Sermon
After being a mentor to Pastor Mark and other Mars Hill leaders for years, Dr. Larry Osborne came this week to Mars Hill to teach our church body as the fourth speaker for our Best Sermon Ever series. He preached the sermon “Thriving in Babylon” out of Daniel 1. Here is a recap of some of the highlights from this sermon.
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Even in Babylon, God is in control of who is in control. #bestsermonever
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Panic and despair are never from God. #bestsermonever
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Everyone deserves respect, even God’s enemies. #bestsermonever
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Jesus is not into wiping out his enemies—he’s into winning them over. That’s his heart. That’s why the cross is there. #bestsermonever
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There’s a big difference between what we don’t like and what God forbids. #bestsermonever
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The enemy can’t hold us back. Whether we’re charging hell with a squirt gun or we’re barely on our last legs crawling towards there, the gates of hell cannot prevail and hold us back. We win.
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If we want to influence our world . . . our deepest self-image is not that we are God’s pit bull or watchdog for poor little Jesus who needs us to help him out, but we are his followers, his servants who have his agenda to win over the lost, not to see them wiped out.
Other resources
To teach us, Dr. Larry Osborne came up from sunny southern California, where he has served as a senior pastor and teaching pastor at North Coast Church in Vista since 1980.
Interviews
Limit spending to 90% of last year's income
Dirty little secret of innovation
Books
- Accidental Pharisees: Avoiding Pride, Exclusivity, and the Other Dangers of Overzealous Faith, Zondervan, 2012.
- Sticky Teams: Keeping Your Leadership Team and Staff on the Same Page, Zondervan, 2010.
- Ten Dumb Things Smart Christians Believe, Multnomah, 2009.
- Sticky Church, Zondervan, 2008.
- The Unity Factor: Developing a Healthy Church Leadership Team, Fourth Edition, Owl’s Nest, 2006.
Featured writing on i4J
- “Fewer people are calling themselves Christians—Here’s why that’s a good thing,” May 2. Key quote:
The large drop in the number of Americans who call themselves Protestant Christians is not a sign that people are turning from the faith in massive numbers. It’s a sign that those who used to call themselves Christians (but neither believed scripture nor followed Christ) are now coming clean.
