November 9 Sermon (page 1)

Page 1 \| 2 \| 3 \| 4 \| 5 \| 6 \|		Mike Slaughter
	Where Has Time Gone Last Saturday I spent some time with friends from high school. I haven't seen them in a long time. We're starting to look old - I couldn't believe it! I said to one guy, "Where did you get the gray beard?" Last Saturday I spent some time with friends from high school. I haven't seen them in a long time. We're starting to look old - I couldn't believe it! I said to one guy, "Where did you get the gray beard?" Time becomes more important. Do you know what I’ve started asking myself now that I'm approaching that 50's age? Do I have enough time left to do what God sent me to do? Do you ever ask yourself those kinds of questions? Do I have enough time left to do what God sent me to do? This Wednesday night the leaders of the church were here and we danced. We did the country line-dancing thing. I have discovered that it is harder to dance now than it used to be. It's like we get stiffer or something. We become less flexible.	Mike Slaughter
Psalm 123:1-2 1: A Song of Ascents. To thee I lift up my eyes, O thou who art enthroned in the heavens! 2: Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, till he have mercy upon us.	Dance is about rhythm, isn't it? It's about hearing God's beat. Turn to Psalm 123. What does the word Psalm mean? It means song. Life is a spirited dance. Here's the music. Here is how we hear God's beat if we're going to keep dancing. "To you I lift up my eyes." It's an attitude of posture through which we go through life. "I lift up my eyes to You who are enthroned in the heavens." No, it doesn't mean location or address in the cosmos, it means place of authority in our lives. "To You who are enthroned in the heavens. As the eyes of the servants look to the hand of their master. As the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress. So our eyes look to the Lord our God until he has mercy on us." To hear the beat you have to look up. And the music is about service. The rhythm is about service, that's where life is - in service. The world will tell you that life is in success. Once you pass the age of 40, success becomes pretty empty without significance. To hear the beat, to hear the music you have to look up. Hey, the world is full of noise. It's hard to hear sometimes. There are major distractions. Have you been in the middle of any distractions this week? So the Psalmist says, "I wait for the Lord, my soul waits for the Lord, in your word I put my hope." We live in an age of media distraction. We were raised with Rin Tin Tin, Howdy Doody, Ed Sullivan and the Wonderful World of Disney. We are bombarded continually with stimuli. We have so much information and noise going into us that TV has changed the way they edit TV shows. Watch any television show like NYPD Blue, cameras aren't held still anymore because they'll lose your attention. Edits are done in four seconds or less. Count - go 1001, 1002, 1003 - you won't get to 1004 before there is an edit or a movement of the camera.
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