Learning to Pray from the Master
In an overview of prayer, Bill Self said, "If you're going to wallow around in the shallows of vending-machine prayer, you're not going to get the great harvest God has for you. The disciples said, 'Lord, teach us to pray.' But before you start, you'd better be ready to go all the way."
Whatever Happened to Sin?
Bill Self says, “It’s not fashionable any longer to think in terms of man as being a moral creature. It’s not fashionable any longer to use sin as a moral category, because the minute you talk about sin, you have to talk about whether it is part of our lives. It presumes a moral law and it presumes a relationship with God. ... (but) man is a creature who is alienated from God. His basic alienation from God is that which gives him his own pain, and God has mercifully supplied a way for us to have a bridge back to God.”
Come Home, Atlanta!
Taking his text from the story of the Prodigal Son, Bill Self said Atlanta, “like the Prodigal, have left our father’s home. I think we need to take a good, hard look at where we are and what we’ve done, and I think that in our journey to be uptown, and our journey to be like New York, and our journey to take our place in the middle of what may be the nation and the world, we have left our father’s home.” He urged, “Come home, Atlanta. Get up out of the farmer’s pig stye and come home!”
Where the Rubber Hits the Road — Fear
Bill Self said, “There comes a time in everybody’s life when you have to decide that you cannot live all of your life dominated by fear of what’s going to happen. So many of the human problems we all see are problems that are created by people who are going into next week, and next month, and next year, and borrowing all the trouble they can and they’re spending all of their time worrying about those things. What happens if? What will come about if? If this occurs what will it mean?”
Standing on the Promises
Bill Self said the Bible has 114 categories of promises of God to his disciples. “Those of us who preach make a big deal of the demands Christ puts upon us, but we say very little about what He’s going to do for us and what He’s promised us....and the way to get out of those dark nights of the soul is to bring up in your mind that which God has already put there, and that’s His promise...We just haven’t appropriated the power and wealth of God for our lives.”
Listen to the Wind
Jesus told Nicodemus that the Spirit of God is like the wind, blowing where it pleases. And Bill Self said, "The trouble with so many Christians is they're ready to have a little bit of God in their lives if He will come and help them in some hard places, but they don't want a full surrender because God may begin to do something with them. And what most of us, in our slick, fine, comfortable, middle-class homes want is a little bit of God to give us respectability, but not so much of God that people think we're religious fanatics."
An Adventure in Faith
Bill Self says if you are a Christian, you have no immunity from the storms of life. But God doesn't abandon you — He's there with you. And as long as your eyes are on God and His kingdom, and not the trouble around you, victory is with the Christian.