Tag: Sermon

A Centered Life

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This past Sunday morning, we kicked off a brand new teaching series called Simplicity: Finding Contentment in a Busy Life. The fact is: We all have lives that are busier than we’d like them to be at times. We all have times when we are just discontent with the state of our situations. Trying to navigate out of and around those kinds of seasons can be tough. This series is all about how to avoid them in the first place. Don’t miss a single part of this journey as we talk about how to focus in, slow down, and live the kind of life we’ve always wanted to have.

A Centered Life

Do you ever want more?  That’s kind of a broad question.  More of what?  Well, anything.  If we’re going to stay that broad, then of course you do.  I do too.  Now, not of everything.  But sometimes we want more, right?  Maybe you want more to drink at dinner.  Perhaps you want more dinner.  Kids often want more attention.  If you’re reading or watching a great story, you may want more when it ends; you may want to find out what happens next.  There are all kinds of situations in which we want more. 

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Love Like Jesus

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This week we finally wrapped up our series, Being Useful. In the final analysis, how can we be the most useful to Jesus? The answer is found in getting ourselves on board with His most central mission: To love one another into the kingdom of God. To find out more about this incredibly freeing truth, keep reading.

Love Like Jesus

By the time I reached my senior year of college, I was so deep into my chemistry major there was no turning back from that.  I say that, because by that time I had already agreed to pursue God’s call to ministry and realized that most of what I had spent the previous three years learning was going to gradually leak out of the back of my head from disuse.  Always a fun realization when you still have the four hardest courses of your major yet ahead of you.  Speaking of that, one of those courses was Descriptive Inorganic Chemistry, or DINC for short.  The professor for the class was Dr. John O’Brien. 

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Irreducible Complexity

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With one more week to go in our series, Being Useful, we are starting to get a lot more clarity on what the picture of a life that is useful to Jesus looks like. And what does it look like? Love. This week and next we are going to wrap up this powerful series by talking about the role love plays in the church and in the life of a follower of Jesus. Don’t miss a single part of it.

Irreducible Complexity

Some of the fiercest and most significant debates happen in places where nobody sees them.  These are often inner-disciplinary debates among scholars on a single topic.  And the stakes for these are a lot higher than it would seem.  For instance, a debate among mathematicians about the best way to solve certain kinds of math problems may look from the outside like a bunch of geeks arguing about esoteric philosophies that have nothing to do with the daily lives of normal people.  But, the winning side may very well have their ideas appear in textbooks—do they even use textbooks anymore?—and curricula for elementary students and, all of a sudden, a whole new way of thinking about math will be planted in the culture.  All of a sudden, what was once abstract academic jargon begins to have a profound impact on the lives of regular people who are far removed from the ivy-covered campus buildings of elite universities.  Hello: Have you tried helping your kids with their math homework lately?  Case in point. 

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What Do You Know?

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This week as we continued in our series, Being Useful, we talked about the next quality on Peter’s list that will make us more useful to Jesus. Having faith and pursuing virtue are good, but they require something else of us to get them right. In this part we talk about with this other thing is.

What Do You Know?

Do you know where the annual U.S. sailboat show takes place?  Any takers?  Do you know who else didn’t know the answer to that question?  James Holzhauer.  Name ring a bell?  He was the most recent super candidate on the long-running game show Jeopardy.  He dazzled the country for just over a month as he went on a 32-game winning streak.  Now, a streak like that would be impressive enough by itself, but that’s not what so captured the nation’s attention.  Back in 2004, Ken Jennings went on a winning streak of 74 games and sits in second place for all-time Jeopardy earnings with just over $3.5 million.  Yes, that’s only second place.  No, what made Holzhauer such a fascinating contestant was his gutsy wagering.  I’ve seen winning contestants on Jeopardy walk away with a few hundred dollars as their prize.  Holzhauer’s biggest prize was a shade over $131,000.  All for…knowing stuff. 

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Get Your Head on Right

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Is faith all we need to be useful to Jesus? That’s not as easy a question to answer as it might seem. Certainly faith is all we need to enter into a relationship with Him, but being useful goes beyond that. As we continue our series, Being Useful, we talk about something that has to go with our faith if we’re going to hit that mark. Keep reading to find out what it is.

Get Your Head on Right

I grew up in a hymn-singing church.  Every single Sunday morning we sang hymns.  As a result, the great hymns of the faith are like a warm, familiar embrace for me.  I suspect that in this room, I’m not alone in that sentiment either.  I suspect there are many of you who grew up with the hymns and have a genuine love in your heart for them.  Now, I love worshiping by singing more contemporary praise music too, but just like anything that was a regular—and positive—feature of your childhood just feels good, the hymns are that for me. 

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