Love In Friendship

Welcome! Today, as we continue our series on relationships, we will focus on friendship. As I was preparing this message, my thoughts turned to the old comic strips by Charles Schultz, Peanuts. Schultz was a Christian, and he had a wonderful way of poking into topics that nobody else would ever touch. Today, as you can see, we have about 35 college students joining us on their spring break to reach out on campus, and if you are one of these students, we just want you to know that we so appreciate you and that we will be praying for you this week. We know that you will be doing a lot of different evangelism techniques, including so-called “cold turkey” evangelism, and so we thought the following comic strip from Peanuts would help by giving you some pointers, some tips on things to say when you are knocking on doors.

Here is a summary of the comic. It features Sally; Charlie Brown’s little sister, and a red-haired boy that is not a regular to the Peanuts universe. The boy has just knocked on the front door of the Browns’ house, and Sally has answered the door.

Love and God

Welcome! This month we have been exploring some of what the Bible has to say about relationships, and so far we have talked about the nature of agape love, love in the context of the relationship between husband and wife, and love in the context of family. I wanted to start today with a video clip produced by the children of a pastor in one of our sister churches in Florida. This video was shown at one of the Faithwalkers conference teachings this past December. I think it is a great example of agape love in the context of the family.

The video can be found here.

For the sake of the recording, let me summarize what the video has shown. A family is sitting down to breakfast together, and they run out of orange juice right before a young boy can pour some for himself. His brother, also a young boy, offers to get him some, and goes to the refrigerator only to find that they don’t have any. He jumps up to grab a big hat, and then takes the hat and goes out the front door. The next thing you know, he is in some kind of shed up on a tractor and starts the tractor. He drives out to some orange trees, and pulls some oranges off of the tree, filling up his hat. He then restarts the tractor and goes back, brings the hat full of oranges into the house (losing a few along the way). Then he goes to his back porch and uses an electric juicer to juice the oranges until he has a cup of juice in a measuring cup. He takes the measuring cup to the kitchen and pours the juice into a cup, and then brings it cheerfully to his brother.

Love in Family

Welcome! Today we continue our series on relationships, on love, focusing on the family. As I prepared for this message, one of the things I did was to think about and review various well-known stories and events from the Old Testament from the direct perspective of family relationships. I had never done this before, and I found it fascinating.

For one thing, I was shocked at how many family relationships in the Bible were what today we would call dysfunctional. What exactly is a dysfunctional family relationship? I came across multiple definitions but was struck by one reference that characterized a dysfunctional family relationship by five symptoms: (1) estrangement (avoiding one another), (2) anger (expressed or hidden), (3) lack of trust (tied to unforgiveness), (4) deception (valuing your own desires over truth), and (5) secrecy (including an unwillingness to change or face reality).

Love in Marriage

When Carl and John asked me to talk on the subject of “Love in Marriage” I told Miriam that I need to be on my best behavior for the next two weeks. I kind-of cringed a little when I heard the topic. Usually, when I give a talk God works on me on that particular subject that week. I’m not standing up here sharing these things with you because I’m an expert at loving my wife. In the business world a person learns how to do something well and then people pay them to share their insights and secrets. They’ve become an “expert” on a particular subject. But the difference in the business world and the church world is that there really isn’t anybody who’s an “expert” on anything. They may be further along than many of us. But we’re all a work in progress. The reason why I’m sharing these things with you this morning is because I’m a work in progress. And Miriam is a work in progress. We have “The Expert” working on us, changing us so that our marriage will reflect the love that God has for the church that’s talked about in Ephesians 5.

Love, Simply

Welcome! Today I am excited to be starting a new series with you on Relationships. Today I want us to contemplate what love really is, according to the Bible. The world and the Bible have different definitions of love, and so it is critically important that we really understand what love really is, or we will have no way to properly understand countless passages in the Bible.

I want to start with an excerpt from a story. The story is The Road to Oz, one of the L. Frank Baum Oz books (no relation, by the way). In this particular story several characters are wandering through the wilder parts of the Oz world together: Dorothy, of course, and her little dog Toto, too; Button-Bright, a small boy who was not so bright and loved to say “Don’t know” to every question, the Polychrome, the Rainbow’s Daughter, a fairy whose natural home was in a rainbow, and the Shaggy Man, a man who loved to dress in rags and who was the proud possessor of a magic talisman known as the Love Magnet. The Love Magnet caused all who were close to its owner to love its owner.

My Portion My Cup

Psalm 16

Today, we will take a step back from the series in the book of John. As you saw in your program and as we talked about last week, we will start a new series on relationships in February. But right now, we are going to turn our hearts to focus on God’s provision and prepare to take communion together.

The passage for today is chapter 16 from the book of Psalms. It is a beautiful psalm of trust and of testimony of what God has done for us. Because it is a personal prayer in the first person, I’d like for us to read the entire Psalm together out loud. The words are on the screen, so please direct your attention there and let’s read aloud together. Now since we all have to look up and keep our eyes open in order to read off the screen, I can’t ask you to bow your heads and close your eyes in prayer. But, I want you to read the psalm with a mindset and a heart attitude of prayer. Even though we are all together in a group, I want each person to read it with the frame of reference that you individually are speaking to God.

Let’s try this together. Psalm 16:

Logos.Son

John 1:19-34

Good morning! Today we are continuing our look into the first chapter of the Gospel of John. We focus on verses 19 to 34; most of this passage involves John the Baptist, whom John-the-gospel-writer simply calls John. I think a good place to start is back in Luke chapter 1, where the angel of the Lord appears to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, back before John is even born. Here is the passage:

Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth. Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” – Luke 1:11-17

Logos.Man

John 1:6-18

Good morning! Today we are continuing our look into the first chapter of the Gospel of John. In order to have some idea of context and continuity, I want to start with a brief review of what we talked about last week. The book of John begins with this:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. – John 1:1-5

Last week we talked about God’s intriguing choice to explain the story of everything through the use of the word “Word,” logos in Greek. The logos was a main theme of this opening to book of John, and our title last week reflected this, LOGOS.GOD, where I explained last week that the title didn’t refer to a website, but instead borrowed on a type of notation found in a variety of computer programming languages. When one writes firstthing.secondthing, it means that the secondthing is an attribute, or property, of the firstthing. And so the idea was that LOGOS.GOD meant that “God” is an attribute or property of “Logos.”

Logos.God

John 1:1-5

[Video shown:  Kimyal Bible 10 minute version – this video shows the great joy the Kimyal Tribe of Papua, Indonesia have as they receive the first copies of the New Testament in their own language.]

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. – John 1:1-5

This is our main text today – these 5 verses, the opening of the Gospel of John. In the video, did you notice how some of the themes of these verses were shared by these Kimyal people? They talked about the Word, and they talked about Light. This day they received the Bible in their own language was a glorious beginning for them, as they were receiving the Word.

Who We Are in Christ A to Z

Created by John Hopler, Great Commission Churches

We are…

Alive in Christ
Ephesians 2:4-5 “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”

Blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places

Ephesians 1:3 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.”