EXPOSITORY LISTENING - The Word of God needs to seed and multiply itself in our hearts. You never sow as much seed as you harvest. You just start with the seed you have. Just start. Listen with all you presently have. Listen repentantly. Use the understanding and the time you have cooperating with the grace and opportunities God has given you. Soon you’ll be filling up your life with the full riches of the power of the Word of God’s grace.

THE BOOK OF MALACHI: PROPHETIC WORDS FOR A LOVE FOR GOD STARTING TO GROW COLD - How many Christians do you know who are just possessed by a passionate love for hearing God’s instruction so they can obey Him at deeper and deeper levels? How many Christians do you know who leave church on Sunday worrying that there may have been one little thing they missed - just one point of following Christ that they may have overlooked. Which do you think we hear most, concern about that or concern about the service being too long, or the music too loud? How many do you know who are looking for three services on Sunday because two sermons just isn't anywhere near enough?

EXPOSITORY LISTENING - Sometimes we get so used to half listening to internet and TV all week that it's hard to turn off the habit when we come to church on Sunday. Immersing yourself in God's Word is one thing, but really listening to what He's saying, making our hearts attentive to God and inclined to seek wisdom that is when the real listening starts. Learn this and your faith will grow. It’s a spiritual law that the Holy Spirit always honors.

THE BOOK OF MALACHI: PROPHETIC WORDS FOR A LOVE FOR GOD STARTING TO GROW COLD - Being Christian is about coming before God with a heart prepared for full obedience. It’s coming to the Lord in a way that’s pleasing to Him, only through the shed blood of Jesus Christ on the cross. And, bottom line, it’s about caring more about pleasing God than pleasing anyone else. And that does relate to us today. That's what we're doing here today in church. This building is set apart - like the temple was - for that purpose to worship Him in Spirit and truth.

EXPOSITORY LISTENING - Sometimes we get so used to half listening to internet and TV all week that it's hard to turn off the habit when we come to church on Sunday. Immersing yourself in God's Word is one thing, but really listening to what He's saying, making our hearts attentive to God and inclined to seek wisdom that is when the real listening starts. Learn this and your faith will grow. It’s a spiritual law that the Holy Spirit always honors.

THE BOOK OF MALACHI: PROPHETIC WORDS FOR A LOVE FOR GOD STARTING TO GROW COLD - Is there any point of attitude or ambition or action in your life that doesn't line up very comfortably with what you know to be true of Jesus Christ? If so, are you truly and thoroughly repenting and turning from it? And if the answer you get is either “No,” or “Well not yet,” then we are presuming on God’s kindness and patience. He gives us grace to turn from our sins, not grace to fulfill them.

TITUS: VERSE BY VERSE - Sustain your mind and memory around the amazing grace you’re received through Jesus Christ. Establish your hope with it, rather than your spiritual performance. Let it steep every word and deed in humility and thankfulness. And shun everything and everyone that might blunt the sharp edge of grace in your mind every moment.

ORDINARY PEOPLE MEETING AN AWESOME GOD - We need the example of Zacchaeus today. Salvation has as much to do with transformation as with forgiveness. Repentance doesn’t just feel sorry for wrongs done. To the degree it can, it rights them relying on God’s grace and help. The actual, visible glory and character of the Lord begins to spill over into areas that used to be selfish and proud and ugly and stubborn. That’s where Jesus was taking Zacchaeus. That was the evidence of God’s grace reaching Zacchaeus’ heart.

TITUS: VERSE BY VERSE - Good works, not rooted and motivated in humble gratitude for grace received are useless for promoting genuine godliness because, isolated from the motivation of humble thankfulness for grace unearned, they generate both pride and judgmentalism in the human heart.

ORDINARY PEOPLE MEETING AN AWESOME GOD - Paul teaches that God chose someone with a past like his so I wouldn't feel hopeless with a past like mine. God saved Paul so I would have some idea (note the word "example" - literally an "exhibit" - like you would see in an art show) of how incredibly patient He is with sinners who are willing to bring the pieces of their lives to Him in faith. Paul says he himself is the model - a living "exhibit A" of what God does with hopeless sinners.