One of our enemy's favorite weapons is fear. It is an ancient weapon that is still effective and in full force against us today. With the strongest army the world had ever known surrounding his city, building siege ramps and making threats, King Hezekiah's trust in God went toe-to-toe with fear. When we look at the tactics the Assyrians used to try to intimidate Hezekiah and the people of Jerusalem into abandoning their trust in God, we can recognize how those same tactics are deployed against us today.
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Monday, October 15, 2012
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Meanwhile, Back in the North...
One lady told me when she was leaving this morning, "Well, you really preached your heart out today." She was right. This was a very personal message for me. When I say, "We are not taking sin seriously enough," I'm not using the "pastor 'we'" when I really mean "you." God has been showing me a lot about myself, and I shared some of that this week.
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Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Fighting "Spiritual Gravity"
So how is your week going? Are you carrying out all that you hoped to carry out during that moment of clarity on Sunday morning (or the last time you listened to God)?
Despite all of our efforts to hear from God and our best intentions to conform our lives to His way, we are always fighting what I'm calling "spiritual gravity"; physical gravity constantly pulls you toward the earth, but spiritual gravity pulls you back into the world. Gravity isn't an issue when you're falling--it can even be fun. The problem is the landing.
Hezekiah struggled with spiritual gravity in his life after the "high point" of his healing and the miraculous sign given to him. We can learn from his life why it is so important to learn to fight spiritual gravity every day of our lives.
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Despite all of our efforts to hear from God and our best intentions to conform our lives to His way, we are always fighting what I'm calling "spiritual gravity"; physical gravity constantly pulls you toward the earth, but spiritual gravity pulls you back into the world. Gravity isn't an issue when you're falling--it can even be fun. The problem is the landing.
Hezekiah struggled with spiritual gravity in his life after the "high point" of his healing and the miraculous sign given to him. We can learn from his life why it is so important to learn to fight spiritual gravity every day of our lives.
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Sunday, September 23, 2012
Interceding for Yourself
The beginning of this week's sermon was not recorded. After the jump is a summary of the content before the recording began.
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Sunday, September 16, 2012
Becoming a Chain-Breaker, Part 2
We see the world through the lens of our own experiences. We cannot truly break away from our heritage and our past (or lead others to do so) without creating new traditions and new experiences based on new biblically-based priorities and definitions. Today we looked at how Hezekiah established a new tradition of worship in his nation and what that work of chain-breaking would look like in our own stories.
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Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Becoming a Chain-Breaker: Part 1
“A chain-breaker is a fork in his family tree. He’s the one God uses to end the legacy of rebellion against God that he may have learned from his parents and grandparents. Instead he passes on a legacy of faith, faithfulness, and blessing to his children and grandchildren, giving them a new model of obedience to follow.”
- Alex and Stephen Kiendrick in The Resolution
This week we look at King Hezekiah's example to discover the first phase in becoming a chain-breaker in your family.
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Tuesday, September 4, 2012
King Ahaz: Adding Disaster to Discipline
We remember that various forms of discipline and punishments were part of our relationship with our parents, but we don't like to think of the difficulties and frustrations in our lives as part of God's discipline. It is a cliche that peop
le run to the Lord in times of trouble, but that's not a common a reaction as we like to think. This week, we looked at Judah's King Ahaz, of whom the bible says: "In his time of trouble King Ahaz become even more unfaithful to the Lord." There are a lot more "King Ahazes" out there than "prodigal sons." Which will you be?
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