What defines church culture? What does it look like to represent the church? Unfortunately, you can find churches that have embraced almost anything you can think of as a defining feature. Some churches are social clubs. Some are basically a charity. Some churches are all about a celebrity pastor or incredible worship team. Every church … Read more
The church is God’s idea and Christ is building His church. It’s a divine promise of the divine Savior. There will never be a moment when the church is wiped out. No matter how liberal, fanatical, ritualistic, apathetic, or apostate it’s outward adherents may become Christ will build His church. While she may need discipline, … Read more
If you were to walk down the street and interview 100 people and ask them if love is important, I think you would get almost universal agreement that it is. Even the Beetles sang “All you need is love, love. Love is all you need.” It’s important! Scripture agrees. 1 Corinthians 13:13 says “But now … Read more
We are continuing our “Growing Faith” sermon series by examining 2nd Peter 1:4-8. The trait we will focus on for this message is the important concept of “brotherly kindness.” True brotherly kindness always defers to and gives honor to others. We can express this in many ways such as spending time and assisting others by … Read more
According to 2 Peter 1:4-8, while in this struggle to live out our faith we must never accept surrender to sin, we persevere. In that perseverance, we need godliness. But what is godliness? GODLINESS = Total surrender to living Christ’s way. So surrender isn’t always bad, it’s all a matter of what or who you … Read more
It’s ok to say something is really hard. It’s ok to say I haven’t succeeded yet. It’s not ok to quit or surrender. If it’s the right thing to do we should continue to pursue it. This is called perseverance and it’s the subject of the 4th message from our Growing in Faith series based … Read more
We are constantly looking for information. Why do we have such a need to know? Because information influences the choices we make. Knowledge is one of the things that the apostle lists as an area we need to grow in as we are sanctified (2 Peter 1:4-8). But we’re not just talking about information here. … Read more
Some people may be able to fool themselves into thinking they have achieved some rendition of true self control. They may be able to conjure up the willpower and the words to “Just Say No!” to various things that are not beneficial to them. Here’s the thing though…..it’s not about managing our “flesh” under our … Read more
What do we need in order to keep growing in faith? There is nothing we can do to add to our salvation to get more saved. Yet there are things we are clearly called to pursue as Christians, which are a part of growing in sanctification. Both Paul and Peter address these ideas. In 2 … Read more
If we delight in something then we are going to want to do it more and more and we will naturally be far more disciplined at it. If we don’t delight in something we’re doing, then regardless of what kind of discipline is put in place, we will most likely stumble, fall, fail, and eventually … Read more