WOW!! Powerful sermon and definitely NOT written by YOU but by the Holy Spirit in you!!! I'm very touched! And, just for the record, it would have been much easier to have let the candy issue go by. I would have loved to have just shown you the grace without the consequences!!
Throughout Advent, as we have been preparing for Christmas and for Christ’s return, we have been focusing on the four words of the Advent candles: Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace. Today, as we celebrate Christmas Eve, we lit the most important candle, the Christ candle. And as we light the Christ candle, it is only fitting that we would focus on Christ and his place within this wreath. Jesus Christ is not only the center candle for his obvious central role in the Christmas story, but his spot in the center of the wreath is because he is the fulfillment of all of the candles. We began Advent with hope. Fitting, that Hope Church would focus on hope. For a people caught in the “in between” times, Micah’s prophecy includes these words of hope: But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me. (Micah 7:7) In the Old Testament, when you find the word “hope” it is almost always characterized not simply as “hope” b...
Colossians 3:1-10 What do you have your heart set on? I’m not just talking about something you want, I’m asking what you really have your heart set on. There’s a difference. For example, once my dad and I were going out to eat, and there was one restaurant I really wanted to take him to. We got there only to find out that it was closed. I had my heart set on eating there, and although we ended up going somewhere else, nothing else really would satisfy. That is a good way to describe someone with their heart set on something; when nothing else will satisfy. In Colossians 2, Paul makes the case for the new life we live in Christ. When [we] were dead in our sins and in the uncircumcision of [our] sinful nature, God made [us] alive in Christ. (Colossians 2:13) Remember that this new life in Christ is not because of anything we do; we aren’t good people who sometimes do bad things; we are by nature evil and only by God’s common grace are we even able to do the slightest good...
Isaiah 54:10 “Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the LORD, who has compassion on you. Galatians 5:22-23: But the Fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Against such things there is no law. As we’ve been looking at the Holy Spirit over these past three weeks, I wonder something: are you any more loving and any more filled with joy than you were before? Part of being filled with the Holy Spirit is when you are, He brings about the Fruit. He brings that love and joy that we talked about over the past couple of weeks. One of the side effects of speaking on the Holy Spirit is that the devil doesn’t like it. He would rather you serve a distant impersonal God. He would rather you not know that your very body is a temple of the Holy Spirit – that the Spirit of God resides within you with power! He hates...
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And, just for the record, it would have been much easier to have let the candy issue go by. I would have loved to have just shown you the grace without the consequences!!