Sermon: Life Against the Flesh (Pt 4)

Life in the Spirit, Life Against the Flesh (Pt. 4) Colossians 3:10-17 October 21, 2018 How can one become good? Only by God’s transforming work — which is what Colossians 3 has said — 3:1 — “you have been raised up” (i.e., God raised you) 3:3 — “your life is hidden with Christ” 3:4 — […]

Sermon: Life Against the Flesh (Pt 3)

Life in the Spirit, Life Against the Flesh (Pt 3) Colossians 3:1-9 October 14, 2018 Several years after inventing the radar, Sir Robert Watson Watt was arrested in Canada for speeding. He’d been caught, ironically enough, by a radar trap. To commemorate this infamous event in his life, he wrote a brief poem about himself: […]

Sermon: Life Against the Flesh (Pt 2)

Life in the Spirit, Life Against the Flesh (Pt 2) Colossians 3:1-17 October 7 2018 “In April, 1983, Robert Vierling of Winchester, Missouri was found in his bed, crushed to death by his sixteen-foot, one hundred pound, pet Burmese python. Vierling’s wife said he had complete trust in the snake and often played with it […]

Sermon: Life Against the Flesh

Life in the Spirit, Life Against the Flesh Romans 8:12-13 September 30, 2018 One of the hardest parts of the spiritual life is dealing with the daily reality that we are in a fight. Spiritual maturity does not come easily. Sin rarely waves the white flag of surrender. The flesh often proposes a truce with […]

Sermon: Life in the Spirit, Pt 2

Life in the Spirit, Pt. 2 Romans 8:9-11 September 23, 2018 A couple of years ago a Great Dane was brought into the DoveLewis Emergency Animal Hospital in Portland, Oregon because the dog had been retching and vomiting all through the day. The doctors examined the dog with abdominal radiographs and found “a severely distended […]

Sermon: Life in the Spirit

Life in the Spirit Romans 8:5-8 September 16, 2018 Columnist Sydney Harris rightly summarized the feelings of many of us when he observed, “Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.” Yup. That’s me. However, […]

Christ came for sin

In Romans 8:3, Paul identifies the reason for Christ’s advent — He came “for sin” (ESV). That is, He came for the purpose of addressing the problem of sin. He came for sin because sin was (and is) the great problem of mankind. We tend to think we have bigger problems than sin. We have […]

Sermon: No Condemnation! (Pt 3)

No Condemnation! (Pt. 3) Romans 8:1-4 September 2, 2018 It wasn’t long after we were married, that Raye Jeanne observed my curiosity about everything. On one occasion a massive storm moved through Dallas, where we were living at the time, and tens of thousands of residents lost power. Our home was without power for several […]

Sermon: No Condemnation! (Pt 2)

No Condemnation! (Pt. 2) Romans 8:1-4 August 26, 2018 Several years ago, author Brett McKay wrote on his popular blog site, “The Art of Manliness,” that he learned the skill of picking locks. After learning the basic principles and being given the tools, he picked his first lock in two minutes. He says this about […]

Sermon: No Condemnation! (Pt 1)

No Condemnation! (Pt. 1) Romans 8:1-4 August 19, 2018 In my closet I have a bag of letters. Most people would not be interested in those letters. They are cards and notes that have been kept in that bag for over thirty years. But they are a treasure to me. They are the correspondence Raye […]

Sermon: The Believer and Sin (Pt 3)

The Believer and Sin (Pt. 3) Romans 7:14-25 August 5, 2018 As I have told my wife (though she already knew), I am impatient. I want things done quickly. I want a 24-hour virus to go away in six hours. I want one-day dry cleaning done in four hours and one-hour dry-cleaning in 15 minutes. […]

It’s a fight

In his book Comrades, Stephen Ambrose writes this about warfare: Combat requires all the nerves, all the physical attributes, every bit of the training. It is only in combat, nowhere else, where time is measured in other ways than by clocks or calendars. Only in combat does the soldier realize that he is in the […]

“I’m no good”

Too many times I have made the statement, “I’m no good,” or “I’m no good at…” And too many times I have heard others make similar statements. Very often, these (and other) self-deprecating comments are actually solicitations of affirmation or a veiled desire for compliments (“Oh, Terry, you’re really good at…” or “You’re not like […]

Sermon: The Believer and Sin (Pt 2)

The Believer and Sin (Pt. 2) Romans 7:14-25 July 29, 2018 In August, 2011, Danya and Troy Donovan closed up their home of 13 years in Littleton, CO and traveled to Indiana to seek work. They winterized their home, anticipating they would be gone through the winter, and planned to return in the spring. In […]

Be a hater

Having teens and now twenty-something daughters has helped me keep up with contemporary slang terms (kind of). One of the phrases that I learned from them a few years ago was, “don’t be a hater.” As I understand the phrase, it means something like, “don’t be jealous of me because of what I am/have,” or […]