CONFESSION
Heavenly Father,
We come today as those who have experienced the deepest realities of your grace. Our sins have been cleansed in Christ, we are comforted by his love, as your church we participate with one another in the work of your Spirit, we have shown one another the affection and love of Christ. All of those realities are ours. They define us, and hem us in, and shape our lives.
Yet Father, even …
EXHORTATION – Psalm 103:2
2 Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits,
Ingratitude is what happens when we fail to give God credit and glory for the good gifts he has given us. And there are two ways that ingratitude manifests itself in our lives:
The first is to receive and enjoy all his good gifts while not acknowledging that God is the one giving them. It’s to forget that …
Call to Confession
During the last 6 months, we have all paid more attention to cleanliness than ever before. Every time I go into a grocery store someone takes a rag and wipes out a buggy before giving it to me. Hand sanitizing stations are all over the place and people carry mini bottles in every vehicle, purse, or suitcase. And it’s all for good reason. We know there’s a virus that can make someone …
PRAYER OF ADORATION
Holy Father,
We bless your name this morning for you have blessed us in Christ. In Christ we know that every spiritual blessing is ours. You are the God who forgives sin and pardons the sinner. You are the one who has removed our sin from us as far as the East is from the West.
And you are our Father—for you have adopted forgiven sinners into your family to be your …
EXHORTATION
The Christian faith isn’t just a faith of ideas. It’s also a faith of practices. And that’s because human beings aren’t just brains on sticks. There is more to us than our minds. We have bodies made up of hands, eyes, ears, and stomachs.
God isn’t just out to form your mind. He wants to conform every part of your body to the image of Christ. And one of the ways he does this …
EXHORTATION
Psalm 62:5 says:
For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence,
for my hope is from him.
As Christians in America, our faith runs the risk of being colored and shaded by the values of the culture we inhabit. If culture loves excess, the unconscious church will value self-indulgence. If culture worships success, a blind church will begin promoting growth and numbers more than holiness and true proclamation.
Our culture is obsessed with …
Galatians 6:9 says, And let us not grow weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.
When you’re trying to grow a vegetable garden you have to sow a lot of seed, you have to protect those seeds until they can germinate, then you have to constantly pull weeds, and water (but not too much). Your hands have to ache. Your face has to sweat. And then you …
EXHORTATION
1 Corinthians 13:7 says…
Love… believes all things
This means that Christians who are growing in love choose to believe the best in others. The word for believe is the same word we translate as “faith.” So, literally, love has all faith.
Believing all things means we give others the benefit of the doubt. We take one another’s word at face value. It means we open ourselves up fully to one another. We believe …
EXHORTATION
Hebrews 3:13 says
13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
As Christians, we aren’t called to love one another in theory—we’re called to actually love one another. It has to be lived out. And, among many things, this means that we are always dealing with one another’s temptations and sin. If you can’t name a …
EXHORTATION
One of the most spiritual things a Christian can do in life is work a job. The first command God gave Adam included the divine commission to work. This means that getting up early on Monday to put in an honest day’s work is itself an act of worship.
Christians are called to consider their work holy. To do their work as unto the Lord. To see their work as a way to bring …
