Jesus can you take the time To throw a drowning man a line Peace on Earth To tell the ones who hear no sound Whose sons are living in the ground Peace on Earth Jesus sing a song you wrote The words are sticking in my throat Peace on Earth Hear it every Christmas time But hope and history won't rhyme So what's it worth This peace on Earth -- Bono, "Peace on Earth" Hope and history. Hope is what we aspire to, what we know is possible. Hope believes and trusts and holds on to the promises of God. Hope inspires. History is what actually happens. History tells the story of our ups and downs, our wins and our losses. History is littered with beauty and marred by ugliness. There are times when hope and history tell the same story. Or, as Bono would say, they rhyme. We see…
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I'm passing along the story I used this past weekend to illustrate how God uses his people to lead others to Him. How will the church be lighted? Several centuries ago in a mountain village in Europe, a wealthy nobleman wondered what legacy he should leave to his townspeople. He made a good decision. He decided to build them a church. No one was permitted to see the plans or the inside of the church until it was finished. At its grand opening, the people gathered and marveled at the beauty of the new church. Everything had been thought of and included. It was a masterpiece. But then someone said, "Wait a minute! Where are the lamps? It is really quite dark in here. How will the church be lighted?" The nobleman pointed to some brackets in the walls, and then he gave each family a lamp, which they were…
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The Lord's Prayer contains a curious word that has survived in most English translations from the King James (1611) to the New International Version (1980's). The word? Hallowed. Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name" (Matthew 6:9). But what does it mean? The basic meaning is this: "to make holy or sacred, to sanctify or consecrate, to venerate" (Source: Dictionary.com). Wikipedia also has a great article on the word itself and its usage. But why does it matter? It matters for this reason: What I believe about God will shape the way I live my life. If I believe God is a ... Slumbering Grandfather (I'll see what I can get away with) Harsh Judge (I’ll live in fear of him) Warm Fuzzy (Sin may not bother that much because he will love me anyway) To help illustrate this, we used a video…
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This weekend at Mountainview I taught on the first part of the Lord's Prayer: "Our Father ..." To help us understand the nature of our new relationship with God as Father, I turned to Ephesians 1:4-6: "Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son (NLT)" We often describe our salvation experience as being "born again" and rightly so (cf., John 3:3, 1 Peter 1:23). Through faith in Jesus, we receive a new life -- a second chance. We speak of the old life…
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