The beginning of Joseph's story was terrible. After being his father's favorite son, he was betrayed and sold into slavery by his brothers. It doesn't get much worse than that. But for Joseph, this was just the beginning of the roller coaster of his life.
As we pick back up this week in Genesis chapters 38 and 39, things get a lot better. Then a lot worse. Then a lot better. Then, well, you get the picture. It's a pattern we probably understand. Ups and downs. Highs and lows. Mountains and valleys. No matter what words you use the idea is the same, and the hard questions that come along with it are, too.
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We were made to worship God. There's nothing more fundamental than that, but what does that mean? For most of us we probably think about music, singing, lifting hands, or other things along those lines. We talk about "worship" as if it's music, but that's complicated. What if we don't like the style? What if we don't like raising our hands? What if we really don't like singing at all? And, if worship is about singing, how can we even know if we're doing it "right"?
This week we'll explore the fundamental reason God made us – to worship Him, but more importantly we'll look to the words of Paul to learn what that looks like practically. And for each of us, when we fulfill our most basic God-given purpose in the way God intended, our relationship with Him grows, but, according to Paul, we are also able to follow Him more closely as well.
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Sometimes Jesus says things that are really hard to understand. Like when he says to "store up treasure in heaven". That sounds great in theory, but in reality, there's no "heaven bank" we can drive to and put our money in. So even if we want to do it, what does it actually look like?
In part two of "Mastered" we'll start where we left off last week. Last week we learned that to escape the money trap we have to obey the giver with our treasure. So this week we'll take the next step and explore just what that means. We'll come up with a working definition of "storing up treasure in Heaven", and we'll also discover a practical step we can take to begin doing just that.
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If we're going to be people who pray prayers that move the heart of God we have to dream big, but we also have to pray hard. We can't phone it in, and we can't pray just because we're supposed to. There has to be something more, something deeper that drives us to go to God.
This week we'll look at a parable Jesus told, and also at a story of one of the geatest prophets in Israel's history – sometone Honi the Circle Maker was likely inspired by. As we do we'll learn what it really means to pray hard, and we'll also talk about what it looks like in a practical way.
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