Baptism Service on the 16th

Our Baptism Service is going to be this Sunday (August 16th) down at Lake Pueblo. I have made a little map and added some directions on it for those who aren't sure how to get where we are going. If you have any questions, please contact me and we'll try and help you out! It's pretty exciting, with several people getting baptized and we're going to make a day of it with a cook-out and an evening service after all that.

Everyone is invited!

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD MAP

Playing Favorites

How often do you size someone up and make a snap judgment about them? Let's face it, we all do it more often than we think. But how often are we right? That takes longer to tell, and sometimes we don't take the time to really know a person. James warns us about the dangers of showing partiality to people because of who they are or what they look like or how much money they have. The world is full of lost souls that come in all different packages, and we must be so careful to treat each one with the same love and care that God has shown to us.

Sermon, August 9

The Lord's Supper

I won't spend a lot of time discussing what this sermon was about, but I can tell you that I was really looking forward to it. Being able to take part in communion with our new church was a wonderful time, and a real blessing as a pastor.

In the message, I tried to set the context for the Lord's Supper. What were Jesus and the disciples doing that night in the upper room, and why were they getting together? What was the significance of the Passover and what Jesus was showing them? Hopefully I answered those questions!

Sermon, August 2

EDIT: Well, it appears that we had some technical difficulties, and the message was not recorded :-( My apologies to those who have tried to listen. We're still trying to figure out how to get all our ducks in a row with this recording, so it's inevitable that things like this happen! So, let me tell you, it was a great sermon, the best I have ever preached! No, in all reality, I really enjoyed preaching this one, it just hasn't been preserved for posterity. Oh well...

Looking in the mirror

I tend to be a big picture person, and as such I like to cover passages of scripture with more of a telescope than a microscope, if that makes sense. Sometimes that means that there's a lot to cover in a particular sermon, but I want to give a sense of how the pieces fit together as a whole.

With that disclaimer, James is a very pointed book with lots of very specific instruction. In today's passage, James 1:19-27, there's a lot to chew on, and we by no means exhausted all that was there. But, what's clear is that God is concerned about our behavior, just as much if not more so than our brains. We need to study and apply the Word of God, and I can say that even as a pastor, I don't always do that. Hopefully, for myself and everyone else, we are growing in maturity and learning to be doers of the Word as James exhorts us in these verses.

Sermon, July 26

Wanting what we don't have

The passage we looked at in James today dealt with the idea of trusting in God's goodness. That seems straightforward enough, but the context is dealing with wealth and poverty, and temptation. All of us, at some point or another, wish we had more, wish that we were more wealthy. But James says that God exalts the one with less, and the rich man actually has to remember that his riches will pass away. Temptation also strikes all of us, an appeal to our sinful desires. We want to be satisfied with something that we know is wrong. Do we give in or do we turn away and trust that God can give us something better than that tempting thing.

Sermon July 19

Learning God's Way

We've started a new sermon series this week, working through the book of James. I have done Bible studies through it and read it many times, but never preached through it. I love James' abrupt but loving style. He speaks very straightforwardly, and uses many illustrations to get his point across.

Today's sermon takes in the first eight verses, and the main topic is learning through trials and difficulty. We all experience them, some are small, others threaten to overwhelm us completely. God uses them to teach us and work in us, so we should look at them with a joyful attitude. That's not always easy to do, but gradually, I believe we learn more and more to rely on God and depend on His help and wisdom.

Sermon, July 12

Think on these things

I have to start with an apology for this sermon. Well, an apology about the recording, anyway. We had worked up a way to hook my laptop up to the sound system itself a couple of weeks ago, which was working pretty well. Yesterday, when I started getting everything ready, I failed to connect the cable that actually connects the amp to my microphone port on the laptop, which meant that there was basically no sound. Or so I thought. My laptop has a built in microphone, and even though it was in the back of the church, it actually picked up most of the sermon. So, I'm going to go ahead and post this, with the warning that you will probably have to turn your speakers up very, very loud. Don't forget to turn them back down later!

This is the last message in the series on being a healthy church, and the discussion is about having the right perspective. God cares about what we do and think, and Paul's challenge in Philippians 4:8 provides a fitting end (I hope) to this bunch of messages. It's a call to discipleship, to really following Christ, where every part of us belongs to Him.

Sermon, July 5