Perhaps nothing is more vital to our participation in God’s plan to grow His kingdom than our calling to be His witnesses. As we examine in Acts 1 the last words that Jesus gave to His followers before He ascended to the Father, we see that it clearly shows His purpose for leaving us in…
This morning, we will be focusing on a topic that I have given much of my life to thinking about. I’ve spent years working to develop effective processes and tools for its implementation. It’s been said that “a person needs to invest about 10,000 hours in a skill in order to master it.” In the…
As we continue to look at the various ways in which God calls believers to walk in the fullness of all He desires for His church, we begin to shift our focus from the internal community of the body to the broader community in which we live. How has God called us to interact with those who are “on the outside”? Or in other words, How has God called us to engage our community? Pastor David shares God’s purpose and plan for engaging our community.
As we consider this idea of being called to minister/serve, I want to look at Mark 10. As we will see in a few minutes, being a servant in God’s economy is not a demotion. In fact, Jesus told His disciples that the one who wanted to lead needed to be a servant and slave…
In light of all this, we want to see that the position we hold in Christ and our membership in His body (this local church) is not something that we should treat casually. We all have casual friendships with others but when it comes to our connections in the church, there should be a deeper…
According to Carey Nieuwhof, when people go shopping for a church, 86% choose a church based on the quality of the preaching—they want to be fed. Thom Rainer says that “being fed” is another way of saying that they want the church to cater to their “desires and preferences.” We know that the preaching of…
Our goal in this series of studies is to unpack what it means to be called—specifically what God wants for those who have responded in faith to the inward calling of the Spirit. As a result of our calling, we must follow in the steps of Jesus—being conformed into His image and having the same…
For better or worse, our lives are filled with moments. Some are minor but others are far more significant; life-changing moments that we look forward to most of our lives such as a wedding, the birth of a child, or a graduation. These moments carry a measure of expectation and uncertainty of what lies ahead or if circumstances will be all that we hope or dream. Thankfully, the Bible is not silent about what we should do when it comes to facing these moments. Listen to Bro. David as he shares God’s instruction to Joshua and the people of Israel as they prepare to face their moment of significant change–entering the Promised Land.
The psalmist encourages us to give thanks to the Lord for He is good, for His steadfast love, compassion, goodness, lovingkindness, grace and mercy never ends (Psalm 107:1). After this encouragement to give thanks to the Lord, the psalmist mentions four different groups of people who are returning from exile. We looked at the first of these four groups a few weeks ago, but since I missed the past two weeks, we will be looking at the other three groups today. Just like we saw with the first group of returning exiles in Psalm 107, each of these groups find themselves in a difficult situation, then they cry out to the Lord in their trouble, and the Lord delivers them from their distress. Each time, the psalmist follows this up with these words: “Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man!” (Psalm 107:8).
We will be continuing our study from Psalm 107 today—focusing in on the concept of the Lord’s HESED to those who have been exiled from the Promised Land. The concept of restoration is a big part of Psalm 107. In this psalm, the author declares that the restoration is available through God’s HESED even to those in despair.