BLC Message Series Podcast

Huey Lewis sang, “Sometimes bad is bad.” No kidding! We can usually tell when something is wrong, bad or evil – at least when it is someone else. But when it comes to our own thoughts and behavior, how bad is too bad for God?

Celebration Sunday. The day many young men and women in our congregation boldly declare their faith in Jesus. Do they have any doubts about their faith? Do you? Almost everyone questions key beliefs and values at some point. But do we seriously consider the long-term effects of our doubts or our beliefs? That impact is what we address with the question, “What if I’m wrong?”

Today we grapple with a really hard question: “If God is so loving, why would He send anyone to hell?” Our prayer is that more people would know the true loving nature of God and His desire that all people would be saved.

Today we talk about how Jesus Speaks life...in prayer ..Please be blessed by the following “To pray in the name of Jesus means to pray in full assurance of the great work Christ accomplished—in His life, by His death, through His resurrection, and by means of His continuing reign at the right hand of God the Father…To pray in the name of Jesus means that we are praying in accord with the way and nature of Christ." -- from Richard J. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home

“Prayer is a mighty instrument, not for getting man’s will done in heaven but for getting God’s will done on earth.” W. Law

“Prayer changes things,” people say. It also changes us…The primary purpose of prayer is to bring us into such a life of communion with the Father that, by the power of the Spirit, we are increasingly conformed to the image of the Son…None of us will keep up a life of prayer unless we are prepared to change…Each day in a new and living way the brooding Spirit of God teaches us. As we begin to follow the nudgings of the Spirit, we are changed from the inside out.

“The truth of the matter is, we all come to prayer with a tangled mass of motives—altruistic and selfish, merciful and hateful, loving and bitter. Frankly, this side of eternity we will never unravel the good from the bad, the pure from the impure. But what I have come to see is that God is big enough to receive us with all our mixture. We do not have to be bright, or pure, or filled with faith, or anything. That is what grace means, and not only are we saved by grace, we live by it as well. And we pray by it…What I am trying to say is that God receives us just as we are and accepts our prayers just as they are.”