living for eternity today
This week is a pretty special week for those of us who are in the Lutheran Church world. This week, if you’re following a church calendar of any kind, you’ll notice was the week of the reformation. Now this isn’t something we go around talking about everyday so perhaps a quick history lesson is in order.
Continue readingFor some people serving is something they do. But for the Jesus follower it should just be part of who we are. That was this week’s focus in our Red Letter Challenge. Throughout the week we’ve been challenged to find creative ways to serve one another. Maybe it’s someone in your house or maybe it’s someone at work or even someone in your neighborhood – whoever it is find a way to touch their lives with an act of service.
Jesus was known for serving people. As a matter of fact, Jesus made it a practice to touch someone’s life before he taught someone a life principle. This week in our message we spent time seeing how Jesus has already touched our lives. Then we dug into the life lessons we’ve gleaned from this touch and the teaching that undoubtedly followed. If you have about 25 minutes, you should check out this week’s Red Letter Serving message.
It’s a simple fact that I can’t give away someone I haven’t first received. I have to have it in order to give it away. I know that sounds pretty simple but so often we fail at sharing something because we haven’t properly invested in it ourselves. This week at Living Word Galena, we talked about forgiveness. The idea was that I’m only going to forgive as much as I’ve been forgiven. If I don’t value my own forgiveness, then I’m not going to forgive others well.
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As a pastor, I kind of have a thing for worship. I believe it’s important to say the very least. As a matter of fact, I think we should all find a place to connect with God in worship with other people who believe what and how we believe! But that’s not all worship is. For so many Christians, worship is something that has to happen in a place at a certain time. It can only last a certain length of time and we have to act a certain way while we’re there. But what if worship was more than a 60 minute time slot on Sundays?
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This week we wrapped up our sermon series titled Jesus is Greater. In this series, we’ve discovered how Jesus is greater than everything! This week we take that truth and apply it to our problems and the giants we face. It’s easy to let our troubles and temptations and challenges seem so large that they’re all we see. But what would happen if we stopped looking at the giant problem and started looking at the giant God?
Continue readingWe live in a dog eat dog kind of world. Every moment is about trying to get ahead in life. We need to be better than everyone else in class or in the office. We need to be the best on the team and the number one in the league. We need to even be better than we were yesterday for crying out loud! Nothing is ever good enough. But ever happened to humility? This week we talked about humbling ourselves versus being humbled by someone else.
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I was never a science type growing up. I mean I used a magnifying glass from time to time but not to look at molecules and see them up close but to concentrate the heat from the sun and burn leaves and yes even the occasional ant or spider. But this isn’t about burning bugs, today we’re going to look at the way we look at problems in our lives. Do we look at our problems through a magnifying glass or a telescope?
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What’s your focus these days? Are you the half empty glass kind of person? Or perhaps you’re the eternal optimist? I tend to be a bit of a realist, and admittedly slide into pessimism from time to time. But there are some who always seem to see the sunshine even in the midst of a cloudy and rainy day. And if I’m being totally honest, sometimes that simply drives me nuts! I’m not sure I know how to find the sunrise in the dark of night. I’m not always able to see the rainbow that hasn’t quite shown up because the storm’s too rough. Continue reading
There are so many things in life that we want to change. We change our hair color. We change the paint in our living rooms. We change our cars when we get tired of driving the one we have. We change churches when the pastor says something that challenges us. We change our clothes. We change our jobs. We change friend circles as our life stages change. But sometimes we want bigger changes. Continue reading
Growing up I was taught that the Devil was a scary creature with horns on his head, a pitch fork in his hand and a long spiky tail. I was taught that he looked like a monster that was out to scare us. I knew that if I saw him, I could just run away and hide because honestly who wears a red suit and always yells and screams at everyone? Continue reading
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