Tag: Sermon

God’s Got You

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This past Sunday was Graduate Recognition Sunday. From preschool to masters degree, we recognized and celebrate our many students and the grand things they have accomplished. Then, when it came time for the sermon, I offered the following as a challenge and encouragement. Thanks for reading.

God’s Got You

Do you remember learning how to ride a bike?  I actually still do.  For whatever reason that particular day is seared in my memory.  If you think about it, other than walking, learning to ride a bike is one of the most significant accomplishments a kid can achieve.  The reason is freedom.  There’s something about being on a bike that brings a sense of freedom few other things allow.  As you push the pedals with your own two feet, you are able to power yourself to go anywhere.  You don’t have to rely on your parents to get you there—within reason anyway.  And when you’re pedaling away, with the air rushing past you, you can feel yourself moving.  With every push of your legs, you are moving yourself more and more in some direction.  Even if it’s just to the end of the neighborhood, you’ve gotten there.  All by yourself. 

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Strange Fire

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This past Sunday morning we continued our series, Bible Stories to Make You Squirm, with what I think is about the hardest story in the whole of the Scriptures. I didn’t want to write this sermon. But if all Scripture is God-breathed, then we need to be able to deal with this part of it too. Check out what makes it so hard and what we should do with it below. Thanks for reading.

Strange Fire

I didn’t want to write this sermon.  Can I say that out loud?  I didn’t want to write this sermon.  Have you ever felt that way?  I mean, probably not about a sermon, but maybe about something else you’ve done.  You did it.  You had to do it.  It needed to be done.  But you didn’t want to do it.  Maybe you were helping somebody out and you knew it was going to wind up being a lot of effort for you for a little gratitude from them.  Perhaps you were given some task at work that you knew was just not going to be a pleasant undertaking—and you were right, by the way—but the boss asked for it and you were stuck with it.  You may have experienced this kind of feeling in yet some other way.  I don’t know what your experience was.  All I know is that I didn’t want to write this sermon. 

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The Problem with Wealth

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In part five of our series, Finding Meaning, we look at one last place we often go to fill this lingering void in our lives: Wealth. Money is a tempting source of meaning because it can make so many things happen that seem to be on our behalf, but if contentment is the thing we are seeking in having it, we are going to come up empty. Contentment has another source. Keep reading to find out what that is.

The Problem with Wealth

Have you ever felt like the system is rigged in favor of the wealthy and at the expense of the not-so-wealthy?  The odds are that unless you happen to feel like you’re part of the “wealthy”—that ubiquitous class of people who are imprecisely defined as folks whose net worth number has a couple more zeros than yours does and who serve as a convenient villain for all kinds of occasions—you’ve probably felt like this before.  As fair and impartial as our system is supposed to be, having money has its advantages.  And the more money you have, the more you are able to tap into those advantages.  We defer to wealthy people in ways we don’t similarly defer to not-as-wealthy people.  Humans have always done that.  We have always assumed that people who have lots of money have managed to get that money for some reason and whatever that reason is, if we haven’t been able to get lots of money ourselves, it must mean they’re better than us in some way.  We can try and deny that all we want, but that’s how pretty much every human culture has always worked.  It just is. 

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When Life Feels Empty

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This past Sunday we kicked off a brand new teaching series called Finding Meaning. For the next few weeks we are going to walk through some highlights of the collection of wisdom in the Hebrew Bible we call Ecclesiastes. In Ecclesiastes, the wisest man who ever lived records some personal thoughts on his own efforts to find meaning in life. Through his reflections we can learn a great deal about where to find it in our own. First, though, we need a foundation from which to build this structure of ideas. That’s what we did yesterday. If we are going to find real meaning in our lives, where do we start building? Keep reading to find out.

When Life Feels Empty

So…the Patriots won the Super Bowl.  Again.  I’ll just say: They’re really good.  More specifically, Tom Brady is really good.  Bill Belichik is really good.  They managed to bring just what they needed to beat every opponent they faced in the playoffs.  Every time.  Now, the result was the most boring Super Bowl game ever, but I’ll bet you didn’t hear any complaints to that effect in the locker room after the game.  A Super Bowl win is a Super Bowl win even if it’s boring.  The thing that drives so many folks crazy about the Patriots isn’t just that they are really good.  The Los Angeles Rams and even my Kansas City Chiefs were really good this season and they didn’t drive anybody crazy.  The same goes with the New Orleans Saints.  No, the thing that gets under the skin of so many folks is that they’ve been good for so long.  This was the sixth win for Patriots and their ninth Super Bowl appearance just in the last 19 years.  In other words, they’ve been to the Super Bowl basically every other season for the whole of this millennium. 

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Planting Seeds

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God designed you to grow. And, when you’re growing like you should, you’ll be producing seeds that can be planted in other people that will affect the way they see and interact with and think about the world around them. The question is: Are these Gospel seeds, or are they seeds for something less savory. As a community, God designed us to be a place where people grow in Christ. Read on to see what this means for us, what it can mean for you, and what we should to about it.

Planting Seeds

I don’t have any corn growing in my front yard.  You can drive by my house any day of the week, any time of the day, and you won’t ever see any there.  It’s the weirdest thing.  It just isn’t there.  I like corn.  I love eating it.  I love it when we buy a whole bunch at the store, strip it off the cob, freeze it, and pull it out months later to enjoy.  Lisa is a wizard with those goodie freezer bags.  But there just isn’t any in my front yard.  There aren’t any green beans either.  That’s really too bad too, because it’s the one vegetable we’ve managed to be able to get all three boys to eat without much in the way of complaint.  I can’t tell you how convenient it would be to simply go out the front door and pick what we need rather than having to go to the store all the time for them.  Alas, though, the yard is bereft of beans.  And greens.  Now, I’m not much of one for greens myself, but Lisa likes cabbage.  You won’t find the first leaf of it in my front yard. 

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