Series: Experiencing God
Series: Experiencing God
Series: Experiencing God
Series: Experiencing God
Dr. Mark Maddix
2 Peter 4:8-15a
“Waiting on God: Being Patient”
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Series: Christmas Images
Pastor Steve
Luke 2:22-31
“Great Anticipation!”
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Revelation 22
By Pastor Brad
Revelation Song
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. Revelation 22:13
I’m sure you’ve been wondering what I would say on this very last devotional of 2011.
God has taught me so much this past year through this experience. Although I wasn’t quite looking forward to this assignment at the beginning, God has been faithful to me and helped me strongly finish this commitment. I am grateful for this opportunity to share my life stories with you all.
Many weeks I struggled to find the right words to share with you, and during that time I found myself trusting God more, allowing him to use me in the way that had planned for that week. You would think that I’ve learned that lesson by now.
At this year’s Thanksgiving Worship Musical, Extravagant Journey, we concluded with Revelation Song by Jennie Lee Riddle. What an exciting time it will be as we gather around the throne in worship singing to the one who has set us free from the bondage of sin.
Christ longs to say to each of us, “Welcome home, you’re forgiven, let’s eat!” It’s up to us to turn towards God and he will run to us with open arms.
Click here to view Revelation Song from the 2011 TWM Extravagant Journey. (Please note that the picture quality is reduced for web viewing.)
You may pre-order your copy of Extravagant Journey to be released in late January 2012 from the church office.
Revelation 21
By Pastor Libby
Intro to Heaven 101
I enjoy reading. Reading takes me to faraway places and to situations that I as a simple Idaho girl may or may not encounter. I love reading a good mystery.
In Revelation 21 we are introduced to the mystery of a new heaven and a new earth. We are dazzled by the myriad of jewels and precious stones of the Holy City, Jerusalem. Something we will never see in this life but in the next. We are promised by God that he will make everything new. Nothing fictional in this reading, but something you and I will experience as heaven becomes real for us.
John 14:1-3 says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”
Yes it will be sad to leave what we know behind in death or in the second coming, yet there are many things John relates to us in this passage that I will gladly embrace. In heaven there will be no more crying, no more pain, fear will not be present there.
Many fictional books and movies have been written that endeavor to tell us and scare us into believing that the last days, should be approached with fear and trembling. I still remember in sixth grade uncontrollably sobbing on the night I was to leave Salina, Kansas for a new life in Oregon, right after we had watched during the Sunday night Service the end times movie, “Thief in the Night.” I definitely couldn’t sleep that night or the next! I can’t tell you how right or wrong these things are in their interpretations, but I can tell you that Christ is not the author of fear. When I read Revelation 21 I am filled with hope and longing to see Jesus. Is your name “written in the Lamb’s book of life?” My prayer is that it is and that one day there will be a great celebration in your honor as you enter those pearly gates and claim your room!
Revelation Chapter 20
By Pastor Neil
Scripture: The Revelation 20
The Victory Celebration of the Ages
Chapter twenty of The Revelation is the great celebration passage of this book. Just in case the readers are worried that there is so much death and destruction that they can’t win, John shows them graphically just how complete the victory will be. There are a great many interpretations of this chapter that have been written even in just my lifetime, though that is getting longer and longer. People invent and reinvent ideas about what this one thousand years is about and just where it is that Satan will be sent. And many an evangelist has “made hay” on the Friday night of an evangelistic crusade as he/she portrayed the “lake of fire” and the likelihood that listeners who were not “right with God” were going to find themselves right there if they didn’t get their lives straightened up.
Over the years, I’ve just about decided that all the ways this has all been interpreted can’t all be right since people don’t all come to the same conclusion about how all of this is going to work out historically. What I think I am finding is that we may have been so hard pressed to find ways to get folks saved that we put all of our attention on things other than what is the great central truth here. It may indeed be true that this terrible fate that awaits the impenitent should be taken literally. It is certain that it should be taken seriously.
However, I think that there is, in the midst of this chapter, a glorious truth to be celebrated. And that great truth is that no matter what things may look like around us in “this old world”, as my Grandma used to say it, you can be sure of one thing, Christ is victorious now and in the end of the world. Whatever else happens to you, you want to be found trusting in God come what may. In life’s difficult times and terrible disappointments, the best answer will always be found when we trust in God for His guidance and help. He is the source of help and of all we can hope for. Circumstances won’t always be changed so that we like them better. But the promise of the presence of Christ is a certainty we can trust in.
John says in verse 6 of those who are in Christ, “Blessed and holy are those who have part in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them…” All of the mayhem that is threatened in this chapter for the impenitent is meaningless for those who remain faithful. This is a message John really wants his readers to see. The final victory of Christ in our lives today and in the end of the age is the true hope of all who trust in Him. No matter what you are facing, the message here is to keep trusting in God. This is your eternal hope!
Revelation 19
By Pastor Steve
Hallelujah Chorus
Hallelujah is a term used almost exclusively in the religious world. It is a Hebrew term that can be translated into English by utilizing such words as—Joy—Praise—Adoration—Thanksgiving. It is used in the Biblical sense to convey the reality of a song of praise and or a song of thanksgiving to the Lord for His interaction in the lives of His people. This concept of offering praise and thanksgiving is the theme of our text for today. But for many people reading our beloved book, our text for today could be criticized as depicting our God as a God of wrath rather than a God of love.
The 19th Chapter of the book of Revelation begins with a subject title: Threefold Hallelujah Over Babylon’s Fall. The last couple chapters of John’s Revelation provide detailed information concerning the fall of Babylon in this prophetic dialog concerning the end times. This text is describing how God will allow the destruction of this typological Babylon due to the sin that is prevalent and the evil that devours all those who are god fearing. As a result of a text that describes judgment and doom, many who do not follow the Lord consider only the wrath and miss the sense of protection that God offers all of us who choose to follow Him.
While I was reading this text, I was overwhelmed by the following hallelujah chorus:
Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting:
“Hallelujah!
For our Lord God Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and be glad
and give him glory!
For the wedding of the Lamb has come,
and his bride has made herself ready.
Fine linen, bright and clean,
was given her to wear.”
(Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of God’s holy people.)
Whenever God’s people draw near the end of a year, we should take time to consider the past year of life and especially the last year with the Lord. Is the linen we are dressed in righteous and holy? Are the acts of our life pleasing to our Lord? Would we be ready if the doors to the Wedding Hall (Heaven) were opened today? Do we rejoice with Him and in Him; or simply throw accusations at Him? Our text describes the end times—but the discussion is not about a God of judgment. The answer is, however, always about our God of grace who is slow to anger and patient with His people.
Revelation 18
By Pastor Brad
In One Hour
“Woe! Woe, O great city, O Babylon, city of power! In one hour your doom has come!”
It sounds like the beginnings of a great movie script.
As the scene unfolds the morning breaks to reveal the devastation from the night before. It is so silent and eerie that even the birds are too afraid to sing. Those that have survived through the cries of the night wake to discover a sea of rubble where once the great metropolis stood. Her stature was a symbol of power and wealth known to no other. Those that made her had grown cold to the lives of those living within her reach. The more they distanced themselves to the needs of the people the greater their desire for immortality grew. Authority and supremacy over all of mankind was not enough for the once great leaders of this city. They wanted divinity, lordship over all.
Attention, may I have your attention please. My following comments are in no way a biblical eschatology of scripture on today’s text. Rather, let them serve as a visual illustration of what things may look like when Christ returns.
In my lifetime the greatest single devastating event would be the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. All of which happened in just about one hour. It left us all with a sense of hopelessness and fear. How could this happen to our nation in one of its greater cities? Through the years we have managed to rise above the devastation, which occurred on that day to help us become a stronger nation. But what has happened in the past pales in comparison to what scripture has promised on judgment day.
Let us once again be reminded of the words of Paul, which were penned almost 50 years prior this letter written from John.
We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not destroyed….Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:8-9, 16-18
Christmas Day Worship
Pastor Steve
“Big Celebrations!”
Matthew 2:7-11
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