Intersection A Sunday Morning Community at The Church of the Good Shepherd March 2, 2014

1. IntersectionA Sunday Morning Community at The Church of the Good ShepherdMarch 2, 2014

2. Things to know . . .www.cgsonline.org Officer nominations until March 23rd. Find the form online at cgsonline.org 8 week shepherding group leader training modules with Bruce Clark Women’s night of prayer tonight 5 – 6:15 pm in this room. Every Friday 6:30 – 7:30 AM in Commons Contact bjames@cgsonline.org Now Studying Romans

3. DINNERSECTIONS! Enjoy a meal and conversations with fellow attendees of the Intersection Sunday Morning Community. Each dinner group will be made up of six people (singles, couples, anyone). Your group can decide to eat in someone's home pot-luck style or go to a restaurant together. We'll do three rounds of Dinnersections this spring - April, May and June. - and you'll have a different group for each session. Once your group is assigned you will have a full month to find a time to meet together over a meal. Note that the Dinnersections are for adults only; we suggest that friends or Shepherding Group members trade off in babysitting each other's children to allow couples with young children to attend. http://www.signupgenius.com/go/508084AA4AA2B0-dinnersections Sign-up genius or clipboard

4. Pray for our people

5. Last week in Intersection ... • “I am not in control of my life” • Spiritual practice: Make time and space for God

6. “I am not defined by what I do and what I accomplish” ^

7. Modern immortality symbols (aka Idols) What are some key immortality symbols in your immediate subculture?

8. Just the other day, I humiliated my oldest minutes before driving to the airport for a business trip. He had gotten an average/below average grade. He called it “medium”. “Medium?” I screamed. “Medium isn’t good enough in this family!”. It was a tender family moment . . . The hard truth, of course, is that medium isn’t good enough because I feel medium. I loathe medium. I want to be Lord. No, I must be Lord. An immortality symbol is not really about the thing. It’s not about baseball, grades, my beautiful house, my meaningful contribution to society. It’s about the glory that the thing bestows on me. I will be famous, finally, in the here and now. If glory means covering for your seventh-grader, then so be it. - David Goetz (Death By Suburb)

9. Modern immortality symbols (aka Idols) Why is the pursuit of immortality symbols and idols so spiritually crippling? If you really stopped pursuing a “besetting” idol, what would you lose? What might you gain?

10. Luke Chapter 9 23 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. 25 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? 28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew Chapter 11 What is Jesus saying about the “self”?

11. Boasting in the cross in the midst of our culture Jon Tyson is a church planter and lead pastor of Trinity Grace Church, located in New York City. He is also on the board of directors of the ORIGINS MOVEMENT, a new church planting movement committed to multiplying missional church communities in the major urban centers of the world. http://www.qideas.org/video/the-cross-in-culture.aspx 14:35 What strikes you about this clip?

12. Romans Chapter 12 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will 14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. 16So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, that person is a new creation. II Corinthians 5 How do we actually do this? What have you learned from your experience?

13. “Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you know that those jobs needed doing and you are not surprised. But soon he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra flor there . . . You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. Heintends to come and live in it Himself!” - C.S. Lewis (Counting The Cost)

14. Revisiting the “tender moment”

15. 30 He must become greater; I must become less.(John 3:30) Our culture of the northwest side of the research triangle says “I am defined by what I do and what I accomplish”.  We need to confront our implicit idols, stop chasing the illusion of the perfectly-constructed suburban life, and accept the counterintuitive call to die to ourselves.  We can only detach from the fruitless anxiety of our inner lives through the cross – the only way to find our life is to lose it.

16. Doug: bettsde@yahoo.com Grant: cgranthoffman@gmail.com Bill: bjames@cgsonline.org