Sermons

It’s hard for us to hear the story of Christmas without thinking of all the children’s pageants we’ve seen – little five and six year-olds on stage in makeshift robes and fake beards, the angels dressed in sheets and wearing tinfoil wings, sometimes missing their entrances and stumbling over the lines and occasionally knocking over a prop. It’s a precious scene that brings back the best of memories. But the original event wasn’t quite that charming and it was far more than a children’s Christmas program.

There were no cute costumes and no missed entrances. When the angels spoke their lines, the response wasn’t, “Ahhh, isn’t that sweet? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it were true?” Instead the response was, “Oh my goodness. This changes everything. This turns everything upside down.”

Be Rich is one of our favorite times of the year. Be Rich is a campaign to change our local world by positively impacting individuals and organizations that are making a difference in people’s lives. Be Rich is a focus that takes our attention off of ourselves and puts it onto God and others. Be Rich shows us how God wants us to respond to His blessings and teaches us how to love beyond self, serve beyond self and give beyond self. Be Rich isn’t about learning how to get rich, because plenty of people are trying to tell you how to get rich. Instead, Be Rich teaches us how to be rich in a way that honors God.

The title of this series is, “That’s All Folks!” It’s a bit tongue in cheek, but it’s also where we are rapidly heading on the timetable of end time events. If you’ve read the book of Revelation, Ezekiel, Daniel, 2 Thessalonians and/or Matthew chapter 24 you’re probably aware that end time events are playing out right before our very eyes. So this brief series is going to focus in on what’s coming on the end-times calendar, what to watch for and how to prepare.

This series is all about how to live out faith in every day circumstances. We’re not talking about how to have more faith or how to find faith or even how to grow faith. This series talks about how to live faith; about what faith looks like in everyday living. In the process, we’ll take a journey through the New Testament book of James, written by the brother of Jesus…….one of the most practical, hands-on books of the New Testament. This is a series about spiritual maturity, about how to be positive under the pressure of problems, how to make wise decisions, how to deal with temptation and so much more.

We’ve been hearing a lot about fake news over the past year or so, especially with the pandemic and then leading up to the election last year. The thing is, Fake News doesn’t just exist in the world of disease or politics. It also exists in many people’s minds when it comes to things that they THINK Jesus said, or things they THINK God said or things they THINK the Bible says.

In this series we’re going to break down some of those things so we can know the truth because Jesus said, …you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. (John 8:32, ESV)