Tag: Faith

Digging in Deeper: Matthew 1:20

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“But after he had considered these things, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because what has been conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.’”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter)

What are you afraid of? That was actually a topic of conversation in my vehicle the other day. The list included a pretty standard set of things: spiders, snakes, mice, insects, and the like. Any of those on your list? Perhaps, but I’ll bet you have some other things on there as well; things that are bigger, harder for you to precisely define, and possess more control over your life than any of the cliched list. The good news is, you don’t have to live with this. Joseph didn’t either.

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Faith in the Hard

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Last week we got to hear from the angel Gabriel as he reflected on his experience delivering the news of Jesus’ birth to Mary. With him we got to marvel at the wonderful truth that with a faithful servant, God can change the world. This week we got to hear from Joseph who gave an poignant reminder that faith in the hard really is worth it. Keep reading to see how this story unfolds.

Faith in the Hard

They’re finally asleep, thank the Lord! You would think that exhaustion from the journey alone would have made that particular task significantly easier than it has proved to be lately, but you would be wrong. These are the things no one bothers to tell you when the child arrives. All everyone does then is ooh and ahh over how cute he is. “He’s such a precious little baby,” they said. “He’s just perfect,” they crooned. “He’ll be the Savior of the world,” they proclaimed. But after a long day on the road and with the stress of recent days weighing heavily on our minds, I’m not so much worried about the whole world being saved as I am getting a few hours of sleep so we can keep going tomorrow.

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Morning Musing: Psalm 15:1

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“Lord, who can dwell in your tent? Who can live on your holy mountain?”‬‬ (CSB – Read the chapter) 

What matters more in the end: What we believe or what we do? What is it that ultimately determines who gets to be with God and who doesn’t? The content of our thinking, or the outflow of our behaving? That’s a little like the chicken or egg question. How do you decide one from the other? You can’t really. But can I go out on a limb a bit and suggest that the Scriptures seem to give maybe a fraction more weight to one over the other? 

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Staying on Track

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So, we know that being useful in our relationship with Jesus requires faith, virtue, and knowledge. But how do we consistently do anything positive with those? We need something else. In this fifth part of our series, Being Useful, we talked about what this next thing is. Thanks for reading.

Staying on Track

When I was growing up, I had the great fortune of going to a church with a whole bunch of godly men to watch as examples of how to do the Christian life well.  It was a gift that has kept on paying dividends in the years since.  There’s a call to our great men in there, but that’s for another sermon.  One of these men was named Martin Coleman.  Martin was an engineer and was one of those guys who could do or build pretty much anything.  My parents and his kids are about the same age and his grandkids are just a little bit younger than me.  We all grew up together as pieces and parts of one big church family.  That’s part of the reason I so love what we have here at First Baptist—which, incidentally, was the name of that church too. 

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Making God Happy

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This past Sunday, we continued our new series, Being Useful, by looking at the first character trait on Peter’s list that will make us more useful to Jesus. Item number one: Faith. What is faith? What does it look like to have faith? And how does growing in faith make us more useful to Jesus? Read on to find out.

Making God Happy

We were sitting in a restaurant the other day and over my shoulder a family had been seated at a pretty large table.  They needed the space.  The waitress came over like she would for any customer and took drink orders.  Not long after, they called her back.  They wanted to make some special requests.  Then they called her back again.  Then she came to take their food orders…and they made some special requests.  Then the drinks came out.  And those weren’t right.  The appetizers were wrong too.  So was their dinner.  The manager came to the table at least once, maybe twice.  It took a couple of trips by the waitress to get dessert ordered and right too.  Now, this was a busy restaurant and certainly mistakes are occasionally made in the industry.  But as we looked around the room, we didn’t notice anybody else getting the amount of specialized attention they were getting.  Now, they were never ugly that we could tell, but the fact that just about all of their stuff wasn’t quite right began to suggest a pattern.  The pattern wasn’t a restaurant that couldn’t get its stuff together.  The problem was a family that was hard to please. 

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