I had to cut this out out of the last sermon because there was not enough time, but it's important to think about: What if someone else is offended by me? We talked throughout the series about how to deal with being offended at someone else / God, and the need to address it with the person if we can't shake the hurt. But what if I'm not the one hurt? What if someone else...

"It is easy to be nice, even to an enemy-from lack of character." -Dag Hammarskjold Christians are called to love their enemies. For fallen human beings this is one of the hardest messages Jesus preached. The old man's desire is to doanythingbut love those who have caused uspain. For most believers learning to be loving towards enemies is a slow and difficult process tha...

To go with today's reading in Luke 1:26-56. Six months after Gabriel appeared to Zechariah, Gabriel went to Nazareth to a young virgin girl named Mary. Mary was betrothed or engaged to a man named Joseph, of the House of David. Gabriel told Mary that the Lord found favor in her and she will give birth to a son and she is to name him Jesus. But Mary wasn't to give birth ju...

Psalm 3 Arise, Lord! Deliver me, my God! Strike all my enemies on the jaw; break the teeth of the wicked. I used to think David was praying for revenge, for justice, for vengeance. But I was talking to a pastor who is much smarter than me and he said that the jaw and the teeth were symbols of the strength of an animal. A lion would have its prey in his teeth, his j...

"In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry" Ephesians 4:26 It has been said that those who anger us control us. Having such control may not be the conscious goal of the person our anger is directed towards, in fact oftentimes they may not even know we feel this way, but whatever the knowledge and attitude of the person in question we h...

There is a certain cold logic to bitterness. Bitterness appeals most strongly to our sense of right and wrong, to our sense of fairness. Bitterness says that we have a permanent right to hate those who have hurt us or allowed us to be hurt by others. It is more interested in past losses than present and future gains. It forfeits hope and doesn't care. When we are caught up...