Pastor: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, People: the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, Pastor: who comforts us in all our troubles, Pe...
Romans 8:12-17, 1 Corinthians 6:, Galatians 5:18, Matthew 7:9-11
Preaching Commentary Context Matters If you have ever taken an introduction to exegesis course, you may remember one of the most important rules for properly understanding a given text: look at wha...
Romans 8:12-17, 1 Corinthians 6:, Galatians 5:18, Matthew 7:9-11
Context Matters If you have ever taken an introduction to exegesis course, you may remember one of the most important rules for properly understanding a given text: look at what comes before and afte...
Psalm 8:1, Isaiah 6:1-8, Luke 19:1-10, John 8:1-11, Micah 7:18-19
Prayer of Adoration Lord, our Lord – How excellent is your name in all the earth. Because of who you are – we praise You. Because of what you’ve done – we thank You. You are a Father to the fathe...
Preaching Commentary Risk, Salvation, and the Fullness of Time Pharaoh’s daughter took a huge risk to raise and protect the child of a Hebrew slave, a child who should have been killed because of h...
Deuteronomy 30:19-20, Isaiah 58:6-12, John 15:1-8, Matthew 28:18-20, Psalm 1:1-3
Pastor: Go now, as God’s children, chosen and dearly loved, to bear fruit for His Kingdom – fruit that will last. May the almighty and merciful Lord, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, bless...
Risk, Salvation, and the Fullness of Time Pharaoh’s daughter took a huge risk to raise and protect the child of a Hebrew slave, a child who should have been killed because of her father’s decree. Tha...
Have you ever known someone so magnetically kind and gracious, so warm and generous of spirit that just a little time spent with them affects how you think, feel and behave? Someone whose very presenc...
Prayer of Adoration Father God … our Abba: You seek us with relentless love – coming after us in Your Son, Jesus. When we are in the pits – You draws us up and out; When we are broken – You fix u...
With what confidence would anyone address God as ‘Father’? Who would break forth into such rashness as to claim for himself the honour of a son of God unless we had been adopted as children of grace i...
Acts 2:1-4 , Psalm 103:12-13, 1 Peter 5:6-7, James 1:5, 1 John 3:1
Pastor: By grace, through Jesus, God calls us His children so that we might become more like Him, setting our hope on His grace, and living as holy people who fear the Lord and love one another. Whe...
Since God is, before all things, a Father, and not primarily Creator or Ruler, all his ways are beautifully fatherly. It is not that this God “does” being Father as a day job, only to kick back in the...
John 1:12-13, Romans 8:14-16, Galatians 4:4-7, 1 John 3:1, 2 Corinthians 6:18, Isaiah 64:8
If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts a...
If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God's child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that promp...
Almighty Father, whose blessed Son before his passion prayed for his disciples that they might be one, as you and he are one: Grant that your Church, being bound together in love and obedience to you,...
O Holy Spirit, come into my heart; By your power draw it to yourself, God, And give me charity with fear. Guard me, Christ, from every evil thought, And so warm and enflame me again With your mos...
To be a child of God means access. We know God is attentively listening to us and watching us. Think about what it takes to get in to see the president of the United States. Only people who merit his ...
Matthew 6:26, Acts 17:24-25, Job 12:10, Matthew 10:29-31, James 1:17
We ought in the very order of things [in creation] diligently to contemplate God’s fatherly love . . . [for as] a foreseeing and diligent father of the family he shows his wonderful goodness toward us...
Prayer is suitable for Mother's Day and Father's Day. On Mother's Day, omit the opening scripture reading. Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who ...
Leader: Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. People: The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow...
Commenting on Ephesians 1:3-6, M. Robert Mulholland describes just how powerful it can be personally, when we recognize that we were chosen by God, especially for children who are the result of an unp...
Romans 5:6-8, Titus 3:5, Ephesians 2:8-9, Mark 10:17-22, Galatians 2:16
In his book The Case for Grace , pastor and author Lee Strobel describes a dream he had as a child after having a significant argument with his father. Strobel does what most of us would do at that...
1 Corinthians 4:14-17, Ruth 1:16-18, Mark 10:13-16, 1 Chronicles 29:19, Luke 15:11-32, Genesis 12:3, Joshua 24:15
God of grace, wisdom and hope—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—from whom every family in heaven and on earth gets its true name. You created us in Your image, making us for relationships, giving us meaning...
How many of you have ever been told that women talk more than men? How many of you have heard this statistic, on average women use 20,000 words a day to men’s 7,000? I know I’ve heard this quote in se...
Why do we imagine God to be so unmoved by our heart-felt attempts at obedience? He is, after all, our heavenly Father. What sort of father looks at his daughter’s homemade birthday card and complains ...
Leader: Sing to God, sing praises to his name; People: Lift up a song to him who rides through the deserts; his name is the Lord; exult before him! Leader: Father of the fatherless and protector of...
Matthew 18:3, Mark 10:14-15, Matthew 6:9, Psalm 131:2, Romans 8:15
A father is delighted when his little one, leaving off her toys and friends, runs to him and climbs into his arms. As he holds his little one close to him, he cares little whether the child is looking...
In the old American South (and in many places in the American North) a European American who invited an African American as a guest to an expensive restaurant in a white section of town would subject ...
A few weeks ago, when I was out surfing, there was no one else in the water. In fact, there was no one around at all, except a guy the size of Goliath doing tae kwon do on the beach. After I’d been ou...