In a Chicken Soup book, Sandy Smith wrote how going to go to college was a big deal because her father passed away a few years earlier, and they were not wealthy when he was still alive. But through her mother’s sacrifices, she and her siblings were not only cared for, she was still able go to college. To make her feel like an adult, her mother even let her drive them when she moved into her dorm room that first fall. As Sandy drove, her mother asked if she had any gum. That request shocked her, however, because Sandy had never seen her mother chew gum. Never. Ever. In all 18 years of her life. And she was then downright stunned when her mother took the pack of gum out of her purse and said “Oh, honey, this is my favorite gum. Even when I was a child, I always loved this gum.” As she watched her mother joyfully chew the gum, Sandy wrote that she just had to ask what the deal was with the gum, saying “how did I not know that you chewed gum?”
May 1: Fear Not
I had a great opening for this sermon when I originally wrote it. But something happened. While I was researching fear, it got in my head. I started thinking about fear. It made me really take stock of my life and especially how I let my fears control me, even guiding me when making certain decisions. I’ve always said that I am as much an audience to my sermons as those who are listening to it. This sermon got more personal than I wanted it to…
April 24: Doubt Is Not The Destination – Believing Is
8AM Traditional Service 9:30AM Contemporary Service
April 17: Easter Day
Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Christians have opened their Easter celebrations with those words for the last 2,000 years. And we have done so because on that first Easter morning Jesus defeated sin and death, and in His rising promised US forgiveness of sins, healing of our afflictions, and eternal life. But despite the fact that those promises will be fulfilled completely one day people still get sick right now. People still get Cancer right now. And people still die right now. That is because Christianity is both a “now” and “not yet” kind of thing. We see this in what Luke records as Jesus’ first sermon. For in that sermon, He quoted the prophet Isaiah: “the Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Luke then tells us how Jesus went out and actually cured the sick, healed the disabled, and raised the dead.
April 15: Good Friday
When our boys were young, they loved a bible story series titled VeggieTales. In their version of the story of Jonah, they introduced a companion for him that they referred to throughout the story as his “pint-sized traveling buddy.” So whenever I wanted one of the boys to come with me to run an errand or go shopping, I would ask them to come as my “pint-sized traveling buddy.” As we ran errands one day in that time period, I had to go from Jonestown to Lebanon. As we sat at a light in Lebanon, I heard a pint-sized voice pipe up from the backseat of the car to ask a question: “It was Jesus that died on the cross, right, and not the Father and Holy Spirit?” “Yes,” I replied, wondering where this question was going. “Why then,” he went on, “does that church on the corner named Trinity have the image of three crosses on its wall?”
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 21
- Next Page »