Thursday, May 22, 2008

Session #4: Darrin Patrick

Darrin founded The Journey in 2002 with a desire to plant a church in the heart of Saint Louis, Missouri. Darrin is Vice President of Acts 29 Church Planting Network, and serves as the executive director for another church planting movement called 360-St. Louis, a network, which joins the church and the business community in planting gospel-centered churches. Darrin's passion is to equip the church to live the gospel in the world. He is working on his first book, The Man, The Message, The Mission. Today, The Journey runs four services across three campuses, and continues to aggressively plant churches in St. Louis and beyond.

Romans 1:18ff

Compelling Idea

Falling into sin/idols

An exchange of our object of worship...Genesis 3. Adam exchanged worship of God for his own agenda. Instead of worshiping God he worshiped something else; something else captured his heart and his desires

John 21; Little children, keep yourselves free from idols. John is summarizing his message of loving God. The opposite of loving God is idolatry.

Anything can become an idol...ANYTHING! Person, place, position, even ministry and church planting. Anything that takes priority over our relationship with God is idolatry. Every sin comes from idolatry. Idolatry is not merely a sin like lying, cheating, stealing, etc. Idolatry is the root that sin and rebellion grow from. We will worship something/someone...God or someone/something else. Most of the time we are clueless to our own idols. We're quick to point out everyone else's, but we are often blind to our own idols.

Romans 1: All of us/everyone lifts up something as more valuable than God. Paul addressed this reality and dealt with it. Paul exposed the what we have surpressed. What are you substituting for God in your life? Spouse/family, career, ministry, etc.

What do you worry about the most?

What do I rely on? What do I do to cope? What preoccupies me? What do I daydream about? What gives me self worth? What do I want to be known by, remembered for? What prayer, unanswered might cause me to turn from God? What gives me hope? What do I live for?

Root sin lies beneath the surface and causes sin to grow surface.

power, approval, comfort, control 4 prevailing root sins.

Focus on the root sins/causes and the surface sins will be cured