GOSPEL :: FAMILY :: MISSION
It is great to be with you after being away for three months on sabbatical! It feels like it has been an eternity since I stood in this pulpit and I have really looked forward to being back with all of you. I missed all of you, deeply!
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When I first began to dream about this study in 1 Samuel, a few months ago, I was thinking ahead, about my upcoming sabbatical, (which begins just one day from now) and I was asking the Lord to give us a series that would nurture The Well in my absence as other preachers stepped into this pulpit over the next thirteen Sundays.
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If you are visiting with us tonight, you might be wondering why we would include Mathew’s genealogy in our lineup of passages for a Christmas Eve Gathering. Here is the reason. We have been studying this passage for the last couple of weeks in our Sunday gatherings in anticipation of Christmas and as we have studied it, we have discussed what it must have been like to wait for Jesus for generation, after generation, after generation. Look at the passage with me…
Continue readingWell, here we are, three days away from Christmas: three days away from celebrating the birth of Jesus! For many of us, in three days, we will gather with family and maybe some friends to eat some good food (hopefully), participate in the tradition of giving and receiving gifts, take some good naps (maybe), watch some football or maybe watch some good Christmas movies like “Home Alone” or “Miracle on 34th Street” or “The Christmas Story” or maybe even the best Christmas movies of all, the “Die Hard” movies or “Godfather” movies! Regardless of your movie of choice, there is much to look forward to in the Christmas season.
Continue readingAs I prayed and studied the text we just read over the last week, I was struck with the theme of waiting on Jesus. When you think about the history of Israel, and our own history for that matter, it is easy to get the sense that we are all waiting for Jesus in some way or another. Here is a question for you: In. what ways are you waiting on Jesus right now? More specifically, what promises of God do you need to rely on right now as you wait for Jesus to fulfill them?
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I want to ask you a question as we begin our study today in the final verses of Paul’s letter to the Galatians. What is your obsession? What do you think about the most, worry about the most, talk about the most, or pursue the most? What is it that marks your life as different from everyone around you?
Continue readingI have a question for you: Who do you trust to help you when you need it the most?And when do you think that you are the most in need of help? Is it only when you need help moving from one house to the next or getting some bills paid? Or do you enjoy the kind of friendship that grows out of the fertile soil of speaking truth in courageous love, confronting sin boldly, and proclaiming grace and forgiveness as a fresh drink of water? Do you have this kind of friendship?
Continue readingWhat do you think of when you hear the word “freedom”? Some of us inevitably think of the freedoms we have as American citizens (our God-given freedoms or rights as the statement goes) we have the right to freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom to bear arms, etc., etc. Others, when thinking of freedom, will think of a cultural interpretation of freedom where we are taught that we are free to do whatever we want, whenever we want, however we want, with whomever we want.
Continue readingWhat stops you from obeying the truth of the gospel? This is Paul’s simple question to his Galatian audience today. As I said last week, Paul is going to hone in on what it looks like to live in the freedom of the gospel instead of living in religious slavery or legalism. In our text today, he continues with that central desire in mind – the desire to see Christians living in the freedom of the gospel rather than living in religious slavery.
Continue readingThe question we are going to wrestle with today is this: How do we live in spiritual freedom instead of living in religious slavery? We kind of stepped into this theme last week in verses 21 – 31 of chapter four, but this is actually going to be the main question Paul is trying to answer throughout the rest of this letter to the Galatians.
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