Mercy Hill Church Sermons

Good things can keep us from the best thing. The gifts of God can keep us from the kingdom of God. Those things we are unwilling to surrender to God in love and trust will ultimately be the instruments of our undoing. But if we can lay them in His hands, all is put to right.

We all want the sort of joy that is impervious to circumstance. But, in all of our attempts to secure it for ourselves, we inevitably end up making costly reductions and distorting reality. As such, whatever joy we do find feels false. If we would have this joy in truth, we must find it in Christ!

God is our only hope and help. There are no other anchors save the Eternal God. None could ever suffice, save our Master, Jesus, who gave himself up for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.

We often make invitations and dinner parties all about us. We accept those invitations that suit us. We extend invitations to people we like or extract some benefit from. But Jesus says that we rob ourselves when we live this way. We miss the very heart and blessing of God.

God, through the Holy Spirit, has called us out of our former life of darkness and into communal life of loving service, for the maturing of God's church. But this doesn't come easily; this requires regular renewal of our minds to put on the new self.

In a culture that is always vying for the places of honor-to be seen and praised -Jesus calls us into faithful obscurity. He asks us to sit in the forgotten places with the assurance that He will remember. Lowering ourselves lifts a ladder to the heavens. Jesus is there. And He is enough.

When our expectations of what God will do don't line up with what He is really doing in our lives, we find ourselves at a fork in the road. We can either try to take Him up in our hands and manipulate Him towards our desires, or we can put ourselves in His hands and let Him shape us towards His.

Few things in life are more distressing than unmet expectations. In the gap that forms between our expectations and reality a war is waged. We must decide in those moments whether we will open to God in trust or turn against Him in bitterness. His kingdom comes in unexpected ways and forms. Will we have eyes to see it?

The obedience of Abraham and the blessing that flows out to others because of it pictures and prepares us for the obedience of Jesus and the salvation that will come to us by grace through faith in Him.