SERMON ON LOVE

If I had one sermon to preach, it would be on the love of God. There isn't a conflict in the world today that couldn't be resolved by love. This word could free us from war, racism, and poverty. Injustice, ignorance, prejudice, tyranny, oppression, exploitation: all these things- love. The Bible says God is love.

And if you don’t remember a thing that I say today, remember this, “God loves you.” God loves you the way a parent loves a child. He wants to have a relationship with you.

Let me ask you a question: What do you believe? What controls you? Today, we live in a world of scores of religions and worldviews, where persuasion has become a force in the hands of leaders, celebrities, and politicians. Where does one turn?

I came to a point in my early life where I had to make a choice to follow God because the ideas that were circulating and the people I looked up to seemed to have all the answers, but were they asking the right questions? Was the Bible Truth? Was it going to fail me? Was it going to change me? And as I read this Book, I accepted it to be the very blood and body of Christ.

At Christmas, so many problems distract us from the reason of the season: disease, family concerns, boredom, feeling rejected, moral issues... We ask, “Why does God allow pain? If God loved us, why doesn’t He come and end it all?”

The Bible teaches that we have a mind and a body, but they contain a disease- sin, and by our sinful nature, we have all fallen short of a holy God.

The Bible says, "The wages of sin is death." Woody Allen commented, “I’m not afraid of death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” But in the life of everyone who lives, there will come a time when life will cease to exist. Everyone who has turned with the pages of history has become history.

We have no eternal hope, but in Christ, we have hope. Jesus came and took the punishment for our sin, the sins of the whole world. Christ shed his blood to pay the price for your salvation.

What must we do? Jesus said "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved." Recieve Jesus today as your Lord and Savior.

SERMON ON SENSE

Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who do see may become blind.”

This book is full of movers and shakers who had sense, motivation, made decisions, had opinions, were sound in their beliefs. They listened and obeyed, not just heard. They envisioned, not just saw. They felt people’s pain, not just gave condolences. Moses, David, Paul- all men who experienced the awe and the wonder of a relationship with God.

We are called to this life to be the light in a dark world. The Book of John says, “Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”

Why does wickedness and perversion rage in men's hearts? In the 20th Century, during rumors of nuclear warfare, Einstein said, “Science has brought forth this danger, but the real problem is in the minds and hearts of men.”

Throughout the life of Jesus, He continually cried about the sin nature of man. In Matthew 17:17, he said, “O unbelieving and perverse generation, how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you?" Deuteronomy thirty-two, eight said, “They are a nation without discernment; there is no sense in them."

SERMON ON UNCERTAINTY

Now today I want to talk on the subject of uncertainty as the statistics that I’ve been reading and the people I’ve been talking to point to a state of unrest in their lives and the lives of the people around them. I’ve received many calls from people who’ve asked me to pray or visit one of their friends or family who’ve gotten cancer. There’s a cancer outbreak in our nation today.

My mother passed away last year from melanoma. She was forty-eight years old and a woman of God, who left this earth in peace with those she had relationships.

What is peace? Peace is simply being in harmony with God and with people. It's freedom from disorder. The opposite of peace is being in opposition to God and to people. Do you have peace today?

Now some people are impossible to please. As we look back on our lives, we find that many times we could not please someone no matter how hard we tried because they simply were not at peace with themselves. Mother Theresa said, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” We all have the same nature, the same coat of skin, the same blood, yet we put up so many fences because of our pride, and the results are unequivocal: war, racism, gossip, hatred.

With so much technology and worldwide communication, it's like we're sitting in a skybox waiting and watching as wicked world events unfold: nations warring against nations; evil powers in the world; global warming; tsunami waves wiping out entire villages. Toward what? Where is it all heading? Luke 21:9 said, “When you hear of wars and revolutions, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away."

Why are we here? Why do we do the things that we do? Now I am certain that many reading this have beautiful stories of their children, their families, their lives. I am certain that there are tales of regret, broken friendships, loss… God can restore you today; God can heal you: all you have to do is let Him into your heart, to be your Lord and Savior.

Do you have a relationship with God? Many of us know Him but question His ways. The Bible says, “God’s ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts than our thoughts.” There is much mystery in God. We look through a very dark veil, the Bible says. Winston Churchill said it this way: “Without…uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed.” And 1 Corinthians 8:2, 3 notes, “If anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know; but if anyone loves God, he is known by Him.”

If you watch the news, just about everyone has different views and they all think that they’re 100% correct. Some of us enjoy watching televangelists. Others don’t as they suspect that they do bad things and propose things that aren’t true. God bless them! I don’t care what they believe as long as they get people to Christ!

Now I'm a simple man. I'm not a theologian or even a good preacher. There are thousands of other preachers ten times better than I am. I don't possess any hidden powers, but there is power in the Word of God to save souls, to change lives.

The Bible is the most-sold book in human history. There are millions of other books that have been published about Christ; commentaries on all the angles forming views on Jesus’ life. John 21:25 says that “… there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

What miracles did he do? What did he come to fulfill? What message did he want us to hear? The greatest message of Christ was fulfilled in his silence: those seventy-two hours that Jesus lay in the grave and death could not hold him: Christ rose again.

Now I don’t understand the full reason God sent His Son (there are things that even the toppest theologian cannot claim to discern), but the Bible says that “God loved us so much that He sent His one and only Son into the world to die on the cross that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have everlasting life” and all one has to do in response to this gift is receive him.

TESTIMONY

Chase Parrish grew up in a Christian family. At age seven, Chase repeated his mother as he confessed he was a sinner, accepted Christ as Savior, recognized him as Lord, and later acknowledged his salvation before his church family. God spoke to him soon after when a missionary from Africa spoke at his Sunday school class and Chase decided he was going to be an evangelist.

What Chase had experienced a year earlier and for many years to come drew him very close to God. Three of his five family members, excluding his dad and brother, contracted Lyme’s Disease. They had severe pain for eight years. His mother had heart attacks. His sister constantly lost the use of her legs. Chase himself had five strokes, the second of which put him in a two-day coma. During the coma, Chase’s mother prayed that if God would raise him up, she would give him completely to God. Suddenly, he woke up and couldn't remember anything he had ever known. He had to relearn everything.

At nine years of age, Chase’s mother discovered they had Lyme’s Disease and they were treated for three years and then cured in 1999.

One year after they had been cured, Chase’s mother got cancer. She became very sick and Chase comforted her every night by reading the Psalms over her bed. She went through three radiations and two chemos and in March 2006, God took his mother home.

Through it all, Chase learned that everyday was a gift from God to be used for His glory alone. Chase recognized his gift of evangelism at the age of six. His first church sermon was at age thirteen. Now, at churches, schools, nursing homes, sports leagues, and the streets, he preaches the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. LET IT BE KNOWN…