What I learned through this experience is this truth: correctly understanding God’s character changes us to be more like Jesus, and improperly understanding God’s character causes us to stay dominated by sin (namely condemnation and guilt).
Worship Jesus. Serve Jesus. Love others.
Worship Jesus. Serve Jesus. Love others.
Gospel Power
Throughout this series, “United with Christ, I see things in Romans 5-8 that I’ve studied before, but they have come to me with new freshness and joy. Focusing on these chapters has given me a new sense of freedom from the power and penalty of sin and Jesus being my righteous advocate before God. It is simply a stunning display of God’s grace and power that stir me to gratitude and worship.
One challenge with preaching on a familiar text, like 1 Corinthians 13, is that it’s…familiar. When a text is so widely known, the danger for me is to try to be cute or “original”. You know what I mean…try to do something no one else has done. Well, with true biblical preaching, that’s a very serious danger.
When you read this text, especially when you see that the Old Testament people were “overthrown in the wilderness” or “were destroyed by the Destroyer”, it creates some challenges for us. Were these people Christians? What happened to them? And what does this mean for us? Is it possible for us to be lost, be found, then be lost again?
I have really enjoyed this sermon series. In hearing from many of you, it seems this series has been needed and encouraging. My prayer is that it’s a good launching point for 2021. We are children of God…adopted by God’s grace; representing Jesus in this world; empowered to overcome sin and the grave; and we love Jesus more than our lives.
For a long time in my Christian life, I found myself on the “tread mill”. Things seemed to always be a big deal or worse or better than they actually were; I didn’t find much traction; or I was up and down spiritually. It was frustrating, to be honest. Then I spent more time in Romans 5-8.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve had a desire to provide hope and help during all the craziness. As I mentioned at the outset of yesterday, our goal has been to shed some light on the reality of the craziness…a historical battle about the supremacy of Jesus.
As I prepared for this week, I was very mindful of so many of the “ironic” cultural moments. I mentioned several of them in the sermon: abortion clinics being open and churches being closed; gathering to worship Jesus is deemed a public hazard, while gathering in a protest is deemed honorable…but to be honest, there’s so many of these ironic issues that it literally makes your head spin.
For the first time since starting 3 services, I finally “hit the wall” in the 12:00 service yesterday. I preached about 10-15 minutes shorter and when I got done, I thought that I might’ve left something out! So, if you were in that service and you felt gypped ?, get the video/audio from the website tomorrow. But man, was I tired. Not sure what happened. Now, onto…
Sunday was one of the smoother Sundays for us, since we started the re-opening. There was a great spirit at church and many remarked about how great it was to be back in the building. We agree. As Dave Quilla has said often…those of us doing the services each Sunday get to see 75 people each week. It’s been awesome. One of…
Restraint…that was what I had to tell myself this past week as I prepared for Sunday’s sermon. This text has literally been a guardrail for what I have sought to do. While not perfect, it has been desire each week to honor the Lord by “knowing nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” Overriding thoughts: When I ‘cut my teeth’ on ministry,…
This past week, I had more extra-local phone calls that normal, but I thought one call would be one that you’d enjoy hearing about. About once/month, I get to talk with Luis Castellanos, pastor at Taproot Church in Burien, WA. Most of you know Luis, but for those that don’t: Luis faithfully served at CLF for about 5 years as our administrator and youth pastor. He…
Yesterday’s sermon reminded me of a time when I was younger and a lady came up to my first pastor after he had preached about the gospel and said, “preacher, keep telling me that old story, over and over again.” It was one of those days at CLF yesterday…being reminded by God that the gospel is His power and the gospel of Jesus…