Two thousand years ago, Jesus lived out the Gospel among us. He taught his followers while he was with them and then, after he ascended, they were filled with the Holy Spirit. That is the beginning of the church. Those Jesus taught then taught others, who taught others, who taught others, sharing the gospel in every generation since.This is church history, the sharing of the gospel from Jesus to us, throughout the world and throughout time. Faithful men and women have studied the Scripture, and struggled in challenging times and against challenging philosophies. Many died for their faith and many more lived out their faith.
There are also, of course, faithless, those who actively denied Jesus, actively opposed Jesus, or just simply put their faith in the wrong hope while thinking they were serving Jesus.
When we study church history, we learn from those who came before us. We can learn from those who were faithful, who brought Christ to new cultures and places, wrestling with the questions and challenges of their times so that those (like us) who came later could build on their wisdom.
We can learn from those who missed the mark, learning how they were pulled off the right path, how their teachings miss key emphases in Scripture, how easy it is for sin to corrupt us or distract us into wrong fights and distorted priorities.
Without exploring this history, we miss out on valuable lessons from those who have been faithful and those who have made mistakes. We also miss out on seeing all the ways God has been faithful and led his people through the generations. As Psalm 77 reminds us, when we are feeling discouraged or lost, we can think “about the former days, the years of long ago” and be encouraged again.
We have not been left to walk this path alone: We have a community around us and a community who came before us to help us navigate the challenges of our times so that we too can be among the faithful, passing the gospel to those in the next generations.
Author: patrick
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why study church history
Recently, I was asked to write a little explanation about why we should study church history. Here’s what I wrote: -
some words from the morning
Every story has a beginning. Often, a person doesn’t even know it’s the beginning of a story. It’s just a new day. Then a wizard shows up at your door and invites you on an adventure. That’s a noteworthy way to begin a story. But most stories aren’t like that. Even if there are wizards out there, they tend to keep to themselves these days and the adventures of old don’t seem to happen anymore. I’ve never had one at least. Even still, I miss them. I miss the opportunity to go on a quest. What kind of quests do we have? We’re out of milk. Not exactly soul stirring.
Instead of heroes and villains, we have bureaucracy, paperwork, and car repairs. Just a lot of little bothers. Maybe that’s why I love really windy days like today. Cool, crisp fall day, the wind blowing through the pines and the oaks, stirring the needles, shaking the leaves, loosening the yellowing holdouts and taking them on their own journey eventually to the ground. The wind is dramatic, stirring even my mundane soul, lost in its own frustrations and struggling to find hope in a world that’s just wearing and worrying without any sense of value.
We take small things so seriously, wanting to have something stir and move, some kind of cause to take up and fight for, usually more enervating than ennobling. Even Christianity is so plainly mundane, the story of God entering into this world, overcoming sin, calling and empowering to take on a new kind of vision for life and hope, calling to see all of creation as part of this dance, this song, this renewing exultation of the divine and physical reuniting. Here’s your bulletin. Take your seat. Stand up. Sit down. Listen to the sermon. Go in peace.
It’s a square dance.
Week in and week out. Do-Si-Do.
Wearying without end.
Then one day, the wind blows. Stirs. Moves. A little whisper at first, then… something more, bringing a scent with it: salt air, orange blossoms, sage. A story awakening its beginning.
Is it even real? Am I imagining, wanting so much to have something new my nose conspires with my brain?
I don’t know. Not all beginnings are actually real. Some sputter out, too many of those have done that. I love the wind, but I don’t trust it. I want the new story to begin, but I am tired of single chapters and plots cut short just when they were getting interesting. Too many cancellations because of low ratings or some kind of cost-analysis decision. Scenes dropped.
But there’s that wind. That wind. That scent that hits me again, coming from the west. Where from? It doesn’t say. Just gusts and stills, waking.
Waking to what? It’s not a square dance. It’s more wild, more wondering.
There’s not a wizard, but there’s something. Or is there? I want a wizard, someone to tell me how long to wait, what or who to wait for, to get ready.
I think I’m too eager, the wanting turning a hope into a aroma, a weariness of the empty frenzy hearing things that aren’t really there.
But that wind. It’s there. It still stirs. So what of it?
I should probably make some coffee. Do some laundry. Mundane, yeah. But it’s good to be ready, just in case it’s a something and not another nothing.
The thing is I don’t have any more stories in me anymore, not that I can find. Beaten finally by life, stretched thin and snapped, tensions raised then slighted off the edge. Even the failings aren’t that dramatic anymore, reduced to dismissal by those without any credentials or evidence of skill. Gauged as extraneous and reduced to seeking some semblance of favor from the nameless, faceless, storyless, bureaucracy that certainly doesn’t care about who I am or what I’ve tried to do.
The wind gusts, my soul slinks back into old memories, stories started and slushed away. Shushed, mushed. The hope and ambition replaced by anger and woe. Oh? Just whoa! Like horses stopped in mid-gallop, stumbling in the stopping, caught in their reins, knotted up and not free. Where? Just there.
Moses as a prince, frustrated by opportunity given and misconstrued. Tossed out. Joseph faithful, lofty dreams and arrogant leads, enslaved, achieving then finding there’s still lower to go from bottoming out. The iron of the chains in his very soul. Cain? Seeing another get the prize, the attention, the favor when there’s no indication of why? Be watchful Cain, sin is crouching at the door. Don’t open it.
Elijah, victory over the priests of Baal, but what for? Proof that the living God is more real, a great story indeed. But the faithless still hold the power and the wind is with them, not him. Slinks off to a secluded valley, left with his thoughts which aren’t helping. How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Enemy? It’s just life. Don’t be so dramatic. The day after day sorrow, that’s real. The thought wrestling, that’s ever present. But enemy? Like it’s a story worth telling, worth asking after? Whispers not of the wind sneak in behind the hope, a cracked sewer pipe seeping into the freshening stream.
I want the story to be real, I want to have the hope that there’s a meaning, a Way in this all, to hope beyond just the everlasting and eternal, to hope in the near and withheld. That there is an opening, widening and beginning all at once, renewing and favor in the wind that stirs and blows.
Every story has a beginning. But not every whisper or knock or even strongly blowing wind is such a beginning. The wanting doesn’t turn it into a something, the yearning doesn’t open the gated community.
It’s wearying watching. Put on the desert island by a ship I once thought my own, castaway but not alone, which is itself a hope, a hope that there were stories that didn’t end with a whimper but gathered together threads and other tales too. I wait and I watch once more, to see if it’s a beginning or just another day waiting for aweigh.
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The Cross
The cross is everywhere in our culture. The legacy of many centuries of Christendom, where it was a marker of faith, then became a marker of culture, ethnicity, power. A symbol of rejection and punishment becomes the marker of acceptability. That which Paul once called “A scandal to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks,” is a topic awash in Christianese, the insider language that has spiritual sounding phrases that often are unintelligible to those outside of Christianity and often bereft of real meaning for those inside.
The cross has become fashion, first for buildings then for people. We are scandalized when people find it a scandal. We declare fools those who find it foolish. It has become a prop for us in religious and culture wars.
Still a source of meaning for those who seek salvation, it has been co-opted by others for their own purposes that differ than those of Christ.
Our familiarity with it as a topic in Christian theology is good, it is one of the central themes that mark an Evangelical faith. Yet, our familiarity with it also is bad, as we play into the cultural assumptions that linger from Christian domination. Talk about the cross, scandalously, has become glib. Which is likely a big reason why we in the West are in a post-Christian context.
The glib ubiquity has inoculated many of those who grew up near the church or in it. They think they know the Gospel, and the gospel they encountered had no power. Except maybe the same power that the world already assumes and abuses. That’s not the transformative power of the Kingdom that Jesus preached and the cross expresses, albeit in an initially disempowering way.
We don’t really trust it so drift back into the vacuous messages of the glib ubiquity.
Peter was afraid during the trial and crucifixion, so he denied Jesus. He experienced the confrontations of power and didn’t trust Jesus would be the victor.
In our era, people deny Jesus because they don’t see the reason for the bother. The cosmic confrontation has been reduced to a personal preference: Which ice cream flavor is your favorite? What is your favorite sports team? What religion do you follow?
The cross has been co-opted and we in the church have let it, even encouraged it, wanting to use Jesus for our own ends, to support our own priority and power and influence. We’ve become the sorts of people who put Jesus on the cross, wanting to be wise to the culture and gain approval from the religious.
This week, let us consider the cross in a fresh way. Think about what it meant as an act, as an experience. Think about what it means in your life, how we encounter hardship, or struggle, or temptation. Think of the cross in social terms: who did Jesus include? Think in terms of strategy: how did God go about saving the world?
The cross is a confrontation, a strike against our patterns of social and intellectual assumptions. The cross is a salvation, a salvation for our inner state of existential sinfulness, and a salvation from our external state of social divisions and manipulations.
Atonement is the doctrine of this salvation, being restored to at-one-ment with God and with others, love begetting love. The cross is the declaration of atonement that declares God’s radical love for the cosmos, sending the Son to die, gathering all those who have been condemned to death, and inviting them to be reborn.
We become new, losing the strongholds and hangups of spiritual, social, and psychological dysfunction as we find our identity in the scandalous and foolish wisdom of God.
This wisdom transcends human wisdom and attempts to find meaning in our ego’s limited perspective. Because of this the cross is an invitation to let go. It is a confrontation, drawing a line between the way of God and the ways of the systems of this world. The latter promise meaning and value and life, but it is only the way of God that can fulfill such promises.
What promises are we indulging that run counter to the cross? What promises are we pushing against because we are afraid of the cross or dismissive of it? Who are we crucifying in the name of an insufficient theology of the cross? How have we co-opted the cross for our purposes? What is the meaning of the cross in our present society and how can we reinstill a sense of its scandal and foolishness so that it has the confronting power once more?
That is the topic of this week. If it’s not challenging or difficult, even to those of us who are familiar with it, then we’re not getting into the depths of what it means and what it calls for.
Ecce homo. Ecce deus
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We Can Only Do So Much
We can only do so much.
It’s one thing if we’re lazy or distracted or just don’t care. Then when things don’t work out, we understand and maybe even can blame ourselves.
Then there are times in which we’ve done everything we can, poured out all our energy and focus, make good decisions and prayed at every point.
When after all that things don’t move forward or fall apart, we feel not only the weight of the tasks but also the creeping despair that there’s never enough, that we’re not enough.
Often the whisper within these moments, which we dare not speak aloud, is that we begin to think God isn’t enough. Or maybe he is, but just doesn’t care about me.
The people of Israel felt this when Moses tarried what they felt was too long on the mountain. They needed some spiritual relief, something to do because they couldn’t face the “what if” questions about being abandoned. They made an idol of gold. Think of the money they spent, the craftsmanship, all the time and energy they poured out.
Elijah felt like this after his major victory over the prophets of Baal. Having dazzled the people, demolished the power of false gods, shown the Lord to be mighty, fear got into his soul and he had enough of his life. He wanted out of it. He was overwhelmed with his seemingly having to face the powers of the world on his own without seeing long term victory.
We can only do so much and when we’ve exhausted ourselves, waited overlong, seen our good work turn to dust, by the decisions of the powers over us or just by what sure seems to be really bad luck, we feel like Elijah did or like the Israelites did.
Or like Peter did: “I don’t know him,” he tells his accusers, which isn’t too far from the truth really since the man who didn’t defend himself and ends up on the cross wasn’t at all like the Jesus he thought he knew.
When we got overwhelmed, our shadow selves emerge, reminding us of our failures and incompleteness, or if we’re more outwardly shadowy, getting us enraged at whoever we can blame for whatever reason.
We blame and accuse, ourselves or others, because we can’t dare to speak the deeper truth that we don’t really trust God in this moment.
There’s no easy response to this.
The answer, of course, is that we are called to trust anyhow. To trust that God is working things out. To trust that even if we haven’t done enough, God is enough. To trust that even if things have fallen apart, that the creator of the very universe is able, and willing, to bring renewal. Even death doesn’t have the final word.
We can only do so much, but rather than lead us to distraction or despair, this can be a statement of faith. We can do what we have been called to do, and while it is never enough, the mission isn’t up to us. Our calling isn’t up to us. Our hope, certainly, isn’t up to us.
If we fail and stumble, that’s not news to God. God isn’t depending on us. God invites us to participate, to resonate hope and faith and love to those around us. But when we’re not enough, when things around us are too much, God is still God.
We are invited to rest because God knows we can only do so much. We are invited to thanksgiving because there’s so much to complain about in this world we need to be intentional about focusing on the good and the ever possible. We are invited to feast, because God is good and we can join with all God’s people in embracing the bounty that we do have, all while trusting that what we lack does not define us.
We can only do so much and in response God doesn’t say, “Do more” or “exhaust yourself and everyone around you.” No. When we do what we can, we can say with the force of Scripture behind us, that we need to rest.
Come what may, we know there is a rhythm of work and rest in this universe God created. In stopping, in resisting the frenzy, there may be consequences, but those aren’t bigger than God’s love for us.
We can only do so much. And God says, “Thank you, that’s enough.”
The promise of eschatology is one of rest, relief, renewal. We have hope that even if it’s never enough, things will keep interfering in our best laid plans, God is still at work. That what we do still has meaning because God uses what we can do in ways that are far beyond what we can imagine.
Life is hard. The world is full of expectations. Our inner self feels beaten and insufficient.
And that’s fine. Because we serve the Living God who loves us even still for who he has made us to be. We serve the empowering God who isn’t calling us to exhausting but just wants our daily obedience. Which is usually a lot simpler than the long lists we come up with .
What is God calling to you this week?
What is God calling you to let go this week?
Who is God calling you to be?
Stop. Listen to the gentle whisper.
Trust that God really is working in and through your life.
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Rooted
On August 4, I preached at Hope Christian Church in La Puente. The passage was Colossians 2:2-8. And my wife Amy and daughter Vianne (age 12) led worship!
As is my recent habit, I’m preaching more freeform, reading through the passage on my own and then talking through it when I’m up front. I have some basic points I make at the end (in case I go completely blank, which hasn’t happened yet!). This is really me trusting that God has been working through me over the years, and in being open with both my own story and the leanings of the moment (and 12+ years of teaching experience) seeing what happens.
Here’s the basic points at the end:
What are we called to do?
•Trust that God is God
•Grow in the Faith
*Understanding *Emotions *Actions•Hold onto thanksgiving
•Be discerning about other
solutions and pathsRemember:
When you forget or lose track of who you are (in sin, distraction, wrong philosophies, so many other ways) start again by remembering who God is and what God has done
He invites and empowers us to be rooted in Him
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Considering the Cross
Read: Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 22; Isaiah 53; Matthew 26-27; 1 Corinthians 1:10-31
The cross is everywhere in our culture. The legacy of many centuries of Christendom, where it was a marker of faith, then became a marker of culture, ethnicity, power. A symbol of rejection and punishment becomes the marker of acceptability. That which Paul once called “A scandal to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks,” is a topic awash in Christianese, the insider language that has spiritual sounding phrases that often are unintelligible to those outside of Christianity and often bereft of real meaning for those inside.
The cross has become fashion, first for buildings then for people. We are scandalized when people find it a scandal. We declare fools those who find it foolish. It has become a prop for us in religious and culture wars.
Still a source of meaning for those who seek salvation, it has been co-opted by others for their own purposes that differ than those of Christ.
Our familiarity with it as a topic in Christian theology is good, it is one of the central themes that mark an Evangelical faith. Yet, our familiarity with it also is bad, as we play into the cultural assumptions that linger from Christian domination. Talk about the cross, scandalously, has become glib. Which is likely a big reason why we in the West are in a post-Christian context.
The glib ubiquity has inoculated many of those who grew up near the church or in it. They think they know the Gospel, and the gospel they encountered had no power.
Peter was afraid during the trial and crucifixion, so he denied Jesus. He experienced the confrontations of power and didn’t trust Jesus would be the victor.
In our era, people sometimes deny Jesus because they don’t see the reason for the bother. The cosmic confrontation has been reduced to a personal preference: Which ice cream flavor is your favorite? What is your favorite sports team? What religion do you follow?
The cross has been co-opted and we in the church have let it, even encouraged it, wanting to use Jesus for our own ends, to support our own priority and power and influence. We’ve become the sorts of people who put Jesus on the cross, wanting to be wise to the culture and gain approval from the religious.
This week, let us consider the cross in a fresh way. Think about what it meant as an act, as an experience. Think about what it means in your life, how we encounter hardship, or struggle, or temptation. Think of the cross in social terms: who did Jesus include? Think in terms of strategy: how did God go about saving the world?
The cross is a confrontation, a strike against our patterns of social and intellectual assumptions. The cross is a salvation, a salvation for our inner state of existential sinfulness, and a salvation from our external state of social divisions and manipulations.
Atonement is the doctrine of this salvation, being restored to at-one-ment with God and with others, love begetting love. The cross is the declaration of atonement that declares God’s radical love for the cosmos, sending the Son to die, gathering all those who have been condemned to death, and inviting them to be reborn.
We become new, losing the strongholds and hangups of spiritual, social, and psychological dysfunction as we find our identity in the scandalous and foolish wisdom of God.
This wisdom transcends human wisdom and attempts to find meaning in our ego’s limited perspective. Because of this the cross is an invitation to let go. It is a confrontation, drawing a line between the way of God and the ways of the systems of this world. The latter promise meaning and value and life, but it is only the way of God that can fulfill such promises.
What promises are we indulging that run counter to the cross? What promises are we pushing against because we are afraid of the cross or dismissive of it? Who are we crucifying in the name of an insufficient theology of the cross? How have we co-opted the cross for our purposes? What is the meaning of the cross in our present society and how can we reinstill a sense of its scandal and foolishness so that it has the confronting power once more?
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Persevering Toward Peace
Earlier this month I had the chance to share the Advent message of Hope at, appropriately, Hope Christian Church in La Puente.
In looking at the nativity passages I was struck by the differences of the angels announcing to the shepherds and the magi going to Herod. The message of hope and deep peace sometimes also involves having to be patient in hope to see the fullness of the promise take shape.
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Pressing on with the Spirit
On August 28, I had the chance to preach on one of my favorite topics at Hope Christian Church in La Puente, CA. A topic and a city close to my heart.
Here are my sermon notes: Hope 4: Pressing on with the Holy Spirit
Here’s a link to the service
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Who to be?
Hyperichius said, ‘Keep praising God with hymns, and meditating continually, and so lighten the burden of the temptations that attack you. A traveller carrying a heavy burden stops from time to time to take deep breaths, and so makes the journey easier and the burden light.’
~The Desert Fathers
“Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.
Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and you will delight in the richest of fare.
Give ear and come to me;
listen, that you may live.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
my faithful love promised to David.
See, I have made him a witness to the peoples,
a ruler and commander of the peoples.
Surely you will summon nations you know not,
and nations you do not know will come running to you,
because of the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel,
for he has endowed you with splendor.”Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call on him while he is near.
Let the wicked forsake their ways
and the unrighteous their thoughts.
Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
~Isaiah 55:1-8
While out on a walk into the nearby national forest, I saw a doe. Off in the distance, a fleeting moment as it saw me about the same time and bounded higher up the hillside and behind some brush. For many that’s not exciting news. Especially for those who live in relatively rural areas.
Deer are common in much of the country, and yet, for me, it was exciting enough to pull out my phone and text Amy, “I saw a deer!” In the twenty years since I’ve been a regular in these mountains, I’ve never seen a deer.
Most of the other wildlife around, I’ve seen. Squirrels, both gray and ground, coyotes of course, all kinds of birds, bobcats, bears (in the last couple years), even some bighorn sheep when I was camping near the peak of Mt. Baldy and San Bernardino flying squirrels, which would land on a bird feeder at my parents house in the middle of the night and not be bothered when I’d turn on the light.
But I’ve never seen a deer up here even though I’ve seen deer in many other places and assumed deer were native to the area. I’ve long suspected that it has to do with the really huge fires these mountains had in 2003 and in 2008, pretty much encircling the mountain communities with their devastation. Like in Bambi, the deer were driven away.
Then, yesterday, I saw a deer, twice even. Maybe the same deer, as I saw it once while walking up the trail and then again on my way back.
The other day we were watching a movie as a family and I looked up out the kitchen window and saw a hummingbird at the feeder, a nice comforting sight, which encouraged me because I had forgotten to refill it, so hoped the hummers hadn’t given up on me.
Back to watching the movie—Age of Ultron—and then saw more movement outside. Another bird at the feeder, but not a hummingbird. An acorn woodpecker? That’s not a good fit.
Yeah, the woodpecker could hang on the feeder and maneuver around, but the feeder was made for hummingbirds. I got a little worried about what the woodpecker would do (they’re kind of bullies around here) and yet I was curious all the same. Clearly it realized there was something good to be had but it just wasn’t the right sort of bird for that.
It flew off finally after a few minutes, thankfully not knocking the feeder down or breaking it by trying to get through the ceramic flowers.
That moment has stuck with me since, not so much the bother about the woodpecker but more a growing sense of how much I try to force some kind of spiritual sustenance at times, and in those seasons where I’m just really caught up in frenzies, I add frustration about not experiencing God’s peace or guidance.
In the past I’ve felt guilt, that I’m not doing the this or the that which I know I should be doing or anger, at myself or at God, about the season of flurried demands that I am in and wishing for a setting that would allow me to recover a sense of my self and focus on those tasks that are life-giving rather than life-draining.
I know how that woodpecker feels.
Yet, there’s this regular invitation the Spirit offers. I can’t be a woodpecker trying to get into a hummingbird feeder, I can’t force myself into peace or orchestrate being handed the kinds of opportunities that I think I need to develop the rhythms I want. I’ve tried doing those and will admit that even in the last couple of years as new opportunities for restoration have arisen, I still find myself striking my head against the walls and knocking at the doors that never get answered.
Impatience, irritations, feelings of regret combined with pride-violating experiences of being overlooked in my areas of strength by the gatekeepers. I can get locked into the pattern of “what ifs” or “it could have beens.”
Given the length of my journey in seeking a place of calling this dispiriting retrospective clouds my whole sense of self and depresses my sense of present faithfulness in doing the work I have before me. I hang on, not feeling able or increasingly even willing to keep at it. I wasn’t made for this and I wonder why God shut other doors only to have me stuck on a feeder I can’t feed from.
It’s me, I know, though it took me a long time in my 20s and early 30s to finally realize this, not excusing the circumstances or justifying being mistreated at times, but coming more and more to the realization that while I can’t force opportunities, I can attend to what I say I believe by re-orienting my emotions in an attitude of praise and noticing.
It’s not a quick turn, to say the least. A sea-going cargo ship carries tons and tons of weight, hard to stop and hard to turn once on its way. So too my sense of self and emotional trajectory can get locked into destinations of frustration and despair, yet in the work of God I’m invited to look around and see from a different perspective, to become, to be present with myself in a new way. The discipline of this turning isn’t itself easy, an intentional embrace of faith, from knowing what I should do and trusting that this is actually what, and who, God calls me to be.
In the turning toward praise, in the seeking of stillness, in the letting go of those areas of frenzy and assumed identity that promise so much but leave me hanging, I begin to not only see differently but be differently. The fruit of the Spirit begins to grow and ripen within, I am no longer the outsider to myself and the world I long for but am increasingly the person who I truly was made to be, oriented in God’s perspective because I begin by praising the God who has variously haunted and comforted me my whole life.
I choose the Spirit rather than wanting, ever wanting, the sustenance that seems so sweet yet isn’t available to me.
Do I trust God? I’ll admit that I struggle with this.
Will I praise God even still? That’s the invitation to enter into a posture of trust even with my tangled doubts and memories of being abandoned on the sides of roads and left out of relevant opportunities. If I am who I am made to be in the Spirit, living the day with faithfulness and praising God for what I see and what I am able to do, then I know that this God of life itself can bring the sweetness and fullness into this moment, into this place, into this season.
Come what may, I can experience peace and hope and expressed love that all indeed is well.
God is with us. Do we see and respond to this transforming reality? Or do we want the world to create idols for us that mimic a sense of the divine in fractured patterns of insufficient meaning?
That’s the crossroads for me today and every day.
Life awaits. It begins with praise. Who or what shall we praise this day?
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
You will go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands.
Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper,
and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.
This will be for the Lord’s renown,
for an everlasting sign,
that will endure forever.”~Isaiah 55:8-13
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Walking with the Holy Spirit
On August 21, I had the chance to preach on one of my favorite topics at Hope Christian Church in La Puente, CA. A topic and a city close to my heart.
Here are my sermon notes: Walking with the Holy Spirit
Here’s a link to the service.
