Introduction

The Men of Cook’s Memorial Presbyterian Church

• • These guys know how to fix things
    • It’s funny, they’ll be rattling off things and I just sit there and smile, gratefully.
      • I have no idea really what in the heck they’re talking about but it’s just cool to listen to experts, even if you’re clueless
    • I’m a problem solver at heart. A fixer
      • Ask my wife, there’s always a thing or three hundred I’m trying to repair.
    • But there is a way to fix problems. There really is.  A series of steps taken to reach a repair. 
      • Wanna know what the first step in fixing a problem it?
        • IDENTIFYING IT and understanding it more fulsomely.
      • That is exactly what we’ll do today, linking it all to Jesus Christ, as the Bible and our Lord would obviously have it.
      • Well, as we come into this second Sunday in Advent, as omicron variant leaps from our screens into our communities, icily reminding us that we’re not quite done with this pandemic yet, possibly.
        • Although we’re outside of the political season, we remain a deeply divided country with little hope presently of reuniting.
        • The Cook’s community has changed, once a family-farming area, we’re now fully enmeshed in city life with our fair share of country-minded people.
          • They’ve seen Charlotte encroach like a weed, disrupting their community and their peace.
        • So, how’s your PEACE level?
          • Not so good, eh?
        • Well, we may have just identified one really, really big problem.

No Jesus, No Peace

• Episcopal church written on the walls. Funny, they don’t really believe that but, okay.
  • I do.
• True, but not in some fundamentalist manner.
  • When there isn’t the awareness of Jesus, we’re going to struggle with our tranquility levels.
    • Why?
      • Because apart from relationship with him, we are bound to be tossed to and from by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
    • Jesus is the means by which we find peace.
      • We find peace in Him by accepting some difficult but obvious truths about ourselves, this world and its 7 + billion other inhabitants.

Step One – Accept You’re Not Perfect

• Perfectionism material
• We are a nation striving for a perfection that will simply never come
  • We might see kids not punctuating properly or doing things perfectly like we did back in the day but those aren’t the real problems with perfection anyway.
  • As a nation we strive to be
    • Perfect in our appearance
    • Perfect in our beliefs
    • Perfect in what we consume
  • Marketers know of our love for being perfect, they count on it every single time they make an advertisement.
    • Best Buy even said it best one Christmas – You, BETTER.
  • Nothing more life draining than this tendency.
    • What’s worse, a lot of people have it that don’t think they do.
      • I’m not a perfectionist, look at my house
        • Okay, that’s not an area you struggle with perfectionism in but that doesn’t mean that you don’t have it.
          • Do you every feel guilty when you relax, knowing you’ve got a lot to do?
          • Do you ever feel dissatisfied or discontent with yourself or your situation?
          • Do you have the tendency to see something wrong with things rather than what’s right?
          • Do you ever find yourself using these phrases regularly – “I have to…I must…I ought to…I should be able to…”