Psalm 4

In 1837, Belgian Catholic priest Joseph Damien De Veuster was sent on a new mission. He was to go and minister to the lepers on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. When he arrived, he immediately started his work as he sought to reach out and meet every one of the lepers on the island, hoping to build a friendship with them. And yet wherever he turned, the people shunned him.

Rev. Buck Day and Leah Appleton –

Our Scripture today hopefully is one that is familiar to you. It’s one that I think a few years ago we committed to memory—at least part of it. And it is one of those kind of foundational Scriptures. It comes from 2 Corinthians chapter 5

Well, there was a recent study at Duke University. They were looking at what it meant to have peace of mind. As they were looking at that, they were in particular focusing in on the factors that contribute to emotional as well as mental stability. They came up with eight kind of factors, and I wanted to lay those out for us this morning.

. . . this is one of those things that God just does. He puts Scripture on my mind. And so I’m going to pray, and in the midst of that, I’m going to pray the 23rd Psalm for us as well.

Rev. Jan Dus, Guest Preacher

Executive Director of Diaconia of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren

Our Scripture today comes from the book of Galatians. I’m going to read a couple verses out of chapter 4.

Let me turn us to Scripture. It’s just a single verse out of the book of Romans. It comes from the 10th chapter.

Well, our Scripture today is a fairly familiar passage, I think, to most of us—maybe not the exact text itself, but just the whole idea of the story of the Garden of Eden and what happened.

We now turn to the strength of Scripture. I’m going to read a pretty familiar passage out of Acts chapter 2, the story of the community gathered together in Jerusalem.