Kevin Elworth Live

Wrote this post a couple years ago obviously right before Easter, but the principle applies no matter when.

How can you claim to have faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ if you favor some people over others? James 2.1 So if you were to continue reading in that chapter you would see how that James is saying don’t show favor over the guy who comes to you in a fancy suit over the poor guy coming with his hand out.

This is Easter Sunday, the day the most the world goes to church whether they usually attend or not. There’s probably going to be a lot of sinners in your churches, the ones who don’t exactly know how to act like a Christian because they have yet to meet Christ. It’s okay for imperfect people to meet Christ, it has to be, you weren’t perfect when you met Christ either!

This weekend we started our series Beautiful and man was it fun. I believe there are so many woman that need to hear what God has put on my heart to talk about through the next few weeks.

Just as a recap, ladies, there are so many things that society screams at you to tell you that you are not beautiful enough or beautiful at all. The problem is that none of those things really matter at all. From appearance to kids, relationships to religion, everything you deal with in life is telling you that you need to to a better job trying to be successful and all this makes you tired.

With this first sermon my goal was to help you redefine your standard of beauty and where it’s found and with that we asked three questions
1) Who do I listen to?
2) What does God think about me?
3) What will I live for?
We looked at only two verses for the answers to these questions, Psalm 45.10-11 

My hope is that you are able to navigate through all that this life is throwing at you and find that God has something so much better for you, to know that He is the Father that loves you, created you to be beautiful and that He is constantly enthralled by your beauty. Because of that He is the only one you need to worry about honoring.

We had a bit of excitement in our 11AM experience when a man on the back row blacked out. Thanks to our Security Team and Medical Volunteers there was no problem at all and chances are that many of you didn’t even know about it. Don’t worry, the guy is just fine, he was dealing with a bit of dehydration.
If any of you would like to be part of our Safety team, greeters, ushers, setup/tear down, stage hands, tech team, you need to let me know. It’s because of faithful volunteers that situations like this work out just fine. You’ve heard me say it before and you’re sure to hear me say it again, if you are not actively involved somewhere in the church that you are not being fulfilled in your life. We are saved people and saved people serve people- it’s not request, it’s a responsibility! 

I’m excited about week two of Beautiful! Next Sunday we’ll talk about Character and it’s gonna be fun! Use your invites and bring someone with you because I grantee you know someone that needs to hear this.

When I was a 12 we lived in Vegas BABY and it was a blast. Probably one of the funnest cities I have ever lived in, there is so much to do there and to have fun with. I remember going to eat lunch on Sundays at one of the casinos, we could get a big prime rib dinner for like 10 bucks. Probably not anymore. I had a Latino friend that lived next door to me and we were both street hockey fanatics. We’d play all day till like midnight, it was a blast. At that time I was involved in Awana at the church we were attending and we’d play hockey once a month. So on the night that we were going to play during one month I invited my Latino friend to join us and together we’d show those kids how it’s done, besides that I was aggressively witnessing to my friend and praying that God would change his life.

During the course of our game Plino got a bit frustrated with a penalty call against him and he let the F BOMB fly. Quickly the ref, who just happened to be the pastors oldest son, loudly scolded Plino in front of everyone. He was embarrassed and that made him fight more making the whole situation worse. I was embarrassed too, I mean this was the friend that I brought.  Plino never got saved, and he never went back to my church again, for all I can think he never went back to church period. So my thought….what was so wrong with him acting like a sinner at church? I mean I know everyone there was shocked, stunned and disgusted that he would say such a vile word, but he didn’t know any better and why should he- GOD HADN’T CHANGED HIS LIFE YET. Why are we so uncomfortable with sinners being sinners? If we are going to reach the lost, it has to be alright for us to allow them to be in church and still be lost- NO MATTER WHAT THAT LOOKS LIKE. Long hair, earings, tatts, smokes, drugs- whatever. Remember Jesus ate with prostitutes, tax collectors, the sinners of the worst kind in those days and people lifted their noses at him because of what He did. Jesus was just comfortable enough to let a sinner be a sinner before they were saved!

Just wanted to share that during the month of April we averaged over 200 in the 945 United Worship Experience! This is a huge milestone for us and show that God is most definitely at work among us. The best part about it is that the best is still yet to come and I believe God is only just beginning his work here. Thank God we get to be a part of that.

Shout out church- Let me hear you make some noise because I know you are glad to be part of it also and I know you glad Jesus is changing lives!