07/01/2024
The Irrepressible Forgiveness of Our God
We just finished an important sermon series on the power of forgiveness to heal our souls, restore our relationships, and bring us into a right relationship with God. If you missed any of the sermons in the series, though I am biased, you might want to go back and listen to them. But when I was a kid there was a song I was taught—though I long ago forgot the tune. It was called Love is like a Magic Penny. The lyrics include these words:
Love is something if you give it away,
give it away, give it away;
Love is something if you give it away -
you'll end up having more!
Love's just like a magic penny,
hold it tight and you won't have any!
Lend it, spend it and you'll have so many
they'll roll all over the floor.
The same can be said of forgiveness. If you withhold it from others, you will find less and less for yourself. But if you learn to ask for forgiveness and offer forgiveness—and appreciate the irrepressible forgiveness of our God—then you’ll only have more and more love to give and to keep. It’s a bit of a paradox, but that’s exactly how it works. If you want to find your life you have to be willing to turn your existing life over to God and let God offer you a richer, fuller life in return.
Archived Posts
The Biblical prayer we don’t know what to do with
Psalm 137 is written by people who have experienced catastrophic loss.
They have been conquered...
Patience and Trust
Sunday, in my benediction (which traditional folks did not hear) I talked about the Marshmallow Test. The original results of that test with children was that those who could delay gratification did better in life than those who could not.
Gandhi and the Sugar
I wasn’t preaching Sunday, Reverend Jackie Chandler was. And she talked about the power of influence you get when you practice what you preach. This famous illustration came to mind. It fits Jackie’s points quite well. Enjoy!
Not Just for Parents
Our current sermon series is about How To Talk Parent, but it doesn’t require any of us to be parents to appreciate the bits of wisdom OUR parents shared with us growing up.
If Not Higher
Here’s a story I wanted to use when talking about ‘what you do when no one is looking’ yesterday. It’s a wonderful illustration of what Jesus was saying in Matthew 6:1-6—do what you do because of who you want to be, not so that others will take notice and praise you.
The Perfect Church
There is an old joke about the perfect church. We talked just a little about the perfect pastor, but turnabout is fair play. It goes like this:
The Clothes You Wear
Sunday I talked about Joshua the High Priest having his filthy clothing replaced by a cleaned and beautiful garments. I also used the illustration of a boy becomes a dragon—who ‘wears’ dragon scales—and is stripped of those scales in order to be restored to a boy. In fact, I could have done the whole sermon around all the clothing imagery in scripture.