Sorry, no posts recently.  We finally had our Christmas picture made.  I hope your Christmas is filled with the grandeur of our Savior.

Also check out my Christmas girls!

At Midnight in Chhattisgarh, India on Oct 13 Hindu nationalists broke open the door of a house where a three-day prayer meeting was taking place & attacked participants as they slept – ultimately forcing two Christians to beat one of their own prayer partners unconscious under threat of death. The mob beat the participants in the prayer meeting, including women, and dragged three of them from the house. “We thought that they were taken to the police station, but instead they were taken to a secluded place where they were beaten all night.” Muneshwar Ekka and Beik were beaten first, and then the Hindu nationalists ordered them to beat the third captured Christian, Ravi Devangan, or be killed. The three beaten men were then arrested by the police, accused of the crime of “false conversion.”

Last Sunday our church, as it has for the previous two years, recognized the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church.  It is our hope that through our prayers and our giving (we raised over $2400 for Bibles) we will be be a source of support to our afflicted family.  I spoke briefly of the return of Christ from 2 Thes 1:4-10.  He shall appear in “flaming fire” that he may “repay with affliction those who afflict” and “grant relief” to the afflicted.  You may listen to my homily by clicking the sermon audio tab above or by clicking here.

This is the last of a four sermon series entitled “What is Our Hope?” Paul writes “he saved us … so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:5, 7).  Though we used the term eternal life often, we give little thought to what it will be like to live eternally. 

C.S. Lewis whets our appetite for this inheritance in The Last Battle, the last of his Chronicles of Narnia Series, as he concludes the adventures of Edmund, Lucy and Peter  by writing, “Aslan turned to them & said: “You do not yet look so happy as I mean you to be.”  Lucy said, “We’re so afraid of being sent away, Aslan. & you have sent us back into our own world so often.”  “No fear of that,” said Aslan. “Have you not guessed?” Their hearts leaped & a wild hope rose within them.  … as Aslan said softly. “Your father & mother & all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadowlands—dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.” And … the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world … had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.

This is sermon is my attempt to re-set before us the hope of live an infinite life in the presence of an infinite God. Audio for this sermon can be found by clicking the sermon audio tab or here.

Jesus gave himself up for his bride, “that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Eph 5:25-27; Also see Eph 1:4, Col 1:21-22; Jude 24-25; Rev 14:5).

What will it be like to be eternally and perfectly holy?  For those who live by faith in the Son of God, that is their eternal destiny.  Paul calls it the “hope of righteousness,” for which we “eagerly await” (Gal 5:5).  This sermon is my attempt to explain this hope of righteous perfection, the redemption of our spirits, in order that we may truly “eagerly await” it. Audio for this sermon from Gal 5:5 can be found by clicking the sermon audio tab or here.

Where shall we spend eternity? What shall we be like?

Theologian Tom Barnes writes of our eternal habitation saying that, “Ethereal beings living among the clouds surrounded by harps smacks of boredom, lack of purpose and absence of true delight.  Yet, the reality of future bodily resurrection reminds us that our eternal home is not as other worldly as we may have thought.  We will have bodies and landscape and relationships, and will work and serve God. We will design, create, build, decorate, perform, and play in such a way that will dwarf the best architects, engineers, poets, painters and athletes that this world has produced” (Living in the Hope of Future Glory). 

Such was our topic this past Sunday as we continued to answer the question, “what is our hope?”  Audio for this sermon from Rom 8:18-25 can be found by clicking the sermon audio tab or here.

You can now access my Sunday morning sermons by selecting the “Sermon Audio” tab above.  I know there must be a better way to do this …

What a wonderful Birthday for our Big Boy

A big day at the Zoo

A major zoo attraction

Samaria is a big girl too

A safari train ride

Josiah made a friend

Feeding the koi and turtles

That was an exhausting day

Siah recovers with his daddy while he cuddles his new zoo motorcycle

Time for presents! What could it be?

It is a Big Wheel!

My feet cannot reach

Daddy to the rescue

Daddy needs to take the turns slowly

Girls like Big Wheels too!