Sunday, March 8, 2009 
Scripture reading: II Kings 10:30-33
30The Lord said to Jehu, ‘Because you have done well in carrying out what I consider right, and in accordance with all that was in my heart have dealt with the house of Ahab, your sons of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel.’ 31But Jehu was not careful to follow the law of the Lord the God of Israel with all his heart; he did not turn from the sins of Jeroboam, which he caused Israel to commit.
32 In those days the Lord began to trim off parts of Israel. Hazael defeated them throughout the territory of Israel: 33from the Jordan eastwards, all the land of Gilead, the Gadites, the Reubenites, and the Manassites, from Aroer, which is by the Wadi Arnon, that is, Gilead and Bashan.
Sermon Title: "DOWNLOADING PATCHES" Sunday, March 8, 2009
PASTOR HUDSON: I want to talk about downloading
patches. It comes from one of my pet peeves. It has always
troubled me when you buy a new computer-related product that
from the time you take it out of the box it regularly has to
have patches downloaded just to keep it running efficiently.
Now is it good? Absolutely it's good. It's an improvement.
That's really the nature of this passage we're referencing
today.
We should want more than to be just okay in our
spiritual life. We should want excellence. To be okay is
not necessarily a bad thing, but it's not where we really
need to be in the Kingdom of God. I listened to a radio
preacher on the drive home yesterday. He had two points I'm
going to borrow from him.
One: To attain spiritual growth, we have to be
willing to continuously work towards our goal. Two: We
have to be patient and engage in the process until we
achieve it. Spiritual growth in an individual's life
requires work. We need to invest ourselves in that journey
and turn away from the things which detract us from
achieving our goal. Think of it as downloading a patch.
Sometimes we need to divest ourselves from the
things in life that keep us from reaching the point where we
are excellent. We need to fix what is keeping the program
from really doing what it needs to do. We need to download
the fixing patch.
What is your highly preferable future? Are you
Satisfied with just okay? Think about that individually and then
ask yourself what is the highly preferable future for our
church? What does it look like two years from now, five
years from now? Where would you individually and the church
like to be at that time? The consultant's recommendations
are to help us achieve our goals. Are we willing to have
both patience and to engage in hard work that's necessary to
take us there? Let's ask that question as we come to the
altar today.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit, Amen.