December 2010
Emmanuel: God with Us to Provide for Us
Dr. Phil Lineberger, Senior Pastor | John 4:1-26 | Posted On 12/26 | More info...
Emmanuel - God with us - came into the world to provide for us the strength, the hope and the companionship that we need every day of our lives. He knew how He created us and in Jesus Christ He has provided for us. Jesus’ encounter with a Samaritan woman at a well in Sychar provides us insight into how God provides for us.
It takes real strength not to get trapped by your body, weak or strong. It takes real strength not to get trapped by your anger or your emotions. It takes real strength to labor over and over again to reach a lofty goal. It takes real strength to triumph over life and not become trapped by it.
THE LIVING WATER JESUS OFFERS PROVIDES THE STRENGTH, HOPE AND COMPANIONSHIP WE NEED EVERYDAY.
Emmanuel: God with Us to Guide Us
Dr. Phil Lineberger, Senior Pastor | Luke 1:76-79 | Posted On 12/12 | More info...
Jesus is called the one who “will guide our feet into the paths of peace.” Jesus was God among the people of the First Century. When he ascended back to heaven, He provided His presence through His Holy Spirit. He would continue to be the one who would guide His follower’s “feet into the paths of peace.”
One of the most elusive paths in every believer’s life is the PATH OF PEACE! Look at our world today and throughout her history. It has been a world history littered with violence, conflict and war. Even those who claim to be regenerated in Jesus Christ have difficulty staying on the path of peace. It is only through God with us that we can get on this path of peace and stay on it.
Jesus came into the world to reveal how God feels about us - HE LOVES US. Jesus came into the world to reveal how God wants to relate to us - HE WANTS US TO BE HIS CHILDREN; children not born of natural birth but of supernatural birth. Jesus came into the world to guide our feet into paths of peace. He is still among us as our guide through the Holy Spirit, the One who comes alongside us every moment. EMMANUEL: GOD WITH US TO GUIDE US!
No Hallmark Christmas
Dr. Mike Massar, Executive Pastor | Matthew 3 | Posted On 12/5 | More info...
God is a consuming Fire. He alone can refine us like gold, and separate us from the slag and dross of our selfish individualities to fuse us into this wholeness of perfect unity that will reflect His own Triune Life. As long as we do not permit His love to consume us entirely and to unite us in Himself, the gold that is in us will be hidden by the rock and dirt which keep us separate from one another. ~ Thomas Merton
November 2010
The Now of Advent
Griff Martin, Associate Pastor, Young Adult Families | Romans 13:11-14 | Posted On 11/28 | More info...
The present monent, this present time, is the high time for us to wake out of sleep. But what is this moment but a time save a past of a future- that has been qualified by the now that is set in the midst of them. (Karl Barth)
It's here but it's not yet fully here
The "not yet"
The Future
by Wendell Berry
For God's sake, be done
with the jabber of a "better world."
What blasphemy! No "futuristic"
twit or child thereof ever
in embodied light will see
a better world than this, though they
foretell inevitably a worse.
Do something! Go cut the weeks
Beside the oblivious road. Pick up
the cans and bottles, old tires,
and dead predictions. No future
can be stuffed into this presence
except by being dead. The day is
clear and bright and overhead
the sun not yet half finished
with his daily praise.