Tag: Sermons

Live as You Speak; Speak as You Live

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This past Sunday, as we continued in our series, How to Be Faithful When No One Else Is, we were confronted with the fact that if our words and lifestyle don’t match each other, our words will be robbed of any power they might have otherwise held. This matters because speaking the truth is something we are called to do as followers of Jesus. Let’s talk about all of this through the lens of the next episode of Daniel’s story. Thanks for reading and sharing.

Live as You Speak; Speak as You Live

Imagine for a minute that you are sitting in an audience waiting for a comedian to come out on stage. When the guy finally walks out, he looks like a huge nerd. What’s more, behind him comes a stage crew member pushing out a big screen TV. When the audience looks a little inquisitive about the screen, the supposed comedian speaks up and says, “Oh, that’s for my PowerPoint slides.” Now, without knowing anything else, how excited are you about this comedian? Probably not very much. Somewhere inside you are thinking something along the lines, “I have seen comedians before, and you, Sir, are no comedian.” We don’t really want to listen to someone we don’t believe knows what they’re talking about. We’re terribly judgmental like that. And as much as we tell ourselves stories about not judging a book by its cover, we do it anyway. It’s like we can’t help ourselves. If you are presented with someone who does not appear to have any knowledge of the subject he is preparing to address, you’re going to start tuning him out before he even gets started. Now, maybe he earns a hearing in the few seconds you give him to grab your attention, but the odds aren’t in his favor. 

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Loving the Hurting

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This week as we continued our series, How to Be Faithful When No One Else Is, we are turning with Daniel’s story in a direction that may be unexpected. When we imagine ourselves standing in faithfulness as the world around us turns away from such a path, we are often tempted to think in very much cultural terms. We imagine ourselves as warriors battling back the forces of evil. Yet being faithful after the way of Jesus looks very different from this. Let’s talk about how and why as we look at another story about a king and a dream.

Loving the Hurting

Let’s do a quick vocabulary poll this morning. This one is definitely a fifty-cent word. How many of you have heard the word “schadenfreude”? Anyone want to throw out a definition or use it in a sentence. It’s actually a really good word to have in your back pocket. It’s probably worth quite a few points in a game of Scrabble. I don’t think I’ve ever actually played a game of Scrabble in my life, so I could be wrong, but it at least has a lot of letters. Schadenfreude, as you might have guessed, is a German word. While a more robust definition is probably available in German, in English it basically translates to taking pleasure at the misfortune of others. We live today in a world where schadenfreude is a common feeling for a lot of people. 

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Stubborn Faith

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This week, after a couple of weeks off – one of them unexpected – I was privileged to be back in the pulpit. We dove into the third part of our series, How to Be Faithful When No One Else Is. This week we explored Daniel 3 and the well-known story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the fiery furnace. We marvel at their faithfulness and God’s miraculous rescue of the trio, but something even more powerful lies at the heart of the story when it comes to our challenge to stand on faithfulness even when we are standing alone. Let’s explore this together to see what it is. Thanks for reading and sharing.

Stubborn Faith

When was the last time you did something that left you feeling accomplished? When was the last time you checked something off your list in a way that made you feel satisfied? It feels good to do big things. It feels good to do smaller things too. It feels good to be making forward progress. Some of you know that I enjoy building metal models. They come in a nice, little kit with detailed instructions and sheets of metal that are pre-painted and laser cut so you can snip them out, fold them accordingly, and build things like this Stormtrooper. Putting the last couple of pieces into place and finishing these feels really good. It’s satisfying to finally throw away the empty scraps of metal that used to hold all the little pieces in place. 

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How to Speak When It Matters Most

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Well, you never know when plans are going to be turned on their head. I was all set to preach yesterday, but wound up stuck at home. Our Minister of Students did a terrific job filling in last minute. Here’s what I would have preached had I been able to go as planned.

This week, as we continue in our series, How to Be Faithful When No One Else Is, we are exploring the next part of Daniel’s story together. Here we find a king demanding something utterly irrational and throwing a royal temper tantrum when he can’t have it. Yet it is Daniel who comes to the rescue by providing the king (with God’s help) exactly what he was seeking. That’s the part of the story that usually gets all the attention, but there was something else Daniel did along the way that is so important for us to understand if we are going to stand firm in our faith when the world is pushing back against us. Let’s explore this together!

How to Speak When It Matters Most

Have you ever thrown a truth bomb? Do you even know what a truth bomb is? If you’re on social media in some capacity, I suspect you do. A website called Slang.net defines a truth bomb this way: “A truth bomb is a statement made that might seem shocking to the recipient but is the truth. It feels like a bomb because the victim…is unsuspecting of it and is usually left disoriented. Truth bombs can lead to disaster depending on the truth they reveal and how the recipient takes it.” Truth bombs aren’t so fun if you are on the receiving end of one, but we live in a day when people love throwing them at each other—especially on social media. Now, just how fully most “truth bombs” actually fall in line with the truth is a matter of some debate, but it’s always fun to feel like you’re telling people something they don’t already know and will shock them to learn it. We love the idea of speaking truth to power like this. 

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Courageous Faithfulness

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This week we kicked off a brand-new teaching series called, How to Be Faithful When No One Else Is. Over the next seven weeks we are going to be working through some of the story of Daniel to see how he maintained such incredible faithfulness to God in spite of living in circumstances that were generally not even remotely supportive of that goal. Living as we do in a culture that is increasingly hostile to public expressions of the Christian faith, Daniel’s story offers us several important principles we can use to follow his great example. Thanks for reading and sharing!

Courageous Faithfulness

All actions have consequences. That’s just how things work. Sometimes we have control over and can anticipate those consequences. Sometimes we can’t. When the U.S. withdrew our forces from Iraq a few years ago, one of the unexpected consequences was the rise of ISIS. This radical, Muslim, militant group swept to power throughout the Middle East, eventually taking control of a huge swath of territory for a short time. During their brief reign of terror, the world was treated a whole litany of shocking and tragic acts by the group and those who followed them. One of the most shocking, though, also turned out to be the most inspiring. Militants kidnapped 21 oil workers from a refinery in Libya. All but one of them were Egyptian Coptic Christians. The group took these men to a beach on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa and on camera offered each one the opportunity to renounce his faith in Christ and embrace Islam. All of them refused and had their lives taken for their refusal. When it came to the turn of the one African man who was not previously a believer, he responded, “Their God is my God,” and forfeited his life as well. The story of the incredible faithfulness and courage of these men is still told throughout that region to inspire others to follow Jesus as well. 

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