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No Offense
An offense is a wrong or a perceived wrong that we experience. We live in an age in which people get offended all the time by how they are treated as customers, offended by people who believe different things and get offended because we really are hurt by other people’s words and actions.
Offenses are inevitable. They can also be a trap that leave us in a cloud of hurt, anger, outrage, jealousy, resentment, hatred, ENTITLEMENT and probably most common of all BITTERNESS.
Living in offense keeps us from living joyfully the life we want to live. To live the life God wants us to live we must learn to avoid the bait, the trap of being offended.
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Defining moments
The whole story of salvation and Scripture is full of defining moments. God creates moments for the men and women he invites into his larger story. They are moments of insight and understanding, moments when he offers a clean break and fresh start, there are moments in which he gives special encouragement, there are moments when he calls his leaders into something more.
In this series, we will look at the moments God uses to impact people, so that we can be open to receive them. We will also look at how we can learn to create moments for others as a way to love them.
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Unwrapping christmas
In our heart of hearts, we all want to be generous – to be people who are givers. This is because we bear the image of God and God is a giver. All of this world is gift. And God gave his most precious gift at Christmas when he sent his Son into the world. God loves and so God gave his son. This is why at the Christmas season we give as well.
Giving and generosity go together. To be generous means to hold our lives and all we have with an open hand. In this series we will look at how Christmas invites us into a life of generosity and offer some ways to give into this temptation.
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Staying Power
We grow by the commitments we make and fulfill. Committing to a marriage, a job, a friendship allows us to grow. Committing to take a class in a foreign language or to dance classes or to martial arts and fulfilling that commitment helps us to grow in our ability to do those things. Likewise we come to mature as Christians, in Christ-likeness by the commitments we make and keep.
In this series we will look at the power of commitment and the steps we invite people to take as a church. These are commitments or habits that must be practiced over and over again. Commit to a life-long journey of growth. We will talk about both the commitments and the benefits of those commitments. You can’t be committed to everything but its important to be committed to the right things.
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Cornerstone
A cornerstone is the first stone set in the construction of a masonry foundation. All other stones will be set in reference to this stone. The cornerstone determines the position and integrity of the entire structure. Over the next five weeks, we plan to look at the bedrocks of our faith and see how these foundations might help us as a church today.
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Worn Out?
Worn out? Good news in tough times.
Even when times are tough, God has good news for you and me. When we feel worn out, dispirited or experience brokenness in our world, God still has good news for us. To emphasize these facts, for a few weeks, we are going to focus in on our second reading which is Saint Paul’s letter to the people of Rome.
HOPE – Hope is the trust that somehow, one way or another, even when things don’t seem to be working out and are very difficult, our future is in God’s hands.
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More Than Words
Death and life are in the power of the tongue. Our words have tremendous power for good or for evil for life or for death. This is because our ability to speak and communicate reflects the divine image we bear. God speaks the world into existence and the church grows as the word of God spreads. In this series, we will look at the power of words and how to use them for good.
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Possible
What to do when you can’t believe what’s happening... The death of the Lord on the Cross brought a crisis of faith for his friends and followers. It was the end of the world as they had known it, as well as the death of all their hopes and dreams. Then something even more unbelievable happened. Something that seemed impossible. Easter celebrates the impossible things God can do in the midst of a crisis.
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When God Doesn't Make SenseWhen we look at the world, we see evil and injustice. Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. Why does an all-good and all-powerful God, allow injustice to happen? Why doesn’t he stop it? Why does God seem to be silent on prayers he should answer while answering prayers that seem insignificant? If we were God we would certainly run the world differently.
These questions are nothing new, but were experienced by many people in the bible. In this series, we will look at some of God’s ways that don’t seem to make sense. We’ll examine what to do in the face of such questions and look at ways we can grow to understand God’s perspective.
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Home Alone
While we have more means of communication and more ways to connect to the rest of the world in human history, polls and research show that many in our culture struggle with loneliness. We feel alienated from each other, alienated from ourselves, and alienated from our Maker. While loneliness looks different in our modern times, the problem is as old as human history. In this series we will look at the cause of our loneliness and what we can do to combat it.
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Baggage
Forgiveness is a basic tenant of our creed. Each week we profess to believe in the “forgiveness of sins.” Yet, while "forgiveness" itself is very simple concept, it can also feel complicated. At its core, forgiveness can be a difficult process, especially when hurt feelings and anger cloud our thinking. However, in order to begin healing from pain caused by others, we must choose to forgive. While forgiving someone won’t change the past, it can change our future.
When it comes to forgiveness, we are at one of three stages.
The first stage is denial. The second stage of forgiveness would be acknowledging that forgiveness would be helpful, but you have not done it yet or don’t know how. The third stage is to actually go ahead and do it. I am going to cancel the debt.
Where are you in that process?
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Grace and Truth
Advent is a time when grace and truth enters the world in a special way: the arrival of Jesus. Many people struggle balancing grace with truth. We tend to be good at emphasizing one but not the other. Truth without grace isn’t actually truth… it’s about being right. Grace without truth isn’t really grace… it’s enabling or lawless. In this series, we hope move from thinking about grace and truth as an “either/or” to a “both/and” attitude. In the persons of John the Baptist, Mary, Joseph, and most perfectly, Jesus, we witness examples of living in both grace and truth. Each week’s readings, we will identify the grace, identify the truth, and bring them together to bear on our decisions and actions to experience Christ more fully at Christmas.
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Insomnia: The Lies That Keep You Up At Night
This series proposes to overcome our fears not with courage, but with faith. We often believe lies that undermine our peace and joy. We want to uproot the lie and, in its place, plant the truth about our identity in Jesus Christ.
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Breathing Room
God wants to give us a life of joy and peace and contentment and margin. He wants to give us breathing room. Breathing room is having space for relationships. It is having time in our schedule so we are not constantly running from event to event. Breathing room is having enough in our budgets to save and give. Breathing room is having enough margin to breath. However, our culture constantly pushes against breathing room and if we aren’t careful we pretty quickly find ourselves without breathing room. In this series we will look at how we can regain a little breathing room in our lives.
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