THE RETURN HOME (14 OF 14)

The Return Home (14 of 14)
Series: The Story
Cal Jernigan
Ezra 1, Haggai 1


Big Idea: The surest way to get ahead is to put God ahead of yourself.

1) Opening Comments

a) Welcome and Greeting

b) Continuing thru The Story

i) The American Bible Society last year came out with a list of the most, and the least Bible minded cities in America.
(1) Number one Bible minded city: Birmingham, Alabama
(2) Least Bible minded city: Providence, Rhode Island

ii) How did we do?
(1) New York City came in as the 91st least Bible minded city in America
(2) Phoenix was 92
(3) San Francisco was 97

iii) What do we do about this?
(1) We make sure that we spend time in the Word of God
(2) We make sure that our experience in church is time spent in the Word of God.

c) Pull Out:

i) Your Bible
(1) Ezra 1
(2) Haggai 1

ii) Your Journal

(1) Week #3

(2) Title: The Return Home
(a) Explain the Big Idea
(b) Why do you always give us a ''big idea?''
(c) Show Sat. Night Live clip

(3) Big Idea: The surest way to get ahead is to put God ahead of yourself.

(4) Let's be clear...
(a) We all want to get ahead
(i) We want to live blessed lives
(ii) We want God's hand of favor to be on our lives.
(b) Nobody ''desires'' to fall behind!
(i) But we can just do our thing and one day we wake up frustrated... we feel so far behind.
(ii) Things don't seem to be working out for us.
(iii) We wake up and discover our lives are a mess
1. Our families
2. Our relationships
3. Our careers
4. Our finances
(c) How did we get there?

(5) Understand the corollary:
(a) The surest way to fall behind is place yourself ahead of God
(b) Where you place God in your life will determine how life goes for you.

2) Getting Up To Speed

a) The Kings and the Prophets

i) Israel and Judah had quite a number of Kings
(1) Most of them were evil...
(2) While they could of done a great deal of good... they didn't.
(3) They used their power to lead people away ...

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