We’re in our fourth week of a series I’m calling the Kingdom of God. For Jesus the Kingdom of God was his self proclaimed reason for coming. Let’s jump right in.

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. Matthew 13:44 (NIV)

I’d like to highlight four things this parable tells us about the kingdom of God.

First, apparently the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God, as the other three gospel writers name it, is EXTREMELY valuable. It is so valuable that you’d give up everything to get it. It is so valuable that all the things that you currently have – houses, cars, boats, all your hobbies, all your jewelry, everything you have in your bank account, your 401k, you’d give it all up if you could just get this. The kingdom of God is so valuable that you’d become homeless, empty your bank account, your retirement account, and sell all your possessions, if you could just get IT – if you could just get the kingdom of God.

What’s interesting is that the parable doesn’t give us any indications as to whether the man was a rich man – upper class, or a poor man – lower class, or a guy who was a middle class guy with a middle-of-the-road amount of money. All we’re told is that he was joyfully willing to sell everything that he had in order to buy the field that the treasure was in. We’re not sure how much the field cost, but we know that it will cost us everything in order to find the kingdom of God.

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How many of you made coffee this morning in an electric coffee maker? If you did, then you used power from the electric company to do that. Some of you really like muscle cars and if I asked you how many horses were under your hood, you’d know that I was talking about horsepower. For 20 years I was an electrician. Every day I installed electrical systems to control power in such a way that it was safe for the user. Every day the sun comes up, it has the power to bless you with its light and burn you at the same time. Our whole world is about power.

We understand these things, but rarely do we think about ourselves as powerful. Yet the whole  Bible, from the beginning to the end is about power, who’s got it, how they’re using is, and how their use of power affected them, others and even God.

Today is Pentecost Sunday. Some of you might wonder, “What is Pentecost?” Pentecost means fifty and therefore Pentecost is fifty days after Easter. Jesus arose from the dead and walked the earth for 40 days, then he ascended into heaven and ten days later, he sent the Holy Spirit on the church. The church was birthed by God when he poured out his Spirit on the church at Pentecost. Let’s read about what happened on the day the first church was born.

When the day of Pentecost came, they (the disciples) were all together in one place. Read the rest of this entry »

Today we are finishing the last part of a four part series entitled “Learning To Hear God’s Voice.” We’ve said that we should expect God to speak to us if we have been baptized and confessed our faith that Jesus is Lord and are seeking to follow him in our life. God is Spirit and we have been created in his image, and therefore we have a deeply spiritual component to us. God created us in such a way that he could be in relationship with us. We were created to be able to hear his voice. This morning I want to investigate a perplexing thing for many Christians, called God’s will. Jesus taught us to pray:

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Matthew 6:9-10 (NIV)

What is God’s will? Do you know? Jesus teaches us to pray for “God’s will to be done and for God’s kingdom to come, but how are we to know God’s will? Is God’s will a mystery? For many it is.  We cannot fully know God, because God is much bigger and much more complex than our minds can comprehend.  However, God doesn’t keep us in the dark about his will. He doesn’t keep us guessing about who he is and what he desires. We can know God’s will. In fact, Jesus expected us to know it.

We’re finishing up a series called, “Learning to hear God’s voice,” and one of the best ways to discern if God is speaking to you is to know his will.

Let’s start with the word “Will”. What is a will? We typically use the word “Will” in a different context, than it was used in the Bible. If I say, “my grandma died and her will was read yesterday” what does the word “Will” mean? It means that when she created her will, it was her way of saying “This is what I desire you to do with my possessions after I die.”  Similarly, you can find out a lot about a person by reading their will, because in reading their will, you find out what was important to them.

When we talk about God’s will, we are talking about God’s desire. We are talking about what God wants done. When we are talking about God’s will, we are indirectly talking about the kind of God he is. Read the rest of this entry »

What is the significance of Easter? Is it about easter eggs and easter bunnies? Is it about jelly beans and chocolate rabbits? Is it about Easter outfits and family gatherings? Is it about forgiveness of sins and eternal life is it about something more? What is the significance of Easter?

Sometimes we define the significance of Easter by family or church traditions? Other times we get read the Easter story and yawn or an Easter message and have to hold back a yawn, because we’ve already heard that before and the whole thing feels dead and dry like eating stale bread.

However, the Christian message, of which many have died for, is not just remembered, it’s not just celebrated, it’s not just a piece of history, but after 2000 years the movement that Jesus began is still growing! What is the significance of Easter? Let’s not ask that question of me, but rather let’s ask that question of Jesus, after all, you’d think he’d have something to say about!

This morning we’re going to look at the first words of the resurrected Christ to determine, through his eyes, why what he did on the cross and what he accomplished in the resurrection.  What did Jesus’ resurrection mean to him? Read the rest of this entry »

Big idea: Jesus died for the sake of truth that leads us toward goodness, and to fight against lies that leads us towards hellishness and death

What is truth? Is there such a thing as truth? Our world suggests that you have things that are true for you, and I have things that are true for me. Is there anything that is true for all people? Is there anything that we can say is true for every child, every little girl and every little boy? Is there anything we can say is true for every adult, every person? What is truth? What determines if truth is truth, or if it isn’t?

What if there were things that were true for every human being? What if there were things that were true for all people? What if there were truths that were true for every relationship, for every marriage, for every friendship? What is truth? Read the rest of this entry »

Does anyone here find it hard to pray? We are on this journey toward Easter, so this morning I want to address an issue that is deeply related to Easter. God stepped down out of heaven in the person of Jesus and he taught us who we were created to be, then he died and rose again, so that we could be forgiven of our sins and be in a deep relationship with him. One of the primary ways that we can be in relationship to him is through prayer.

But prayer is hard. I have come to understand that prayer is hard, not just for me, but for almost everyone.  So my first question is why? If God intended us to pray, why would it be so hard for us to do that? This morning I want to address seven questions about prayer that I believe will help us to pray better, because when people come up with the wrong answers to these questions, prayer will be difficult.

Throughout the majority of my life, I have struggled with prayer. After having made significant strides in my prayer life during the past couple of years, I’ve come to understand that prayer is a spiritual life-line. Prayer is to you and I what an umbilical cord is to an unborn child. We can’t live the good life that God created us for, without prayer. Prayer is as necessary to our spiritual lives as breathing is to our physical lives. Prayer is essential for life.

Prayer is hard, but it is essential, therefore, we must struggle with it in the same way as someone who can’t breathe struggles to have that breathe.

Prayer is essential, but it’s hard. Why? Read the rest of this entry »

 Is anybody happy that winter is behind us and Spring is before us? We live in Michigan so it is easy for me to come up with words I associate with winter: death, ice, hypothermia, wind chill, death, snow, shoveling snow, shoveling more snow, buying a snow blower, death, salt trucks, black ice, dead batteries, frostbite, gangrene, thermal underwear, ice fishing, diminished mental capacity, seasonal affective disorder, recreational eating, and death.

These are all things I associate with winter. I know, some people say, “God made winter. It must be a good thing,” but I want to point out there is no mention of winter in the Bible before the fall. In the beginning of Genesis, we read of trees that are bursting with fruit and people who don’t even need clothes to wear. The Garden of Eden was clearly not in Michigan in January.

My wife’s mom and dad avoid winters in Michigan, so there are some who avoid snow, but there’s another kind of winter from which you can’t move away. There’s a winter of the soul, and it’s inescapable because we all go there at some point in our lives. Winter of the soul is the place where nothing good seems to grow and the place where many would say nothing good happens. The Bible has some books that we could describe as “wintry” type books–books of wintry spirituality. The Book of Job might be the most famous one. Job’s remarkable story is one that is wintry, a story in which all the warmth and life seems to die in his life. His story digs deeply into the human condition and is a great place to learn about the God who is bigger than our sufferings.

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Big Idea – Sometimes we have to often go backwards in the physical in order to go forward in the spiritual

Have you ever had a time when you needed God to do something, but he didn’t do it? Has there ever been a time in your life where you knew that God could do something, but he didn’t and you can’t figure out why God just isn’t doing it? Doesn’t it just drive you crazy when you know that God can do anything, and yet you can’t figure out why he’s just not doing it?

When that happens, then we begin to think that there’s something wrong with us. We doubt that we’re praying right, or we doubt the love of God. We tend to think there’s something wrong with me, because we know God is perfect and we’re not, so therefore we reflect, there must be something wrong with me.

Not understanding what’s going on when this happens is a real problem because it deeply affects our relationship with our heavenly Father, and it affects how we understand ourselves, and it affects how we participate with God in his mission of bringing heaven to earth. It affects everything and Satan loves to trip us up on this part of our journey. He loves to get us sideways in our journey with God and take us off the path of following Jesus, because when he does that, then he makes us ineffective, and when he makes us ineffective, then he robs us of joy, peace, and love that God created us for. Read the rest of this entry »

After 22 years of marriage, there is one thing that I realize will never be true. I will never be enough to make my wife happy. Now, what I don’t mean this in the negative derogatory sense that some men mean when they’re not happy with their marriage. My wife and I have a good marriage and we love each other unconditionally and I can’t imagine being married to anyone else, but I know that I will never be enough to make my wife happy. The reason is that I’m damaged goods. This isn’t an excuse. It’s just a statement of fact.

I also know that after being a father for nearly 17 years, that I will never be enough of a dad to make my kids happy. I have a great relationship with my kids and I love them deeply and I’d do anything for them, but I’m not enough to make them happy, because I’m damaged goods.

I say that because we work with people and we live among people who are not models of emotional maturity and spiritual health. Because when it comes to the human race, you have reached the damaged goods department. There is a mind that will not open. There is a mouth that will not shut. There is a backbone that won’t hold firm. There is a stiff neck that won’t yield. There is a temper that will flare. There is a fear that will take over. That’s everybody here. If you’re visiting this weekend, you have arrived at the damaged goods department.

With that said, we should never be satisfied to live as damaged goods. There is something better that God is calling us to. This morning I want to look at two words that are not fully understood where we live. The two words that we’re going to talk about are a bit foreign in the world we live in. The two words are grace . . . and blessing. We’re putting them together because they are deeply connected.

Grace is concretely expressed from the very first chapter in the Bible. And always connected to this word grace is the word blessing that we’re going to follow all the way through the first book in the Bible. Only the first book, because that’s all we have time for. Let’s take a look

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Less than a month ago, I buried my great aunt. She lived to the rich age of 91. But I was stunned by something she told me as she lay on her death bed. She said that when she was very young, she heard her dad say these very hurtful words, “I wish you had been a boy.” Some 85 years later, some of the last thoughts my aunt would think were how deeply wounded she had been by those words as a little girl. The last word that someone shares says a lot about them. Some of her last words to be spoken were about the power of those words and how they had shaped her life.

What’s crazy is, she said several times that she knew that her dad loved her, but those words that her dad so carelessly spoke, lodged into my aunt’s heart like a fish hook under the skin, to stay lodged there until the day she died.

When I was young, my best friend and his dad took me bullheading. Bullheads, if you’re not aware are a primarily nocturnal fish. It was just before midnight when I caught a big bullhead. About that time a man appeared at the boat landing where we were fishing. Bullheads have stingers for whiskers and can be very painful if you touch them, so, having never removed a bull head from the hook, I was being very cautious. The man who had appeared and had been talking with us, who I might add was quite drunk, so my timidity, and jumped into help. He told me how to hold the fish, saying “hold the fish this way, and hold it here, and as I’m holding the fish he promptly removes the hook from the bullhead with a yank and imbeds the hook in my finger . . . well past the barb.

If you know anything about the barb on a fish hook, then you know that the barb is there to keep the fish from coming off the hook. Once in my finger, the only way to get the hook out of my finger was to push it through my finger until the barb appeared on the other side, and then cut the end of the hook off, and then back the hook out of my finger.  As you can imagine, it was a very painful process.

Words are like fish hooks. Once they go inside a person, they have a type of barb on them that makes them stick inside us. Those words often don’t ever leave us, and therefore they will always continue to give us pain. Words have great power, and unless we go though great pain to remove them, they stay stuck inside of us, and the power of those words form us, create us, and at times kill us. We’ll talk more about this as we go along. Read the rest of this entry »