Port Orchard Church of the Nazarene

Surveys have shown there are six major categories that consistently showed up in western church that hold us back from growing in God. These areas are addiction, unforgiveness, depression, shame and fear, control, and anxiety. This week, Pastor Jerry focused on exposing the root of everything that holds us back from God.

Surveys have shown there are six major categories that consistently showed up in western church that hold us back from growing in God. These areas are addiction, unforgiveness, depression, shame and fear, control, and anxiety. This week, Pastor Jerry focused on exposing the root of everything that holds us back from God.

This week, we were joined by Pastor Harold Eberle, who spoke on the spectrum of God's personality and how that impacts our relationships with both God and each other.

In Luke 17: 1-10, Jesus gives four distinct teachings that on the surface seem unrelated. However, when taken in context with each other, they highlight four different aspects of how we are to live in Christian community with one another.

In Luke 17: 1-10, Jesus gives four distinct teachings that on the surface seem unrelated. However, when taken in context with each other, they highlight four different aspects of how we are to live in Christian community with one another.

This week, Pastor Jerry took more time to examine the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and particularly its original audience. In the context of when Jesus told this parable- or rather, whom it was told to- the important thing to remember is that the information we have about God doesn't do us any good if we don't put it to use. After all, the Pharisees had all the information in the world on God at the time, and yet they still missed the Messiah. A person can know a truth but convince themselves that they don’t know it, if they don’t like the implication it would have for their life.

This week, Pastor Jerry took more time to examine the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and particularly its original audience. In the context of when Jesus told this parable- or rather, whom it was told to- the important thing to remember is that the information we have about God doesn't do us any good if we don't put it to use. After all, the Pharisees had all the information in the world on God at the time, and yet they still missed the Messiah. A person can know a truth but convince themselves that they don’t know it, if they don’t like the implication it would have for their life.

This week, Pastor Jerry took some more time to bring some light to a dark topic- Hell. The parable in Luke 16 of a rich man and a beggar named Lazarus interacting from respective 'halves' of the afterlife is commonly used as an argument for the traditional view of Hell. However, the problem with this, as Pastor Jerry mentioned last week, is that illustrations aren't always designed to be taken literally. Additionally, scriptures like 2 Peter 3:7 are completely misinterpreted, despite evidence to the contrary just two verses later. There are many more examples of this kind of misunderstanding, and Pastor Jerry walks through several of them.

This week, Pastor Jerry took some more time to bring some light to a dark topic- Hell. The parable in Luke 16 of a rich man and a beggar named Lazarus interacting from respective 'halves' of the afterlife is commonly used as an argument for the traditional view of Hell. However, the problem with this, as Pastor Jerry mentioned last week, is that illustrations aren't always designed to be taken literally. Additionally, scriptures like 2 Peter 3:7 are completely misinterpreted, despite evidence to the contrary just two verses later. There are many more examples of this kind of misunderstanding, and Pastor Jerry walks through several of them.

This week, Pastor Jerry was back to speak on parables. As you likely already know, Jesus preferred to use parables in many of his sermons. The problem, however, is that storytelling is a bit of a lost art outside of Hollywood. As a result, it makes it unfortunately easy to miss the point of many of Jesus' lessons now that we're several centuries and a continent or two away. So Pastor Jerry decided to take a few commonly misunderstood messages and try to put them back into context.