Please join us and invite someone new this Sunday for the final sermon in our series The Writing On The Wall – A study through the book of Daniel. Sunday services at 9am & 11am.
Do you ever have “just one of those days” in which the darker forces seem to be industriously wreaking havoc in the orderly calm of your life, and even the most trivial incidents are producing rather disagreeable results? The barista made you a lukewarm whole milk latte, although you specifically ordered an extra hot soy latte. How do they even mix that up? You called your sister up to share some good news, but she ended up monopolizing the conversation and complaining about her “unfair” life for forty minutes. Your latest electricity bill is triple the cost of last month’s, so the family will now be banned from touching the thermostat. Regardless of how insignificant or consequential the circumstances of a bad day may be, resist the urge to succumb to moodiness. No amount of spilled coffee, annoying family disputes, or incompliance from your spouse justifies your wallowing in sullen terseness, egocentric vexation, or bitter resentment. Rather than squandering our days self-centeredly focused on our unhappy travails, we must actively pursue a Christ-centered mind.
Ever feel unloved, in spite of what your spouse regards are valiant attempts to show you affection? Does your husband or wife ever complain that you’re emotionally distant, yet you’ve been striving to demonstrate your devotion in ways that make sense to you? The likely reason for these crossed wires is that you are both communicating in different “love languages.” Dr. Gary Chapman’s life-changing book, The 5 Love Languages, enlightens how we meet each other’s deepest emotional needs, positing there are five principal love languages, or, ways to communicate and feel love.
PERSONALITY
“That they may be one, even as we are one.”
JOHN 17:22
Personality is that peculiar, incalculable thing that is meant when we speak of ourselves as distinct from everyone else. Our personality is always too big for us to grasp. An island in the sea may be but the top of a great mountain. Personality is like an island, we know nothing about the great depths underneath, consequently we cannot estimate ourselves. We begin by thinking that we can, but we come to realize that there is only one Being Who understands us, and that is our Creator.
“What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.” –Matthew 18:12-14 NIV The following excerpt from Francine Rivers’ The Prophet offers a narrative depiction of
A BOUNTY OF THE DESTITUTE
“Being justified freely by His grace. . . .”
ROMANS 3:24
The Gospel of the grace of God awakens an intense longing in human souls and an equally intense resentment, because the revelation which it brings is not palatable. There is a certain pride in man that will give and give, but to come to accept is another thing. I will give myself in consecration, I will do anything, but do not humiliate me to the level of the most hell-deserving sinner and tell me that all I have to do