The Green-Eyed Monster

The third in the series “7 Deadly Soul Viruses” is "The Green-Eyed Monster". These 7 sins act like viruses that infect the soul, lead to destructive thinking & behavior that poisons relationships, damages our own souls, & pushes us away from God. Today I used a clip from the film “Amadeus”. The entire film well portrays the sad destructive nature of envy. Poor Salieri, the court composer, was driven to such evil by his envious heart. He wanted to have the talent God gave Mozart and could never be truly grateful for the blessings he had received from God.

If your heart is suffering with the envy-virus, how do you rid yourself of it? Here was the assignment for this week.

Assignment: Counting & Rejoicing  (slide)

1) Count your blessings; list them one by one till you get to 100.
2) Rejoice with someone else in their blessing
3) Memorize 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a

Blessing: “May your heart be filled with gratitude and love that you may rejoice in your neighbor’s blessings as well as your own. Amen.”

Pride: Misplaced Confidence

This Sunday we take on the first, and according to Thomas Aquinas and many others, the worst of the 7 deadly sins. I introduced the message with a clip from the film “Shenandoah”, starring my all-time favorite actor, Jimmy Stewart. Set in Virginia during the Civil War, Stewart plays the patriarch of a large family attempting to sit out the war going on all around their farm. The clip occurs near the beginning of the film when Stewart offers the most ungrateful prayer at the dinner table. You can see it @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzzyZ1M-kVU . Charlie Anderson is not a man of faith. If you haven’t seen the 1965 classic it is definitely worth a rental, the ending is good.

In preparing this message I found C.S. Lewis’ chapter on pride in his book Mere Christianity to be very helpful. He identifies what sinful pride is not. It is not pleasure in being praised. I often feel awkward when I’m praised by others. The truth is that I know the one praising me is grossly overestimating my good qualities. But we all enjoy genuine and truthful praise. Lewis says, “The saved soul to whom Christ says, “Well done” is pleased and ought to be.” The problem is in the person who lives for the applause of others and will do virtually anything to get it.

Lewis also insists that sinful pride is not “warm-hearted admiration for another.” For example, it is not sinful for a father to be proud of his son. Lewis writes, “To love & admire anything outside yourself is to take one step away from utter spiritual ruin; though we shall not be well so long as we love and admire anything more than we love and admire God.” The problem is when we take a precious gift of God, like a son or daughter, and elevate that gift in our hearts above God.

Spiritual pride is difficult to detect in ourselves and even more difficult to deal with when detected. In the message I offered an assignment based on Rebecca DeYoung’s statement in her book, Glittering Vices. She suggests 2 spiritual disciplines in the battle against vainglory & pride: silence & solitude. “In silence,” she writes, “we can recognize our anxious need to create an approving audience for ourselves, and the discipline of solitude removes the audience.”

Here’s the assignment:

1. For an entire day don’t talk about yourself… AT ALL!

No stories about you, no sharing your feelings or opinions. Then reflect on how much effort you devote to calling attention to yourself to win the approval of others.

2. Help someone this week

Any act of service will do except for giving someone money. This is about giving your time & energy. Here’s the catch: do it secretly! Don’t tell ANYONE!

3. Memorize the sinner’s prayer and meditate on it daily this week: “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Let me know how the assignment goes this week, especially that part about not talking about yourself for an entire day. That reminds me of a story about myself… wait… never mind.
Blessing: (Phil 2:3) “May you ‘do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.’ Amen.”

7 Deadly Sins and Ray Bradbury

I was sad to see the report that prolific science fiction writer Ray Bradbury passed away last week. I love to read, but science fiction is not one of my favorite genres. I can count on one hand the number of science fiction books I’ve read in my life and three of those are by C.S. Lewis. But I do love a good story and Bradbury was a master story teller.

Oddly enough I read my one and only Bradbury book just last month. The book: Something Wicked This Way Comes. I saw the film based on the book back in the 1980s. I was fascinated by the film and remembered it as I was contemplating doing a sermon series on the “7 Deadly Sins”, so I found a copy of the book to read. This Bradbury book is not a science fiction work, but a strange and haunting story about two 14 year-old boys, one with no father, and the other with a father who thinks he’s too old to be the dad his son needs. It’s also a story about secret desires that burn within the soul, desires and dreams that are seductive, promising unimaginable fulfillment and pleasure. And it’s a story of the devil’s work, making those desires come true, but at an unexpected and devastating price.

Bradbury’s story of two teenage boys seeking adventure and mystery at a bizarre late October carnival that comes to their small town is really about temptation and how it works in all of us. The sinister carnival master, Mr. Dark, seems to know everyone’s secret weakness and intends to exploit to the fullest every single one of them. It’s a page-turner with plenty of close calls, unexpected twists, and a good soul. I think it’s a good read.

As I stated at the beginning, I picked up Something Wicked This Way Comes to read as I was preparing a new sermon series. That new series starts today, June 10. I’ve given it the title “7 Deadly Soul Viruses”. I have two goals for the series; the first is to discover how these soul-viruses lead to destructive thinking & behavior that poisons our relationships, damages our own souls, & pushes us away from God. The second goal is to offer the appropriate remedy to each one, what we might call the spiritual antivirus. What are the 7? This Sunday I’ll introduce them with a somewhat spooky video short. For the next few weeks… 7, to be exact, I’ll be blogging about the upcoming Sunday messages and fishing for some input. If you are not able to be at Pflugerville Community Church on a given Sunday, you can always hear the message on line @ http://www.pc-church.org/media.php . I’m not saying my preaching is as stimulating as Bradbury’s novels, but I try to include a good twist now and then, and even the occasional surprise ending.

You can learn more about Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes @

http://www.amazon.com/Something-Wicked-This-Way-Comes/dp/0380977273/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339313754&sr=1-1

You can learn more about the church I pastor @ Pflugerville Community Church Website

Here's the assignment given at the conclusion of Sunday's message:
1) Note the biggest and least of the 7… in you. Off the top of your head which of the 7 do you think you struggle with the most, and which of the 7 do you struggle with the least? Write down your answer and save it to reconsider at the conclusion of the series.
2) Memorize 1 John 1:8-9 and meditate on it daily this week.
3) Read my blog @ http://pvillepastor.blogspot.com/
let’s make this series interactive.