Skip to main content

Surely The Lord is in this Place: A sermon I wish I have written

My good friend Jeanette has done it again with a blockbuster sermon that I wish I had written or been present to hear. Preachers get a lot out of preparing a sermon and it's a shame that much of that work may just go out into the air and not be grasped.

However, I still believe in preaching and value it over 'dialogues', 'hi-tech' displays etc. which entertain more than they inform. Preachers are not entertainers so it can be hard to understand, in our western world which is 'entertaining itself to death', a phrase based on the educator's Neil Postman's graphic book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, that preachers are not sent for that purpose.

Someone has said that only recently have Christians had to ask themselves the question for the first time in history, how much time they should spend entertaining themselves!

Anyway, enough of my ranting for Jeanette's sermon is spiritually entertaining and refreshing.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

God's Proof of His Love-While We Were Still Enemies

I've just come across an excerpt from a wonderful book I have, The Divine Forbearance or The Dynamics of Forgiveness (2001) by Paul T. Harrison 1 . I want to focus on some points he makes from Rom 5.1-11 concerning the love of God. In Romans ch 4, the subject is faith: 'the means by which we are rightwised 2 to God' (Harrison, p. 52). But what, Harrison asks, arouses faith; what 'has Christ revealed about God that makes us able to trust Him?' Fire of God Ministries International Church-see http://fireofgodservants.blogspot.com.au And to that question he answers, God's forgiving love . God's love is so faithful and true that we may depend on it absolutely. Why is that so? That is explored in Rom 5.6-11. Our status before God as ungodly sinners (Rom 5.6, 8) in the past meant that we were the 'enemies of God' (Rom 5.10). Think of that! Being an enemy of God means to be subject to his wrath (Rom 5.9) and displeasure. People don't give their live...

Reigning With Christ by F J Huegel

Reigning With Christ by F J Huegel (1963) is a book of only 88 pages yet it is filled with crucial truths of the Christian faith organised around the theme of the enthroned believer . It's fair to say that the theme he concisely addresses in this small book is much neglected today. For the press of technological life with its bustle and speed is such that we can forget that present life, so ' real' to us, is temporary (2 Cor 4.18) and as in the first century, 'the form [Greek, "schema"] of the world is passing away' (1Cor 7.31). It's easy to read this work and though it has 20 chapters, they are short and pithy. However, reading it requires a meditative attitude so as to allow the Spirit to work on our hearts.

Christian Atheism!

" The great lesson that our blessed Lord inculcates here...is that God is in all things, and that we are to see the Creator in the glass [mirror] of every creature; that we should use and look upon nothing as separate from God, which indeed is a kind of practical atheism; but with a true magnificence of thought survey heaven and earth and all that is therein as contained by God in the hollow of his hand, who by his intimate presence holds them all in being, who pervades and activates the whole created frame, and is in a true sense the soul of the universe." These pungent words were given to me by an overseas correspondent and come from a sermon by John Wesley (1748) on the 'Sermon on the Mount'. Part of the context for his words apparently were that Wesley originally baulked at the idea of preaching in the open air until he realised that the Lord Jesus had preached outside! But, more especially for our edification is that Wesley fixed on the truth that nothing ...