Category Archives: Sermons

Daily Bread

Does God really provide our daily bread – what we need for life today? Can we trust him to take care of us? Jesus knew we could. This encouraging message helps us to trust God as we pray, “Give us … Continue reading

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Hallowed Be Thy Name

Only when we can pray, “Our Father,” from a full heart can we say truly, “Hallowed by thy name.” This message looks at hallowing the name of “our Father, the One in the heavens.” You live in two worlds – … Continue reading

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Our Father

In this message, we enter, explore, and savor the Lord’s Prayer, which is to say, the prayer he gave his disciples. And what a gift it is! We see in this first sermon that it is those who can call … Continue reading

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Becoming a Person Who Can Pray the Lord’s Prayer

When I was a boy, I wanted to be just like Mickey Mantle. In 1961, he had 514 at bats and he hit 54 homeruns. That means he hit a homerun one out of every 9 or so at bats. … Continue reading

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Power in Prayer (Mark 9:14-29)

“This kind comes out only by prayer.” Jesus said that about a stubborn unclean spirit, but there are many things in our lives that “come out” only by prayer: stubborn marriage problems, addictions, financial needs, and more. Learning to pray … Continue reading

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Praying for The Knowledge of God’s Will (Colossians 1:9-12)

We want to know God’s will. God wants us to know his will. So, why is it so difficult to know his will? This sermon on prayer and the knowledge of God’s will is rooted in the Apostle Paul’s great … Continue reading

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Why Wait: A Message on Prayer

This sermon, based on Abraham’s experience as detailed in Hebrews 11:8-13, helps us understand why we need to wait on God in our prayers, and how we can wait well. The key is to wait for God, not for things and to wait with God, not alone. Come and join us in the waiting room. God is already there.

The text of the sermon is included below the video. Continue reading

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Prayer: Where the Battle Is Won

I don’t think I’ve ever begun a sermon with a quote from The Art of War before, but I did this one. Sun Tzu said, “Every battle is won before it is ever fought.” Jesus proved it true through life … Continue reading

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A Different Way to Pray (Romans 8:26-27)

Prayer is not the private, highly individual thing we thought it was. There is a work crew that assembles when we pray. Or, say rather, a dream team: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God invites us –in all our weakness – to join his team.

Prayer, as Paul thought of it, is more like basketball than archery. It’s done as a team. We don’t stand alone aiming at a target. Instead, we work the prayer down the court toward the goal. It doesn’t all depends on us—and we should never think it does. That would be like playing in a three-on-three basketball tournament with teammates LeBron James, Stephan Curry, and Nikalo Jokic, and thinking that it all rests on me! We need the team as we pray. Without God’s help, we’ll never move our prayers toward the target. Continue reading

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Unanswered Prayers: The Rest of the Story (2 Cor. 12:6-10)

Here is the thesis of this message: When God says no, he does so because of love. When he says no, it is because saying yes would be unhelpful in the long run to you and to others. When he says no, it is to preclude some evil that would happen or to promote some good that would not happen had he said yes.

The evil that must be precluded and that good that must be promoted may not be apparent right now. They may not even be apparent in our lifetimes. That good or evil might be four generations away or twenty. We cannot see it, think it, or even imagine it – our minds are too limited; we are still babes in the infancy of humanity. There is so much we don’t know. Continue reading

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