The last night of Jesus’ life, before his arrest, his death and resurrection, began with these words from John 13:1, “It was just before the Passover feast. Jesus knew the time has come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now...
Do we allow ourselves to picture God dancing? Do we picture Him smiling? Why do most of our pictures show Him with little or no emotion? Or when we do show His emotion it is usually His anger in clearing out the temple or His agony in preparing for and enduring the cross. The way...
We have a tendency of complicating things that don’t need to be complicated. Some of us here are over thinkers; some of us try to straighten things out that are not even crooked; Some of us try to find a better way when the way we’ve got is good already. It is not just good...
Some scriptures are difficult to deal with. I don’t know if you’ve noticed like I have, but we tend to have a handful of verses that we all seem to gravitate around and then there are others that we avoid and we try to skip over. And if we have to read them we sort...
The first sermon that was ever preached by the church is recorded for us in Acts 2. Peter was preaching under the influence of the Holy Spirit. And while he was in the middle of his sermon, we’re told that the crowd interrupted him. They shouted out, “what shall we do?” Truth is often met...
We’ve talked about the True Vine, the Vinedresser and the fruit. Jesus supplies all of our needs. The Father supplies all the effort and our lives produce the fruit of Christ likeness. Today we get to the command of this analogy. See, as expected we play a part in this analogy. It is a relationship...
Have you ever wondered, maybe even asked the question, “what does God want from me?” The question sounds like it might have a negative context as if someone is fed up and they think that God is being unjust and they think that somehow He wants too much. But I believe it’s actually an important...
Last week we started our conversation of John chapter 15 by concentrating on Jesus’ first few words, “I am the True Vine.” The vine is the source of everything that grows. From the vine comes the branches and from the branches comes the fruit. Everything is dependent upon the vine. But Jesus wasn’t establishing his supremacy...
In John 15:1-4 Jesus makes several short yet poignant statements through which he presents himself not just as an option, but as a necessity, “I am the true vine.” It’s not simply that we need Jesus or that we have lack in ourselves.It’s that Jesus is everything of value. He’s everything that is good or...
In Luke 2, an angel appeared to a group of night watch shepherds and announced, “I bring you good tidings of great joy for all people”. The angel was announcing that something unexpected had happened, that the God that had always been for them was going to be with them, that needs were about to...
