January 10, 2010 - re:CREATE #2:

Breath of Heaven

Core Ideas: Breath of Heaven -- Ezekiel 37 & Acts 2 along with Ephesians 3:14-21 (The song Days of Elijah is a must sing this Sunday! For more suggested songs, see last week CTT and also below. Also, Anne Jones was prepped to sing Breath of Heaven at Civic Center, I would love to get her and that team to do this on this Sunday as well, maybe both services?)

Last week overview to get folks connected. Focus last week was individual, but this week is on us as a community, a church family. How do we release the Holy Spirit into our lives as a church family?

• God taks a lifeless, dead, people, characterized as dry, bleached, lifeless bones, and breathes his life, his Spirit, into those bones and they come alive and become the people of God! (Ezekiel 37)
• God takes a rag tag group that had experienced the greatest events in the world's history with Jesus, and He empowers them to "turn the world upside down" by pouring out His Spirit (Acts 2).

Time in the Word Focus:

• Last week, we were challenged to begin praying for the Holy Spirit to come into our lives personally. This was based on Luke 11:1-13 and personally asking God to send the Holy Spirit into our lives. God longs to give us His good gifts, and as followers of Jesus, the greatest gift He can give us is His holy presence, the Holy Spirit, coming with the power and presence of God. For those who have never been baptized and received the gift of the Holy Spirit, this is the place to begin, but for all of the rest of us, the crucial thing is to ask for God's presence in our lives!
• We want to move from last week's focus on a personal level, to a focus on a church family level -- praying for God's power to be real and at work in us as a community of believers, a family of faith!
  • Paul gives us a great example of how that happens in Ephesians 3:14-21! He is praying for the release of the Holy Spirit in a powerful way in the lives of the Christians in Asia Minor. We can do the same for each other. Let's put it this way: we've used Ephesians 4:20-21 as a slogan, but don't regularly pray the prayer of vs. 14-19! We don't pray for each other to be strengthened by God's Spirit in their inner being.
  • And Acts 2 and Acts 4 show us what happens when God's people pray and He releases the Holy Spirit into our lives. This is the promise that was made a long time ago to Ezekiel (Ezekiel 37) at the Valley of Dry Bones. God still can breathe His powerful presence, His Holy Wind, the Holy Spirit into us to do His work in the world.

Key SoHills Emphasis:

We are building a strategy for bringing the vitality and power of the Holy Spirit back into our lives personally and individually.

• We are going to emphasize the gift of the Holy Spirit that comes to us at baptism, knowing salvation is more than waiting for something to happen when we die, it is something we experience through the Holy Spirit when we come to Christ. (Acts 2:38-39; Titus 3:3-7)
• The Luke 11:13 promise, that if we ask the Father for the Holy Spirit, He will give the Spirit to us
• The Ephesians 3:14-21 prayer for our church, family, and each other expecting God to release His power in us!

Key Passages:

To the experience of the Spirit's presence, we will focus this week on several key passages: Acts 2 & 4, Ezekiel 37, & Ephesians 3:14-21

Suggested Songs:

• Days of Elijah
• Lord, Listen to Your Children Praying
• Let Your Spirit Come, Fall Upon Us Now
• Breath of Heaven

Drama, Media, & Connecting Pieces:

• Pre-video:
• Video Piece: TBD
  • Direction
• Scripture readings
  • TBD
    

• Key focus of the Time in the Word
  • Key Ideas
    • Point

Daybreak Focus: (Return to 8:15 a.m. service)

Refresh Focus: (Return to 11:00 a.m. service)

Sundown Focus: (Return to 5:00 p.m. service)

We will be using Traveling Light by Max Lucado and Psalm 23 to be our study focus at Sundown this Spring.