Counting Blessings

I recently heard a pastor say that we ought not just to think about the bad times but also praise God for the good times. Of course I would agree with him. All throughout the Old Testament, God's people set up altars to commemorate how good God is. They counted their blessings.

Often as Christians we don't count our blessings. We think about the bad times and the times in our lives where God either said "no" or we had to go through some kind of trial. Don't get me wrong, we ought to remember those times and thank the Lord for those times of growth. But we ought to also thank God for the many blessings he has given us.

Recently, my wife and I were struggling a bit with faithfulness. For some weird reason, we decided to put our house up for sale in this last spring. News reports began to spread that the housing market was crashing. Well, we would have taken our home off the market if we could have, but we were already legally committed to a new home closer to our church. Things were rough. We had a new baby to tend to (our third) open houses that seemed to be worthless, many on-call walk throughs--the stress level was high.

On one particular night we were both feeling down. I walked into the room and my wife was watching a woman sing her heart out on the TV. She was incredible. She was singing about praising God for all of his blessings. Then she sang something along these lines, "Sometimes I don't think I have anything to praise the Lord about, but last time I checked I woke up this morning!"

Isn't that the truth? God has given me another day of life to enjoy Him and His creation and all of the many blessings and hardships that he has given me. What more could we desire or want? I echo the words of Paul, "For me to live is to Christ and to die is gain."

We ought to count our hardships and consider them pure joy. But we ought to count our blessings and consider them pure joy as well. God is the giver of all good things. Have we thanked him lately?

Live Victoriously

Pastor Dan's sermon from 10/28/2007

Scripture Reference: 1 John 5

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"No Matter What the Cost"

Pastor Dan's sermon from 10/21/2007

Scripture Reference: Acts 7:1-25

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YOU CAN DO IT!

You know one of Joel Osteen's statements in HIS CREED is that we are what the Bible says we are. Yet his preaching and ministry and self help books do not live up to this wonderful statement of truth. I have had the privilege of watching Mr. Osteen the past few days as the "evangelical" consumer gets ready for the launch of his second book "Becoming a Better You". Once again, he has continued to deny the Gospel of Jesus Christ by not taking a stand on a world wide stage. I don't want to get into the questions of Osteen's salvation. After all God is the final judge. I don't even want to get into his motives. After all God is the final judge. But I would like to address his actual message regardless of what his heart tells him or what he may or may not say in an interview.

I have posted a video below that a website had put together with some of Joel's preaching. There is one fundamental that is completely missing from all of Joel's preaching. He does not understand the message of the Bible as fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Dr. Michael Horton says it perfectly when he refers to Osteen as a cotton candy gospel who preaches the Bible as if it were a fortune cookie.

Why should we even comment on these kinds of preachers? Because the world has been fooled into a gospel that is no Gospel at all. Christian consumerism (which is questionable in an of itself) thrives on preaching such as this. We are talking about millions of dollars that are spent to bring a false gospel to a needy and broken world.

When preachers remove Jesus and Christology from their preaching, there is nothing left. Even if 95% of what they say is "good stuff" without Christ-centered preaching, the message is 100% bogus.

Anyway, judge for yourself what you think....

"The Workers Are Few"

Pastor Dan's sermon from 10/14/2007

Scripture Reference: Acts 6:1-7

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"Robbing God to Pay Peter"

Pastor Dan's sermon from 10/7/2007

Scripture Reference: Acts 5:1-16

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"Living Boldly"

Pastor Dan's sermon from 9/23/2007

Scripture Reference: Acts 4:23-31

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God Will Strike You Down

This week, I will be preaching on Acts 5 as we get into the story of Ananias and Sapphira. This has been a hard passage to study and apply to my own life because it is very revealing. All of us have a little of Mr. A and Mrs. S in us. It is convicting and scary all at the same time.

A few weeks ago I got into an online argument with a PCUSA pastor who has graduated from a school that is very liberal in it's view of the Bible. These types of schools have unapologetically attempted to destroy the authenticity and veracity of the Scriptures. This man's education came out of him in our online debate about Mormon's and whether or not they should be included as "Christians". I won't get into the details.

To be honest, I was a little jealous of him in a weird way. He was able to pretty much say whatever he felt like saying. His truth was not based on the authority of Scripture but rather he based his claims on whatever he felt should be right. He could throw Scripture out the window and still call himself a theologian and biblical scholar. I was constrained to the truth of Scripture. I was jealous because there were times when I just wanted to "go off" at him but knew that I couldn't.

I share that story to share this with you--it is stories like Acts 5 that prove the inspiration of Scripture. Why would Luke include this account when it demonstrated the warts of the early church. Not only this, but it would be so much easier if I could misinterpret this passage to make it say whatever I wanted.

The facts of the passage are that a believer in Christ was decieved by Satan, fell into sin from temptation, attempted to lie to the church and Holy Spirit and ultimately died as a consequence for his sin and to demonstrate to the rest of the church that the Kingdom of God was serious business--so to speak. These aren't easy pills to swallow.

I am looking forward to preaching this passage, but only with some fear and trepidation. I pray that I would not be like Ananias any longer. I pray that I would not hinder the Gospel in any way, but that our church would be a shining light for Jesus Christ. To God be all the glory.