Some things God will show you and take you through so that you can have a firmness of faith and become a cornerstone, and they're not always pleasant things. This is an intermediate stage. He has risen from the dead, and yet he has not yet [...]

The problem in the text is they've been trying to fix a spiritual problem with physical restraints and it has not worked. His problem is affecting his body but it is not his body, yet the text is diagnosed in the opening phrase that says, [...]

This morning, I came to preach with a symbol. This is not particularly valuable to anybody who doesn't know what it represents, it's just a rag. What good is a rag? It's just a symbol. You might not recognize the value of this rag but [...]

I saw a man running over in Acts, and I wonder where he was going. And he was running down the road, down this winding road, hollering and yelling. I caught up with him in Acts 8:30. His name was Philip. Philip was running dither to him and heard [...]

He's on his way out, he's walking away and one woman, who was in the midst of all of this idolatry and this chaos, she makes the decision to go after Jesus. Now, you have to understand, you think the miracle is in the healing of the [...]

The truth was dependent on a lie, if Rahab didn't lie they would have murdered the truth and so Rahab lied and told them that they were gone. And she said, "Look, I got you out of this, I got you on this now," but Rahab was used to [...]

He stands up and says to Jesus, "What must I do to inherit eternal life"? Now, this is an innocent question. It is a question that any sinner would ask. It is a question that Jesus came to answer. But it is a trick question. It is a trap. [...]

The importance of balancing the extremes, he is the Lord of glory, but he is sitting on a horse. The extremes of the donkey waiting and the master's urgency, a waiting donkey and an urgent master. This text is full of extremes, the coronation, [...]

God will give you strength that is not visible. He will cause you to be successful when the odds are against you, when there is no outward evidence that you are as strong as you are, and yet you can do feats that succeed people's impression of [...]

Put me in the place that you want me to be, because God has a place for you where the blessings will flow. Often the blessing is only in that place. If you forsake that place, he said don't leave where I put you, because once I put you in a [...]

Everything is going wonderful, and then Sarah, the Bible says, looked out and saw Ishmael, Hagar's son by Abraham, mocking Isaac, and the party was over. She stopped laughing. Put the cake back, take the hot dogs off the grill, put the party [...]

When Jesus was preaching in Gennesaret and he comes down to Simon, Simon is not yet called Peter, he's not even a disciple, he doesn't even know that much about who Jesus is or what's goin' on. Simon is just a fishermen. When [...]

These porches are a shelter from the elements. Five porches. There are shade from the Palestinian heat. It gives them some comfort while they wait for the miracle moment to happen, which only happens annually, once a year. Up until then, [...]

What is common in both texts is common in our society today. It's the perpetuation of deception. The wise men, you see, were from the east, and they were brought by Herod to go after Jesus that he might worship him, but they were deceived. The [...]

You see, if you intellectualize life you will be frustrated, you will be confused, you will be upset. It is like the line that Shakespeare quotes in Macbeth, that, "Life is a tale told by a fool," I think he said, "Told by an idiot, [...]

So Jehoram, who is the king of Israel, and has not wholly followed the Lord, he's been better than his father, Ahab. He's torn down the statues to Baal, and he's torn down the high places, but he has not wholly follow the Lord. He [...]

It brings out all kinds of emotion, because Adam said, "I was afraid. I was naked. I hated myself". I want to talk about men that hide. I hid myself. I showed you who you wanted to see. Ooh, it's gonna get quiet in here. I showed you [...]

Because he sees you as his child and you can come boldly to the throne of grace and find grace to help in the time of need. And when God got ready to make his first son, his first-made son, he created Adam out of the dust of the earth with his own [...]

The Bible says that Jesus was moved with compassion because he saw them being scattered as sheep having no shepherd. Now, there's one other thing that I think is important for you to understand. The disciples were hungry. They were already [...]

What he was tryin' to do, he was tryin' to plant a seed. See watch this. He knows that faith cometh by hearing and hearing by word. So words are seeds. And when you take them in, listen to this, the Bible says engrafted Word of God shall [...]

Now, now, if we only see this text through the lens of a desperate mother seeking help for her daughter, though that is what she is, if that's all we see about the text, we will do an injustice to the text. It's obvious that though she [...]

The reason God allows us not to get him locked into a formula is because he wants us to always have to seek him, have to come back to him, have to ask questions, have to have the humility of coming back to him and say, I don't know what to do. [...]

Making it ain't easy. Oh, y'all can't talk to me. I'm in the wrong church this morning. Making it is not easy. Making it happen, making it do what it do, making it all the way to the end, making it through adolescence, making it [...]

This is the first time that the disciples got to see him lose. All he ever did was win. At 12 years old they brought him into the temple, and he warred up against the doctors and the scholars. He won, he outsmarted all of them at 12, all he ever did [...]

Our faith is being challenged. Our faith is being challenged to the core, because suffering now seems strange to us. Suffering now becomes a question that I have to respond to in the press because of the complexity of how could God be good and allow [...]

Paul says that Jesus died to raise us up together and make us to sit in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. By grace are you saved. And I want you to look at that Scripture, and I want you to look at that Scripture closely and see how many times you [...]

And it's the clashing of kingdoms. A true evangelist disrupts things, changes lives, marriages are reconciled, people are gettin' breakthroughs, people are getting delivered, people are getting help. You got these gunslingers with Bibles [...]

We have come down to the 13th chapter, and then the writer carefully notes to us that Jesus died without the camp. And I want you to take the time to understand that Jesus did not do all he did so that he could get into a building, he did everything [...]

And when the angel came to get in, he found him in the wine press. The wine press is the strip club of grapes. It is the place where grapes disrobe and uncover themselves, for it is not the skin of the grape that is the most important thing. [...]

Let's talk about the historic feasts and parties of ancient Israel and understand that the harvest seasons were huge events, not just work events. They were moments of elaborate celebrations, and people would come from miles and miles around to [...]

And so it was amazing for me that, in the same year, the first time I made my first trip to the motherland, to the land of my ancestors, when I first got off the plane, to hear the gentlemen say in a deep, African accent, "Welcome home," [...]

Not long ago, my wife had a medical problem that slipped upon us like a thief in the night. In the midst of doing our daily tasks and going through our routines, she collapsed on the bedroom floor, and we had to call 9-1-1, and it was just the [...]

So the Lord called me, and I became aware of it around 17, though I didn't say, "Yes," to him until I was 19. And it's funny because, when we talked about the Lord calling us, it's like it's this one-time experience [...]

The Bible says that we are "A chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people," that we didn't just wander in to him. We were chosen. He said, "You have not chosen me. I have chosen you. I picked you out. [...]

This is the end. You're going to lose everything. You won't come out of this. You're not smart enough. You're not bright enough. You waited too late. You start should have started younger. Those are the kind of voices that we all [...]

When I was 17 years old I laid down and went to sleep, and while I was sleeping I dreamed I was reading a verse that I didn't know existed at the time. God was saying to a young man, before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee or I ordained [...]

I remember when I was a little boy, my father, our idea of a vacation wasn't like... we didn't go, like, to Disneyland or anything like that. We didn't go to Rome or London or Paris or even the Bahamas or anywhere like that. We went [...]

In law, there's a term called "discovery," and the definition is this is the formal process of exchange of information between the parties about the witness and evidence that is submitted that they'll present at trial. Discovery [...]

The people who brought you here may not be the people who can take you there. Doesn't mean you'd leave 'em, doesn't mean you hate 'em, doesn't mean you don't appreciate 'em, doesn't mean you don't [...]

The two texts I have chosen are dealing with how these two men met an appointment with destiny. It is about the passing of the baton. See them as bookends. The first story is one part of it, and the last text is the end of it. The first story shows [...]

The temple to Diana was one of the most elaborate temples that was ever built in all the world. It took some 200 years to build that temple. It was powerful, it was amazing, it was significant, it was creative, and it was the offspring from which [...]

Integrity, loyalty, friendship, and don't give it to everybody, 'cause everybody ain't worth it. Find somebody that is worth the investment of the level of what you have. When I buried Holloway Gray the other day, we'd been [...]

How can God be so good and make such a way and then we doubt him. Our doubt bites at him, it bites at him. It's a painful thing to be doubted, your integrity disrespected. It occurred to me that this doubting was not just about God, they had a [...]

Read Romans 1:16, just so I have a scriptural reference for it. Put it up on the board, the Romans 1:16. "For I am not ashamed," this is Paul talking later. "For I'm not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God [...]

All through Ephesians, you keep hearing about the riches of his mercy, the riches of his grace. It is no accident that God keeps using this term, rich. Don't-don't-don't sleep on that word rich. "The riches of his grace and his [...]

All of us have gone through something that caused us shame. Have you ever lost something that kept you up at night? A job, a car, or a relationship, or a person, and you wondered, "Is it my inadequacies that has caused me to have this [...]

I love the holidays, any kind of holiday, Thanksgiving... I'll make up a holiday. I love holidays 'cause you have great food, and you have great fun. People come over. I like to entertain and have a good time. Fourth of July is one of I [...]

So I was building my church, the church of my dreams, the church beyond my dreams, the church that I never thought I would ever get to build, the church that was valued out at millions and millions of dollars that I didn't have, but I had the [...]

It is a misnomer to think that if you walk with God, and serve God, and do his will and work, that you won't have any trouble. The reality is: they that live godly shall suffer persecution. And you don't get to pick when or how or what the [...]

You know the funniest thing to me is that poor people think that rich people don't get crushed. They think that if they had money, they'd have everything. But crushing is the one thing in the world that you can count on to be totally [...]