Preacher of Habit

Message          2/26/17         More Than Enough Scripture: John 6: 1-13             One of my favorite spiritual disciplines (although I’m not as consistent as I’d like) is to spend a few moments every morning creating journal entries. Sometimes my entries are devotional in nature. I spend some time thinking about God and pondering theology. But more recently, my entries have been mostly about you. One of the coolest things I get to do is think about you and the fact that God has put us together to accomplish some pretty amazing work. What we’re doing together as a parish is pretty phenomenal, although it’s not easy. We’ve had and will have our challenges, hiccups and changes but most importantly, we’ve had and will have our God-given potential. And when we allow God to use our God-given potential, miracles happen. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today, allowing God to do the unthinkable through us.             I hadn’t been in this world much longer than a de

Losing Our Big Shame             Feb. 18/19, 2017 Genesis 3:1-13 Today we are concluding our Biggest Loser Blairsville Style sermon series. We’ve been attempting to lose the hurts, habits and hang-ups that keep us from God’s best, and today we’re going to explore a topic that might be the heaviest burden we carry, the burden of shame. When I was in high school, I was a big of fan of the Rocky movies. I thought it would be cool to be tough like Rocky Balboa, the Philadelphia born and bred boxer who overcame all obstacles. And like most teenage boys, “The Eye of the Tiger” sort of became my theme song. Rocky was a winner, and I wanted to be a winner. But there’s one scene from Rocky III that began to redefine for me what winning really looked like.   In that scene, it’s clear that Rocky’s motivation had become stagnant. He’s preparing to fight Clubber Lang (Mr. T!), and he can’t seem to get past this big mental wall that’s he built. And finally, his wife Adrian has enoug

Biggest Loser, Blairsville Style           Losing Our Big Eye(dols): Avoiding Temptation Scripture: James 1: 12-18             Our journey to becoming Biggest Losers continues today. Over these past few weeks, we’ve been attempting to lose the spiritual baggage that keeps us from God, baggage like pride and excuses, discouragement and unhealthy independence. We’ve talked about our big mouths that get us into trouble and our big heads that suggest we are more than we care to admit, and big shoulders that think we can take on the world. In losing these behaviors and characteristics, we find a deeper, fuller life in Jesus. And that’s our goal. So with that goal in mind, we’re going to lose our big “eye-dols” and jump into another topic today: the topic of temptation.             One of the most difficult tasks I have as a pastor and we have as followers of Jesus, is keeping my head up in times of trouble. And let’s call it like it is: We live in a world that is filled with