As we start the season of Advent, we move into a time of great anticipation, longing and waiting….and waiting…and waiting. In fact, before the birth of Jesus many in Israel were waiting desperately for their entire lives to see God send His promised Messiah and to see that Messiah bring about all that God had promised. Generation after generation, desperately longing and waiting for God. Those that stayed close with God celebrated when they simply saw the baby Messiah. Today, we can relate to Israel’s desperate waiting and longing for things to change, for something new to come, for a breakthrough.
Sermons from November 2021
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!
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.