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Hosea 1:2 “Faithful by Choice”

I believe that one of the most important things that any of us will ever know is that God desires to be in a love relationship with each of us and that He builds that love relationship by communication. The Scriptures are filled with stories of God speaking to people. Throughout Genesis alone there is...

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Titus 3:1-7 “When Kindness Appears”

There are words that we use so often that we lose the depth of their meaning. I tease my wife that her favorite adjective is “amazing” and so whether it’s a hamburger, the last episode of Downton Abbey or last week’s sermon, if she liked it you can almost guarantee that it was “amazing”. The...

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Matthew 18:21-35 “A King of Justice”

What do you think of when you hear the word justice? For some of us justice is immediately about judgment, about someone getting what they deserve. For others of us justice may be a cause of fear, being afraid of getting what we deserve. Some of us think of justice in terms of our society...

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Matthew 18:21-35 “The Expectation of Grace”

Last week we started our brief look at “The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant”. Our context for studying it is to learn the heart of our king so that we can understand the nature of His kingdom; Jesus’ context for teaching it was for His disciples to learn that humility expresses itself through forgiveness and...

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Matthew 18:21-35 “A Merciful King”

There are at least 11 times in the book of Matthew in which Jesus said “The kingdom of heaven is like . . .” and then He told a story, what we call a parable, to illustrate or explain to us the nature of God’s kingdom. As I have been sharing, the only way to...

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Isaiah 6:1-13 “The King Who Sends”

Today we had the opportunity to do something both beautiful and biblical, sending out our dear friend Arne Mathingsdal into the next steps that the Holy Spirit has ordered for him. In doing this we began our discussion of being “kingdom-minded”. Every kingdom reflects the heart of it’s king, as citizens of the Kingdom of...

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Jeremiah 20:1-18 “The Contents of Our Hearts”

We started this year by talking about the function of God’s Word in our lives. We read God’s Word to see God’s character, to meet Him, experience Him, draw near to Him and follow Him. God’s Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path as Psalm 119 says but it...

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II Samuel 9:1-13 “What Kind of King is This?”

Today we will finish our discussion of the story of David and Mephibosheth. We have talked about Mephibosheth’s tragedy, how in a moment he went from being a prince to an orphan, from royalty to exiled and from privileged to afraid, ashamed and even disabled. While Mephibosheth’s story is dramatic we all share in it,...

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Hebrews 12:1 “A Rich Heritage”

This Sunday our youth leader Amanda Mackie shared the message using Hebrews 12:1 as her text: This morning I hope to be able to encourage each of you in some way, but to also offer a challenge. Hebrews 12:1 says “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge cloud of witnesses to the life...

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II Samuel 9:1-13 “From Kindness to Restoration”

Last week we started talking about Mephibosheth, a man born as a prince, orphaned, disabled and exiled as a little boy and then adopted and restored as a young husband and father. As I mentioned last week, while Mephibosheth’s story sounds dramatic he was not different than any of us. We are all born for...