Church Blog (Page 2)

There are days that feel so heavy that it seems like we cannot travel one more step. Those days come in the form of stress, loss, disappointment and other things that take away our joy. God has spoken to us through His word and encourages us to remember Him and His words in those heavy days, however, it can be easy to follow the world’s example of self-pity and self-loathing. Today, we examine what we should do with the next…

The instinctual response when we fail is to look around us and survey the damage that is done. The most basic response is to examine yourself first for damage, then examine your surroundings. It hurts to admit, but there are times in my life where I have seemingly escaped the damage of my failure only to look around and see tremendous damage done to those in my sphere of influence. It is in those moments that we fully come face…

No one likes to fail. No one ever likes to feel that they have let someone (or themselves) down. However, if you have lived longer than about 5 minutes, you have failed in some capacity. When failure comes, how do we respond? One article suggested there are four ways that people respond to failure and only one is helpful: 1) The Godzilla response – When we fail we explode in anger and try to destroy everything and everyone in our…

Today is the first Sunday of the new year. Passing from one year into the next carries many reflections with it. There is something lost. We can never again go back into 2020. There will be things gained this year, but they are not yet a reality. Those things are only imagined. The point of saying this is to say that we tend to think reflectively about something lost or gained when a we embrace a new year. Now, let’s…

“A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks, a new and glorious morn.” The world acknowledges the birth of Jesus Christ around this time every year. While I cannot say that Jesus was undoubtedly born on our December 25th, I will say that it was refreshing this past week to hear, at Disney World of all places, an open acknowledgement of the birth of Christ being the most important moment in the world’s history. Our challenge during…

This week we will be looking at the sermon on the mount. We will concentrate ourselves on chapter 7, verses 13-23 this morning and tonight. Then this coming Wednesday, for our coordinated devotional, we will consider verses 24-27 as our focus. I am hoping you will join us in studying all these words of Jesus. There are important matters for you to hear from your Master in the sermon he preached 2000 years ago. Some try to make this an…

As we begin the countdown towards what we hope to be a fantastic 2021, it is important to remember what we know about God. – He is near. – He is in control. – He will always make the right decisions. – He loves mankind in a way that we cannot even understand. Remembering these things will create a completely different attitude for us all as we take aim at a new year. God has always been, will always be,…

As a kid, I remember being told that the Christian life was one of JOY. I would notice that people who were faithful Christians were consistently happier and more satisfied than other people I happened to be around. When I was younger, it was explained that was because they lived their lives according to the following acrostic: J – Jesus first O – Others second Y – Yourself third Living the Christian life brings out the best in people. The…

There is much attention to the idea of gratitude this week. It is a yearly reminder to us that we have so many blessings. Look around our good land, and you will quickly see that we have some of the best water, food and shelter. Truly we are a rich nation. Gratitude comes from knowing what these blessings are, and feeling a direct connection to how those blessings improve your life. Gratitude might be expressing those wonderful blessings around a…