Hello All,
This is a promotional for the Ten Year Celebration of White Prairie. This is a very interesting place to visit. Kerry and I plan to go back and take more friends this year.
Here is his promotional flier as a PDF:
Hello Everyone,
Forgot to post earlier. Here is this week’s bulletin.
Hello to You,
Had to take my sweatshirt off earlier. Getting a little warm. Oh yeah! Do a little grass cutting next week maybe. That’s what I’m talking about.
Anyway … on to “spiritual” things. 🙂
This week is what many regard as Palm Sunday. The event in the following text takes place several days before the crucifixion of Christ. They are celebrating what they believe to be their Savior and their salvation. The problem is that it seems many of the same people are just days later joining the masses and calling for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
Jesus knows this, thus his lament.
From the garden of Eden to this present day the same dynamic cycles through every generation of humans. God offers life as he intended and designed, but many people choose their own plan. And, not only do we choose our own plan, but we call it God’s plan.
In this week’s text, we will look at such a group. They chose their plan of salvation, and then they discover too late that they have missed the most important thing about salvation, that being – God saves only his way, only one way, only one plan, only one Savior.
There is only one plan that ends in life – God’s!
The tragic irony is that they did use the Bible to build their spiritual houses. They heard the words but didn’t do the words. When they read and studied, apparently they didn’t hear God speaking because they sifted and sorted until they found something to fit their plans. And if they couldn’t do it on their own, they found “teachers” to validate their choice.
But the person who hears God when he reads and studies doesn’t sift and sort. He obeys.
Message Title: “Lord, Lord, save me … My way!”
Message Text: Matthew 7:13-29
Dave
Hello Everyone,
What a beautiful day! Maybe our warmest yet this year?
I can remember message planning, planning for Easter, etc. last year and thinking how far away April seemed. Not so.
Here is this week’s bulletin.
On Tuesday April 15, 2014 @ 7 pm the Colchester Area Historical Society will meet at Colchester City Hall.
Good Morning to All!
It is April. Yay! We had quite a rain on the prairies of western Illinois last night. Very fresh and springy this morning. Grass is getting green. Again … Yay!
We finish our Ezra study this Sunday, and I have to say that I have been very blessed, and God, as he does, has been over-the-top in his grace and wisdom through the last several weeks.
Lessons in Ezra:
God is God. People are people. People do really stupid and sinful things. God is full of grace and there is always hope. God will move heaven and earth, kings and kingdoms for his people if we will bow before him and make things right. We need each other. We must have strong leadership. We must all have a strong, faithful sense of mission and purpose as directed by God. God tells us who we are; no one else. We are who God says we are. We must move in faith toward the vision that God has for us that he sets out in his holy book, the Bible.
More lessons in Ezra:
One king, many pawns. There is no panic button in heaven no matter who is the president of the U.S. or Russia or the prime minister of the UK or the dictator of North Korea. God should be our main media outlet. If our news source cultivates fear and despair, then we are listening in the wrong place, whether it is labeled Christian or not. God is God. God is full of grace. God is there, always has been and always will be. Same God as in Ezra’s time rules the universe today.
Did I happen to mention that “God is God!”?
Here are this week’s handouts.
Message Title: Yet There Is Hope!
Message Text: Ezra 9 & 10
Hello to All!
It is April and that is wonderful. I am looking forward with great anticipation to celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ this year with you. I am hoping that God bowls us over in awe and appreciation of what Christ accomplished at Calvary.
Here is this week’s bulletin. This is our last study in Ezra, and I will be a little sorry to leave this powerful book of Scripture but am looking forward to our Romans study beginning on June 1.
Hello All,
Happy Friday! Yay!
Help, humility, the hand of God and honor.
Recurring themes throughout Ezra it seems. God is there. But he is not just there. He is also very active in our lives and in the affairs of the world. Not just then, in the Bible stories, but now in our lives, in our world. We will see this very clearly in retrospect from heaven, but we need to see this now by faith. We need to allow God to build our perspective of life on the planet. God needs to be our major news source.
The Bible story of Ezra, Zerubbabel and the others is actual and historical. Not fable and myth that help us along our merry religious way, but real life and real truth which we can bite into and trust. Anchor. Rock solid. God was there. Is here. Has always been and always will be. He is Sovereign LORD, God Most High, and he determines the course of humanity.
Let the mountains fall into the sea! Our God still reigns! (See Psalm 46.)
If God is our major news source, this is what we hear: The darkness has had its day and is passing away.
So who are we listening to?
What are we telling each other?
If we are trembling in our boots before anything other than our holy God who is a consuming fire, then we’ve got it wrong. Way wrong.
This week Ezra sets out for his place of service and confronts his fear of the journey, asks for help, bows in humility, looks to the hand of God for deliverance and worships God when he comes through again.
Dave