Rekindling Love for God
Reading the Bible in Modern Contexts
Pastor Tom
February 26, 2012
Deuteronomy 6
Why do you come to church?
What if you came to church “because of your whole-hearted love for God?” That would be the ideal. We engage more fully in anything when our hearts are in it. If we came to church because we love God, it might affect our attitude toward a lot of things.
But what if you don’t have that whole-hearted love to God on a particular Sunday? What if you have doubts about Him? What if you have not been close to God for a while and church has become a chore. How can we recapture a whole-hearted love for God? How can we move from our complacency and boredom with Jesus to white hot love for Him?
The Bible tells us how…
God's Riddle
Reading the Bible in Modern Contexts
Pastor Tom
February 12, 2012
Psalm 78
We’re talking about Reading the Bible in modern contexts this winter. We’ve looked at Reading the Bible to resist temptation and reading the Bible for personal devotion. We looked at adding meditation on the Scriptures to our Bible reading so that we carry God’s Word with us all day. We also looked at praying the Scriptures to transform our prayer lives from drudgery to delight. Last week we looked at Reading the Bible in times of sorrow and suffering. The next two messages are about Reading the Bible with the family. But I don’t want those of you who aren’t parents to think this does not apply to you. We all have a responsibility to pass on our faith to the next generation.
Today, we are going to see that call on our lives. The text we’re using declares this call clearly. But the writer of this text uses a surprising approach in passing on the faith. Today, we will see him pass on God’s riddle so the younger hope in Him. If we want to see the next generation put their hope in Christ, we too must pass on God’s riddle. We will discover examples of this riddle as we walk through the Bible text. By the end, we will discover the riddle itself and propose an answer.
Reading the Bible in Times of Sorrow and Suffering
Reading the Bible in Modern Contexts
Pastor Tom
February 5, 2012
Lamentations 3:1–33
Imagine with me that you came to church one Sunday and you were not doing well. Maybe you didn’t feel great or you had a tough week or something troubling happened in your life. How do you answer the question “how are you”…
There once was a man who faced great difficulties. He survived a terrible siege of his capital city. But the city finally fell. And now the conquerors wreaked havoc on what remained of it. He witnessed the devastation of his home, land and people. He suffered personally with physical illness and emotional pain. And he felt like God had abandoned him. Yet, he went on a journey that reconnected him to God. This journey did not involve repeating the phrase “don’t worry, be happy.” In fact, this suffering man journeys through something called lament to reconnect with God.