When I was a kid I loved sitting and watching the different spaceships blast off. It was mesmerizing too me. Especially the countdown. When you started hearing those last numbers tick off you knew it was happening. I would try to imagine what it must be like for those guys. What a thrill. What a [...]
Yesterday morning, I had an encounter that really rocked me. And I think it’s a hint from God about the ministry that is ahead of our church.
We have two cars, and Zach takes Lesley’s car to work every morning at 5:30. So that leaves us with one vehicle for most of the day. Mine is a stick-shift that Lesley is not comfortable driving, so that means during the summer months, I have to be a bit of an errand boy to get Lesley to where she needs to be. Yesterday morning we went to Cub Foods because we were almost completely out of groceries. We NEVER shop at Cub, but we were given a gift card to Cub, so we went there. (hint… I think God ordained what I am about to tell you through the actions of several other people)
As I shared with my readers Sunday night, I had one of those embarrasing, I-can’t-believe-that-just-happened, moments on Sunday as I began the service with my fly undone. It just seems that anyone who is in front of people in a public way on any sort of regular basis will suffer a similar fate sooner or later. Maybe because I want to make myself feel better about my own gaffe, or maybe just because it kills me every time I see it, I thought I would share one of the funniest “preaching gone bad” moments I have ever seen. A simple slip of the tongue is all it takes as he reviews a passage about “pitching tents” …..
How about you? Any gaffes you want to confess… or any you remember that floored you?
Yet another article addressing the lack of men attending church appeared in the USA Today last week. Our church has been a living, breathing experiment for the last couple of years now on how do we build a church that reaches and energizes men to walk in the fullness of the Christian faith. How do [...]
Another letter day in our church this morning. We wrapped up a month-long series on four of the letters from Paul to the churches in the New Testament. Today’s letter was his encouragement to the church in Phillipi, aka, Philippians. The overall theme we focused on today was Paul’s declaration that we should run for the highest prize. Here are the highlights (and lowlights)
Quite often, we forget that these are letters written from the Apostle Paul to a church. It didn’t have chapters and verses as we have today. Those were inserted to make finding certain passasges of scripture easier than trying to scan through one long unmarked document. So, although this “chapter” did not exist when it was written, we enter the final chapter of our “You’ve Got Mail” series. Remember as you read this, or read other passages of scritpture how very personal these are in nature. Think of how difficult the task of writing was 2000 years ago and the efforts that anyone had to go through to actually “deliver the mail”. It almost killed Epaphroditus in chapter 2. Both the writing and the delivery were labors of love. Read them with a sense of honor at how much effort went in to delivering these letters to the original readers and to you today!
This is a chapter that lays down some timeless principles of “FIRST THINGS FIRST“, and that’s what I will focus on today.
Let’s continue or reading today of chapter 2
VS 1-4, GOT ANYTHING? GIVE IT AWAY - This is a challenging section for most of us. Paul asks a very basic question here..”Is there any value for you in being a Christian? Do you receive anything from Christ?” How can you answer that any other way but yes? It’s basically a rhetorical question. Paul knows the answer. He just wants them and us to answer it. THEN… he says….
I am an imperfect, flawed man who wants to be all God made me to be. I mess up, I offend people, I fail people, but like the Apostle Paul and King David, I keep trying. I invite you to not only join me, but help me in that journey...
