2) Read Jeremiah 30:18-24. Listen as the Lord describes his prophetic future for his people through the prophet Jeremiah.

3) God has a future for us. It is a future filled with wonderful promises and absolute assurances that the "Lord will not turn back until he fully accomplishes the purposes of his heart."

4) Now to the second passage that deals with our future. Read 1 Corinthians 3:10-15 (NLT). This passage contains a warning for us. Whatever we do we must make sure it is of enduring quality. There will be an inspection of each and every church, and of the work of every person in the Lord’s service. Read it with a sober heart and a clear head to the testimony of God’s sacred text describing the Lord’s activity as his Kingdom approaches.

5) There is a new world coming. There is a question before us today. Will we help create the dwelling place of God within this new world, or will what we build burn up, judged uninhabitable by God? It is my prayer for this morning that we set out some building principles and materials that are certain to be of value when God’s Kingdom dawns upon this planet and he comes to take his rightful and chosen place of abiding with us his people. Read Revelation 21:3-5.

6) God’s calling to us is that we be:

a) Embedded, embodied, and engaged.

b) Embedded in the story–God’s Kingdom dream. Our life as Christians and as a local church, a community of faith, is part of the greatest dream, the highest aspirations, and the most blessed hope that exists in the human race.

i) We must start here, embedded in this larger story to avoid the cultural heresies of consumer Christianity and self-centered living.

ii) You and I are a part of a story, a destiny, and a future that is fantastically larger than our personal lives.

iii) We are not only invited to partake of the is future but to actually contribute to in construction by becoming the church we are called to be.

iv) The emerging church must offer a new story to a culture that is weary of living in an empty universe.

v) This story must include mystery as well as mastery, spirit as well as science, respect for all of life, sufficiency, balance, and a re-weaving of the web of authentic community.

c) Embodied means being so caught up in the beauty and majesty of being embedded in the glorious story of God’s Kingdom that we offer ourselves up to God to be one who surrenders to embodiment, to incarnate God’s rule and reign in the hear-and-now.

i) We are called to become fully integrated beings, fully attuned to God’s Spirit, and fully reflective of God’s image in us.

ii) We are called to respond to God as did Mary, the mother of Jesus, "Be it done unto me according to Thy word."

d) Engaged fastens us to our story, the story of God’s people, the story of the church, the body of Christ.

i) Like Christ, we are not called to escape from this world, but we are sent to embrace this world in all its sin and brokenness.

ii) Being engaged calls for us to be light in darkness, hope in despair, truth in the face of the lie. It insists that we be like our Master Jesus living with self-sacrificial love and laying down our lives for sinners.

iii) By our lives together, we tell God’s story and we turn his dreams into deeds by touching the world with his character, truth, power, love, and joy.

iv) Engagement makes us co-creators with God of his Kingdom serving to transform the world into his dwelling place.

v) So that when he comes, our work will not be burned up, instead what we have become together and done together will actually have prepared for God a resting place.

e) Embedded, embodied, engaged: intimacy, community, kingdom.

i) Calvary, we are headed in the right direction.

ii) We are positioned to become one of the emerging, advancing churches that can bring great light to a world that will know increasing darkness.

iii) The emerging church will get better and better, as the world gets worse and worse. The advancing church will get brighter and brighter as the world grows darker and darker.

Warnings

1) Before I list some qualities that will be useful as building materials, characteristics that will be beautiful and meaningful parts of the home God is constructing among us, I want to share a few warnings.

a) The work we do in building upon the foundation of Jesus Christ is important. It is important to God, it must be important to us.

b) Our work as a church family will be our offering to the Creator on the day his Son returns to our planet. Don’t you want that to be beautiful? Don’t you want to make a worthy offering to the Lord in that hour? Do you desire to hear the words, "Well done," spoken over Calvary? I know you do.

c) This passage in 1 Corinthians 3 is a sobering statement of what is going to happen in our future. So let us make sure that we are a part of the reward God gives on that day.

d) I asked the Lord, "Lord, what should we beware of as we enter our future?"

2) Beware of half-hearted religion, worship, and ministry. Read Romans 12:11.

3) Beware of learning the "how" and forgetting the "why."

4) Beware of losing true Christian community to the western idea of the "free individual."

a) Being the "Body of Christ" is not a theological idea but an essential reality!

b) Maintaining our corporate identity is essential in the face of our Western "individualism."

c) Beware of going to church instead of becoming the church.

5) Beware of familiarity with the holy and with one another that robs us of sincere love and genuine devotion to God.

6) Beware of the "Big Stuff" mentality. Always bigger, better, greater!

a) Stay little. Stay humble. Stay available.

b) Never stop doing the little things. "A cup of cold water given in his name."

c) Mother Teresa: "We can do no great things, only small things with great love."

7) Beware of:

a) explaining without encountering

b) wondering without worshiping

c) rationalizing without relating

d) laboring without loving

8) Beware of worshiping Jesus’ journey instead of doing Jesus’ journey.

9) These kinds of religious activity will not stand the test of the Lord’s fire. They will burn up. Beware of them.

Examen Questions

1) If you continue on just as you are, what will you regret some day in the future?

2) If you continue on just as you are, what will you be sorry for when God calls you to your time of accounting?

3) If you continue on just as you are, what will you be grieved over that you failed to do for God?

4) Hell begins on the day when God grants us clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts we have wasted, of all we might have done which we did not do.

Maxims

1) Don’t let what’s wrong with you keep you from worshiping what’s right with God.

2) God’s place in us will determine our place in God.

3) We cannot attain the works of God unless we first become the workmanship of God. Read Ephesians 2:10.

4) Maintain a clear vision: Intimacy, community, and kingdom. Why?

a) Our vision is the fire of our passion

b) Our vision is the anchor for our storms

c) Vision casts a guiding light on our future

d) Our vision keeps us locally grounded and universally connected

5) The Father’s declared purpose us is to reveal the nature of Christ in us. Read Romans 8:29.

a) Therefore, "let us fix our eyes on Jesus the author and finisher of our faith" (Hebrews 12:2).

b) Calvary, if we ever take our eyes off of Jesus, then we have just plain lost.

c) Jesus is the only fully human one. We need to see Jesus so that we can find ourselves. Read Colossians 3:3.

d) Christ in us is our hope of glory.

e) Only Jesus calls us to be who we truly are.

6) To whom much is given, much is required.

7) God is seeking to create a people of presence.

8) The Trinity must become increasingly tangible in true Christian community.

9) Don’t go where the path may lead. Go where there is no path and leave a trail.

10) We will only see what we are prepared to see. Vision is the art of seeing the invisible.

11) What we are planting in the soil of prayer, we will reap in the harvest of action.

12) Keep listening. Hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

13) Be biblical.

a) The sacred text fixes our lives on what is important.

b) The scriptures order our steps according to God’s eternal principles.

c) The scripture grounds us in truth that has the power to set us free.

d) The sacred text pierces the edges of our lives and exposes the essence.

e) We must chart our course by God’s promised future revealed to us in the Bible, written by the apostle’s and prophets and most of all by his Son, Jesus Christ.

14) Always live in the light of God’s promises.

15) Be authentic.

a) Great synergy is created by an authentic Christian community.

b) We are the message, an embodiment of the Good News.

16) The church should be the most creative place on the face of the earth.

17) There are ways of doing church that no one has thought of yet.

18) New wine in old wineskins is a "no-no."

19) Stop living as if the purpose of life is to arrive safely at death.

20) It is easier to look back and smile on yesterday’s accomplishments that to look ahead and think about tomorrow’s possibilities.

21) Love people when the least expect it and least deserve it.

22) Don’t die with the music still in you.

23) Love gives meaning to all things.

24) Four essential qualities: zeal and diligence, expectancy and perseverance.

25) Keep looking for the big picture.

26) Our best presentation of the gospel is our community life.

a) We must enter the biblical revelation with our best thought, study, and teaching resulting in the biblical revelation entering us and making us a home for God.

b) The result is that we must no longer say, "Don’t look at us. Look at Jesus." We must say, "Look at us and you will see Jesus."

c) That is why I said our community life is the best presentation of the gospel we have.

27) Be prayerful.

28) Be involved. "Be always abounding in the work of the Lord."

29) Be loving.

a) Loving God completely

b) Loving ourselves correctly

c) Loving others compassionately

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