| Clicking on the title of a message below will take you to an mp3 file of the message. |
 |
One of the ways to grow spiritually is to read and apply the Word of God to your life. We are issuing a challenge to enter the AmazinG Race through the Bible. Using the One Year Bible, we've presented a plan, check point dates and a group for encouragement in the race to read the Bible in 2008. Take the challenge and see if it changes your life for good and for Christ. |
We are continuing our race through the Bible in the AmazinG Race. In our first leg of the AmazinG Race, we looked at the Old Testament, in this leg of the relay we will examine what we are reading in the New Testament and how it applies to our lives in 2008.
- March 30 - New Testament Idol: Whackos, Critics, and the Rock Star of My Life - Dig Deeper - Outline
This message is from the March 24 - 30 readings in the One Year Bible. We follow Jesus in his ministry as He takes the show on the road. Like a Rock Star in present day He has all sorts of whacked, needy groupies following Him, who all came to believe in Jesus as the Son of God with a faith that caused Jesus to marvel at them. And just like a Rock Star, Jesus had his critics - the "normal" people who had nothing wrong with them and lived in the proper and fashionable way. They looked good, smelled good, talked right, lived right, but they did not get Jesus. It was those who had much to be forgiven that enjoyed His forgiveness. It is still true today - those who think they are good enough get left behind in the Gospel, but isn't it true, we are all a little bit whacked and in need of a Savior?
- April 6 - The Moment of Truth - Dig Deeper - Outline
This message is taken from the March 31 - April 5 readings in the One Year Bible. Like the controversial game show on TV right now, this leg of the AmazinG Race leads us to the place where Jesus must prove that He is telling the truth. For Jesus to be the Messiah there must be no falsehood in Him and everything that He says must be proven to be true. Like the contestants on The Moment of Truth, Jesus is up to the task - or is He? It's either all in with the truth and every answer be true or just one false answer and there is no prize - all in or all out! Is Jesus God? Is He the Son of God as He claims? Is Jesus the Messiah as Peter exclaims? That answer is... TRUE. He passes His Moment of Truth - His Prize, the ability to save humanity from itself. Now your Moment of Truth is upon you. Jesus begins asking the important questions in your quest for the truth. What are you going to do with the Truth of the Gospel? |
Marriage is meant to be a life-long love affair between two people that God has drawn together in unique relationship in the same way that He drew Adam and Eve together quite specifically, emotionally, and erotically. However, our view of marriage in society today allows us to be drawn into a faulty philosophy of love and marriage and family and creates very shaky foundation for life-long romance, relationship, and commitment between two people drawn by God to each other.
In this series, we will challenge the state of marriage today and look at the epidemic of failed relationships and the core reasons why relationships do not seem to last in our society. We will analyze the biblical principles for seeking relationships and marriage, for maintaining good relationships and marriage, and for recovering from the devastating mistake of adultery in relationships and marriage.
Bottom line we will apply biblical principles for having love affairs that last a lifetime.
- February 24 - How To Have an Affair - The Pathway to Promiscuity - Dig Deeper - Outline
Adultery is rarely the result of one or two major issues in a marriage or relationship; it's the result of a long, methodical process. In this message we will analyze the process that leads to an affair and the warning signs that signal to ourselves that we are headed toward an affair. We will also explore the steps needed to take to reverse the leaning toward an affair and to step away from the ledge and return to the faithfulness of marriage.
- March 2 - I Promise - The Covenant of Marriage - Dig Deeper - Outline
In this message we will explore society's definition of marriage and compare it to God's definition of marriage. We will explore the myths of marriage that most people looking to get married buy into, only to see shattered within a few short months of most marriages. We will seek to adopt God's idea of marriage both as a single person looking to be married in the future and as a married person needing to reshape a present marriage into a lasting and forever love affair. We will define marriage according to God's principles, stripping away the superficial ideas of "fairy tale" endings.
- March 9 - Love With a Crack in It - Can My Marriage Recover from an Affair? - Dig Deeper - Outline
Ok, so I have had an affair or my spouse has had an affair, is there any hope for love to survive? The consequences of an affair are devastating and the road to recovery requires much more than surface level repair. Love is created by God and never truly dies; however, that love when damaged reveals its hurt through the passion of hatred and revenge. In order to survive a cracked marriage, boundaries must be drawn, expectations rearranged, accountablilty created, and a professional sought to help reconstruction and referee honest thought and help!
- March 16 - Forever Faithful - God's Authority in Marriage - Dig Deeper - Outline
In this message we will outline the five keys to living a life of faithfulness and experiencing a forever love affair. How can we insure that our marriages, whether present or somewhere in the future will be marriages built to last forever in committed faithfulness? There are some general faithfulness principles that can be lived out and are outlined in the Bible to "affair proof" your life and your marriage. They begin before one is married and continue right into marriage. God desires our marriages to be one big "threesome" - God, my spouse, and me.
- March 23 - The Ultimate Love Affair - Easter Sunday - Dig Deeper - Outline
This is Easter Sunday, a celebration of God's love for us. God went to great lengths to regain relationship with us and reconcile us in relationship with Himself - the ultimate Love Affair Relationship! Join us in a worship experience that reveals the great love that God has for us! |
|
One of the ways to grow spiritually is to read and apply the Word of God to your life. We are issuing a challenge to enter the AmazinG Race through the Bible. Using the One Year Bible, we've presented a plan, check point dates and a group for encouragement in the race to read the Bible in 2008. Take the challenge and see if it changes your life for good and for Christ. |
- February 10 - Whose Law is it Anyway? - Dig Deeper - Outline
Many of us are racing through the Bible this year as we read the One Year Bible. In reading through the Bible we can come across things that just really cause us to wrinkle our foreheads and wonder about the relevancy or even the ethicality of the Bible, especially when we get into the Old Testament, a series of books written around 5000 years ago.
What can a book of Law like Exodus, written 5000 years ago teach us that will help us in a 2000 AD world? What can a book about Ancient Law show me that might help me deal with my present rat race, raising kids in an Xbox world, Bling Bling economics, and red and blue states? What does cooking a baby goat in its mother's milk have to do with a world that could dream up global terrorism? How can instructions on blood and sacrificial offerings help me balance my checkbook?
Those are great questions and ones that we will tackle as we look at the relevance of reading through the Bible. Is this just a great classic literature exercise or are there answers in these 5000 BC passages that can help me live a full life?
We will examine the passages in Exodus this week and seek to apply their relevance to our 2008 lives.
- February 17 - What's Sacrifice Got to Do With It? - Dig Deeper - Outline
As we continue the AmazinG Race this week, things get really weird. How can we apply anything in our hectic 2008 lives from a record of how to build a church in the middle of the desert? Surely there is nothing in this that applies to me.
And yet a closer look reveals a building that applies several practical keys to living a full life! First, God loves those who are gifted crafts people and believe that what they produce with their hands is ministry. God makes room for all kinds of people in His world and does not create a hierarchy of value when it comes to people. He filled those who could build and decorate and create with His Holy Spirit so they could build a beautiful place of worship and community called the Tabernacle.
Within the creation of the Tabernacle, God communicated the key concept of Grace - the offering of a gift to someone who has done nothing to deserve it or earn it. The sacrificial system of OT Law involved the saving of a life by a substitutionary death and atonement of an innocent. God provided through the OT Sacrificial system a way for grace and forgiveness to be substituted for sin and death and used both the Tabernacle and the sacrificial system to point to the ultimate sacrifice: Jesus' death on the Cross for our sins. Even as the OT people had to accept the forgiveness of the substitute so do we in 2008 AD. |
 There is a famous set of commercials out there that ask a very good question - "What's in your wallet?" Look at the things you carry around in your wallet - family photos that you show off to anyone who might ask about your pride and joy, insurance cards that you use to take care of yourself in times of health crisis, credit cards that are a necessity in surviving in your day-to-day life. Your driver's license is also there to prove that you actually exist and are indeed who you say you are.
Our wallets carry our identities and if we lose them, we are in real trouble. For the next few weeks let's take a look at our wallets, because the contents of our wallet say something about our values, our identities, our priorities, and our loves. As we look at What's In Your Wallet, we'll find that the Bible addresses these things as well and will offer you some principles for properly managing What's In Your Wallet?
- January 6 - Driver's License - Identity Theft or Identity Contentment? - Dig Deeper - Outline
Your driver's license represents your personal identity and holds a key to all the pertinent information about you. However, we tend to give away our identity by striving to be someone we are not. It's time to see ourselves as Jesus sees us and find our identity in Him and the way that He wants us to live our lives!
- January 13 - Dollar Bills - Money Management or Money Managed? - Dig Deeper - Outline
When we dig into our wallets, the obvious image that comes to our mind is the dollar bill: either that we see a few in there or that there just aren't enough of them residing in our wallets. We will explore some biblical principles for viewing money in the proper perspective in our lives and not allowing it to identify us.
- January 20 - Credit Cards - Debt Builder or Credit Enhancer? - Dig Deeper - Outline
As we continue to look in our wallets we will soon discover a card that unleashes the power of the universe into our hands for at least 31 days. And then the 18 to 24 percent interest monster comes to visit. Are credit cards bad? Is debt evil? The answer to both of these questions is "yes" and "no". As we look at the proper use of credit, we'll develop a good plan for using credit to our advantage, or getting out from under a mountain of debt, both based upon biblical principles.
- January 27 - Family Portraits - Vital Relationship or Vicious Cycles? - Dig Deeper - Outline
In most of our wallets we will find a vast array of pictures, some old and curled on the edges as well as some new pictures that show of our pride and joy as they look today. Those pictures represent the most valuable assets in our lives. We'll find that the Bible has much to say about family relationships and offers some basic principles that will ensure that your family portrait is true and genuine in its representation of a happy family.
- February 3 - Health Insurance Card - Health Plan or Health Crisis? - Dig Deeper - Outline
We cannot go too far into our wallets until we run into a very expensive but very important card - our heath insurance card. This card really stresses us in the money management department as health care costs have risen incredibly over the last several years. However, the Bible calls our bodies the "Temple of God" and as such there is an expectation that we will guard those temples with the proper care. We'll take this opportunity to look at what the Bible says about living healthy lives. |
|
One of the ways to grow spiritually is to read and apply the Word of God to your life. We are issuing a challenge to enter the AmazinG RACE through the Bible. Using the One Year Bible, we've presented a plan, check point dates and a group for encouragement in the race to read the Bible in 2008. Take the challenge and see if it changes your life for good and for Christ.
|
Wow! It’s December already and you know what that means? Craziness – gift shopping for the kids, family, friends; business, church, and friend get-togethers and parties that fill the schedule so unbelievably; big dinners to plan for and prepare, relatives to hope I don’t offend; and tons of events that I just can’t miss! Whoa! It is one super busy time and then before I know it, it’s over and I wonder what I got out of it.