What do we do if we’ve said no to God? Many of us find ourselves in this difficult place. We have said no to Jesus by putting off saying yes to salvation in Christ. Perhaps we fear what God might do in our lives if we receive Him. In the book of Jonah, Jonah wrote how he finally gave God his yes when God brought him to repentance in the depths of the sea. We can give God our repentant yes and turn from our mistakes, no matter how much we’ve said no to Him in the past.
Speaker: Stephen Combs
Quality Time
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Without routinely giving God our Quality Time or “Undivided Attention,” we will struggle to know and be known by God. We will find ourselves feeling distant from Him, despite how much we might do for Him. We will struggle to perceive His will for our life and will be shaken by the questions that come with each day. We will find ourselves feeling tired, no matter how much rest we get.
In Mark 6, Jesus dismissed his disciples and the crowd and intentionally went off alone to give God His undivided attention. As we learn from Jesus’s actions in this story, we too can worship God with our undivided attention.
Words of Affirmation
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God didn’t incidentally love us; He wasn’t emotionally moved by our actions towards Him and therefore loved us in return. He made a choice to express His love, even when we didn’t deserve it. His expression of love at the cross was intentional and well thought out. He laid down His life for us and entered into a mysterious relationship with the Church, whereby He calls us His “Bride”. In this series, we will use principles taken from Chapman’s “The Five Love Languages” to better understand God’s love for the Church and to learn how to reciprocate this love in worship. Today we will discuss how God loves us with “Words Of Affirmation” and how we can reciprocate that love in worship.
Matters of…Parenting
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In this conclusion to our Family Matters series, we look at how God has called us to raise our children with the target of Christ-like maturity. There are a lot of different targets we can have, but Paul taught the church at Ephesus how to bring up children in Christ-like maturity that reflected the relationship they had with God as his children. We can bring our children up in Christ-like maturity when we cultivate their whole being, focusing not just on external behaviors, but on their heart, mind, and spirit.
Matters of…Marriage
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Marriage: a wonderful union designed and declared by our Creator God for the our good. But it doesn’t always feel so good does it? Not always a “dream within a dream.” Two people, uniquely different, trying to be one unified family for life facing all the internal challenges of dealing with differing opinions, goals, and dreams and all the while facing the challenges of work, bills, sickness, and sometimes kids.
God’s plan goes far beyond the divorce statistics. God designed marriage and has a wonderful plan for couples according to His Word. A plan that will show off the glory of God to the world. In the book of Ephesians, Paul taught wives and husbands how to have a Christ-like marriage that reflected Christ’s relationship with His church.
Matters of…Reconciliation
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We heard last week about having oneness and unity in our families, but sometimes things divide that oneness and we can’t see how to reconcile. In this message, we learn how to reconcile the division that has come between us and become unified once more.
Be a Disciple Maker
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Disciple making begins simply by telling others about the things that you have seen and experienced in your own relationship with Christ. Despite the barriers many of us feel, we are all called and equipped to make disciples of others. In the book of Matthew, Jesus gave all of his disciples a command to make disciples – as we go, baptizing them, and teaching them.
Worship and Witness is…Transformational
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Do you feel like your are running in place sometimes or just not moving at all? Sometimes we can feel that our lives have no meaning or that we are going nowhere. We often put our focus or our worship on things that don’t move us or give us meaning. Newton’s first law of motion says that, “An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.” You may feel this way now, like a stagnant person or a person in motion towards the wrong things. God has designed us for more. He is the unbalanced force that can get us not only moving but moving in the right direction.
In the book of Romans, Paul appeals to his fellow believers that they would become living sacrifices as worship before God. He tells the believers in Rome that their worship of Jesus will transform their life. We too can be transformed by our worship and witness of Jesus.
Joseph: A Persevering Faith
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We begin our Faith Heroes series with Joseph the dreamer. As we study the life of Joseph, we see the commands of the book of Hebrews very clear in his life. Hebrews shows us three ways to have heroic faith like Joseph.
Easter Means…Joy
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In the apostle Peter’s first letter, he tells believers in Asia Minor that they can have wonderful joy in every situation because of the resurrection of Jesus. We too can have this wonderful joy because God raised Jesus from the dead. Our text today gives us three ways to have wonderful joy through the resurrection of Jesus.