Good Morning and Good Week to You, Harvest South Bay!
Haha, I’m going to take an informal SURVEY to see how many eyeballs are paying attention out there. IF YOU HAVE READ THIS EMAIL, simply FORWARD IT TO ME. If you don’t know my email it is goodby1 and then the @ sign and then JUNO dot com… If you don’t know, I’ve told you my email in this manner because there are programs that search the web for emails for the purpose of sending them spam and this is being posted on our public announcements page.
PLEASE do this, I want to know how useful these posts are 
Many thanks to Carsten for starting our World Religions curricula off on the right foot. I was so pleased with the presentation on Islam- it was both informative and just the right tone to help us learn. Now we can all feel much more informed and equipped to open discussions with Muslim friends and neighbors!
Here are the notes from our sermon last week!
Byron
Harvest South Bay January 25th, 2009
Entrance Exam
Great Expectations: Mark 10:13-31
2 Themes of Mark:
The Passage
1. Jesus and the Children: Jesus welcomes the children: they illustrate His openness to those who receive from Him without being able to repay.
2. Jesus and the Rich Young Ruler: Jesus challenges this young man to yield to Him his life by identifying the area which the man loved most. By doing so, Jesus confounds the popular notion at the time that it was the rich who were the closest and most blessed by God. Instead, Jesus says, it is not the people of great means, but the people who have so little means that they are humble and submissive before Him.
Theme of the Passage: Entrance to the Kingdom takes Yielding to God
2 Applications
1. Continue to Yield: If our salvation is based on simple yielding then our continuing spirituality needs to be based on simple softness of heart toward God.
2. Beware of Riches: It is the particularly insidious trap that God reminds us of constantly through the Scriptures. Jesus actually uses the adjective “unrighteous” to describe wealth.
Weekly Application Exercises
1. How you have evaluated your spiritual life in the past? How might one evaluate their inner life with God in a realistic but not legalistic way? How is your spiritual life and is it growing?
2. Examine your philosophy of money use. How have you brought your finances under the Lordship of Christ? Think of a tangible example of how you have responded to God’s leading in the use of the finances He has entrusted to you.
More applications
1. Nurture a freedom from riches by doing something particularly stretching in loving someone else with your money this week.
2. REST! Rest from the treadmill of works by simply understanding God’s great love for you regardless of your performance. In your rest and as you thank God for His unconditional love, begin to understand how that rest motivates you to do according to His call.
3. Identify your treasures by spending time in meditation understanding what is most dear to you. Is it family or security in wealth or the admiration and respect of others? Present these before the Lord as a sacrifice to Him.