February 26, 2023 | Ephesians 4:11-16 |
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In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he gave them a vision for being a church that builds up believers in love, growing them to spiritual maturity in Christ Jesus. We can get a vision for being built up in love, growing up to spiritual maturity in Christ Jesus.
February 19, 2023 | Matthew 11:28-30 |
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Are you mindful of your soul? How are you doing in the deepest places of your life? Are you wasting away from within? Is your soul withering due to lack of care? How much attention do you give to your own soul?
We often think if only we could change our circumstances, then we would be happier, more at peace. But the truth is, there is a place deep within us that only the Lord can touch, that only He can heal and restore. In the gospel according to Matthew, Jesus invited his hearers to come to him for rest and renovation of their souls. We can answer Christ’s call to come to him for rest and renovation of our souls.
February 12, 2023 | 1 John 4:7-21 |
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All along, we are being shaped by these various relationships. We seek acceptance, but we are so bent and broken by sin, that we often experience rejection and in like manner, cause others to feel rejected by us. This is the human condition apart from God. We are all deeply wounded relationally. We are hurt. And hurt people, hurt people.
We’re relationally broken and only a right relationship with God through Jesus Christ can heal us and renovate our relationships. And what is the chief way that God moves to heal us? Love. In the apostle John’s first letter, he wrote to encourage believers to let the love of God heal and renovate their relationships with Him and with others. We can let the love of God renovate our relationships.
February 5, 2023 | 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 |
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How we view our bodies and how we use our bodies matters to God. How do you view your body? Do you have a love/hate relationship with your body? Do you struggle with your self-image because of your appearance? How much of your identity is connected to your body… its color, gender, height, weight, age, health, etc.? Have you ever wondered how God wants you to view your body? Does He call it evil or good? And what’s its real place in following Jesus? What’s God’s purpose for our bodies?
It just so happens that we’re not the first believers to struggle with questions about the body. The believers in Corinth had some of the same questions and God inspired Paul to respond to them. In the apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he responded to their questions about the body by challenging them to recognize God’s good and spiritual purpose for the body, so that they might submit their bodies to God for renovation. We can submit our bodies to God for renovation.
January 29, 2023 | Romans 12:1-2 |
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Have you learned to pray as Jesus did? Asking for the Father’s will in your life? Do you struggle with knowing and doing God’s will? Most Christians don’t have trouble knowing it, they have trouble obeying it. Why? Because we have what Willard calls “the splintered will.” This is a will that has been “splintered,” corrupted and turned against itself by choosing to its own way, rather than God’s. The splintered will asks, “How can I get my way?” Rather than, “How can I please God?” Manipulation, deception, seduction, and malice replace transparency, sincerity, and goodwill, as exaltation of self replaces submission and service to God.
But what would it look like for our hearts, our wills, to be in total alignment with God’s heart and will? Is this way of life even possible? In Paul’s letter to the Romans, he appealed to believers to fully submit themselves to God for renovation of the will, transforming it to know and follow God’s will.
January 29, 2023 | Galatians 5:16-25 |
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Our feelings can be both a blessing and a curse. We might even put them into two categories of feeling: pleasurable or painful; and two categories of effect: helpful or harmful. That’s why we’ve entitled today’s sermon: Renovating Our Feelings.” In becoming like Christ, our hearts, our minds and our feelings too, must be renovated. Because feelings are a major influence on how we make decisions. Feelings affect the heart as the seat of the will.
In the apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he taught them how to yield their desires and feelings to the Spirit of God for renovation, so that they would no longer be controlled by their old nature. We can yield our feelings to God’s Spirit for renovation.
January 15, 2023 | Ephesians 4:17-24 |
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What kind of ideas and images inhabit your mind, your thinking? Where did they come from? Do you have a mindset, a worldview, shaped by the Word of God as applied by the grace and Spirit of God? Or is your thinking shaped by the culture you’ve grown up in? The truth is, as believers, we all struggle with being “double-minded,” having competing ideas and images in our thinking. Some from God and some from the world.
God wants to renovate our thinking so that we have the mind of Christ. In the apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he taught believers to yield their minds, their thinking, to Christ for renewal, for transformation, for renovation. We can yield our minds, our thinking, to Christ for renovation.
January 8, 2023 | Colossians 3:1-17 |
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We all tend to think that if we could renovate our house, or our job, or our marriage, or our …, then we’d be happy, but the truth is that life is not lived from the outside – in, but from the inside – out. We live from our hearts. So what does it mean to let God renovate, to transform our hearts? It means to have the heart of Christ, the character of Christ formed in you.
Are you growing in Christ, becoming more like Him in character and behavior? Do you want to? Do have a desire to grow in Christ, having His life and character fully formed in you?
In the apostle Paul’s letter to the Colossians, he instructed believers that since they had been raised to new life in Christ Jesus, God wanted to renovate their hearts, so that the character of Christ was formed in them. Having received Christ as Lord and Savior, we can actively yield our hearts to God, so that Christ is formed in us.
December 24, 2022 | Luke 2:1-14 |
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Everyone loves a story. And the best stories are worth telling over and over again.
What story are you telling yourself this Christmas. Is it a story about your past? Past mistakes you’ve made? Past hurts you’ve experienced? Or maybe it’s today’s story? So many of us get discouraged and even depressed at this time of year. Maybe there’ll be an empty seat at the Christmas dinner table this year? You’ve lost a loved one and Christmas won’t be the same? Or maybe it’s because we’re telling ourselves the wrong story. What if there’s a better story? In Luke’s gospel, an angel of the Lord invited the shepherds to come and be part of Christ’s story. The Lord still invites us to be part of Christ’s story.
December 18, 2022 | Matthew 2:1-12 |
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What is worship? It’s whatever you value or love the most. It’s what you spend your time, talent and treasure for as your greatest source of significance and security. That’s worship. It’s whatever or whoever you ascribe the greatest worth to. Ironically Christmas might be the most difficult time of the year to truly worship God because we are tempted to put more of our affections on material things and spending money.
Don’t you feel the tension? Don’t you feel the pressure to spend more money than you have in order to give your kids everything on their list? You want everyone to be happy and you want to be happy, so you spend, spend, spend… And the more you spend, the less it feels like Christmas. Or what it’s supposed to mean. In the gospel of Matthew, the story of the birth of Jesus is told within the political backdrop of the times. From the beginning there was a battle between worshiping the true King and the false king Herod that had usurped His Throne. The challenge for us is to remove our worship from the false king and to put our worship on the true King, Jesus Christ.