We've just spent the last eight weeks looking at what happens in corporate worship, the thing we gather to do on Sunday morning. But what about what happens the rest of the week? While we are not gathered together on Tuesday morning, does that mean that worship ceases Monday through Saturday? No. Gloriously not. While there is something special and necessary about Sunday worship, God hasn't left us twisting as to how to think about our lives the majority of the time. There is a wonderful specificity that God gives to us, not just as a body of Christian believers, but as individuals. 

Why do we end our worship service with a benediction? We will be finishing our series on worship this week by answering that very question. As we have seen, our worship is meant to be very God and His Word centered. Things are done for God, as God commanded that they be done. Our service opens with an invitation to worship from God's Word, and now we will look at the close of our service from God's Word as well, the benediction or blessing. Is that something important? Is anything really happening? 

In order to answer those questions, we need to look at a more basic question: What is blessing? There is a lot of confusion about what is a blessing. Is it physical things? That seems too unspiritual! Is it just spiritual? That seems like that doesn't take into account all that God does in our lives! We will attempt to get some clarity around this issue, and I hope by the end of it, you will see the benediction for the real blessing that it is. 

We will look at two points this morning: God's blessings are comprehensive and All God's Blessings are in Christ. 

On this episode, we look at one of the most foundational creeds of the Church, The Nicene Creed. 

There are some funny rules about what you are allowed and not allowed to talk about in polite society. You can ask people how tall they are, reciting a basic fact about their body, but you can't ask what they weigh. We are ok talking about vertical dimensions but not horizontal dimensions. You can ask people what they do for a living, but you can't ask them how much of a living they are making. 

This seems to apply doubly in the church and what we might here on Sunday. The idea of the pastor preaching on money, particularly the giving of said money, just seems distasteful at best and self-interested at worse. This isn't helped by jet-setting prosperity preachers often talking about the same thing. So it is easy to simply decide that there are other things to preach on, and just skip the passages and opportunities to talk about money. Or if we do talk about money, we try to make it as little as possible. 

And this is a great shame, because that means the the Church either speaks wrongly or not at all about the real thing our culture is obsessed with, money. Our entire culture is built on acquiring stuff, and the prosperity preachers fit right in to that message. Theirs is, "Give to God so you can get the stuff you actually want: more stuff." That's what secular culture does, too, just with even less attention given to God. "Give to your company (your time, body, attention) so you can get the stuff you really want: more stuff."

Now, when the church does decide to speak on it, it can be framed in a couple different ways. It can say something to the effect of, "Well, you just gotta do it, and 10% is the number." Or it can say, "Well, God has been pretty gracious to you, and to show your gratitude you should give something, and maybe start at 10%." Both of these approaches miss the mark slightly. 

What I am hoping to show you here out of 2 Corinthians 9 is a larger vision for your giving that gets at your heart. I'm hoping that after today you are not guilted into giving but awed into giving. Our main point today is: Your faith filled giving shows God's grace.

On this episode of Church History 101, we look at the lead up to the Council of Nicaea! 

We resume our series on worship by looking at the wonderful things that God is doing in and through us in our singing! 

Thank you for your patience as we catch up on podcasts! This episode is from our Mission's Conference with Vapor's Micah McElveen! 

Here is part two of Church History 101! Tonight we look at the Gnostics, Polycarp, and everyone's favorite heretic, Marcion! 

Thus far in our series, there has been a lot of talk about Who worship is for (God), and how that is directed (God's Word). We've seen the Word visualized in the sacraments, and declared in the sermon. In other words, we've covered in depth the things that are declared to you. We have to have these as our starting points. We have to know what has been said to us before we can respond. And that is what we are going to talk about today, how do we as a congregation, as worshipers, properly respond to God's Word and work. We will be looking at this in three parts by covering the last three elements of our worship: praying, singing, and giving. 

Now, as before, each of these elements themselves are ordered by the Word of God and find their content in the word of God. So how does that work for praying? Does that mean that we are only allowed to follow scripted, word for word prayers from the Bible? While that in itself would be a lot to pray through, that isn't what we are told to do, nor is what we see in the Bible itself. Scriptural figures didn't only pray Psalms, but they lifted up their requests to God. As we see in our text, we are to pray about everything. Yet the Scriptures can guide what those prayers can look like, and in those times where we just don't know what to pray, we have a deep well to draw from in the Bible. 

Welcome back to our Sunday Night Lecture series! This semester we will be looking at Church History! In this episode we look at how God used three different cultures to build the world of the New Testament!