From the Blog
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Forgetful Hearts
Spiritually speaking, the heart is the seat of the will, the driver’s seat of our lives. Yet we have this human tendency to have forgetful hearts. And when we forget the Lord in our hearts, we put our very lives at risk. For we open our hearts up to temptation and every kind of sin…
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Could Not or Would Not?
In these first two introductory chapters today, we see that Israel had not fully placed their hope and trust in God to fully obey Him. They said they “could not.” But God essentially said, they “would not.” This is a question worth asking ourselves. Where have you made flimsy excuses to God because you’ve put…
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A Vision for Spiritual Formation
In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he gave them a vision for being a church that builds up believers in love, growing them to spiritual maturity in Christ Jesus. We can get a vision for being built up in love, growing up to spiritual maturity in Christ Jesus.
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Renovating Our Relationships
All along, we are being shaped by these various relationships. We seek acceptance, but we are so bent and broken by sin, that we often experience rejection and in like manner, cause others to feel rejected by us. This is the human condition apart from God. We are all deeply wounded relationally. We are hurt.…
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Renovating Our Body
How we view our bodies and how we use our bodies matters to God. How do you view your body? Do you have a love/hate relationship with your body? Do you struggle with your self-image because of your appearance? How much of your identity is connected to your body… its color, gender, height, weight, age,…
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Renovating Our Will
Have you learned to pray as Jesus did? Asking for the Father’s will in your life? Do you struggle with knowing and doing God’s will? Most Christians don’t have trouble knowing it, they have trouble obeying it. Why? Because we have what Willard calls “the splintered will.” This is a will that has been “splintered,”…
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Renovating Our Feelings
Our feelings can be both a blessing and a curse. We might even put them into two categories of feeling: pleasurable or painful; and two categories of effect: helpful or harmful. That’s why we’ve entitled today’s sermon: Renovating Our Feelings.” In becoming like Christ, our hearts, our minds and our feelings too, must be renovated.…
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Renovating Our Thinking
What kind of ideas and images inhabit your mind, your thinking? Where did they come from? Do you have a mindset, a worldview, shaped by the Word of God as applied by the grace and Spirit of God? Or is your thinking shaped by the culture you’ve grown up in? The truth is, as believers,…
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The Heart of the Matter
We all tend to think that if we could renovate our house, or our job, or our marriage, or our …, then we’d be happy, but the truth is that life is not lived from the outside – in, but from the inside – out. We live from our hearts. So what does it mean…
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A New Thing
Our God is constantly doing a new thing. I don’t know what kind of year you had last year. Perhaps it was a great year, you experienced financial freedom or growth in a relationship or a new and exciting career path. Perhaps it was an extremely difficult year, you lost a loved one, lost a…