Everyone needs encouragement. In this message, we receive personal encouragement from the last paragraph in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians and learn how to better encourage others!
Ephesians
Jesus is working to see the whole church share the whole gospel with the whole world. Satan is working against this plan by trying to turn everyone in Christ’s church into spiritual weaklings. To see Christ’s plan prevail, Jesus is training us to receive His divine gifts, including the sword of the Spirit and prayer in the Spirit, so the world gets the Good News, God gets the glory, and we all, except Satan, get to be a part of it.
God created life. But sin created death. And the inevitability of death is troubling. We have a variety of ways of coping with this reality, of protecting our minds from fearing it. We deny the inevitability of death or rationalize it to try to lessen its burden. But none of these things actually prevent it or our fear of it. Only one thing can truly alleviate our fear of death: the assurance of salvation, of life after death. The assurance of salvation is a helmet that protects our minds from fear.
We are exhorted to hold up the shield of faith in all circumstances, to extinguish the arrows of the evil one. Just what are those arrows? Attacks come in many forms, including accusations, deceptions, distortions, distractions, false assurances, and temptations. How does faith in God act like a shield in these attacks? We can draw on the heroes of our faith and on Jesus himself to consider how we, too, might stand against and be empowered to overcome these attacks to produce lasting fruit in the Kingdom of God.
Join us for a very special Family Sunday in which we invite the children to demonstrate all the pieces of the Armor of God, and we hear a short devotional from Pastor Jay Oertli on what it means to have shoes made of the readiness given by the gospel of peace.
Jesus reigns and He is near to all of His followers. Yet, when difficulties come, it’s natural to get distracted from this central reality. Anticipating hard seasons, Paul used a quill to remind us of several exquisite everlasting facts of faith which he calls the armor of God. This week we will learn why we desperately need to embrace, in our challenging days, God’s breastplate of righteousness
God loves children and so do the people of Hope. Since the kids will be with us throughout this 4th Sunday service, Pastor Dean will bring a shorter and kid-relevant message entitled, “Kids, God is For You!” from Ephesians 6:1-4. Parents, this message will encourage your children to abide in Jesus in various ways, including through obedience and honor toward you so if you are in town, join us as God’s family unites to worship and receive His wisdom for our everyday lives.
Sometimes we disagree with people we love. This difficulty can cause sleepless nights, stomach aches, avoidance, anger and sometimes even slander. Last week we learned from Ephesians 4:1-16 that God’s vision for the church is unity, not uniformity. In this coming message, from Ephesians 4:17-32, we will begin to discover God’s guidance on how to be faithful to our convictions and kind toward others, especially when we disagree.
Imagine a deeply unified people. What would it look like for people with legitimate differences to eagerly maintain unity in a community of peace? Christ envisions His followers to be this unique group and in this message, we will learn how He summons us to think and live together that it may be so!
Why pray if God is sovereign over all? Why pray when time is limited and there is so much work to be done? Why pray if God already knows everything including what I will converse with Him about? After writing to the church in Ephesus about the awe-inspiring and freshly revealed gospel of Jesus, the Apostle Paul shares the reason why he bows his knee before the Father. In so doing, he has inspired generations of people like you and me to do the same. Join us for this message and service to worship God and discover a potentially new and compelling reason to pray!