This fall I have the honor of speaking for C3 East in Orlando. You should seriously consider bringing your team to this conference. Some of the most significant and defining moments in our church leadership culture have happened at C3 and I firmly believe that its potential to revolutionize your ministry is exponential in scope. Ed Young has been a model of creativity for me and challenged me to dream dreams worthy of the God we serve. But even more than that, he and his wife Lisa’s love, support, and honor of Holly and I have made an impact I don’t think I’ll ever be able to measure. Check out this video, go to their website for more information, and do whatever you can to be there in October.

My team and I are currently on our annual Staff Advance (we never retreat). One of the essential components of this yearly event is showing one another our accomplishments in strategic projects and initiatives. This is about much more than accountability. It’s about being able to participate in each other’s progress. As awareness of our successes is spread across different departments, a powerful synergy of feeling of “we got so much done” is created and ongoing progress is enabled.

Momentum is one of the most valuable assets a team can ever possess. And I’ve found that one of the best ways to create it is to share your successes. When progress becomes the expectation through participation and celebration, progress will become the norm in your organization. And not because you as a leader value and expect it. But because your team will come to value and expect it.

The same dynamic can be found in the area of spiritual transformation. If your church staff wants people to be serious about growing in their faith, highlight examples of it actually happening and let everybody participate in the advancement of God in other people’s lives. If you celebrate it, you empower it.

Or maybe you feel like your family is stuck in a state of spiritual inertia. Begin asking them where they see God moving in their lives and where they’re making progress in their faith. Even if it’s just a little bit. And then respond with encouragement in tangible and meaningful ways.

The level at which of you participate in and celebrate the progress of those around you is directly related to the level of energy you will possess to continue to make it in the future. The moment you’re too busy to honor progress is the moment you lose your ability to sustain it.

Were great sermons delivered to the wrong people.

As pastors we have to remember that the measure of a sermon isn’t just based on the effectiveness of its delivery or its faithfulness to Scripture. Just as essential is that it is designed for the specific group of people God has called us to reach.

The problem usually occurs before the sermon is ever delivered. Every preacher has a galley of people that is sitting in their minds when they are preparing a sermon. The problem is that many pastors have the wrong people sitting in that galley.

Some of us are preparing our sermons for our old seminary professor so our goal is to not make any mistakes or do anything unorthodox. Others of us are preaching to a donor we don’t want to offend by saying the wrong thing. We’re preaching to bloggers who might criticize us and take something out of context. We’re preaching to the person who made us mad and we want to get them back so we bully them from the pulpit.

In each of these cases, the issue isn’t that we’re not faithfully preaching God’s Word. It’s that we’re not faithfully preaching it to the people He has called us to preach it to.

It’s so important that when we are preparing our sermons, we keep two primary audiences before us. First and foremost, God must be the primary person on our minds. Otherwise whatever you preach won’t be worth anyone’s time. But then you have to take the next step and ask yourself the identity of the primary group you have been called to reach or that God has given you this sermon for. Otherwise whatever you preach won’t be worth their time.

God determines your faithfulness to the Word. But your audience determines who receives the focus of the Word.

Yesterday I began a four-week series on Romans 8 called “Christ Alone.” This is what many consider to be the most important chapter in what might be the most important book in the Bible.

I didn’t make it past the first verse.

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

I spent an entire week on this one verse because I think there might not be a more important topic for Christians than condemnation. And I’m not just talking about our status with God. Almost every Christian believes that one day there will be no condemnation for us because of the sacrifice of Jesus. But few live in light of the truth that there is no condemnation for us now because of the sacrifice of Jesus.

In Christ you are free. Now.
In Christ you are holy. Now.
In Christ you are pure. Now.

I firmly believe that more Christians are derailed by condemnation than by loose living. And I think the root of the problem lies in the fact that we allow ourselves to be deceived by the devil’s lies and half-truths regarding condemnation.

So part of what I wanted to do yesterday was present truths designed to expose condemnation for what it is and what it does to us. I came up with 17. Like a few weeks ago with the topic of forgiveness, there was no way I could get to everything I wanted to. So I promised everyone that I would give all 17 here to help you as you fight the temptation to condemn yourself for something that Christ has already covered.

So if you’re tempted at all this week to give in to the condemnation that Christ has already received on the cross for you, remember this:

-Condemnation operates through the power of suggestion.
-Condemnation is counterfeit conviction.
-Condemnation highlights the need for change. But paralyzes your potential to do it.
-Condemnation tries to turn a momentary lapse into a permanent condition.
-Condemnation is God’s correction without God’s kindness. And this is not God’s way. (Rom. 2:4)
-Condemnation is over-identification with what you’ve done and disassociation from who you are in Christ.
-Condemnation is the master of the half-truth.
-Confrontation builds you up, calls you higher. Condemnation beats you down.
-Condemnation loves comparison and competition.
-Condemnation leads to arrested development.
-Condemnation can be a copout because it keeps you locked-in to lowered expectations.
-Condemnation likes to pull out footage from the home video archives.
-Condemnation operates through selective memory.
-Condemnation only operates in the shadows. It tries to make you believe that the shadow of your real self is your real self.
-Condemnation is the operating system that constantly crashes.
-If condemnation can’t keep you in the past, it will convince you to defer to the future.
-Condemnation’s theme song is, “Don’t expect too much from yourself.”
-Romans 8:1 says that there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. Not there will one day be no condemnation.

(If you weren’t there to hear it, we’ll have the whole sermon up later today.)