“Don’t Tell Me What to Do!”

Nobody likes to be told what to do. And that is probably why we have such a hard time with laws. We even have a saying which reflects this attitude, “Rules are made to be broken”.

There is one situation, however, when we not only want, but demand laws – that’s when someone is doing something we don’t appreciate. Then we’re all over the law thing, demanding that justice be done!

No doubt about it, we human beings are complicated. Sometimes we like things, sometimes we don’t. It just seems to depend on the circumstances we’re in. And that thinking pretty much summarizes our way of looking at laws.

God’s view on the matter of law is very much different. His take on it is there is an unchanging standard of right and wrong that doesn’t vary with how we feel at a particular moment in the day. These laws are called the 10 Commandments. In recent years they’ve gotten a bad rap. They’re called repressive, antiquated, even intolerant. Those descriptions could come from a personal bias however – a bias which comes from the thinking, “I’m going to live my life the way I want and not even God is going to tell me different.”

So, when we talk about the 10 Commandments, it really comes down to, “Who is our God?” Do we step up to that role on occasion so we can do what we want or do we let God take his rightful place, even when it doesn’t seem convenient?

The two words “radical” and “revolutionize” both have very strong meanings but they aptly describe what happens to human life when we accept God for who he is and willingly submit to his 10 Commandments – our lives are radically revolutionized!

Join us for our Sunday morning service as we begin a sermon series on the 10 Commandments.

Sunday morning worship: 10:00 am

For When We Cry

You may not be a person who cries often, but surely you can remember a few times when, after you made sure no one was looking, you broke down in tears. You might even remember those scenes with vivid details. They were times of searing pain. Times when you may well have wondered, “What’s the point of it all?”

When life is fun, no one asks, “What’s the purpose of my existence?” We’re too busy enjoying ourselves. But inevitably, we go through periods during which we either aren’t having a whole lot of fun or we have come to the conclusion that there may be more to life than just having fun. Such times in our lives can raise a lot of hard and even uncomfortable questions.

“What is my life all about?”
“Does my life really mean anything?”
“Is everything just programmed for us; do we actually have a choice in anything?”

What we believe the answers to those questions are, will determine the course of our lives because they serve as the foundation on which we live each day; they are the glasses through which we see the world.

What are the foundational beliefs on which you build your life? Are you confident they will withstand the difficult times you will face? Join us for one of our services this weekend as we review the rock-solid truths we’ve been studying in the first book of the Bible, Genesis. It’s a foundation that will resist anything – even the inevitability of death.

Saturday evening worship: 6:00 pm
Sunday morning worship: 10:00 am

The Inconvenient Truth about Faith

Very often the terms “person of faith” or “faith-based” are not intended to be complimentary. As one skeptic put it, “faith is the license religious people give themselves to keep believing when reasons fail.” The inconvenient truth about faith, however, is that every human being lives by some type of faith. There are no laboratory experiments which can be repeatedly carried out and arrive at the same conclusion to demonstrate to people what the purpose of life is, how to be happy, who to marry or even what career to choose.

The real question is: in what or whom have you placed your faith? Christians have always believed that the God who made the human race continues to be actively involved in his creation and especially with his creatures (us). It is by no means a blind faith, but neither is it as “slam dunk” certain as most people would want. Basically, their question is, “Why doesn’t God rip open the sky and show himself to us in a way that would eliminate all doubt?” Whether the answers provided to such a question are convincing or not to those ask it, the one thing we all must keep in mind is that who or what we put our faith in means far more than we imagine, both for the present and the future.

So, who or what is your faith in? Is your faith solid, secure, attested? Are you satisfied with the confidence level you have in the one you’ve put your faith in? If not, join us for one of our weekend services. We all have a lot to learn from a man named Abraham about faith.

Saturday evening worship: 6:00 pm
Sunday morning worship: 10:00 am

Hope

Hopelessness is not seeing any kind of light at the end of the tunnel. Hopelessness leads to depression, even suicide. There is little else in life which so crushes the human spirit than the belief that things will never improve.

After Adam and Eve turned their backs on God’s offer to live in a perfect relationship with him in which they were to recognize his role as Creator and their role as his creatures, everything changed drastically – for the worse. The one word which best describes life after the fall into sin is “brokenness”. And when we look around at our world, at ourselves, we see brokenness. Broken relationships, broken hearts, broken dreams, broken bodies, even nature is broken.

If God had stepped out of the drama at that moment, humanity would have been lost in an unending ocean of hopelessness. But with one short statement directed at the devil, the one who led the first people to push God out of his own creation, the light of hope pierced the darkness. God said he would send someone to destroy the devil and what he had done.

God didn’t give many details. Adam and Eve certainly must have had a lot of questions. But one thing was for sure, they had hope that life would somehow, someway get better. And you can have that same hope!

Saturday evening worship: 6:00 pm
Sunday morning worship: 10:00 am