This passage spoke to me this week. Pastor, imagine if God had you stand on the front steps of your church and deliver this message as people entered your church Sunday morning…
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If you have a smart phone, you never have to leave home again without your Bible!
I love what the team at LifeChurch.tv has done to encourage Bible reading through their work with YouVersion. Our church uses the live version each Sunday (sign up HERE) and it has started to catch on with people. YouVersion continues to improve their offerings for churches. Consider these additions:
Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck! Psalm 69:1
This is my favorite safety pull verse! Helpful always, but especially in emergency situations…
When a person struggles with greed, it will rob them of the peace and joy God intends for use to have. The saddest part of this struggle is that most people who have greed in their heart don’t even know it. Everyone around them does though…and most of the time…that greed becomes a wedge in those relationships.
Recently I talked about this at Grace Community Church. Listen with an open heart.
I am amazed at what God has done through the work of the people of Grace Community Church in the first five years. We celebrated that milestone last week, but tomorrow is a new day. The start of the next five years. As a natural dreamer, I can’t help but wonder what the next five years will bring.
The anniversary caused me to be reflective this week. I thought about some of the obedience of the people following God in Scripture:
When we were in Sierra Leone Africa earlier this summer we saw some of the most unique and beautiful beaches I have seen anywhere in the world. Interestingly, the people don’t seem to appreciate or enjoy the beauty they have right next to them as much as one would think they do. I can’t help but think if I had this beach in my backyard that I’d be on it frequently. We baptized people at the beach who lived a few hundred feet from the water yet had never been in it before.
On one trip to the beach, as I stood mesmerized by the beauty of perfect blue skies, sand, ocean waves, boulder-sized rocks and mountains in the background, I couldn’t help but ask a pastor friend how it all formed in his mind. The rocks that line the ocean appear to have developed by volcanic activity. I ask him if he knew the make-up of the rocks and how they formed…and if he knew of any volcanoes in the vicinity.
He looked at me with complete sincerity and said very simply, “God is great!”
I was quickly humbled in my search for answers and reminded of a few truths:
People watching is such an art. It takes discipline and practice. If you aren’t careful you might miss something good…or you could scare people away.
In one people-watching day recently I saw…
Tweet In case you missed my earlier posts, I’m in Sierra Leone for a couple weeks. I will share more later, but wanted to give a quick update. We are…
I had been eagerly reading the account of Moses and the Israelites on their journey to the promised land. God had provided for them each step of the way. Each morning they had their manna (bread), and in the evening they were provided quail. Now, I know that manna is a crisp and sweet tasting flaky bread type food, because the Bible tells me so.
But, what is an omer?
We are in a new series at Grace Community Church called Outsiders, looking at some characters in the Bible who aren’t as well known as other characters, yet who made huge impacts to the Kingdom. Yesterday I spoke about the disciple Thomas. Though some know him as Doubting Thomas, I prefer the title I have also heard by which I’ve also heard him referred, Thomas the Believer. In this message, I address the bottom line that doubts are not the major problem for a believer, unbelief is. Ultimately we must go from doubts to a solid foundation of faith; that God is who He says He is and will do what is best in our life.