Grace & Peace PGH

"A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert

"Perhaps, in the strange providence of God, the way Mark's book now finishes encourages us all the more to explore not only the faith of the early church, that Jesus is indeed risen from the dead, but our own faith. There is a blank at the end of the story, and we are invited to fill it ourselves. Do we take Easter for granted, or have we found ourselves awestruck at the strange new work of God? What do we know of the risen Lord?"

"You don't spread your cloaks on the road

"Who do we perceive the Master to be? Do we domesticate Jesus merely as the 'Lord of the church,' the 'Lord of my personal prayers,' or the 'Lord of my family'? Or do we bow before him as the Lord of the universe, the Lord over political rulers and business leaders, the Lord over creation and his church, the Lord to whom we are to submit rather merely asking him to bless what we do?"

"God limits our knowledge first that we should be kept humble and also that we should continue to have dealings with our fellows."

Today's sermon from Psalm 32 by guest preacher Jim Weidenaar.

"In Western cultures we don't have anything like this kind of assertiveness. We only have the assertion of our rights. We do not know how to contend unless we're standing up for our rights, standing on our dignity and our goodness and saying, 'This is what I'm owed.' But this woman is not doing that at all. This is rightless assertiveness, something we know little about. She's not saying, 'Lord, give me what I deserve on the basis of my goodness.' She's saying, 'Give me what I don't deserve on the basis of your goodness

"Your doubts may rob you of your comfort

"We can trust God's loving pursuit of us because he does this not merely to show us the weight of our inner lives, but to liberate us from it with the cleansing assurance of his love."

This week's sermon on love as maturity, from 1 Corinthians 13, by guest pastor Nameun Cho.