Welcome Home | Listen | Alan Rogers

[Music] good [Music] your hearts this morning your light there is no rival that could ever stand against your might you've always been with us every battle you've already won you've already won [Music] you've always been with [Music] one us he can do show me [Music] [Music] he is [Music] is [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] i [Music] is [Music] [Music] show me what we can do [Music] if anything is possible [Music] [Music] anything is possible [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] this is a house of worship [Music] this is a place of praise i wanna sing this where every demon trembles where we proclaim your name this is a house this is a house of healing our hearts are full of faith [Music] come alive in the name of jesus come alive in the name of jesus this is a house of miracles we bring everything to the feet of jesus everything in the name of jesus this is a house of miracles [Music] well there's resurrection [Music] [Music] is [Music] this is a house of miracles [Music] this is [Music] this is [Music] this [Music] i is believe you're moving i still believe you're speaking god i believe your work all things for good i [Music] god [Music] [Music] all things were good [Music] [Music] in the name of jesus this is jesus [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] jesus come alive in the name of jesus this is a house of miracles we bring everything to the feet of jesus everything in the name of jesus this is a house of miracles [Music] oh this is a house of miracles we receive your blessing we receive your healing we receive the restoration that you're offering us today god every battle is won [Music] peace bring it all to peace the storm surrounding me let it break at your name still call the seas to still the raging me distill [Music] jesus jesus you make the darkness tremble jesus jesus [Music] you silence me jesus jesus [Music] i will praise jesus jesus [Music] jesus [Music] jesus jesus jesus jesus jesus you made the darkness [Music] is [Music] oh [Music] jesus jesus [Music] jesus [Music] your name is the light that the shadows can't deny your name cannot be overcome [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Applause] [Music] [Music] jesus [Music] good morning avenue church thank you so much for being here you can have a seat as we continue to worship my name is mark i'm one of the pastors here and it is so good to see you here today those of you joining us online it's also great to have you joining us as well on this dreary morning in august we before we go any further we have to look back just one week ago to life day last week in our services we had 66 people take their next step in faith by being baptized it was truly an amazing day a very memorable day in the life of the avenue church as god was doing some amazing things and people were stepping up and stepping out and proclaiming their faith publicly through baptism last week so excited about the journey that everyone is on but especially those who were baptized last week looking forward to what god continues to do in their life if you're new here to the avenue church we want to say welcome to you we're so glad that you've joined us we hope that you feel welcomed wanted and loved here this is a good place to call home we'd love to connect with you the easiest way to do that is to go to the abuchurch.com connect and we'll be in touch this week if this is your very first time with us we have a gift for you in the lobby we'd love to connect with you after the service right under the sign that says the hub we have a special gift just for being here today as a new guest with us also i want to say thank you for your generosity each and every week people are faithful by giving and this week because your generosity we were able to provide 40 uh bedding and sheets and pillows for foster kids without placement there's a new ministry starting here in ellis county called harvest family life ministries and they had reached out earlier about two weeks ago and just said hey we need bedding for 40 beds that are going to be at harvest family life and so because your generosity we're able to do that very quickly and so thank you the easiest way to join us on the journey of generosity is by going to the avenuechurch.com give and each and every week god is using what you give to to bless people to use your funds to make a difference in our community and around the world i know there's so many needs right now and the church will continue to be the church and continue to use what you give to make a difference today we have a special guest with us to make a special announcement a special announcement so once you welcome misty huff one of my friends to the stage misty is the director of the women's ministry here at the avenue church and she's going to tell us about an event called renew so welcome misty hey thank you mark i really appreciate it um i do want to talk to you guys about our upcoming women's event with guest speakers jenny allen and katherine wolfe but before i dive in i want to let you guys know why we host these large group events year after year the vision it's simple you've probably heard it before we want as many women in our church and in our community to experience and encounter jesus christ in a very intimate way once we get them in this building once we get them through the doors we want to connect them with smaller groups of community so that they can find a better way to do life now the avenue church you guys we accomplish that week after week that is the goal so what makes this women's event so special there's two reasons the first being this how many of you have come to the realization that women in general cry a lot more than men i've never noticed you've never noticed i think you know between mark and myself i think mark probably sheds a few more tears than i do i think um but in general women are more emotional not a bad thing providing an evening where they are just surrounded by other women it allows them to explore their faith in a deeper way without feeling the need to hold it together like they would in the pews on a sunday morning the second reason being this i love just like you all probably do sitting under the teaching of pastor david every sunday now i'm biased i am his daughter and so i have been taught god's word by my dad since i was a little girl sitting at the breakfast table i love being led by him week after week but there's something special about being taught by a woman who understands me and who can relate to me you know my dad and i were very much alike he knows me very very well um but i assure you i assure you he will never understand what makes a woman's heart and mind tick jenny allen and catherine wolf they will so tonight you guys ladies you do not you do not want to miss this one so when is renew renew is september 10th it's a friday evening from six to nine and who is renew four renew is for all women in our community and in our church the speakers are going to be so dynamic katherine wolfe has a story an incredible story about how suffering and joy can co-exist jenny allen she has a heart for discipleship and she wants to equip women to do the same so any any lady in our community young and old and so if a lady here today is not registered for uh renew how could she find out more information or how could she register so you can visit the avenues website we should also have the qr code maybe up on the screens if not you can stop by the hub there are postcards with a qr code scan it with your phone it'll take you right to the link with all of the information you need yeah we know renew is going to be an amazing event misty and the team thank you so much for putting this together for our community let's give it up for misty thank you guys today we are continuing our series in the book of malachi the last book of the old testament 400 years before jesus and today the word that malachi received from the lord was a really hard and harsh word it was a message that was not easy to deliver it was a message against the religious leaders against the church community the faith community of israel and so we're going to continue in malachi chapter 2. if you have a bible or maybe you have a bible app turn to malachi chapter 2 just so you know that i'm not making these words up starting in verse 1 and it says and now o priests this command is for you if you will not listen if you will not take it to the heart to give honor to my name says the lord of hosts then i will send the curse upon you and i will curse your blessings indeed i have already cursed them because you do not lay it to heart behold i will rebuke your offspring and spread dung on your faces the dung of your offerings and you shall be taken away with it so so shall you know that i have sent this command to you that my covenant with levi may stand says the lord of hosts my covenant with him was one of life and peace and i gave them to him it was a covenant of fear and he feared me he stood in awe of my name true instruction was in his mouth and no wrong was found on his lips he walked with me in peace and uprightness and he turned many from iniquity for the lips of a priest should guard knowledge and people should seek instruction from his mouth for he is the messenger of the lord of host but you have turned aside from the way you have caused many to stumble by your instruction you have corrupted the covenant of levi says the lord of hosts and so i make you despised and abased before all the people inasmuch as you do not keep my ways but show partiality and your instruction it's a pretty harsh word to the religious leaders of malachi's day and i know many of you have been hurt by the church many of you have been hurt by somebody of religious influence and religious authority and today we're going to dive into what does this look like to be reconciled to be redeemed to find forgiveness in the midst of uh brokenness today we're going to look at a story of a man who you've seen on the stage who grew up in church but he was taught to fake it and to pretend that he was walking with christ and so today whether you've been burned by the church or burned by a leader within the church god still has a plan for you and we want to find forgiveness and reconciliation despite the brokenness of our world and so we're going to watch a story together let's watch derek's story i'm 39 years old i grew up here in waxahachie um a preacher's son my high school years i knew what what faith was knew what religion was in christianity sort of in quotes i was a work a student worship leader in my youth group and just knew sort of how to play the part what started to bring things off for me was i had an identity crisis i had a i had placed my identity in a relationship that i had to to validate me i knew who god was but i just didn't have a relationship with him to the extent that i needed to my identity was in a person rather than in christ when that relationship ended my my life just started kind of spinning out of control i started drinking heavily and started doing drugs i was trying to cater to other people and not to the lifestyle that i was raised to live as a as a believer after i got married you know my addiction was kind of uh under the surface it was very hidden from everyone when uh my wife would confront me about something is is wrong something what what's what's the matter what's the problem it turned into you know excuse after excuse after excuse and and i did anything and everything i could to keep this part of my life hidden first it felt it felt great after a little while with that cocoon that blanket of what i what i saw as comfort i started to get to the point where i couldn't get out that's when it went from a blanket to a prison everything was just in the dark everything was in in just in my mind and my in my body i i just continued in my addiction just continued in this in this downward spiral i had no way of getting out of it i essentially tried to fill this void that i had in my heart i tried to fill it with another relationship that wasn't my wife and with that um i had absolutely no self-worth at this point i knew what i was doing was wrong i knew that what i was doing was was uh devastating to my family to my my spiritual growth i knew uh you know because in reality i knew what was right and wrong um but i was doing what felt good at the time at this point i couldn't even be really sorry until until a certain a certain point i told christine that i didn't want to be married anymore when she realized what was going on uh with this relationship that was uh extramarital she told me that that she wasn't going to let divorce happen she wasn't going to let that happen but this particular night that she told me that i ended up going to a hotel room and because i just didn't want to stay home i didn't want to stay at home i didn't want to be there and i was just lost so i went and i and i checked into a hotel room and i overdosed the next thing i remember was waking up to my wife banging on this hotel room door she found me tracking my debit card i was barely conscious um i got the door and i uh and she came in and she sat down and she was just trying to get to the bottom of what was going on she was starting to realize that that my uh the block in my heart was from substance abuse to begin with but most of all was from uh a break in the relationship between me and my creator she asked me to come home and she wanted to talk to me and i went in to the house um and my wife was was there and she asked me to sit on the couch and she went into the other room and she got a bowl of water and she got soap and a washcloth and she brought it out and she washed my feet this was the first time that i saw really the action of grace it's absolutely undeserved i was ministered to in this moment there was just this moment of clarity that i felt that the holy spirit was in this place with me and calling me out of this grave when i got up and i decided you know what i'm i'm not gonna do this anymore i knew that i was i knew that i was was was too far gone and the only thing that could bring me back was was a relationship with jesus it was a surrender and called christine and i told her i'm on my way home i need you to take me somewhere she dropped me off at a detox was the medical detox facility where i spent 11 days and uh and even even in this detox facility i was still an addict christine came and she snatched me out of this place and took me to teen challenge it took me a lot of time to really come to grips with where i was i still didn't want to be there i wanted to be with my wife i wanted to be with my son but they needed to see that i was not the man that i used to be what really set it off for me was the first church service that i went to the first service that i went to um with with my brothers in teen challenge i felt the presence of god so strongly that i couldn't i couldn't stay the same somebody told me something this that day they said why should god let you be a father to his children when you're not seeking him that really sort of changed the dynamic of you know what he shouldn't he should with with me not seeking his face and me not really chasing after the spirit of god there's no reason for him to give me any type of a leadership over my wife over my son i mean i broke down i broke down in this church service what i realized at that point was that that i had to find my identity in christ i uh realized at that point that my that my true identity is in who jesus says that i am i gave in to the process of truly finding jesus and really you know searching for him and and not just saying that i was no matter how far away that i felt like i could run from god i could get away i could you know i could go you know to the to the end of the earth and all i would have to do to come back to the father is just turned around he had been right behind me the entire time and he he just he loves us so much that there's nothing that we can do to change that you know he's always been after you and there's no distance that you can run to get away from him he is uh he's completely in love with you and there's absolutely nothing that you can do to change that he wants a relationship with you and all you have to do is make that decision is and that's that's one of the hardest things to do is to decide i'm not going to be who i was yesterday i'm gonna be who who god tells me that i am there's nowhere too far that he won't come chasing me down there's there's nowhere too far [Music] [Music] i've been strong and i've been broken within a moment [Music] i've been faithful and i've been reckless at every band i've held everything together and shatter i've stood tall and i have crumbled in the same breath i have wrestled and i have trembled towards surrender [Music] chased my heart adrift and drifted home again plundered blessing till i've been desperate to find redemption and every time i turn around lord you're still there i was found before i was lost i was yours before i [Music] grace to spare for all my mistakes in that part just [Music] and i know i don't deserve this kind of love but somehow this kind of love is who you are it's a grace i can never add up to be somebody you still want but somehow [Music] as you find me oh you love me as you find me who am i to think your glory needs my praises but if this borrowed breath is yours lord take it all you are faithful and you are gracious and i'm just grateful to think you don't need a single thing but still you want my heart i was found before i was lost [Music] for all my mistakes [Music] and i know i i don't deserve this kind of love but somehow this kind of love is who you are it's a grace i [Music] as you find me you love me as you find me you love me as you find me [Music] you love me as you find me your [Music] as you find me your love's too good to leave [Music] cause i need your love more than anything [Music] your love's too good [Music] [Music] more than [Music] your love's too good and i know i i don't deserve this kind of love but somehow this kind of love is who you are it's a grace i can never write up to be somebody you still want but somehow you love me as you find me [Music] you love me as you find me [Music] man you can stand up for that come on good job come here brother [Music] you can be seated good morning avenue it's good to see y'all i want you to know i love you and there is not a place on this planet straight from my heart that i would rather be this morning than with you and i love you and i'm glad to be here with you but you know there's somebody else i love and it's this guy derek i've known derek literally all his life and so i think i've pulled up a picture that we're going to show you of of the two of us all right you see that the best i can come up with derek is like that was like 33 years ago and now you all understand why i get caught in every airport in the world is i look sketchy i look like i'm fixing to rob something but derek's family and my family we vacationed together and this was up in colorado and i think i was telling him how to do some card tricks i don't want to come on let's sit down here i want to uh to just talk to derek for a while and i want him to share his journey of recovery and i don't know of anybody that understands worship any more than derek does because god has freed him in his life in malachi chapter 2 we find a story of malachi just kind of spanking the spiritual leaders of the day now i want to kind of dumb that down for me the term that malachi uses with spiritual leaders is kind of a term of of influence that you have influence and you've walked away from what you know as truth and and the word and they'd walked away and and so malachi is just kind of giving them a spanking and saying you're not walking in obedience and derek i've known you all your life i know your family in fact you and i went to church together and so i know literally from birth you heard you you heard truth you heard the gospel you heard the word your dad's a preacher uh a very uh influential pastor for years but at some point there was a season in your life that you walked away from god and so kind of tell us about how how that happened uh and and you walking away from from god tell us about that so my spiritual journey uh like i said i was i was uh really into my youth group i was a core part of my youth group i uh i loved jesus but i had something in my spirit that made me feel like i wasn't doing it right so i might as well just not do it at the point that i that i had come to um i was putting my personal my my like i said my identity was in other people in the gratification and in the the uh approval of people i care i care about what people think about me and i want everybody to be happy with me and when i found that i couldn't do that all the time i felt the same way about about my spirituality i felt like i can't please god i can't there's nothing that i can do to to make god happy and that was just incorrect but i walked away from god i walked away consciously and uh when you walked away you know and i think that we we can kind of identify with that because i know there's been times that that i've done the same thing what was it a deliberate decision to walk away from god or was it a process did you just kind of drift or was it just i'm done it uh you know obviously there were some things leading up to the time that i did say i'm done i was done with church i was done with church people i was done with anything that had to do with church so i went extreme the other direction and but it was there were things leading up to it there were there were little things that you know i you know my my addiction started small it started innocently but then it grew into something that was a monster that i couldn't fight but that that's what really prompted me to just say look i'm done i can't do it i think i think all of us in the room can can kind of identify with that to a degree because maybe it's it's legalism or maybe we've been hurt by the church and so we just i've had enough or maybe it's just in our particular lifestyles that that we just kind of drift it's not like intentional drifting for some it's just that we begin to to fade and walk away and and we just find ourselves like distant from god that we can't feel him anymore in our life but in malachi chapter 2 it's interesting in verse 3 he talks about the leaders and and literally i'll just say this okay um that they had walked so far from god and and and malachi was disappointed and and uh he said your lives are gonna be cursed but literally they had just smeared over their bodies manure and it was just a depiction of where they had gotten in their life can you kind of describe i think there was a point in your life that your life went down the toilet can i describe that journey of of of that well the uh the concept of the manure being smeared to me it's a it's a it's a matter of humiliation of personal humiliation of of you know do i want to bring this to anybody's attention this is only in my mind at the at this point and and you know i was can i say something can i lay these pills on the altar this morning can i lay this down and and uh it was there was it was uh you know i decided no i can't i don't want the manure i don't want the humiliation of of making that step so for me i feel like the manure if you will was has to do with the humiliation and just what what we've brought ourselves to yeah and and you talk about the humiliation which i think in your video you state and i think you know you talked about the humiliation but you kind of got lost in your identity and where that was talk to me about that so i uh i really just didn't didn't know who i was i was i knew who i had been i knew who had who had uh i knew that that jesus had created me for something more for for a purpose and and uh but at a certain point i just didn't know who i was i was you know i was a jesus follower that was i was i said jesus follower i was a jesus guy i believed in jesus but i still wanted to do what i was doing i still was doing what made my you know what made me feel good uh physically and it had nothing to do with my spiritual life and and i just wasn't pursuing that wasn't pursuing you know anything spiritual it was all carnal all you know and uh so that's kind of how my my identity was was uh was in the hands of of other people i think um in fact in recovery we talk about our identity and there there are times in our life that we get caught up in in maybe a particular sin maybe it's an addiction maybe it's a hurt a situation in our life and we allow that addiction or that circumstance in our life we allow it to define us and then as we allow that particular thing to define us we lose our identity but the but the bottom line is we're we're children of god and from him that's where we gain our purpose that's where we have our identity and so if you're here this morning and maybe you've gotten caught up in a particular um addiction or hurt maybe somebody has has offended you or maybe you have made a mistake in your life and and you just have allowed that to to identify you maybe as i'm a loser i am never going to amount to anything or maybe you've allowed and i know sometimes this happens we allow other people to identify us we allow others to say what our value is and who we are and so we can't do that because our identity is in christ one of the one of the follow-up questions i want it for you is conversely there were some leaders that had walked away from god that absolutely they knew the word clearly but they chose not to follow in it or to live by it but in your in your video and in your story and thank you for being so transparent this takes courage to do this there's somebody significant in your life that i think conversely in in the story of malachi 2 and that person is your wife that she came in she found you in the hotel room in a dark place but she wasn't gonna give up on you and you mentioned that you went home you're on the couch and then she comes in and just absolutely serves you and and washes your feet and you make the comment that for the first time at least the first time in a while you saw faith and i believe you called it grace that you saw grace in her and i think that's what malachi is saying to us is that he wants in us influencers whatever your sphere of influence is to to be people of of faith and grace tell us about how that impacted you her influence on you at that particular time her influence on me man was there's there's people that care for you there's people that care about you and then there's people that absolutely would do anything for you and my wife christine who's right over there she's uh she's an angel she's uh she showed me the path back to jesus through her action of grace and washing my feet when there's no reason at all for her to even give me the time of day and be gone tomorrow she should have been gone tomorrow but her love for me and for my spiritual man overcame what everybody around her was telling her she should do you should just leave him he's no good but she went the other direction and she she just she she changed my perspective on what grace is it's absolutely no reason for the love that we get and jesus does that for us you know there's there's no reason for him to love us other than the fact that we are his sons and daughters she became the ultimately the hands and feet of jesus she was jesus in the flesh and i think that's what god calls us to is others may be caught in sin but but a lot of times we're quick to jump on the on the wagon of beating them up and destroying them but i think he wants us to be the instrument of grace and shine the light of christ in their life now derek if if they're and i assume there are people in this room that may be exactly where you were they chose to walk away they've had it with church they've had it with religion uh or maybe they're just disillusioned they've lost their identity what's your heart to them what would you say to them where they are what would you encourage them today to do what i would say is there's there's just a uh there's a future it doesn't matter what you did yesterday and and there there's there's gonna be consequences for our actions today but all we have to do there's a decision that we need to make and that's the first step is making a decision to stop what i'm doing right now and turn around and and jesus is waiting he's waiting for you he's he's there banging on the the the door we're in a tomb and he's breaking the stones out and bringing us out of this tomb yeah so this morning there may be those in the room that you found yourself maybe not in the position that you would want that maybe you've wandered maybe you've drifted or maybe you've made a deliberate choice to distance yourself from god and today's your day to kind of draw the line in the sand and say i want it i want to make my way back and you talk about in the video that it was a process of making those steps of coming back to christ but it takes courage and we have to own where we are in our walk and so this morning we want to encourage you that most of us in this room have been influenced by the gospel we've heard the gospel we've been in church but are we really living in obedience are we living in are we living in that relationship with god and are we worshiping him in truth and living in truth and and really pouring into that relationship and so we want to encourage you this morning that wherever you may be you may be in the throes of of pain you may feel like manure has just enveloped you in your life we want to encourage you that you have the opportunity to dig out of this with god's help and you can start fresh and you can start a life of recovering so i want to pray for you just now and just ask god to give you the courage as he did derek to step out no matter what anybody else says because there's there's doubters there's haters that's going to say well you're the same old same-o and you'll never change you're going to be a loser all your life but god knows that's a lie and so some of you this morning i'm going to pray that god would give you courage and boldness to step out and reclaim and then walk in obedience in your relationship with god so let me let me pray over you god i thank you for for derek and i thank you for him being so honest and transparent with us this morning and god though he walked away god i'm thankful that you were the heavenly father that looked for him and was there with him i thank you that there was a time of awakening in his life that he came back to you but god there are some in this room god you know who they are i pray that if they're in a position this morning that they they know the truth they've been exposed to it maybe all their life or maybe they're new to faith they've never really heard the truth for a while but yet they have not embraced you they've not embraced the gospel god i pray that you would give them courage and boldness to walk in that give them freedom let the chains fall off that they can walk with you and they can be in freedom and know what true worship really is so god do a work in their life and help us all god help me to walk in truth and god help me to be real with you and authentic and god if there are those in my path that are hurting god help me to be a light and it's in jesus name i pray amen i want to do something go ahead and stand to your feet i want to just express to you my heart listen i want to i want to thank you for allowing me to have the greatest job on the planet i love what i do uh i want to encourage you that if you're struggling today with a hurt a hang up or a habit or maybe life just maybe just life sucks and it's been difficult we have celebrate recovery on monday nights here in waxahachie at seven o'clock and we invite you to come we have the landing for students great place for them then we also have celebration place for children we start at seven o'clock i invite you to join us we serve dinner at 6 30 come and and participate and then back about a year ago we started uh celebrate recovering in us and it's going well and um we meet on thursday nights in ennis at 6 30. you can come there and join us uh in innocent 6 30 we serve dinner at 6. thank you for being here today give it up for derek again one more time i love you i love you all god bless you and i'm going to encourage you as you dismiss today be the feet and the hands of jesus god bless you and you're dismissed

Channel: The Avenue Church

Views: 388

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: kTMoryHl7n0

Length: 59min 58sec (3598 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 29 2021