Called to Prayer

This sermon concludes our series and is based on Mark 9:17-29. You can also view each week's sermon/worship service on our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5ncsq_QNvCv61bIwKUpP5A SERIES OVERVIEW: BLURB: Sometimes we make things too complicated. Suppose our goal is to follow Jesus. What do we do? Easy. We study theology. We analyze passages. We scrutinize sayings. We delve into the parables, and then we make a list of 72 things to work on before Saturday. And why do we do this to ourselves? It’s complicated. But what if we started by asking the question: “What did Jesus’ life looked like?” What if we asked about Jesus’ daily routine and seek to duplicate that? Where would that take us? I think it would take us right where we want to go.  After all, it is Simply Irresistible!

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Hot Wisdom for Desert Living, 4

Let’s be honest: we don’t want to go into the desert. We don’t want to confront our demons. In fact, we don’t want to grow, at least not at the price that the desert fathers required. But true spirituality calls us to die to self and give ourselves completely to God. But that seems a bridge too far and so we constantly put it off until tomorrow, but tomorrow never comes. There’s a great scene in CS Lewis’ The Great Divorce. A ghost (a person) has a lizard (his rabid sin nature) on his shoulder. The lizard is constantly spewing out lies and tempting the ghost who is more than willing to listen. An angel comes and offers to kill the lizard, but the ghost is unwilling to let him do so. He can’t imagine life without his sin. The angel asks, “Can I kill it?” To which the ghost

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Called to Enjoy God

This sermon is based on Matthew 3:16-17 and John 15:9-11. You can also view each week's sermon/worship service on our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5ncsq_QNvCv61bIwKUpP5A SERIES OVERVIEW: BLURB: Sometimes we make things too complicated. Suppose our goal is to follow Jesus. What do we do? Easy. We study theology. We analyze passages. We scrutinize sayings. We delve into the parables, and then we make a list of 72 things to work on before Saturday. And why do we do this to ourselves? It’s complicated. But what if we started by asking the question: “What did Jesus’ life looked like?” What if we asked about Jesus’ daily routine and seek to duplicate that? Where would that take us? I think it would take us right where we want to go.  After all, it is Simply Irresistible!

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Hot Wisdom for Desert Living, 3

We normally don’t consider the desert to be both a wilderness and, at the same time, a paradise, but the desert fathers saw things from a unique perspective. For them, life in the desert was one of great spiritual richness and abundance. But the desert was also a place where we confronted our darkest demons.  Henri Nouwen writes: "Thus the desert is the fearful wilderness inhabited by the demons and the paradise where the first human beings lived in harmony with God and creation. We find here the core reality of the spiritual life. The spiritual life is the life in which we come to see God, but also the demons. "I have often wondered why there is such an immense resistance in us to be with God. Why do we find prayer so hard; why do we always prefer to be busy instead of praying? If God really exists

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Called to Bless and Give

This sermon is based on Luke 11:11-13. You can also view each week's sermon/worship service on our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5ncsq_QNvCv61bIwKUpP5A SERIES OVERVIEW: BLURB: Sometimes we make things too complicated. Suppose our goal is to follow Jesus. What do we do? Easy. We study theology. We analyze passages. We scrutinize sayings. We delve into the parables, and then we make a list of 72 things to work on before Saturday. And why do we do this to ourselves? It’s complicated. But what if we started by asking the question: “What did Jesus’ life looked like?” What if we asked about Jesus’ daily routine and seek to duplicate that? Where would that take us? I think it would take us right where we want to go.  After all, it is Simply Irresistible!

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Hot Wisdom for Desert Living, 2

There is no doubt that the desert is a wilderness. It is a place of scarcity and seclusion and struggle. I get that. But the desert is also a paradise. And that, I don’t get. Henri Nouwen writes: “There is another side to the desert. The desert is also a paradise. The monk does not just withdraw from the world, but is en route to paradise.  “The best way to think of paradise is to think about it as a life in Christ. By being in the desert, the fathers sought their own true selves in Christ. The proximate end of all their striving was ‘purity of heart,’ a clear unobstructed vision of the true state of affairs and an intuitive grasp of one’s own inner reality as anchored in God through Christ. A pure heart is a heart that is not attached to anything, or anyone, except God. “We

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Story About Surveys

“Surveys show that surveys never lie.” ~ Natalie Angier “Latest survey shows that 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the world’s population.” ~ Stephen Hawking "Surveys show that the #1 fear of Americans is public speaking. #2 is death. That means that at a funeral, the average American would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy." ~ Jerry Seinfeld   In April, the Pastor Nominating Committee (PNC) got to take a survey of our own. We discovered some interesting things but also realized there were still questions we needed help answering. Here is that process documented: Among the resources that ECO offers as our new denomination is their Flourish Ministry, which has a component focused on churches in transition, like we are (https://flourishmovement.org/churches-in-transition/). We agreed as a team it would be wise to invest part of our team’s budget in leveraging this help and got

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Called Together to Give

This sermon is based on Luke 6:32-38. You can also view each week's sermon/worship service on our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5ncsq_QNvCv61bIwKUpP5A SERIES OVERVIEW: Sometimes we make things too complicated. Suppose our goal is to follow Jesus. What do we do? Easy. We study theology. We analyze passages. We scrutinize sayings. We delve into the parables, and then we make a list of 72 things to work on before Saturday. And why do we do this to ourselves? It’s complicated. But what if we started by asking the question: “What did Jesus’ life looked like?” What if we asked about Jesus’ daily routine and seek to duplicate that? Where would that take us? I think it would take us right where we want to go.  After all, it is Simply Irresistible!

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Hot Wisdom for Desert Living

Seriously, what spiritual benefit is there in moving, of all the places, to the desert?  Henri Nouwen writes: “Desert spirituality is a movement toward a different type of place—the move to the desert. The desert has two aspects: wilderness and paradise. On the one hand, the desert is a dry and sterile place. It is the place of the demon. (‘When the unclean spirit goes out of a person, it wanders through waterless countries to look for a place to rest’ – Luke 11:24). And whenever God appears, the evil one is also present. . . . In the city, with its compulsions and compromises, the lines between God and the demon become blurred. Good is called evil and evil good. But in the desert the true struggle becomes clear. In the desert, where compulsions no longer rule us and we no longer can borrow an identity from the world,

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