Tag: Sermons

Love Amid the Mess

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In part two of our series, The Big Story, we dug into the tragedy of the Fall.  While creation was originally adorned with not just beauty and splendor, but holiness and righteousness, it didn’t stay that way.  We broke it.  And yet, God refused to let sin have the last word.  Even in the midst of the mess of the Fall there was one thing God kept doing.  Keep reading to find out what this was…

Love Amid the Mess

Have you ever totally blown it?  I’m not talking a little explosion.  I’m talking, you rolled out the big guns, pointed them right at the stockpile of ammunition, and blew the whole fort to pieces.  If you’ve lived very long we’ve all done that at least once.  You may still be trying to recover from it.  Usually explosions that large leave a crater that even when once the ground has recovered from the blast still leaves a mark that everyone can see years later.  Where we came from near Petersburg, VA, there is the Petersburg National Battlefield Park.  The highlight of the drive through the Civil War battlefield is known as “the Crater.”  It’s this giant hole in the ground where the attacking Union soldiers exploded a mine up next to the defenses of the Confederates stationed there in order to breech the lines and win the battle.  The hole is still there.  They even named a road after it: Crater Road. Read the rest…

A Good Start

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This past Sunday we kicked off a brand new teaching series called, The Big Story.  Over the next few weeks we are going to look at the story of Scripture.  We often spend a lot of time studying the details of the Bible, and that’s not a bad thing.  But if we don’t know the much bigger context in which those details are situated, we run the risk of misunderstanding them.  The goal of this series is to help us understand the big story of Scripture more so we can better understand and know the God who is writing it.

 

A Good Start

Around parts like these where most everybody’s a “from here,” when folks meet someone new there are two primary questions they ask.  Anybody know what these are?  Where are you from and who’s your daddy?  The first question will tell them important things like whether or not you’re a Yankee.  It lets them know whether you’re a Tar Heel, a Blue Devil, or some other strange species…like a Jayhawk.  It gives them a sense of what kind of culture you bring to the area with you.  The second question—especially if you’re not a “come here”—gives them more of a sense of who you are.  If your daddy was well-respected in the community, you’ll probably be given the benefit of the doubt in a lot of things.  If your daddy was generally considered a scoundrel, though, you’re going to be treated with at least a bit of suspicion whether you deserve it or not. Read the rest…

The Happiness Trap

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In this final part of our series, Marriage Myths, we look at one last myth our culture tells us about marriage.  This is the myth that marriage is primarily about our happiness.  It sounds nice, to be sure, but just like every other myth, it does not compare with the truth.  Keep reading to find out what the truth here is and how we can live in it, and stay tuned for next week when we start a brand new teaching series called The Big Story.  If you’ve ever wondered what the Bible is all about, over the next four weeks we’ll talk about it together. Read the rest…

The “All’s Fair” Dilemma

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In this third part of our series, Marriage Myths, we take a look at the cultural myth that the perfect marriage is one in which the husband and wife are perfectly equal in every way.  While there is no difference in their value to the relationship, the husband and wife are not the same, nor were they designed to be.  Marriage isn’t about equality at all, as it turns out.  To see what it will do, keep reading…

 

The “All’s Fair” Dilemma

I brought a little something for show-and-tell this morning.  Who knows what this is?  Good.  It’s a mousetrap.  Okay, next question: Who knows what it’s for?  Close: It’s for breaking the spine or neck of a furry little woodland creature that is only a fraction of our size and was just out for an evening snack.  Its wife and 5,000 kids are probably going to starve to death now.  (Anybody feel guilty yet?) Read the rest…

The “One” Syndrome

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This Sunday as we continue our series, Marriage Myths, we started unpacking the first myth: The soulmate myth.  Our culture says that when we find our soulmate, everything about our life will be on the up and up from there on out.  The truth is something entirely different than that…and a lot better.  Keep reading (or listening) to find out what this is.

The “One” Syndrome

So, my boys were watching the movie Frozen again the other night.  And I’ll admit it: I sat there and watched a lot of it with them.  After all, I set it to record…for them of course.  Okay, I’ll go ahead and admit it: Frozen is a good movie.  It’s actually pretty unique as far as Disney princess movies go.  Now, at one level it’s just like all the rest.  But at another level it’s very different.  It does something no other Disney movie I can think of does.  Again, though, for most of the movie you wouldn’t know it. Read the rest…