"I do not cease to give thanks for you," Paul tells the saints in Ephesus. Why? Because, "I have heard of your FAITH in the Lord Jesus Christ, and your LOVE towards all the saints." Faith and love are the fruit produced by all of God's work in us, work that Paul has catalogued in chapter 1 as Grace and Peace and Blessing and Inheritance, and the guarantee of the Holy Spirit. And so we, too, give thanks for the ways faith has been apparent and love has been enacted, even in the last week in the folks who constitute NPC.

"In him you have an inheritance," says the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 1. An inheritance that actually includes EVERYTHING, for everything belongs to Christ, including us. The Holy Spirit helps us to connect "things" as we typically experience them, to the shared life of God, where sanctified reality becomes a sacramental experience, and a participation in God's good news story. Listen in, and discover how even pickup trucks can be transformed into a conveyor of the heritage that is our in God's economy of grace!

As we enter in to Paul's letter to Ephesus, we get no further than the first word before the reality of BLESSING meets us: we bless God because God has blessed us, and within that mutual blessing, we discover that God has set us apart to extend His own blessing to the world. In this message, we pay particular attention to the SPIRITUAL nature of God's blessing that Paul celebrates.

As we gather on the lawn this morning, within the theater of God's glory, we take a moment to remember. To remember God's goodness; to remember how God has spoken to us, comforted us, and led us during these last months. And then, we turn to Ephesians, where we hear from the Apostle Paul, who speaks to us "by the will of God," a word of Grace and Peace.

As we conclude our series on the Travel Narrative in Luke, we discover, in Christ's tears overlooking Jerusalem, the revealed truth of God's heart towards us, which is "compassion," a willingness to "suffer with us" in such a way that all of our past sin and all of our future suffering can be redeemed and transformed. And finally, an invitation for Jesus to enter the Temple of our hearts and make it clean, so that we, too, can bear the compassionate life of God in the world.

In Luke 18 we hear Christ's call to enter the kingdom like a child, for "the kingdom belongs to such as these." Perhaps such child-like qualities as dependence and delight, worship, prayer and curiosity will aid us as we seek to "receive the kingdom of God like child," so that we might truly enter.

As we worship this morning, we'll give thanks to God, cry out for Christ's mercy, gather around the Scriptures, and fall down before Jesus in worship. Interestingly, all of these things happen in our Scripture this morning from Luke 17, which presents to us a picture of the Gospel and aids us in our understanding and practice of worship.

In this recorded sermon we take on the strange parable of the Dishonest Manager (Luke 16), compare it with the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke places these stories side by side), and trace the theme of Grace that Christ has been placing before us at each step of the journey.

Listen in as we continue through the Gospel’s travelogue (Luke 15), and the stories that Jesus tells as we learn of that which was Lost, those who were Found, and the great rejoicing of Heaven and Earth. Perhaps you'll be as surprised as Christ's first listeners to discover who chooses to remain outside the banquet feast and who enters in?!

On this Lord's Day, we continue our journey with Jesus in Luke 14, hearing three parables which culminate in an invitation to a great banquet table. So, after praise, after gathering around the Word, after prayer, we all join together at the Table, where we feast with Christ and all the saints.