One of our church members noticed that I had twisted the wires together and loosely wrapped the connection with black tape. He showed me how to attach the wires with tubes crimped tightly on the wires--followed by tubes of heat shrink rubber. Now that my connections are good, my trailer lights work great!
A memorial stands near the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, where 168 people died needlessly. At the heart of that memorial is a nine foot statue of Jesus--with his face in his hands, turned slightly away from where the acts of terror took place. The plaque reads, "And Jesus Wept."
The steward traffics in what is, by definition, unrighteous currency -- money. We are called to traffic in righteous currency. The currency of God's kingdom is forgiveness.
Worship was endangered in the Temple, and worship may be endangered today as well. Too many people are selling out their worship experience to the dictates of the culture. Worship may be endangered because of a loss of habitat, a loss of a setting which is conducive to worship.
Would you rather be positive or negative? Most of us want to be positive. I see something unusual about this Scripture. In these two little paragraphs, there are nine negative statements. I kept coming across "no," "not," "neither," and "nor." Those are negative words.
Welcome! I am so glad you came by to visit a widow lady. I have been lonely since Joseph died. I do miss him a lot. James and the others are good boys, but they spend quite a bit of time at the carpentry shop.
Perhaps some of you have plaques on the wall that say, "God bless this mess." Our text for today tells us that God blessed Mary in a messy time of her life, and yet she might well have called it "this magnificent mess."
The opposite of rich is not poor. The opposite of rich is free. The rich man was not free to take the hand of Jesus because his hand was too full of things. He might as well have had a ball and chain around his leg. He was not free to follow Jesus.
Every church has traditions that have become sacred cows. In one church, the color of the carpet had become the sacred cow. We had always had red carpet, but now the property committee was going to change it to blue. Some people just weren't sure they could worship God on a BLUE CARPET.
At his home synagogue, Jesus begins to teach. And he earns a response, but hardly like that in other places. The people are astonished at his teaching, but appalled at his message and manner. "How dare this local boy, Jesus, assume such authority?" they ask.