Category: Sermons

A Vise-Grip on Truth

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This week as we continued in the third part of our series through 1 John, A Word on Reality, we looked at how we can stand firm in the reality of God against this world’s unrelenting tide of fantasies and their ever more aggressive attempts to move in their direction.  If we are going to resist the lies of this world, there is one key thing we must do.  Read on to find out what it is.

 

A Vise-Grip on Truth

For the past couple of summers, Lisa and I have enjoyed the show “Fool Us with Penn and Teller” on the CW Network.  It’s a gameshow wherein four different magicians bring their best tricks to try and fool the world-famous magician duo.  The challenge is that they’ve been at it for over 40 years and know just about everything there is to know about magic and how to do it.  While there are a few tricks we have been able to figure out, there are some that leave us absolutely flummoxed as to how they did it.  Any really good magic trick can leave you feeling like maybe there’s more to this world than we know about.  Now, of course, no magic show is any more than a cleverly disguised trick, but the intimation of something more is part of its appeal.  Still, while the nod and wink of a magician is entertaining, following that rabbit all the way down its hole can lead, as Alice discovered, to more trouble than most of us would care to find.   Read the rest…

Contagious Holiness

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Last night I had the pleasure of being invited to speak at the revival service of Pleasant Grove Baptist Church.  Wayne, Trent, and the family there were exceedingly gracious and the good folks of FBCO offered an overwhelming and humbling show of support.  In the message I talked about the major solution to the major problem of the world.  To see what it is and what it means for how we do church keep reading.

 

Contagious Holiness

It is a good day to be a fan of comic book and superhero fare.  Never in the whole history of the silver screen or the small screen have we had as many offerings featuring one comic book storyline or another.  And it’s not just that the volume is high.  The quality is great too.  The comics giants Marvel and DC are in a growing competition for audience loyalty and while Marvel has so far dominated the games, the level of excellence they have achieved has set a high bar that DC is doing their best to clear which in turn simply spurs Marvel on to keep upping their own game.  Well, for a fan of this genre, the net result of this is a ton of great movies and tv shows to enjoy.   Read the rest…

Whose Word Is Final?

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In part two of our teaching series, A Word on Reality, we talked about how we can know with assurance that we are close to God by looking at 1 John 2:1-17.  What is the evidence of a life spent in Christ?  Read on for the answer.

 

Whose Word Is Final?

Close your eyes for me for just a minute.  I’m going to say some words and I want you to internally react to them.  Whatever your reaction is, I want you to just dwell on it for a moment and then we’ll talk about it in a bit.  Heaven.  Grace.  Love.  The world.  Sin.  Submission.  Obedience.  Okay, open your eyes.  Now, by a show of hands, how many of you reacted positively to all of those words?  Anyone react negatively to all of them?  How many were split between some of the words?  How many of you reacted positively to the first couple of words and more negatively to the ones after that?  Okay, how about this one: how many of your reactions went from most positive to most negative in the order of the words as I spoke them?  That last word, obedience, leaves a sour taste in the mouths of a lot of people today.  I think part of the reason for this is that we have been fed since birth a worldview by our culture that believes the highest good is achieved when we are singularly in control of our lives.  Now, while there are a few people in the world who have personalities that are very comfortable in a setting where we simply do as we are told, I suspect they are more the exception than the rule.   Read the rest…

A Vibrant Realism

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This Sunday we kicked off a brand new teaching series called, “A Word on Reality.”  For the next few weeks we are going to be working through 1 John and taking a close look at his invitation to be a part of the real world and what it looks like when we do.  In this first part of the series we talked about what needs to happen before any movement in this direction can take place.  Keep reading to find out what this is.

 

A Vibrant Realism

Have you ever tried to teach someone who thought they knew what you were talking about better than you did?  How’d that go?  It was pretty frustrating, wasn’t it?  You probably kept trying to tell them one thing or another, but you could tell they weren’t really listening.  Maybe they were hearing, but not listening.  Then, when you sent them out to put whatever it was into practice they failed.  Miserably.  But then, instead of getting mad at themselves for not being a very good student, they got all upset at you for not teaching them well enough.  The problem was: While they thought they were living within the bounds of reality on whatever the issue was, you knew they weren’t.  But, because of their deeply ingrained false belief, they weren’t willing to listen.  Have you ever been there?   Read the rest…

Being the Church

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This Sunday we continued our conversation about the church and how it was designed to work.  With the help of a summary of the church Luke offers in Acts 2, we saw that the church was designed to rest on four pillars.  Keep reading to see what those were and what we need to do about them.

 

While there have been very large churches at various times and in various places throughout the history of the church, the megachurch movement in this country began in the 1980s.  One of the first churches that was a part of this movement and in many ways came to define it, was Willow Creek Community Church.  Willow Creek was founded by Bill Hybels.  It started as a youth ministry meeting in an old theater in 1975 in Chicago, but under Hybels’ visionary leadership it quickly became the largest church in the country.  Today it averages 26,000 people a weekend.  It’s main sanctuary seats just over 7,000 people.  Read the rest…