Brian's Sermons

6th message in our series: Putting the Pieces Together: a Journey toward mature discipleship*. The next day the great crowd that had come for the Feast heard that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, "Hosanna!" "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" "Blessed is the King of Israel!" Jesus found a young donkey and sat upon it, as it is written, "Do not be afraid, O Daughter of Zion; see, your king is coming, seated on a donkey's colt." At first his disciples did not understand all this. Only after Jesus was glorified did they realize that these things had been written about him and that they had done these things to him. John 12:12-16 It is a fantastic scene: Jesus coming into Jerusalem triumphantly: for as humble as it may seem, this was the answer to prophecy from Zechariah 9:9 Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, daughter of Jerusalem! See...

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...