The Apostle Paul tells us that we are gifted by the Holy Spirit for a purpose. But how does that work? What are the gifts and what do they look like? And why are we given them?
What the Holy Spirit Does
When we talk about God from the Christian perspective, there are some thoughts about God we are more comfortable with than others. We know that God the Father is the creator, and God the Son died for our sins, but what exactly does the Holy Spirit do? Many of us are uncomfortable with the Holy Spirit maybe because we don't understand His role in our life. Together we will explore the difference the Spirit can make in our lives.
What Are We Talking About When We Talk About God?
A key distinction in Christianity is that it is trinitarian, meaning one God is expressed in three persons: God the Father, Jesus the son and the holy spirit. While we talk a lot about the Father and the Son, we sometimes ignore the Holy Spirit. So what or who is the Holy Spirit?
Dry Bones
Have you ever felt like your spiritual life was dry? Maybe non-existent? Maybe dead? Together we are going to explore through the words of a prophet long ago the ingredients we need to revitalize our life with God.
Fighting Doubt
We have all watched movies or read books where we knew the ending before we were halfway through. And often the stories we really enjoy are the ones with a twist at the end that goes against our preconceived ideas, we love plot twists, but not in our own lives! Sometimes when our plans don't go as planned we can question and doubt if God has our best in mind.
The Role We Play in Changing Our Plans
Some of us are good at many things. And some of us are great at a few things. And because we have confidence in our abilities, sometimes we make plans that we know we can accomplish. But sometimes those plans change, because of something we did. This morning we will be looking at the role we play in making our plans change when we overestimate ourselves and underestimate our ability to sin.
Best Laid Plans
Some of us are dreamers. We love to dream of what is next and can not wait to do it. But sometimes we need to ready to change our dreams for something better. It does not mean our plans are bad, just not what is best. So how can we try to line up our plans with what is best?
Not as Planned
There is an old Yiddish proverb that goes "We plan, God laughs." Despite our most careful planning, the road of life is unpredictable. We may make careful considerations about how to travel to our destination, but unexpected construction and roadblocks may force us to recalculate. In this four week series, we are going to explore what happens when the future we envisioned does not come to pass. And how we can trust God when our best-laid plans don't work out.
And Justice for All
One of the central teachings throughout the entire Bible is that people are made in the image of God and have intrinsic value because of it. So if this is true, how should we be acting towards other people? Even people we may not agree with or like?