Brian's Sermons

5th message in our series: Putting the Pieces Together: a Journey toward mature discipleship*. Where were you when President Kennedy was shot? When the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded? When the September 11 terrorist attack happened? We are in our 5th message in our series: Putting the Pieces Together: a Journey toward mature discipleship. Today we are exploring the topic of embracing grief and loss. The events I mentioned as I opened are certainly giant focal points of national grief and loss; not only did most of us experience them, but we remember them vividly. Besides national events, many of us have experienced devastating losses, such as the death of a child, premature death of spouse, disability, divorce, rape, emotional or sexual abuse, irreversible cancer, infertility, shattering of a life-long dream, suicide, betrayal, let down. But those aren’t the only things that affect us. We all experience so called “insignificant losses” such as graduating high school/college ...

4th message in our series: Putting the Pieces Together: a Journey toward mature discipleship*. Rabbi Edwin Friedman tells the story of a man on a journey. As he hurried along toward his destination, he came to a bridge that crossed high over a dangerous river. After starting across the bridge, he noticed someone coming from the opposite direction. As the stranger came to greet him, the man realized that he had a rope wrapped many times around his waist. The stranger began to unwrap the rope as he walked. Just as the two were about to meet, the stranger said, "Pardon me, would you be so kind as to hold the end of the rope for me?" The man agreed, and, without a thought, reached out and took it. "Thank you," said the stranger. Then he added, "Two hands now, and remember, hold on tight." At that, the stranger jumped off the bridge. "What are you trying to do?" he shouted to the stranger. "Just hold tight," came the reply. "If you let...

4th in the Series: Putting the Pieces Together: a Journey toward mature discipleship* Why is it that we are such emotional wrecks? When it comes to the beneath the surface stuff, that 90% is killing us! We are in our 4th message in the series: Putting the Pieces Together; a Journey Toward Mature Discipleship, and we’ve already established that God made us emotional beings on purpose, and that exploring beneath the surface and breaking the power of the past is hard, necessary work. We don’t break the power of the past just to let it fester on the surface, but to let God transform and redeem it. One of the ways God does this is by working through our brokenness and vulnerability. When we sing Jesus Loves Me, we sing about this: "we are weak, but He is strong." Through our weakness, we can see His strength. God does this all the time; He acts miraculously but does it in such a way as to demonstrate that it is He who is acting, not us. Gideon, whose story I shared a couple of mon...

3rd in the Series: Putting the Pieces Together: a Journey Toward Mature Discipleship* We are in our third week of putting the pieces together – our journey toward mature discipleship. We have established that we are emotional beings, and that it’s our duty to look beneath the surface of our lives, to see the 90% of us that usually never surfaces. As we look under the surface, however, the Gospel provides our safety net, reminding us that we’re God’s beloved sons and daughters. As we look beneath the surface, especially as we reflect on our past, I wonder if there might be any emotional baggage or unfinished business from my past affecting us today. What makes us ask, "What would everyone think? We’ve got to keep up appearances. Nobody must ever know." Many of us have those skeletons in our closets, those things about our past that we’re ashamed to admit. For some, it’s abuse. For others, it’s extreme poverty. For some, it’s addictions. For the rest, it’s something else. The t...

2nd in the series: Putting the Pieces Together: a Journey Towa rd Mature Discipleship* Last week, we began our search for the missing piece of the puzzle: emotional health. We established that God made us emotional beings and He did it on purpose. Jesus, being fully human, experienced the full range of emotions. Thus it isn’t possible to be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally unhealthy. We were reminded that we need to address emotional issues in order to love God and others, and that evangelism flows naturally from emotionally healthy people. Today we’re going to start digging beneath the surface, because in emotionally healthy churches, people take a deep, hard look inside their hearts, asking, "What is going on that Jesus Christ is trying to change?" The image I want to use today is an iceberg. When the Titanic ran into one, their big issue (besides thinking their ship was unsinkable) was neglecting the fact that when you see an iceberg, you only see the 10% tha...