Father, we calm ourselves now. The music is set aside. The exuberance and excitement of being able to express to you the feelings and the worship of our hearts through song with others, as wonderful and powerful as that is, now is the time where we [...]

Father we thank you for the privilege that we have in this country to freely assemble. We don't worry about what the government, or the police, or rival groups, or religious persecutors might do to us. We can gather. We can come. We can [...]

Father, we begin where we ought to begin, by talking to you, because this is your plan we're reading about. This is your truth. And you superintended the very writing of the documents that we are considering. And so, though John wrote it with [...]

And let's prepare our hearts. Let's just pray, come before the Lord and purposely, intentionally, still, calm those hearts, our thoughts before God, making a determination that we're not going to let anything distract us, disturb us, [...]

So at the risk of sounding a bit mushy, let me just say I love you. I love this church, and you may remember in the gospel of Luke, it says that when His hour had come, Jesus sat down with his disciples and he said with fervent desire, "I have [...]

Father, even as we've had a meal most of us before we've gotten here, we now sit down to a spiritual meal. We're recalling the night when you had a meal with your disciples, what you shared with them during that time, and what you [...]

Father, we calm our hearts and we give you, like Paul said in the book of Romans, we present our bodies before you as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable, which is our reasonable service. Lord, we pray that you would, through this time together, [...]

Would you please turn in your Bibles to the Gospel of John, Chapter 14. We were unable to finish last week. We took the Lord's supper together. I aimed to do a chapter or so. I didn't even make it through a chapter last week, but that [...]

I am indebted to a guy by the name of Stephen Langton who was the Archbishop of Canterbury back in the 1200s. Because in 1227, the year before he died, he decided it would be helpful if we had in our bibles chapters and verses. Up to that point, [...]

Father, we now focus our hearts, we calm them before you. We do so, because we know you, and we have come to trust you. And in this time of prayer, we ask you to be our teacher, that your Holy Spirit would break the bread of life, the word of God [...]

Father, we want to commit the evening into your hands, pray that you would take away the distractive thoughts, Lord, that would be there. As this is a divided nation, I can only surmise that any large group is a divided group. And I don't [...]

So there were three sisters, elderly sisters, who live together. Their ages were 92, 94, and 96, respectively. They were old gals. They had survived, and they were sharing a home. And as they were getting older, they were getting more frail. And the [...]

When I was growing up, funerals creeped me out. My mother told me that it was because when I was quite young I had a classmate die. And we went to his funeral. And I was like in grade school at that time. My first experience with somebody that I [...]

Gospel of John, chapter 10. One of the most famous plays by William Shakespeare is his play Hamlet. And there's a famous line in the third act in the first scene, some of which you know. When I say it, you're going to know it. You're [...]

Father, we want to pray as we have announced Sunday. We want to pray for this nation where you said, in your Word, that if those who are your people who are called by your name would humble themselves, and pray, and seek your face, and turn from [...]

We're in John, Chapter 9 tonight and we'll see how far we get before we take the Lord's supper. But some of you may remember years ago on television, Art Linkletter, anybody remember that name, OK, you do. So he hosted a program [...]

Father we ask You to break the bread of life to us, the word of God. As Job said, "I have a esteemed the words of His mouth more than my necessary food." Lord, I pray that we would be nourished, we would be encouraged, we would be [...]

Now Father, once again, we want to commit the hearing of our ears to the speaking of Your word. For we remember our Lord Jesus said, "whoever has ears to hear, let him hear," implying that not everybody who has words going into their head [...]

Father, thank you for the opportunity we have to, in the middle of our week, put everything aside, come from different parts of this city and even area, even the state, for I know people who travel from a long distance to come on Wednesday nights [...]

We are in the Gospel of John, but I looked. I saw that the Gospel of John chapter 7 has 53 verses. And ain't no way I'm going to do 53 verses outside on Wednesday night in the breeze with a fire going on before we take communion. So what [...]

Father, we give you this time during the week as part of our worship back to you. It's a way for us to say that we love you enough, we worship you so much, that what you say to us is worth our listening to, that gathering together as a group, [...]

Father, thank you for this group of people. That's my prayer. I'm so thankful that I look out and see familiar faces of those who through the years, Lord, have grown. And we have experienced things together, and that love is deep. Your [...]

Father, we open up our hearts along with the Bibles that we brought with us. We are interested, Lord, in the life of Jesus, the words that he spoke, the works that he performed. We're interested in knowing about them, knowing more about you. [...]

Father, we're especially excited tonight because of the material we find ourselves in in Scripture. The Gospel of John is always rich, a gold mine, a treasure trove of truth, an insight into the nature and character, the authority and love of [...]

Let's open our Bibles or we already did. John chapter 3. We made it down to verse 21 last time. Then we stopped. Now verse 22. Let's just start taking a peek at it. "After these things, Jesus and His disciples came into the land of [...]

Father, we now just want to take everything from our minds and give you an open hearted attitude, an open mind to receive. Lord, we want to push away any prejudices of interpretation or of ideas. We are firmly anchored in the cross, even as this [...]

We have, at the beginning of this chapter, what I see as sort of the equivalent of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. You remember, some of you, do you not, CS Lewis's the Chronicles of Narnia and the first book, The Lion, the Witch, and [...]

As you turn in your Bibles to the gospel of John, Chapter 1, a question to ask yourselves is, what is your view of God? In particular, what is your view of Jesus? Some would say, well, I picture Him as a King, He's enthroned. Others would say, [...]

John, Chapter 1. In the Old Testament, Solomon dedicated the temple. The temple was a symbol of God's presence upon the earth. As he dedicated the temple, Father David had saved up the wherewithal to do it. Solomon built it, and as he dedicated [...]

Father, we want to thank you for this incredible journey we've been able to take in this first historical book of the early church, one that has been rendered for us in holy scripture. So we're able to see the devotion and the dedication [...]

I have a couple of friends who absolutely love the weather. You know, a lot of people say, well, what's the weather like? It's like the weather, that's like such a shallow topic. But to them, it's like their favorite topic. In [...]

Father, it's going to be 30 weeks that we will have been in the Book of Acts by next week. And we have seen how the gospel has gone from, as Jesus said and promised, Jerusalem, all Judea, Samaria, then to the utmost or uttermost parts of the [...]

Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for your Holy Spirit who has not just the word of God to break to us corporately, but You're able to take a promise, a warning, an anthem, and You're able to take that and just deliver that [...]

So we're in the book of Acts, chapter 24 before we take the Lord's supper together. There was a family that moved to a town, and a local pastor in that town invited them to church. And the husband, the head of the family said, well, I [...]

Turn in your bibles to Acts chapter 23. We're in the book of Acts. We're in chapter 23. We're going to pray together, then we're going to jump in. Father, we pause to thank you for your faithfulness. Your track record is [...]

I was thinking today what it would be like, what it could have been like to be on Paul the Apostle's missionary team. And though it sounds at first exciting, I think it would have been tough to be around Paul. It would seem looking into the [...]

Father, we feel it important to pause and to address the author of scripture itself, the divine author. Yes, we know that Luke penned this book. John wrote other books, as did Paul, as did Peter, and so many others. 66 different books, so many [...]

We are in chapter 19 of the book of Acts. If you would turn to Acts chapter 19, we didn't quite finish it last week, little surprise. Can we pray together first? Father, we know that tomorrow is a National Day of Prayer, and though we pray [...]

Father, thank you for just the incredible moments we've already shared, pouring out praise to you. Those are the words. We pour out our praise to you only because you're worthy. And some of us so far this week have had a difficult time. [...]

Could you turn in your Bibles, please, to the book of Acts, Chapter 18, the Book of Acts, Chapter 18. We're going to jump into the scriptures and we're going to finish the chapter. And then we're going to take the Lord's Supper [...]

Book of Acts, Chapter 18, and displayed behind me is the wonderful panorama of this city that we're going to be studying in this chapter tonight, the city of Corinth. And I'll be explaining a little bit about this city that's behind [...]

Father, we deliberately still our hearts before you. We just want to, in prayer, take a breath, so to speak. And we're inviting you to be in charge, be in control, be the teacher, the divine instructor behind the human, flawed instructor. We [...]

Every time I travel I think of Paul the Apostle. Why? Because it's estimated that Paul the Apostle, in his lifetime, traveled 13,400 miles. He didn't get on an airplane, didn't have a hotel room. He usually went from prison to prison, [...]

A brother showed me before the service started a bulletin from 1987. We had been in this building about a year, and I was just looking at the design, the front cover of the design, just where we've come from and what it took to design something [...]

Father, now we deliberately calm and still our hearts, pushing away any device or any thought that would distract us from you. And I think of the words that this book of acts begins with. The former treatise that I wrote to you oh, Theophilus, of [...]

Now, in the 13th chapter of the book of Acts as you turn there, we're in a new section. There's been a transition. I just want you to know what that is. Beginning in chapter 13, to the end of the book, it has been sometimes referred to as [...]

Father, we just now calm our hearts. We just push everything aside, making ourselves aware that, not only do we have open Bibles, but that all things are naked and open before the One with whom we have to do. As the writer of Hebrews reminds us [...]

Lord, You know the events of our day. You know the thoughts of our mind, those distractions or legitimate good thoughts that we've had, and how we process them. You know how we feel about You, about people around us. You know the kind of depth [...]

I hope you brought a Bible, or, did you bring one? Let's see it. Raise that up. Ah. That's such a sweet picture. So how many of you, and if you don't, I don't care. It's OK. But you don't carry a leather Bible, but you [...]

You know, it's always amazing to me to come to an end of another year, because we all say it every year, and you say it more often the older you get, but boy did this year fly by. Right? It just goes so quickly. So in a few days you will have [...]