“Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

Hippocrates:  "For extreme diseases, extreme methods of cure, as to restriction, are most suitable."[1].

Erasmus:  "Malo nodo, malus quærendus cuneus"  which means “for a hard knot a hard tool must be sought.”

Lowe’s Commercial


A.    Desperate
1.      Definition:  des·per·ate
adjective
adjective: desperate

                  feeling, showing, or involving a hopeless sense that a situation is so bad as to be impossible to deal with.  "a desperate sadness enveloped Ruth"
synonyms:

(of an act or attempt) tried in despair or when everything else has failed; having little hope of success.  "drugs used in a desperate attempt to save his life"
synonyms:
last-ditchlast-gasp, eleventh-hour, do-or-diefinalMore

(of a situation) extremely bad, serious, or dangerous.  "there is a desperate shortage of teachers"
synonyms:
(of a person) having a great need or desire for something.  "I am desperate for a cigarette"
synonyms:
in great need of, urgently requiring, in want of; More
(of a person or fight) violent or dangerous.  "a desperate criminal"
synonyms:


2.    Full Definition of DESPERATE

Ø  1        a :  having lost hope <a desperate spirit crying for relief>
          b :  giving no ground for hope <the outlook was desperate>
Ø  2          a :  moved by despair <victims made desperate by abuse>
o   b :  involving or employing extreme measures in an attempt to escape defeat or frustration <made a desperate leap for the rope>
Ø  3          :  suffering extreme need or anxiety <desperate for money>
Ø  4          :  involving extreme danger or possible disaster <a desperatesituation>
Ø  5          :  of extreme intensity
Ø  6          :  shocking, outrageous

3.      des·per·ate

adjective
1.  reckless or dangerous because of despair or urgency: adesperate killer.
2.  having an urgent need, desire, etc.: desperate for attention.
3.  leaving little or no hope; very serious or dangerous: a desperateillness.
4.  extremely bad; intolerable or shocking: clothes in desperate taste.
5.  extreme or excessive.

Desperate Measures:
Desperate measures either push you toward God or away from God – toward good or toward bad.

Example: 

TV Show Breaking Bad on the Dangers of Pride

The critically-acclaimed TV show Breaking Bad centers on the story of Walter White, a bored high school chemistry teacher who discovers that he has stage III lung cancer. Desperate to provide for his family, Walter decides to start manufacturing methamphetamine to create a nest egg. Initially, his goal is to make about $750,000; enough to cover the mortgage, college for both his kids and to cover any other major expenses that might arise over the next 20 years.
But as the series moves forward, the drama focuses on Walter's transformation from a frustrated middle-class American male to a drug kingpin and a cold-blooded killer. The central question of Breaking Bad Becomes this: What makes a person "Bad"? As the story develops we get a clear answer: at some point, Walter decided to become bad.
Specifically, Walter succumbs to the sin of pride. Initially, his pride was submerged under a thin veneer of suburban respectability. But as the show progresses, Walter's pride rises to the surface. In one of the show's most stunning scenes, Walter chillingly explains to his wife Skyler why he's the man in charge when it comes to Mexican cartels and the drug trade. He says,
Who are you talking to right now? Who is it you think you see? Do you know how much I make a year? I mean, even if I told you, you wouldn't believe it. Do you know what would happen if I suddenly decided to stop going in to work? A business big enough that it could be listed on the NASDAQ goes belly up. It disappears. It ceases to exist without me. No, you clearly don't know who you're talking to. So let me clue you in. I am not in danger, Skyler. I am the danger. A guy opens his door and gets shot, and you think that of me? No. I am the one who knocks.
Walter is no longer the frustrated, somewhat bumbling and basically good genius of season one. He's changed, and we're encouraged to look at him the way Diane Keaton looks at Al Pacino at the end of The Godfather: "What's happened to you?" It's a mixture of horror, deep regret, and revulsion. It's a disturbing picture of the evils of pride.
Good people under pressure can go good or break bad.

Desperate Measures:

1.     An EYE-OPENING Encounter

“O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am!  Psalm 39:4 (ESV)

Andy Stanley:  Everybody ends up somewhere in life.  A few people end up somewhere on purpose.

2.     A LIFE-TRANSFORMING Experience

Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.  Hosea 10:12 (ESV)

3.     A CYCLE-BREAKING Decision

13 Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not think to yourself that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. 14 For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” 15 Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai, 16 “Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish.” 17 Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him.  Esther 4:13-17 (ESV)



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