John 14:15-24 | Who Loves Jesus
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Ephesians 1:15-19 | “More to See”
[display_podcast] Wanting More is Sometimes Good Sometimes wanting more is a bad thing. Gideon loves carbs. He loves bread and noodles. When we had chili last week, all he’d eat was cornbread. He wanted more and more and more of it and wouldn’t eat the chili to save his life. We wanted him to stop wanting cornbread and start wanting chili. After a week of eating chili, I was ready to stop eating chili too! Sometimes wanting more is a really good thing. You might want to exercise more [...]
Ephesians 1:11-14 | “An Inheritance from God and For God”
[display_podcast] God Loves His Glory Most What does God most care about? What does God love the most? World peace? The poor and marginalized? Social justice? The U. S. A.? Evangelism and missions? What is in the center of God’s affections? Many of us might say, “God loves us the most.” We’re prone to think that God’s greatest love is for us. That we’re the thing in the center of his heart. God of course loves us. “For God so loved the world” (Jn. 3:16). But does the Bible [...]
Ephesians 1:7-10 | Redemption and Revelation
[display_podcast] We All Love a Good Plan We all love a good plan. Good plans give us peace and hope and purpose. When we have something we’re aiming at we tend to shoot straighter. Our fears and anxieties are eased when we have a good plan. When you’re in debt and you seek the counsel of a financial coach in order to come up with a plan on how to pay it off, you gain a peace that you didn’t have before. When you’re thinking about building or creating [...]
The Doctrine of Divine Election | Who elected who?
[display_podcast] As I mentioned last week, I want us to push pause on Ephesians for a week and consider the doctrine of divine election. Our text last week forced us to consider the ultimate reason why we’re Christians and how we became Christians. Ephesians 1:4-6, “(God) chose us in him before the foundation of the world…In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace.” This text says plainly that a Christian is a [...]
Ephesians 1:3-6 | “Saved By God, For God”
[display_podcast] Why and How Are We Christians? Why are you a Christian? How did you become a Christian? These are usually questions we answer from our point of view, from the street-level existence of our lives. We say that we’re Christians because we accepted Jesus. We say that we became a Christian when we prayed a prayer, walked an aisle, got baptized, or made a commitment to live a new life. How would God answer these questions? Why are we Christians according to God’s point of view? How did we [...]
Ephesians 1:1-2 | “May Grace and Peace Be to You”
[display_podcast] Why Study Ephesians? This morning we’re beginning a study of Ephesians. We’ll spend thirty weeks this year going through this letter. We’ve spent the bulk of the last two years on Sunday mornings covering large portions of Scripture, going through Matthew and Acts one chapter a week. It’s important to study large portions of Scripture in order to see the overarching scope of what God is saying. But it’s also important to study smaller bits in order to see the precious gems that make up each paragraph and sentence [...]
Psalm 127:3-5 | Children Are a Blessing, Not a Burden
[display_podcast] Cultural Schizophrenia Concerning Children Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a failure to understand what is real. Common symptoms include false beliefs and unclear or confused thinking. .5% of people are affected by schizophrenia during their lifetime. Concerning the topic of children, I’d argue that a much larger percentage of people in our culture are suffering from schizophrenia. A large portion of our society struggles with unclear or confused thinking concerning children. Over the last decade, between 45 and 50 percent of Americans have identified with the [...]
Colossians 3:16 | “Where Will You Live in 2018?”
[display_podcast] Where We Live Shapes Our Lives Where we live shapes who we are and who we become. The place where we lived growing up shapes our values and thought-processes and preferences and behaviors. I love hearing people’s stories. I love asking people about where they’re from and what their life was like growing up. Why? Because our past has a way of shaping our present and guiding our future. I spent the most formative years of my life, grades one through twelve, in a small country town of [...]
Colossians 4:2 | Watch for God in 2018
[display_podcast] What We Love Watching Most of us love watching television. The average American watches between four and five hours of television a day. Two thirds of us watch television while we eat dinner. Over half of us pay for cable TV. We love television. We love it so much that we usually make the TV the centerpiece of our living rooms. So much that we’ll spend money we don’t have on getting bigger and better and more TV’s. So much that, at the end of a long day, [...]