Skip to main content

2022: A Year of Growth

At the beginning of last year I preached a sermon, a subsequently posted a blog, about my theme word for the year. Every year I try to have a word or theme to focus on and better understand. Last year's word was grace, and boy was it appropriate. With our society, and sadly many Christians, unable to have meaningful disagreements and conversations anymore it was easy to forget that we need to show people grace and depend upon God's grace and not our own righteousness.

This year my word is growth. I want and need to grow. I want to grow closer to Jesus. I want to grow personally in many areas. I want to expand my horizons and push myself to grow as a Christian and as a man. I want my congregation to grow closer to God. 

I'm keeping it short this week, but I encourage you to find a theme word for the year. It doesn't mean limiting yourself to just things that directly have to do with that theme, but it does help focus our attention a bit. We can't do everything at once and sometimes need to take things one step at a time.

Pray for me as I try to grow in all areas of my life. I would be happy to pray for you and your endeavors and striving to be more like Jesus. May the love of the Father, the grace of the Lord Jesus, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Thankful

Today is Thanksgiving, the day that we are supposed to celebrate all the things we are thankful for. It is a time of family reunions, football, and turkey eating. I sincerely pray that each and every one of you has a good day today. I'll admit that being thankful has not been easy for me this year. As pretty much all of you know, my mother passed away December of last year. Though she had been in the hospital for months, we were not expecting it. In fact I was sure she would be finally able to come home within a matter of weeks. Instead she peacefully passed on into the arms of Jesus, whom she loved more dearly than anyone else. As you can imagine, the entire family was heart broken. After what can easily be described as the worst Christmas ever, I returned to home to Illinois. It was here that I finally broke down. I spent the next months doing everything except being thankful. I cursed God, wept, screamed, begged to have her back, and was generally not the nicest person to be...

What is Theology?

Greetings all! For the first true post I have decided to cover what will be one of the defining aspects of this blog; theology. I know that when I was growing up theology wasn't a word that was used in the churches I attended. In fact I don't recall ever hearing the word until I was in high school, and even then it was used negatively like theology was a bad thing. Theology is inseparable from Bible study, Christian living, and being a disciple of Jesus in general. It is an indispensable part of being a Christian. The thing is we haven't always treated it that way. We have allowed our theology to fall by the wayside, believing it to be useless or not appropriate. So what is theology exactly, and why is it so important? What is Theology? The word theology simply means "the study of God." The goal of theology is to reveal who God is, and when we know God we also come to know ourselves, sin, the world, and so on. What we've done in the past (and this may ju...

The Name of God

In the book of Exodus we are introduced to many important elements that appear throughout the rest of the Bible. This is where we meet Moses, the first prophet sent to the nation of Israel. It is in Exodus that we first learn of the tabernacle and God's intention of living among his people. It is in Exodus that we witness the first Passover, which is the type of what is to come in Jesus. There are several other events that we could look to in Exodus, but there is one in particular that is very important that we have largely ignored; God revealing his name. We typically only refer to God by his titles. We call him Lord, Father, Judge, King, and God (yes, God is technically a title). I would like to emphasize now that there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing so. In fact I would say that it is right for us recognize the power and authority of God in what we call him. What today's post is about is the fact that we have forgotten or even ignored the fact that God reveals his n...