Our sermons are only a part of our Sunday morning, but they are an important part – they are the Word of God presented to us in our context so that we can repent, seek to amend our lives, and receive God’s grace through the power of the Gospel.
This week’s Gospel involves several vignettes that all lead to the same end, the idea that Jesus’ disciples are to be humble in their approach to each other and to the world. When we fail to embrace humility, we fail to follow Jesus’ example of searching for the one sheep over the 99. Our poise…
This Sunday gives us the first sense of “poise” in the Christian life, which is taking up our own cross in a sacrificial life. Sacrificing our own lives, denying ourselves, puts us in the poise to receive God’s love on His own terms instead of ours, as well as allowing us to put our own…
This week we start our Poised to Love series and look at the idea of being “poised” Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others…
We end our Book of Love series on the “spooky” note of the Revelation to John and other apocalyptic works such as Daniel and Ezekiel. In the midst of these revelations, we look to “find” a God who is mysterious, but whose greatest mystery is His love for mankind, and how he chosen the…
We look this week at the Catholic/General Epistles (the Epistles not written by Paul). In these Epistles we generally find a sense of the impending return of Christ and how churches are to behave in the last days. They also seek to further explain the true nature and true love of God, and how that…
As we continue in the #BookofLove series we take a look at the writings of Paul, and how they show the different sides of The Message that God has for us. Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself. But when the crowds heard it,…
As we venture into the world of the New Testament in our #BookofLove series, we consider the Gospels and Acts to be like a movie trailer that God uses to show us the story of our salvation. “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up.…
Are you an exile? The children of Israel were exiles, but are we as Christians? The apostle Peter thinks so. And so we delve into what it means for us to live in lives of exile while maintaining our identity in Christ. Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the LORD…
Are you a Christian? Would you say that being one is wise? Does it look like a wise thing to others in our culture? or does it appear to be less than wisdom? The proverbs of Solomon, son of David, king of Israel: To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive…
Is skimming the Bible a sin? Sometimes we think so, and it can keep us from seeing the big picture that God is trying to show us in the Scriptures. What would happen if you allowed yourself to read (even skim) the Bible for 8 weeks? That’s what we want to know. It seems like…