Be a good steward of the grace of God!

The year 2021 is here! Some of us are very excited. Others are very nervous. Whether things go back to normal or things continue to get stranger and stranger, as followers of Jesus Christ, our marching orders still remain the same. The grace of God has been manifested to us. Jesus is full of grace and He manifested grace to us when we took on human form and dwelled among us. If we are followers of Jesus Christ, not only has the grace of God been manifested to us, the grace of God has also been entrusted to us. Our job is to be a good steward of the manifold grace of God. How do we do that in a practical way? The Apostle Peter does a great job in his first epistle (letter) explaining this to us in a very practical way. I would like to dig down into I Peter 4:10-11.

Do you value people over things?

I am working on my lesson for our Connect Groups that will meet this coming Sunday at Southern Calvert Baptist Church. As a church, we have been walking through the entire Bible over the previous two and a half years. I am so excited to see how all of the things that we have been learning are all coming together in the person of Jesus Christ. This week, our journey takes us to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 12. What do you value in this life? What do you spend the majority of your time doing? What do you invest your time and energy into the most? For many humans, we invest our precious time and energy into acquiring wealth and possessions. In and of themselves, wealth and possessions are not a bad thing. Money is simply a tool in the hands of God that He uses to reveal our priorities. We all have a choice; we can use the precious gift of time to invest in temporary things, like wealth and possessions or, we can use the precious gift of time to invest in eternal things, like the souls of our fellow human beings. Jesus challenges us to pick one or the other because we cannot do both. In other words, we cannot serve two masters. We cannot serve wealth accumulation and God both at the same time. We will give lip service to one and really devote ourselves to the other. This is what Jesus addresses in Luke 12.

From fear and doubt to praise and service

Last week, we took a look at our great salvation in Jesus Christ. This week, we are digging into the Gospel of Luke, chapter 1. Our lesson will cover the birth of John the Baptist. In this lesson, we will begin with fear and doubt that, through faith, leads to praise and service of the Lord. I do not know about you, but, to me, this is very, very good news. I know what it means to be afraid. I know what it means to doubt and be uncertain. I can relate to those feelings and emotions and I would be willing to bet that you can relate to them as well. Zacharias  was a servant of the Lord who struggled with fear and doubt. That reassures me to read about because I can relate. If you ever struggle with fear and doubt, this lesson is for you, just as much as it is for me. Let’s dig down in Luke 1 and learn how we can go from fear and doubt to praise and service.

The Gospel & Social Media

I am sitting here in my home office preparing to preach this message at Southern Calvert Baptist Church this coming Sunday. I am so excited to have the opportunity to share God’s Word with His people. Have you ever thought about how you could use Social Media to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

In our church this coming Sunday, there will probably be between 300 and 350 people in attendance. According to the latest statistics, there are 2.3 billion people on the Social Media platform known as Facebook. The average Facebook user spends 35 minutes a day on Facebook. The average Facebook user has about 155 friends on Facebook. If each of the 300 people in attendance this coming Sunday were to share Gospel via Facebook, on Sunday, we could potentially reach 46,500 people with the Gospel. There are 8 billion video views a day on Facebook so simply sharing the live sermon during the service has the chance of being seen multiple times among the 8 billion views that day. Why do so few Christians share the Gospel on Social Media?

Time, Talents, and The Kingdom

I am preparing to preach this Sunday at Southern Calvert Baptist Church. I am going to preach on the parable of the talents. Our main passage is Luke 19:11-26 and I will also use Matthew 25:14-30 to add some details to the story.

There are two major gifts (talents) that the Lord has given to every single human being. Those two gifts are the gift of life and the gift of time to live life. The Bible teaches us that we can use time one of two ways. We can spend our time wisely or we can spend our time unwisely. Time is a commodity that we spend daily. We receive it as a gift and then we choose how we use it. In the parable of the talents, Jesus wants to teach us how to use our time wisely until the moment when He establishes His earthly kingdom.

Sin Nature is Contentious

As we continue to walk through the book of Exodus, we continue to see the character of God, His working out of an eternal plan, as well as His personal interaction with humanity. While walking through Genesis, we discovered that all of us have been born with a sin nature and that sin nature wants to master us. God’s plan is to rescue us from our sin nature so that we can master it. In Exodus 17, we are going to discover that God is our victory over our sin nature. God reveals this character trait to us through His Name, Jehovah-Nissi. The Lord is our banner of victory. Victory over our sin nature is already ours, we simply must choose to walk in that victory. God shows this to us with His interaction with the children of Israel in the wilderness. Sin nature is never satisfied, ever. The more that it is fed, the more it wants. The children of Israel were hungry, so, by grace, the Lord fed them manna from heaven. They then wanted meat. God gave them meat until it spewed from their nostrils. In Exodus 17, now they are thirsty. Let’s take a look at how their sin nature manifests itself when squeezed.

Be useful to the kingdom in 2019

As I have spent the last couple of days planning this sermon, I have been blessed by the Lord through His Holy Word. I do not know about you but, when I open the Word of God to study, I discover new things about Him and about myself every single time. The New Year is almost upon us. 2018 went by so quickly. It seems that 2019 will go by even faster. I want to be useful to the kingdom of God in 2019. I want YOU to be useful to the kingdom of God in 2019. The Lord teaches us how we can be useful. This is an article based on the sermon that I am preaching this coming Sunday at Southern Calvert Baptist Church in Lusby Maryland. If you are in the area, stop by and encourage me. If you are not close enough to come, the sermon will be available online in the near future. God has truly blessed us with modern technology. I often wonder what all the Apostle Paul would have accomplished if he would have had the internet 😀