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The Cross Set-Apart
Our church has a large open field next to it, with a tall wooden cross in the middle– perhaps 15-feet high or so. I love that cross. I’m always struck by its isolation, abrupt in the midst of land wi... -
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Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end... -
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Baptism: A New Beginning out of the Watery Chaos
At the very beginning of creation, the book of Genesis tells us, there was watery chaos. And over that watery chaos there was, depending on how you read the Hebrew, the Holy Spirit hovering or a great... -
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Reading the Bible as Drama
Kevin Vanhoozer draws on 1 Corinthians 4 to argue powerfully for reading and teaching the Bible as drama. As Paul talks about his apostolic ministry, he says this: “For, I think, God has exhibite... -
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Father: Thank You for always being
Father: Thank You for always being ready to welcome us and listen to us. Thank You for sending Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Savior: born like us, experiencing all that we experience yet sinless, who d... -
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Adapted from “Continual Repentance” in The Valley of Vision
Pastor: O God of grace, you have taken my sin and put it on Jesus’ head, and you’ve taken his righteousness and put it on mine. You’ve made me holy and blameless in your sight; therefore, you delight ... -
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Almighty and merciful God, the fountain
Almighty and merciful God, the fountain of all goodness, who knows the thoughts of our hearts: We confess that we have sinned against you. Wash us, we implore you, from the stains of our past sins... -
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Amazing grace How sweet the
Amazing grace How sweet the sound. That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, But now am found. Was blind, but now I see. Lord of all, you have called us toward a new way of life. Give... -
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Leader: We are people of the
Leader: We are people of the resurrection. Witnesses to God’s glorious victory in Jesus Christ, which brings peace and transforms the power structures of this world. But we also know that we live in ... -
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Hear the Good News. God sent his Son,
Hear the Good News. God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem us, free us, and make us children of God. In the Name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven. Glory to God! Amen. -
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We affirm the good news that this
We affirm the good news that this saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. He personally bore our sins in His body on the cross, s... -
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This total self-giving, to which the Son and the Spirit respond by an equal self-giving, is a kind of “death,” a first, radical “kenosis,” as one might say. It is a kind of “super-death” that is a com... -
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Hope in Death: Sermon Illustration Tuesday
What, as Christians, can we say to those who face death, either their own or that of their loved ones? We certainly can give them the hope of Christ’s resurrection, if they or their loved one has trus... -
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Descent and Resurrection
In the Christian story God descends to reascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still, if embryologists are right, to reca... -
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Does God Accept Us as We Are?
Romans 6 shines a bright spotlight on the dangerous half-truth, currently fashionable, that ‘God accepts us as we are.’ Will ‘God’s acceptance’ do as a complete grounding of Christian ethics? Emphatic... -
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Romans 6 shines a bright spotlight on the dangerous half-truth, currently fashionable, that ‘God accepts us as we are.’ Will ‘God’s acceptance’ do as a complete grounding of Christian ethics? Emphatic... -
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Superficial views of God and His holiness will produce superficial views of sin and atonement. God hates sin. It is His uncompromising foe. Sin is vile and detestable in the sight of God.... The sinne... -
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Baptized into Death
Some time back, a retired missionary dropped by our church. She had served faithfully in Africa, and one day, she happened upon a small baptismal service. A fellow missionary took three new converts t... -
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Baptism Gives us Assurance in Our Faith
For us, Jesus instituted two ongoing signs to confirm our confidence in the gospel of his grace, the first of which is baptism. Though simpler and less obviously supernatural than the ten plagues on E... -
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The Prime Sacrament
Baptism is the prime sacrament, the foundation of them all…There are two things which baptism signifies, namely, death and resurrection…We call this death and resurrection a new creation, a regenerati... -
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Why They Were Invited
Peter Storey, the former Methodist bishop and president of the South African Council of Churches, a white man who opposed apartheid, tells a story about a party at which he and Archbishop Desmond Tutu... -
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A Naming Ceremony
Your own baptism was a naming ceremony: you were baptized “in[to] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19). That naming ceremony no more changed your heart than did ... -
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For ‘the Spirit breathes where He wills, and thou hearest His voice, but canst not tell whence He cometh or whither He goeth.’ He blesses the body that is baptized, and the water that baptizes. Despis... -
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A book can teach you, a conversation can assure you, a poem can seduce you, a genius can inspire you, but only you can save yourself. -
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The generosity and the magnanimity of God are so great that he accepts nothing from us without rewarding it beyond all computation. . . The vast disproportion existing between our work and God’s rewar... -
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God just doesn’t throw a life preserver to a drowning person. He goes to the bottom of the sea, and pulls a corpse from the bottom of the sea, takes him up on the bank, breathes into him the breath of... -
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It is a fact that the Lord Jesus has already died for you. It is also a fact that you have already died with the Lord Jesus. If you do not believe in your death with Christ, you will not be able to re... -
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The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation - This story begins and ends in joy. -
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Which Comes First, Identity or Behavior?
I am not perfect, and I will struggle with the “old Jim,” who was and is influenced by American culture, narratives and values. But the key is that identity comes before behavior. We almost always do ... -
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How Transformation Happens
In The Good and Beautiful God , James Bryan Smith describes a new Christian he happened to know who came to him one day feeling dejected. He was so excited to be a follower of Jesus, but he just co...
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