The Church becomes unified when its members lay aside personal agendas to adopt the Kingdom agenda. Titus 3 teaches us to avoid needless controversy, resist divisive people, and encourage everyone. Titus 3:9-15. Keith Luttrell, July 10, 2016.

Greg Beauchamp begins the service with a response to the July 7 shootings in Dallas. July 10, 2016.

We have a great capacity to remember and a strange ability to forget. Especially things that matter. Beth Moore tells of going to a spa that was overlooking the Pacific Ocean, she was in awe of her view and was going on and on about it with the lady who worked there who just kind of shrug her shoulders. Beth Moore said, “I can’t believe she wasn’t seeing the beauty I was seeing.” She became so accustom to her surroundings that she lost the wonder seen in the beauty. Titus doesn’t was us to lose the wonder seen in the beauty of being a Christian.

Last week, Greg & Keith invited many of our core members and leaders to a briefing that casted the vision for where God is leading our church. This church-wide initiative, called the Go Movement, will mobilize our church to go share the love of Christ with the people of Irving, in word and deed.

There are two different ways to save your life. One of them is the way of performance (works). The other one is the way of grace. We're all trying to save our lives.

What do we teach? Sound doctrine. Doctrine simply means “the way things are.” We need to know and live by sound doctrine, not because God’s going to give you a theological exam someday and you can get an ‘A’ on it. It’s because Jesus and the Bible proclaim the truth about the way things really are. If you trust things really are as Jesus taught them, you will live the kind of life He invites you to live. When we believe we have a God who delights in watching you, and you are perfectly safe in his hand all the time, and nothing can separate you from the love of God - that has some serious consequences for your anxiety, your life, and how you treat other people.

We saw last Sunday, the positive ripple effect that can happen when good people are involved in a church or a family or a community. Today, we look at the opposite of that. We see that the reason we need good people involved in our church and our homes is because it is also possible to have a negative ripple effect.

One bad letter can ruin the whole paragraph. One bad leader can ruin a nation, a family, a business, and one bad leader can ruin a church. In the church, we need people who are positive and loving. People who can bring order out of chaos. We begin a series today on Titus, the theme is, "Go fix it. Set things in order.” It’s a book about influence, having a ripple effect on the lives of others. If you throw a rock into a pond, it creates a ripple effect. That one rock influences the motion and direction of the water that surrounds it.

We all know what a lack of self-control can do. It puts the extra pounds on. It causes us to light up another cigarette. It's why wives get beat up by husbands. It's why teens get pregnant and why adults have affairs. It's why credit card debt reaches the thousands of dollars, it's a lack of self control. It also affects our relationships.

Without self-control, I'm vulnerable to all kinds of problems. Where is your greatest struggle with self-control? Uncontrolled anger. Uncontrolled lust. Uncontrolled spending -- the number one cause of divorce in America is financial stress. Uncontrolled drinking. Uncontrolled ambition. Uncontrolled tongue.

When you look at the word "gentleness" the Greek word is Prautes. It's really an interesting word. Many times when we consider the word, we think of what happens on the outside. How we treat things or how we treat people. For instance, an egg. We know when we have an egg that we have to be gentle with it. Somethings you can toss into your buggy, but the eggs, you place them carefully in the top.