Presby-Musings

This week we are starting a new sermon series entitled "Haunted" that will take us through the month of October.  If you are wondering if I timed this series to happen during the spooky month of October--wonder no longer. I totally did. But I've been thinking about the idea of this series for quite a while, in fact.  Over the course of my years as a pastor I've had occasion to talk to people in crisis about the things that got them into crisis mode.  Their crises could be quite different, but there's always a common thread that runs through their stories. Maybe their crisis has to do with faith, or their purpose in life.  Maybe they can't seem to get unstuck from addictive and destructive behaviors.   Regardless of their actual experience, virtually every single person was haunted by something from their past that was affecting their present and ruining their vision of the future. Some people were haunted by regret.  Others were haunted by doubts--...

Last week I preached on how our garages, storage units and closets full of stuff have become our temples where we worship idols and sacrifice to demons. It was a rousing sort of sermon as you can imagine. If you read the previous post, then you know that my wife took what I said pretty seriously.  And because my wife has the spiritual gifts of discernment, prophecy and persuasion... I basically just do what she says when she's had a "word" from the Lord. I'm learning. The sermon that I preached last week was essentially an admission that we have a problem...  Christmas is in crisis.  Our culture worships the false gods of Materialism and Consumerism at Christmas, and Christians are doing a lousy job of resisting the very same idolatry. But as most of us know, it's not enough to just admit you have a problem, you have to do something about it. So... what do we do about all of our stuff? Read 2 Corinthians 9:6-15 Here's the back story on that pas...