Tag: Sermons

Love Flows Out

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Yesterday morning in our journey through 1 John we finally got to the point of defining love.  What is love and what are the five implications for getting it right in our lives that John outlines?  Keep reading to find out.

 

Love Flows Out

Near the end of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus looked at the crowd gathered around Him and said this: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.  And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.  And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.  And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” Read the rest…

Empowered Servants

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This past Sunday we had the pleasure of ordaining two new deacons, installing them along with two others, and ordaining a veteran minister out of a sister tradition into our own.  In other words, it was a great Sunday.  At the end of the morning, I took a few minutes to tell the story of where this all came from and to point the way forward to where we’re headed as a church.  Keep reading to see what I said.

Empowered Servants

Hasn’t this been a good morning?  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I love being a part of the church being the church.  Seeing a group of Jesus followers come together to do the basic things we were called, equipped, and empowered by our Lord to do is really exciting to me and I hope it is to you.  Frankly, it’s hard for it not to be at least a bit exciting.  Whether you are part of a group or not, there’s something exciting about seeing one fulfill its purpose.  We are naturally drawn to purpose ourselves and so when we see one being fulfilled we root for it. Read the rest…

A Call to Action

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As we continue in our series, A Word on Reality, this past Sunday morning we looked at John’s call to make loving one another something that goes beyond being merely a slogan we claim, to an essential part of our identity in Christ.  Read on for more…

A Call to Action

Have you ever seen or worn a t-shirt with a slogan on it?  I suspect you have.  I had one in high school that my folks recently dug up in one of their closets and mailed to me that read: “The football team will be performing before and after tonight’s featured performance of the marching band halftime show.”  It featured a picture of a trombone slide piercing a football.  Now, if you’re a football fan or player you may be rolling your eyes, but I’m comfortable admitting that I was a huge band nerd in high school.  Also, our football team was awful.  And with over 200 kids in the marching band, for most home games our parents easily made up the biggest percentage of the crowd.  So yes, the crowd really was mostly coming to the game just to see the band.  Read the rest…

Good Little Children

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This past Sunday as we continued our journey in 1 John, A Word on Reality, we looked at both the blessings and the expectations of being called the children of God.  The blessings are incredible beyond our ability to comprehend, but we are at the same time called to live up to a standard consonant with our confession.  What is this standard?  Keep reading to find out.   Read the Rest…

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…