titus on Advocate

The Spirit of truth has been given to a people who lacked truth. The Advocate has been sent. We who were once without life have been given new life. For it is by grace we have been saved through faith...

Leader: Heavenly Father, by your love and kindness, you saved us. Not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of your great mercy. People: Teach us to more fully understand your ...

Lord Jesus–You’ve come, are coming and will come again. Whether we know it or not, we live on the edge of Your advent every moment of every day either with anticipation or with anxiety. As if stumblin...

To hold to a doctrine or an opinion with the intellect alone is not to believe it. A man’s real belief is that which he lives by.

Our task is not to protest the world into a certain moral conformity, but to attract the world to the saving beauty of Christ.

There is something profoundly hypocritical about praising God for God’s mighty deeds of salvation and cooperating at the same time with the demons of destruction, whether by neglecting to do good or b...

Justice is for those who deserve it; mercy is for those who don't.

In another day and age, God, religion and church enjoyed the general respect of the culture. Not today. Religion is suspect, church is weird, and Christians are hypocrites. Distrust has become the nor...

The higher people are in the favor of God, the more tender they are.

Christianity is a rescue religion. It declares that God has taken the initiative in Jesus Christ to rescue us from our sins. This is the main theme of the Bible. You are to give him the name Jesus, be...

Gracious God, we ask for Your forgiveness and receive it with joyful hearts. Renew our minds so that we may discern what is good. Fill us with Your Spirit so that we may be Your witnesses in the world...

Scripture calls us to offer a radical welcome to strangers, but we are not able to give what we do not have. Before we can love our neighbor, we must love and care for ourselves so we can have somethi...

​O my all-merciful God and Lord, Jesus Christ, full of pity: Through Your great love You came down and became incarnate in order to save everyone. O Savior, I ask You to save me by Your grace! If You ...

Pastor: Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! People: Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, Pastor: who forgives all your iniquity, who h...

Self-righteousness is a sense of moral superiority that appoints us as prosecutor of other people’s sinfulness. We relate to others as if we are incapable of the sins they commit. Self-righteousness w...

The ancient Greek word for actor was hypocritēs (ὑποκρῐτής), which, at first, only implied someone who explained or interpreted something. But by New Testament times, it was more negative. It suggest...

To tell someone what you believe may be to answer the wrong question—better to say, instead, what the church believes, better to use the language the church has bequeathed to us to shape our experienc...

Serving at the time as provincial governor of Northern Italy, St. Ambrose was called in this capacity in 374 to the cathedral in Milan, where a riot was threatening between two rival factions of Chris...

A friend of mine who is an entrepreneur was listening to a CD of a series of messages I had given on the Beatitudes. When he came to meekness, he told me, he skipped over it. He wasn’t interested in b...

For although faith alone justifies, love is also demanded…. A living faith is that efficacious, burning trust in the mercy of God which never fails to bring forth good fruits.

The success of every culture hinges not on big points of morality—there will always be issues like abortion or school prayer over which people differ—but on smaller values, like being considerate of o...

Leader: Since we have a great high priest who can sympathize with our weakness, let us boldly approach the throne of grace, confident that there we will receive God’s mercy and grace in our time of ne...

Heavenly Father, we come before Your throne of grace to confess our sin. We have been selfish instead of generous; we have been proud instead of humble; we have held grudges instead of forgiving; we h...

While there is a place for condemning, critiquing, consuming and copying culture, the primary posture Christ followers are to have in the world is as culture makers. In regard to history, the word cul...

A living faith is that which pours itself out in works.

Pastor: Peter calls on believers in exile to rid themselves of those things that would point themselves and others away from Christ.  Like the early church, we too are to rid ourselves of all mali...

We gather today and recognize our need for You. We admit that it is easy to lose sight of Your goodness and purpose when faced with emotional, physical, and spiritual storms. Forgive us for the times ...

Faith cannot but pour forth from all creatures in most eager service to God as a dutiful son serves a godly father. The efficacy of faith is such that from its fruits it is very evident in whose heart...

A classic mission dilemma: The chief of a village in a remote area, whose people practice a tribal religion, becomes a believer and declares the whole village is now Christian. Most of the leading m...

O Lord our Governor, whose glory is in all the world: We trust this nation to your merciful care, that, being guided by your Providence, we would live secure in your peace. Grant to the President of t...