Tag Archives: obedience

Sermons and Preaching

Walk Before You Run

Read Isaiah 40: 28-31 and Ephesians 4: 17-32 to start.

Last month was the 20th annual PEI Marathon. It’s grown to be a rather large event, with more than 2000 participants this year. I’m pleased to report that I have maintained my perfect record of not participating. That’s right, 20 years of marathons in PEI, and I haven’t competed in a single one. With sufficient planning and enough training, and this might be tough, but I’m hoping to stretch that out to 21 next year.

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Sermons and Preaching

That Your Joy May Be Full

Read 1 John 1:1-10 and John 15:1-11 to start.

Who remembers Marie Kondo? Of course, I say remember like this is ancient history, but her Netflix show Tidying Up with Marie Kondo only came out five years ago. For those who are unfamiliar with Ms Kondo, she is an author and TV presenter specializing in organization. She has sold millions of books and was on Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people. She has some controversial and frankly ridiculous ideas when it comes to how to organize and declutter your home, such as the recommendation that you should have no more than 25 books. No, that’s not 25 books on the table at one time, but rather 25 books in your house. In total. Yeah, we’re a bit over that at my house. When I was writing my sermon I took a look around the room and stopped counting at 25 books, and that was before I got to the bookshelf. Or the other bookshelf. Or the rest of the house.

The concept that Marie Kondo is perhaps best known for is the idea of sparking joy.  Gather the items in your house, pick them up one at a time, and with each item, ask yourself “Does this spark joy?” The idea is that if something does not cause joy, then you get rid of it. If it does cause joy, then you keep it. This is supposed to help you reduce clutter. Frankly, I’m up for trying it. Of course, if I did, I might end up throwing out the bills from Maritime Electric and Eastlink, and probably the bathroom scale, too.

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Sermons and Preaching

Foundations, and Building Thereupon

Read 1 Corinthians 3:1-15 to start.

Before we get started, let’s take a short trip down memory lane. Back in October, I preached a sermon that I titled Work In Progress, and I started by talking about Sarah Winchester and the Winchester Mystery House. For that sermon, I read most of this same passage from 1 Corinthians. In that sermon I talked about how God is working on every believer, and how we are His handiwork, His workmanship as it says in Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10. The comparison of a building under construction is certainly a very apt one for this concept, because putting up a house or a barn or a tower or some other large project takes time, takes effort, and requires a design and a plan in order for it to come to a successful outcome. If we allow God to work on us and in us, if we are obedient and willing to let Him work, then that is what the result will be, even if it’s not at all what we first expect.

Every building, every construction project, needs the things we just mentioned in some measure, there needs to be effort, time, a plan, and of course some sort of input, some materials. But every building also needs something more than that if it is to be a lasting structure of any sort. It needs a foundation.

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Sermons and Preaching

Sink or Swim

Read Ezekiel 33:1-9 to start.

We all know what today is, which is Father’s Day. Do you know what tomorrow is, though? Anyone have a guess? It’s the last day of spring. Which means Tuesday is the first day of summer. Now, we’ve already had some days that feel like full on summer, because the start and end of the season on the calendar is based on the position of sun in the sky, and the weather may not exactly reflect that. In any case, summer is basically here. And summer, in my mind, includes going to the beach. I’m not a big beach person myself, but if I don’t get to the beach at least a time or three in the summer then it wasn’t really summer so far as I’m concerned.

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Sermons and Preaching

What Holds You Back?

Read Acts 8:26-38 to start.

When I was in school, back in 1980s and 90s, we had semesters and school years. One thing that took place at the end of every semester, at in particular at the end of the year, apart from the finishing of exams and deadlines for papers, there were report cards.

I assume that in public school they still do this same sort of thing, although it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s not all digital now, rather than the folded cardstock we used to have to take home and sign. I did well in school, it was never much of a concern for me when report cards came out. But there were other students who did not do as well. Some of them may have been very good in certain subjects, but did poorly in others. And some just didn’t do so well in school at all. If your report card came back with too many low numbers or poor letter grades, then you might end up failing the school year and have to repeat the grade. Not something that anyone would look forward to, not the teacher, not the student, and not the parents.

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Sermons and Preaching

How Long?

Read Psalm 94:1-15 and Matthew 24:3-8 to start.

Sometimes when I’m preparing to preach a sermon, I know exactly the passage I want to speak from and the particular story I will start with. That’s great when it happens, and while it’s still plenty of work and a number of hours to prepare a sermon, it feels like things flow well and it’s fairly straightforward. It can be easy to look at these occasions and say that the Holy Spirit lead me to speak on this topic and in this way. And that may well be the case, at times the Holy Spirit certainly leads down clear and straight paths that go easily. But not always.

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Sermons and Preaching

No Turning Back

Proverbs 12: 15 The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: but he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise.  

Normally I like to start with a longer scripture reading, and I do have some passages to share a bit later, but first, a story. Last Saturday I took some kids, one which was one was my own, to Cavendish for paintball. Because of the construction taking place on the way to Charlottetown, I thought it would be a good idea to avoid that area, and go via Mount Stewart. Google Maps told me that it was about the same distance, maybe 3 or 4 minutes longer, and avoiding construction delays and traffic seemed a great idea. So we went that way.

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Sermons and Preaching

What About Abel?

Read Genesis 4: 1-10 to start.

The story of Cain and Abel is a familiar account. I know I’ve mentioned Cain in many past sermons, on topics such as envy, anger, revenge and forgiveness, as well why do bad things happen to supposedly good people. I have used Cain repeatedly and thusly because he is a ready example of how things can go so tragically wrong in such a short time. It’s easy to reference him, and it’s generally applicable, because we see sinful behaviour all around us, all the time, and we see it as well when we look inside. Cain embodies our sinful nature with all the jealousy, rage, impulsiveness, and false self-righteousness that we know to be inside the very worst parts of ourselves.

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Sermons and Preaching

David or Saul?

Read 1 Samuel chapter 15 to start.

There are two well-known individuals that we are going to look at this morning. From what we read, you can probably guess the first one, which is of course King Saul. The second, and we’ll read his account a bit later, is David. We know David a lot better than we know Saul.

We often think of David in relation to someone else. David and Goliath is of course the obvious example. David and Jonathan, that’s another, and sadly, there’s David and Bathsheba, but we’ll get to that a bit later on.

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Sermons and Preaching

Substitutes, Poor and Otherwise

Read Exodus 32:1-8 to start.

I’d like to start this morning with a question. Actually, there are two questions, one leads to the other. The first one is who here still eats toast? Between those who are on low carb, keto, or gluten free diets, probably lots of people don’t eat toast much anymore. I don’t eat toast all that often, it’s not my breakfast go-to, but my wife and a couple of my kids opt for toast fairly often. If you eat toast, or for that matter if you eat popcorn, or corn on the cob, or baked potatoes, or steamed carrots, odds are pretty good that you use butter on at least some of those foods. Maybe all of those foods. Maybe you use a little butter, maybe you use a lot.

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