In this season of Thanksgiving, one of the many things for which I am grateful is Christ the King Sunday. It’s the last Sunday of the liturgical calendar just before the start of the Advent Season where we acknowledge that Jesus is King and that we belong to his kingdom. We remember that as members of Jesus’ Kingdom that we operate under a different ethos than the world’s or Caesar’s kingdom. If you need to get fired up about your faith in Chri

Sailors understand the power of the wind. Unless they raise the boat’s sails, the wind would never be caught in order to propel them through the water. The same is true with the Holy Spirit. Unless we make ourselves available to the Holy Spirit’s filling, we will never experience the Spirit’s power in and through our lives. Being filled is not a one and done event, but something is ongoing throughout our lives.  

These days seem fraught with uncertainty and despair. It can be hard to know where God is amidst the darkness. "Come, Lord Jesus Come,” we cry out! But Jesus told us that he would not leave us orphaned, but that he would send another counselor who would comfort us, remind us of all that he taught while on earth, and mold us more and more into his own image. For this I am forever grateful to know that Jesus is with us always through the gift of the Holy Spirit.  

Upon faith in Christ, the Holy Spirit gives gifts to each believer to build up the church and to bring us to maturity in our faith. These are given for God’s purposes and glory. Not our own. When we work in concert with these gifts, the burden is easy and light. When we do not, it is hard and challenging. So let us keep in step with the Spirit.  

When we become believers in Jesus Christ, Jesus not only plants his Holy Spirit within us but grafts onto us all the buds necessary to produce all the fruit of his Holy Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These fruit are contrary to the fruits of our sinful nature or the works of our flesh. This is to our Father’s glory, that we bear much fruit, showing ourselves to be Jesus’ disciples

One day of the year on Pentecost, we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit. But then we don’t hear much more about it. Shouldn’t the third person of our Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit get more play than that? Over the next couple of weeks were are going to hear more about this Advocate, Helper, and Friend that Jesus promised to leave with us in his physical absence.  

This has been such a rich journey on learning how to pray over the past several months. For it we used several resources, one of which was Pete Greig’s book How to Pray, a Simple Guide for Normal People. Pete is the founder of the International 24/7 Prayer Movement and encourages us to “Keep it Simple. Keep it Real. And to Keep it Up! Today’s sermon recaps all the things we learned along the way.  

Scripture is very clear that our battle is not against our fellow humans, but against the spiritual forces of evil at work in our world.  This is a message that must be preached to our very polarized political culture in America today.  How we engage in this warfare is not by using the enemy’s tactics, but with God’s weapons of love, peace, and prayer.  We must begin to see each other as fellow humans created in the same image of G

Rarely today do we hear the words “I am sorry” or “I was wrong” from our leaders. It seems that people would much rather not admit to any short coming or would prefer to rewrite their story entirely. But God’s Word tells us that none of us live in right relationship with God all the time. As Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he taught them the importance of confessing their sins, asking for forgiveness, and then forgiving the

How to Hear from God Have you ever wondered what it would be like if God spoke directly to us as God did in the Bible? Well, God does speak. It’s just that our hearts and lives are often not tuned into the frequencies that project God’s voice best. To hear God more in prayer, we need to stop and listen for the still small voice through which God speaks. As fall begins, we are returning to the topic of prayer and how can we hear God in our hurr