I Want to See God…

Looking for God in your everyday life? He’s there. In fact, he’s shown himself in many ways you might overlook if you’re not careful.

Life is full of Sacred Moments. Among the most sacred are the oaths God has made to us. This Sunrise Service sermon speaks of some of those oaths and helps us see him in the every day.

Overcoming Fear of Risk-taking

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. ~Teddy Roosevelt

Palm Sunday — Holding On To a Hero

Every era looks for heroes.

When I was in college, music was bad. I don’t mean it was evil. I just mean that the music was bad. Among the many bad songs of the 80’s was one sung by Bonnie Tyler called Holding Out for a Hero. Bonnie asks the question, “Where are all the heroes?” and sang out, I need a hero! That was the eighties. We needed a hero.

In the 1990s, we looked for heroes. Remember Mark McGuire? I remember my friend, Ottis, watching that home-run race and saying to me, “Man — that Mark McGuire is great stuff!” Then McGuire did something outside of the sport, I don’t know what he did or said, but with a sad and disappointed look on his face, Ottis said to me, “There’s a man who could be a real hero to kids, but he isn’t.” We need a hero.

After the turn of the century we still had a fascination with heroes. Save the cheerleader; save the world. If you don’t know what that means, then you probably didn’t watch one of the most popular shows of the last decade — Heroes. Every era looks for heroes.

The people of Israel were looking for a hero when Jesus came into town on what we remember as Palm Sunday. The problem was that, while they got a hero, he wasn’t the one they wanted.

This podcast speaks of our need for heroes and helps us avoid being people who worship Christ as hero on Sundays and then fade away by the end of the week