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Sermon & Worship Packages: Time to Remember
A one dollar bill met a twenty dollar bill and said, "Hey, where’ve you been? I haven’t seen you around here much." The twenty answered (as the dollar bill listened enviously), "I’ve been hanging out at the casinos, went out on a cruise and did the rounds of the ship, back to the United States for a while, went to a couple of baseball games, to the mall, that kind of stuff. How about you?" The one dollar bill said, "You know, same old stuff, church, church, church."
Steve Malone
Mark Buchanan writes;
“Fasting churns the stuff up from the depths. Is there anger in me? I can usually control that with a burger and fries Am I resentful, irritated, overly ambition, fearful? I can smoother that with pizza. Am I depressed or embittered, suffering from a sense of life’s unfairness? I can artificially perk myself up with a Mars bar.”
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WE do that at times – use food to deal with life…
A lady and her husband were playing the slots side by side. The lady’s husband had a heart attack. The lady pushed her husband out of the way, straddled both machines and continued gambling while the medics tried to revive him to no avail.
A River Funny
A preacher was winding up his temperance sermon with great fervor: "If I had all the beer in the world, I’d take it and throw it into the river."
The congregation cried, "Amen!"
"And if I had all the wine in the world, I’d take it and throw it in the river."
The congregation cried, "Amen!"
"And if I had all the whiskey and the rum in the world, I’d take it all and throw it in the river."
And the congregation cried, "Amen!"
After the sermon the preacher sat down. The deacon stood up: "Fo...
[How God’s Children Change, Citation: Craig Barnes, author and pastor of National Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C.; from sermon "The Blessed Trinity" (5-30-99)]
When I was a child, my minister father brought home a 12-year-old boy named Roger, whose parents had died from a drug overdose.
There was no one to care for Roger, so my folks decided they’d just raise him as if he were one of their own sons.
At first it was quite difficult for Roger to adjust to his new home—an environment free of heroine-addicted adults!
Every day, several times a day, I heard my parents saying to Roger:
"No, no. That’s not how we behave in this family."
"No, no. You don’t have to scream or fight or hurt other people to get what you want."
"No, no, Roger, we expect you to show respect in this family."
And in time Roger began to change.
Now, did Roger have to make all those changes in order to become a part of the family?
No. He was made a part of the family simply by the grace of my father.
But did he then have to do a lot of hard work because he was in the family?
You bet he did.
It was tough for him to change, and he had to work at it.
But he was motivated by gratitude for the incredible love he had received.
Do you have a lot of hard work to do now that the Spirit has adopted you into God’s family?
Certainly. But not in order to become a son or a daughter of the heavenly Father.
No, you make those changes because you are a son or daughter.
And every time you start to revert back to the old addictions to sin, the Holy Spirit will say to you, "No, no. That’s not how we act in this family."
So we are not only talking about the sex act itself, but also anything that feds these shameful evil desires....
And listen one thing that does that, and it something I need to talk about briefly is pornography... because It is an epidemic that is destroying our country... It has it’s death grip in people especially men from 11 year olds to men married with children..
. Pornography is a $13 billion dollar a year industry....
. In 1999 web-site revenues were 1.2 billion dollars
. There are 100,000 porn sites on the web - with an estimated 200 new sites
Everyday.
. Currently more than 50% of requests on search engines are for porn
. 10,160 porn movies were released in 1999 alone
. There are 450 porn magazines being published today
. There are more porn outlets today than there McDonalds
. More than 300 million x-rated videos are distributed each year. This is more than the entire population of the US.
. 25% of porn sites have brand names (barbie.disney.nintendo,nba...) in their metatags to attract hits from search engines.
Few college football coaches have made a point against drugs as effectively as Erk Russell of Georgia Southern College. He arranged for a couple of good ol’ country boys to burst into a routine team meeting and throw a writhing, hissing, six-foot-long rattlesnake onto a table in front of the squad. "Everyone screamed and scattered," Russell recalls. "I told them, ’When cocaine comes into a room, you’re not nearly as apt to leave as when that rattlesnake comes in. But they’ll both kill you!"
Bruce Wilkinson, author of Prayer of Jabez, said:
Sexual immorality is a threshold sin. On one side of the threshold is immorality and on the other is purity. On one side are guilt, lying, deceit, addiction, and shame, an on the other side are freedom, honesty, transparency, liberty, and a clear conscience. Believers who are in bondage to immorality find that unless they exper...
Some time ago, a teenager, Arthur Hinkley, lifted a 3,000-pound tractor with his bare hands. He wasn’t a weight lifter, but his friend, Lloyd Bachelder, 18, was pinned under a tractor on a farm near Rome, Maine. Hearing Lloyd scream, Arthur somehow lifted the tractor enough for Lloyd to wriggle out. Love motivated him to do it.
Our Father in heaven heard the screams of lost humanity, crying out for deliverance. He sent His one and only precious Son to the cross so that our sins could be lifted off of us and on to Himself. Love motivated Him to do it.
ADDICTION: The existence of Gamblers Anonymous implies that gambling can be addictive! -
Current estimates list approximately 2.5 million people as pathological gamblers, another 3 million as problem gamblers, and another 15 million people as at risk to become problem or pathological gamblers. Gambling Impact Study Commission, Final Report. Last Update: Jan. 28, 2001
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