Category: Sermons

Taking Him at His Word

Leave a comment

We all know the story of the wise men. They came from the East, following a star, to worship at the feet of the newborn king of the Jews. Along the way to Bethlehem, they stopped by Jerusalem for directions. Interestingly the people who told them to go to Bethlehem to find the baby knew that the Messiah would be born there. If that was the case, though, why weren’t they already there themselves watching and waiting for His arrival? That’s the question we are exploring today as we continue our Advent series, When Heaven Met Earth. Let’s dive in together.

Taking Him at His Word

There is a difference between taking something seriously and taking it literally. Now, sometimes there’s not much of a difference. If I were to give you an instruction like, “Stand up and walk up here on stage,” you could take me both seriously and literally by getting up and joining me up here on stage. On the other hand, if I were to tell you that I want you to do something for me, and to have it done for me yesterday, taking me literally would be impossible. Unless you happen to have a time machine handy, doing something that I asked you for today, yesterday is physically—not to mention temporally—impossible. But you could take me very seriously, understanding me to indicate that I want you to do it for me as quickly as you possibly can. That’s what I was really expressing anyway. I never meant to be taken literally when I said it. That would have been silly.

Read the rest…

For Our Good

2 Comments

After a few days off, it’s good to be back. The Advent season is a time for preparing for the arrival of Jesus into our world and into our lives. For the next few weeks, as we take part in the preparation, we are going to spend some time looking at the stories of Jesus’ arrival. When Jesus arrived, heaven met earth in a way that left earth forever changed for the good. These classic stories give us some insight on how that happened. They may be familiar, but there is nonetheless great wisdom here if we will have it. Let’s get started with Matthew’s story of Jesus’ birth and see what the Spirit has to say through it.

For Our Good

Many of you know that I enjoy building metal models. They are all over my office. I think what I enjoy most is following instructions carefully and winding up with a neat-looking finished product in the end. There are enough things in this world that don’t have nice, neat endings where you can see and physically hold in your hand the results of your work. These metal models give you just that. And these days, the more complex they are, the more fun they are. I think my last model had somewhere near 200 pieces and 8 double-sided pages of instructions. That felt good to finish. 

Read the rest…

Redirection

Leave a comment

Sometimes we get everything right. Sometimes we serve God in a way that explodes in the best way possible. Lives are changed; communities are made whole. And then sometimes, just when things seem poised to grow even further, God comes and interrupts what we are doing for Him to call us in a new direction. Why would He do such a thing? Today, as we wrap up our teaching series, When Life Gets in the Way, that is exactly what we are talking about. Thanks for being here throughout this journey. May you be better prepared for the interruptions you will yet face as you journey toward His kingdom. Here’s the message.

Redirection

In 2016, we thought we were moving. We had been serving our little, country church for several years, and things were going really well. But then another church reached out, and as we prayed through it and considered all of the various factors involved, it really seemed like this might be something God was doing. We inched our way through their process, but it was quickly clear that things were moving ahead pretty smoothly. It was not easy to wrap our heads around the idea of moving. The church we were serving was the first church we had ever served. They had taken a chance on a young guy fresh out of seminary. Our boys were all three born in that community. The church loved us well. But the further we moved forward, the more we got our hearts and minds wrapped around it, and the more excited we got about the prospect of what God seemed to be doing. 

Read the rest…

Waiting Is the Hardest Part

Leave a comment

Life brings all kinds of interruptions to our plans. And those interruptions come from all kinds of different sources. But sometimes they come from nothing. What I mean is that sometimes our lives get interrupted when what we expected to happen, what we expected God to do, doesn’t happen. We find ourselves facing downtime when we thought we were going to be actively doing something…anything. As we continue in the second-to-last part of our teaching series, we are talking today about what to do when we face the interruption of waiting.

Waiting Is the Hardest Part

So, the other day, I had told somebody that I would show up to help them do something at a certain time. I’m the kind of person who would rather be ten minutes early than two minutes late. So, true to form, I showed up about fifteen minutes before I said I would be there. That gave me time to make sure everything was ready when they arrived. As I was pulling in, though, I got a text: “Running a bit behind.” Given who was meeting me, I wasn’t all that surprised. I went inside and started doing the things I knew I needed to do. By the planned meeting time, all of that was done. So, I twiddled my thumbs for a bit. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Then fifteen. I expected a little late, but not that much. So, I started doing some other things I hadn’t planned on doing. Then I got those done too. The waiting wasn’t what I planned, but it turned out more useful than I expected. 

Read the rest…

A Choice of Response

Leave a comment

For the last few weeks, we have been talking about the various kinds of interruptions we might experience as we go through our lives. We’ve talked about divine interruptions as God invites us to go in a new direction as well as interruptions from sin – both the sin of others and our own sin. So many of the interruptions we face on a regular basis, though, aren’t critical interruptions, they’re just irritating. In those situations, knowing how to respond to the person who is the cause of the interruption matters a lot. This is especially true when the interruption turns out to be God-ordained after all. In part four of our series, we are taking our cue from the example of Jesus. Let’s dig in together.

A Choice of Response

Covid was tough. It was tough for a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons it was tough for me personally was that I wound up working from home a lot. With three still-young children. Who were all doing school from home. Do you know how hard it is to write a sermon or a Bible study outline when you’ve got three kids coming to you on a rotating basis (or simultaneously) either needing help with their schoolwork, needing to be reminded to do their schoolwork, or just needing to be entertained for a few minutes so they don’t start creating their own entertainment which usually creates more problems than it solves? About as hard as it is to get anything else done with all of those things going on. Many of you know those woes far better than you’d like. 

Read the rest…