South Fellowship Church

Postcards from the Edge | A Letter to Misdirected People | Revelation 2:12-17 | Week 4

"
Over the Christmas and New Year holiday, my family and I had the chance to get away and we went up to a cabin in the mighty metropolis of Hot Sulfur Springs.  My whole family was there and we had a great time.  We had planned this pancake breakfast for New Year's Day.  There was no shortage of texts messages back and forth about the kind of pancakes we were going to eat.  Oatmeal pancakes.  Banana pancakes.  We got up on New Year's Day with sleep in our eyes and deprivation in our souls because we had stayed up past midnight.  We made the pancakes and were keeping them warm in the oven.  We started putting them out when someone in my family asks, "Did anybody bring the syrup?"  Here's the question: What do you do when you have a pancake breakfast prepared and you forget the syrup?  Here's three options:  1) You try to make syrup out of something else.  2) You don't eat the pancakes.  3) You eat the pancakes plain.  {Ryan has congregation discuss it.}   In my opinion, number three is the only non-option.  You CANNOT eat pancakes plain.  They taste disgusting!  You don't notice it when you put syrup on it, because syrup makes it all better.  It covers a multitude of sins.  The only reason we have pancakes is so that we can get syrup into our mouth!  
I want to talk to you about syrup this morning.  About the one thing that changes everything---with it everything falls into place and without it, nothing else matters.  Open your Bible to Revelation 2.   You'll remember that we're starting a series and journeying through the first few chapters of Revelation, where Jesus is writing, through the Apostle John, to specific churches in his day.  He's giving them encouragement, he's writing to the context that they're in uniquely, and he's got a word, both of commendation, of correction, of instruction for the churches he writes to.  Listen as he begins these letters with a letter to the church at Ephesus:  To the angel of the church in Ephesus write:  'The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands.     Remember, last week we saw Jesus lifted up, we saw Jesus reigning above, we saw Jesus advocating for, and we saw Jesus walking among the churches, and John wants to reiterate that as he writes to the church at Ephesus......"

Postcards from the Edge | A Letter to Hurting People | Revelation 2:8-11 | Week 3

"This Christmas I got my wife an Instant Pot.  It's a modern twist on the old pressure cooker.  It essentially works the same way----the top seals on there pretty tight.  Inside there are two things that happen:  heat that starts to buildup and steam that is released.  You can put in a whole frozen chicken and in three minutes it'll pop out to be dinner for you!  It's awesome!  Maybe not, don't try that at home.  It's a little nerve wracking with this 'bomb' you have in your kitchen.  We turn it on and my wife, Kelly, backs up, and all of the kids have their biking helmets on when she's cooking with it.  It's a little bit crazy.
I think sometimes life feels a little bit like an Instant Pot, doesn't it?  It presses in on us, and the heat gets turned up, and the steam gets released.  Sometimes in those seasons we have questions for each other, we have questions for God.  We ask God things like:  God, do you see?  God, do you care?  God, are you going to do anything?  God, in this situation that I'm walking through right now, what do you want me to do?  Sometimes the pressure situations can seem small......it's a child that won't behave, or the job situation that's not working out exactly the way you wanted it to.   But sometimes it feels like you're just in the thick of it and the temperature keeps going up and up and up and up.   The news from the doctor isn't good.  The relationship is falling apart.  It just feels like the pressure is just building.  What do we do in situations like that?  I sometimes think that as the Church, we're not good at talking about lament and grief.  Some seasons of life just aren't fun.  Can we admit that, even though we're in church?  Sometimes it feels like the pressure is just getting turned up...."

Postcards From the Edge | A Letter to Misdirected People | Revelation 2:1-7 | Week 2

:
Over the Christmas and New Year holiday, my family and I had the chance to get away and we went up to a cabin in the mighty metropolis of Hot Sulfur Springs.  My whole family was there and we had a great time.  We had planned this pancake breakfast for New Year's Day.  There was no shortage of texts messages back and forth about the kind of pancakes we were going to eat.  Oatmeal pancakes.  Banana pancakes.  We got up on New Year's Day with sleep in our eyes and deprivation in our souls because we had stayed up past midnight.  We made the pancakes and were keeping them warm in the oven.  We started putting them out when someone in my family asks, "Did anybody bring the syrup?"  Here's the question: What do you do when you have a pancake breakfast prepared and you forget the syrup?  Here's three options:  1) You try to make syrup out of something else.  2) You don't eat the pancakes.  3) You eat the pancakes plain.  {Ryan has congregation discuss it.}   In my opinion, number three is the only non-option.  You CANNOT eat pancakes plain.  They taste disgusting!  You don't notice it when you put syrup on it, because syrup makes it all better.  It covers a multitude of sins.  The only reason we have pancakes is so that we can get syrup into our mouth!  
I want to talk to you about syrup this morning.  About the one thing that changes everything---with it everything falls into place and without it, nothing else matters.  Open your Bible to Revelation 2.   You'll remember that we're starting a series and journeying through the first few chapters of Revelation, where Jesus is writing, through the Apostle John, to specific churches in his day.  He's giving them encouragement, he's writing to the context that they're in uniquely, and he's got a word, both of commendation, of correction, of instruction for the churches he writes to.  Listen as he begins these letters with a letter to the church at Ephesus:  To the angel of the church in Ephesus write:  'The words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand, who walks among the seven golden lampstands.     Remember, last week we saw Jesus lifted up, we saw Jesus reigning above, we saw Jesus advocating for, and we saw Jesus walking among the churches, and John wants to reiterate that as he writes to the church at Ephesus....."

Postcards from the Edge | Upsizing | Revelation 1:1-20 | Week 1

"The year was about AD 90, around two decades before the temple that stood in Jerusalem had been absolutely leveled.  Emperor Titus, along with his Roman army, came in and absolutely leveled the central spot of worship in Judaism.  In doing so, they started to remove even the very soul and heart of that religion.  They've never worshipped the same since that building was destroyed.  The Apostle John, at this point in time, is a friend of Jesus.  He's one of the only disciples still alive.  In fact, most people would say he's the ONLY disciple still alive, and he finds himself in exile.  He finds himself on this little island off the coast of what's now modern-day Turkey.  It's about 24 miles from the shore.  He's there as a prisoner of the empire of Rome.  Rome, in AD 90, is ruled by a man by the name of Domitian.  Domitian was the very first emperor that required that he was worshipped as both god and savior.  John refused to bow his knee.  Can you imagine standing before the emperor and being required to bow down to worship him as god?  John, this friend of Jesus, the one who cared for Jesus's mom after Jesus was crucified, risen . . . the one who leaned up against Jesus during the last supper meal he celebrated with his disciples. . . .this John.  This John refused to bow his knee.  Tradition says that Domitian got a pot of boiling oil and dumped it on the Apostle John to try to kill him.  It sort of backfired on him though.  The people there that were witnessing this 'murder' actually turned and started to follow Jesus because they saw that it didn't affect John in the way it should have.  Since he couldn't kill him, Domitian thought he'd put John on an island with other criminals....."

Christmas Eve | Home | 2 Samuel 7 | Week 4

Advent | Instead | Isaiah 61:1-11 | Week 3

Dwell | The Power of Pistis | 1 John 5:1-51 | Week 6

Advent | Comfort | Isaiah 40: 1-11 | Week 2

"Turn with me to Isaiah 40.  We're journeying with the prophet Isaiah as he points us to the coming Christ, in this Advent season.  We're using lectionary passages, passages the church universal has decided on, in a given year, to lead us to the birth of Christ.  This Sunday's passage is Isaiah 40:1-11.  
As I was reviewing it on the plane back this week, I had an experience come back to mind.  I was a backpacking guide throughout my college years.  One night we were in the wilderness outside of Crested Butte.  There were high schoolers packed in next to me in our fly.  There was a sound out in the field.  It was a sound that could only be described as heinous and death!  If you've been in the wilderness at all, you know you hear everything.  There's some things you don't want to hear and that was one of those things.  I was lying there, packed in like a sardine and I hear a mauling going on in the field near me.  I snuck deeper in my sleeping bag, trying to give the aura of confidence to the high schoolers who were with me.  As I slid my feet down to the bottom of my bag, I encountered a little plastic bag that I had slid in there, and it had beef jerky in it.  I'm like, "I'm about to be the beef jerky!"  I said to everyone in my tent, "Hey, guys, good news-bad news.  Good news is you're going to get a snack.  Bad news is you might be a snack if you don't eat it quickly.  Hurry!"  I gave out the beef jerky because I did not want to get mauled by whatever I heard earlier.  
Wilderness can be a scary place, can't it?  If you spend much time out there, you know that you're at the mercy of the weather, you're at the mercy of the wild, you're at the mercy of the animals, and that can be a nerve-wracking place.  The Israelites knew a little about wilderness themselves.  They knew about the wilderness of being slaves in Egypt.  They did that wilderness for 400 years.  After they got out of that wilderness, they crossed through the Red Sea and wandered around in the wilderness for another 40 years.  It was during that season of wandering that the Israelites were solidified as a nation.  It was in that wilderness wandering that they grew to trust God, they grew to know God, and they were given the commands of God, solidifying them as a people and a nation....."

Advent | Presence (sermon from Africa) | Isaiah 64: 1-9 | Week 1

"{Recorded at Denver International Airport on the way to Ivory Coast, Africa.  Ryan Paulson and Aaron Bjorklund went to help at a leaders' and pastors' conference.}
The English word 'advent' comes from the Latin word 'adventus.'  It means coming or visit.  It's a four-week season in the church calendar where churches all around the globe prepare for the birth of Christ.  It's a time that's epitomized by three postures of the soul.  One of those postures is intentional waiting.  We remember that there's a certain transcendent longing within us for something more, and we allow ourselves to hope.  The second posture is anticipating.  This emptiness that we sometimes feel in our soul?  We expect that God will come in and meet us and fill us.  Then there's this posture of preparation.  We take some inventory of our life, we take time to think and we invite the Spirit of God to work in us and move in us that we would become little bit different people, over the course of the next four weeks.  
No one really knows when the season of Advent started.  The church universal has been practicing it since 567, at least.  It was that year that a number of monks decided to undertake a season of fasting leading up to the birth of Christ.  Their practice of fasting was adopted by the church to eventually become the season we now know and celebrate as Advent...."

Dwell | Dialed In | 1 John 4:1-20 | Week 5

Listen as Pastor Ryan Paulson continues in the Dwell series with "Dailed In" taking from 
1 John 4:1-20.