The Wedding Feast, Podcast

This is a recent sermon I gave a few months back, it has really been on my heart latley, thought I would post it for everyone to enjoy, blessings!!

Jason Hardy; Parable of the Wedding Feast; podcast

The Blessings of an Orphan

Sometimes life just does not make sense, we live in a world of inconsistencies, that make us question the goodness of the God we claim to follow. We live in a world were injustice is rarely revenged, the poor are left needy, the hurting and broken are left alone to their sorrows. To spend almost two weeks in Romania with children that have been abandoned, raped, left in gutters as newborns, thrown out and discarded as trash, brutally been beaten and considered unworthy in society has been a humbling experience. It has been a humbling experience because the love from these orphans puts to shame the love offered by the wealthy, worthy, putt together, attractive people in my life. I myself have realized that I too fall into the second category. It is a love that can not be described and penetrates to the deepest part of your being, exposing the voids you never knew you had. The love of the broken has shown me my own brokenness and what it looks like to love from the midst of it. I had the opportunity to hear the stories of many orphans I now consider friends, and the constant theme I heard was, “I am blessed.” How can a child who is thrown away consider their life blessed. These children would not exchange a moment of their experience for another. Because they were born in a country where communism stole the hope of the people, and had parents that abandoned and brutalized them in horrific ways, they were placed in orphanages were violence and neglect are common place. In the midst of this place they have experienced strange Christians that constantly loved them till their hearts melted with the love of Jesus and discovered God as their father. They would not change a moment, for without the pain of their experiences they would never have known Jesus as savior. In a country with only %4 Christians the only way they would ever hear the name of Jesus would be to be at these orphanages where Christians come to shine Christ’s love. How is that for a picture of a huge incredible God. There are many things we will never understand in this broken world, but one thing I know to be true. Our God is constantly redeeming the broken in ways we could never imagine. It is not our job to question, but to be the redeeming agents available to go to the most broken places to love as Christ would.

Jayden has arrived!!

It has been a rather eventful week in the Hardy home. Our son Jayden Michael Hardy was born June 3rd at 4:41 am after a long 31 hour labor that ended with a failed delivery and emergency c-section. Jayden was born 8 pounds 8 oz, and 21 inches long. He has a mop of beautiful dirty blond hair and dark blue eyes, absolutely beautiful. About 18 hours after Jayden’s birth he started having elevated respiration and a positive on an infection test, He has been placed in NICU and placed on IV medication. It took over 5 hours for them to get an IV in.  His veins were just collapsing from being so young. They had to strap his arms and legs down to get a direct line IV through is belly button that failed as well. Needless to say it has been a very emotionally draining experience. His breathing is now stable and no cultures are growing on the positive test, which is great news. If  cultures do grow we will have to leave him in the hospital and go home on Sunday, we desperately want to go home with our boy.

Here is a verse I found getting me through the craziness.

Philippians 4:20 “Be anxious in nothing, but in everything in prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. And God’s peace which surpasses all understanding will guard will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Hookers and Robbers

I am amazed by the love Jesus expressed while on this earth! He came to save , and love, and bring life to anyone who would take it. It is funny that those that thought they had everything missed it, while those very aware of their hang ups and failures found love and life in Jesus Christ.

Romans 5:6 “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

I saw Charlie Hall in concert a few weeks ago with phil wickham and Charlie’s song “Hookers and Robbers” reminded me why I love jesus so much!!

Do I Love Jesus?

This past Easter I have been completely overwhelmed by how much God loves us! The creator of the universe, the giver of every breath we breath has pursued us to the ends of the earth, even to the point to become a man and die on the cross for us!! Just stop and think about that concept for a moment, the almighty God pursued you and me to the point of death! I pray that never becomes something we are used to thinking about. As I think about this Easter and all the friends and family I saw, I realized it is not a matter of the lack of God’s love in our life, but often a lack of my love for God. I often say I love Jesus, but I wonder if we really mean it, and if I do mean it how does that love play out my life. I read this quote today and it rocked me,

“The critical question for our generation – and for every generation- is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with heaven, if Christ was not there?” – Francis Chan in “Crazy Love”

I fear that too often we are content with the blessings given to us by God, but have no desire for God himself. I never want to be satisfied with anything apart from Jesus, I pray that we may truly have such a deep desire and love for Jesus that anything without him is emptiness. What is your answer, can you say you love Jesus?

Sunday’s Coming

Posts from Old Blog

Old Posts from my blog: “A Raggamuffins Journey”

Stop & Hear the Music

Joshua Bell is a world famous violinist. Several months ago Josh takes his 3.5 million dollar violin to the Washington D.C metro station during rush hour and played for and hour to see if anybody would notice him. He usually makes $1000 a minute. In total Josh made $32 and only 7 people stopped to watch him. People pay hundreds of dollars to see this guy!!

The point:How is it that we can be running so fast through life the we can completely miss the most beautiful things our world has to offer. What if Jesus was standing in our midst would we notice His beauty and stand in awe. Everywhere we look everyday God is making his beauty and wonder present, have you missed it?

What is success in ministry?

I have been thinking about this question a lot lately. This is not a bad question to ask, but lets take an honest look at why we ask ourselves this question, and we can expose the dirty truth behind most of our hearts when it comes to success in ministry. What does success in my ministry look like? There is this hidden sense in most of us that if we are successful we have more value or worth, we have arrived at a point of completion. Yet as Christ followers we are to find our value in Christ, not our empty pursuits of anything but God. And do we really ever arrive at a place of completion this side of heaven, the last time I checked, “Rom 3:10 There is no one righteous , not even one” is there really anything we can do to make us successful in God’s eyes yet alone in ministry. How many times have you gone to a gathering of pastors and been asked, “how big is your church or youth group?” It is as if they are sizing you up for a church fight or something. I like to lie and say I have some small # students and see them immediately blow me off and look for the next guy with the big youth group that they can ask all their questions to, to become successful in ministry.

Let’s be honest, we have all done this, we equate success in ministry to the size of our packages; our packages of followers that is.  And the larger our congregation often the  more pride we have in ourselves, does this really please God. Does God call that a success in ministry. Given there are mega churches who’s pastors love the lord and have are the most humble men about how that success happens. But never do they equate success to the size of their church. Maybe the reason why most Church’s don’t experience this growth is because God doesn’t think you can handle it. Maybe because we would give God a sliver of the credit and take the rest for ourselves. Maybe we are focused on the wrong growth. If you have a church of 1000 but they are sshallow spiritualy is that a real success, what can be produced from saltlesness, more people with no flavor.

God’s picture of success is, John 17:1-3

“Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. 2 For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. 3 Now this is eternal life: that they may know you , the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”

Luke 14:25-35

25 Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: 26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters — yes, even his own life — he cannot be my disciple . 27 And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple … 33 In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple . 34 “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? 35 It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” 

This is what Jesus came to earth to die for! This was God’s picture of success, that we would deeply love the father, and live a life of sacrifice and saltiness for Him! Here is the thing, disciples don’t just stick around and enjoy nice peaceful services in air-conditioned multi-million dollar buildings, they are going anywhere they can to spread their saltiness to anybody that will take it.

If we have truly surrendered our lives to Christ do we really have a right to see the fruit or growth from our labor? Scripture says, “1 Cor 3:6-9  So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 8 The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. 9 For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.”

My prayer is that we as God’s servants would live by this passage, whether we have 100 people or 1000 in our church it is God who is working and he deserves all the glory. May we stop striving for prideful self-satisfying success and call it God’s church, lets get real it is just your Chruch. May we be truly satisfied by striving to see people love Jesus with everything they have and to live lives that bring so much salt into the world!

Finding Faith in a Faithless world

God has really been challenging me lately when it comes to the size of my faith. I so often pray for a deeper faith, yet completely miss or fail at the opportunities God puts before me to gain this deeper faith. In scripture Jesus is always challenging his disciples to leave behind what we so often cling to for comfort and safety and venture into the unknown.

Matt 16:24-25
“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.
NIV

Everywhere I look I see people with a passive faith desperate for something more. Could it be that the very comfort and safety we are so bent on finding is actually robing us and leaving us void of the authentic active faith we long for and were created to experience!