Now, with this crazy week, I decided not to preach on 1 Timothy but to preach on “The Functional Centrality of the Gospel.” It really is the most important lesson of my life. And like I said Sunday, “if I were to preach the last sermon of my life, this would be it.” Lord willing, this wasn’t my last one, but it’s sure an important message.
It is always amazing to me how the Lord providentially puts us in a text that fits perfectly with issues in our world. That was certainly true this past Sunday.
I was looking forward to opening up the new year at CLF because of this. It’s just felt like we need a fresh beginning. That’s part of the impetus for the series, “Children of God”.
There are so many various directions that a text like 1 Corinthians 9:1-18 can take you, that’s it’s tough to stay on track. My hope from Sunday was to make sure that we noticed/remembered the context of 1 Corinthians 8 because it plays itself out in 1 Corinthians 9.
Doing an overview of 1 Corinthians 5-7 is a challenge due to the vast amount of information that is covered. When I went back and reviewed for this sermon, I was struck that I had preached 10 sermons in these 3 chapters. So…taking that information and reducing it into 1 sermon was a fun challenge.
ALL of God’s people are in ministry, at one level or another. And when Jesus enters our lives, he doesn’t expect us to move, change locations/jobs/spouses/etc., to be better Christians or be more acceptable to God.
There have been few moments in my ministry that have happened where the Lord seemed to change directions on me at the last minute. This past week, really wasn’t one of those.
One of the things that I don’t want you to miss, as we’re blitzing through these 4 books, is that we’re covering a lot of ground, in a very short time. Believe me when I tell you, if we were studying each of these books, and allowing them to “breathe” a little, we would take a lot more time mining the depth…
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…
This past week, as I was thinking through various things (kids starting school, the blitz of a summer, leadership meeting, Sunday gathering, Sovereign Grace Council of Elders, etc.), I was reminded of Paul’s word in 1 Corinthians 4:7 when he wrote, “What do you have that you have not received?” A phrase like this causes you to pause of a moment and…
My hope is to get back to writing musings more frequently as the fall gets going. Our summer was a bit of a blitz (no different than many of yours). With the big event of Hannah and Grant’s wedding, summer baseball, and trying to keep up with church things, things were a bit hectic, to say the least. With fall just around the corner, the…
Straight gospel…that’s the way I would describe the last two weeks of sermons. It’s fascinating because often as a preacher, I find this temptation to make the gospel “more exhilarating” or “more interesting”…and then I think about that again…slowly…and I realize how dumb that is. The gospel is “the power of God for salvation”. It’s the dynamite of God. It hits the…
Yesterday morning, as I prayed for our Sunday gathering, I was overwhelmed with gratitude as I thought about all the servants at CLF. The joy that our people take in serving each other and making Sundays happen so that we can gather to worship Jesus together is simply remarkable to me. As I quoted to the church on Sunday from Philippians 1, the people…
YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS OUT ON THE FELLOWSHIP.