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Jeff Simms
Proverbs 30:8-30:9
Matthew 13:22-13:22
Luke 15:11-15:32
Isaiah 26:3-26:3
Titus 2:11-2:15
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In a speech made in 1863, Abraham Lincoln said, "We have been the receipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prospertiy; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us."
"PLEASE COME BACK"
Max Lucado tells us about a girl named Christina. She lives in a small dusty village in Brazil. She’s bored. She feels like her strict parents have cheated her out of the joys of life. She longs for the excitement of the big city of Rio.
One morning her mother Maria finds Christina’s bed empty. Maria knew immediately where her daughter had gone. So she quickly throws some clothes in a bag, gathers up all her money, and heads for the bus station.
On her way, the mom enters one of those photograph booths in a local drug store and takes pictures of herself. She puts the pictures in her purse and takes the next bus to Rio de Janeiro.
She puts up pictures of herself all over town. But she can’t find her daughter. The weary mother gets back on the bus and weeps all the way home.
Months later, Christina slowly walks down the hotel stairs. She’s already worn down by life. Her young face is tired. Her brown eyes no longer dance with youth but speak of pain and fear.
A thousand times over she longed to go back home. She remembered the warm secure feeling of love and acceptance she had experience back with her mum in their little village. But she thought it was too late to turn back.
As she reached the bottom of the stairs, her eyes notice a familiar face. She looked again, and there on the lobby mirror was a small picture of her mother. Christina’s eyes burned and her throat tightened as she walked across the room and removed the small photo. Written on the back were these words: "Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please come home." And she did.
Christine’s mom pulled out all the stops to get her child to come back home, and this is exactly what God is doing for His children. It’s not His will for anyone here in this room to perish. "Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please come back to Jesus."
(From a sermon by Maarc Axelrod, Crazy About His Kids, 2/9/2011)
“For over fifteen years I have been asking people of all walks of life from Morocco to India and from Turkey to the Sudan about the implications of a son’s request for his inheritance while the father is still living. The answer has almost always been emphatically the same.”
…the conversation runs as follows:
“Has anyone ever made such a request in your village?”
“Never!”
“Could anyone ever make such a request?”
“Impossible!”
“If anyone did, what would happen?”
“His father would beat him, of course!”
“Why?”
“This request means – he wants his father to die!”
Ken Bailey
Listen to this news clipping. “Gambling, robbery, sexual immorality, and violence is prevalent. Half of all children are born out of wedlock; purity and fidelity to the marriage vow are sneered out of fashion. Corruption in politics is rampant. The world is broken.” This clipping is from 1694.
It was in this time that John Wesley began preaching to the poor, a message of new life through the free grace of Christ. His message was one of assurance and the power of the Spirit. He taught that while sin remained it could not reign. In addition to a great preacher Wesley was an organizer, and those who accepted Jesus as Lord where put into bands. In these bands people strived to put scripture into practice and they called it holiness. Wesley had a great deal of observers, but his goal was to bring them to obedience of Christ<...
Sermon Central Staff
2 Timothy 1:5-2:1
2 Timothy 1:5-1:8
Luke 15:11-15:32
Acts 3:1-3:10
Psalms 79:1-80:19
Romans 8:22-8:27
Acts 13:3-14:23
Jeremiah 23:1-23:6
Philippians 1:1-1:11
Ephesians 3:20-3:20
Philippians 1:1-2:1
Romans 1:8-1:17
1 Timothy 2:1-2:4
Luke 11:9-11:10
Isaiah 52:2-52:3
PRAYER AND PRESIDENT LINCOLN
A clergyman from New York, during a call on President Lincoln at the White House, said: "I have not come to ask any favors of you, Mr. President; I have only come to say that the loyal people of the North are sustaining you and will continue to do so. We are giving you all that we have, the lives of our sons as well as our confidence and our prayers. You must know that no boy’s father or mother ever kneels in prayer these days without asking God to give you strength and wisdom."
His eyes brimming with tears, Mr. Lincoln replied: "But for those prayers, I should have faltered and perhaps failed long ago. Tell every father and mother you know to keep on praying, and I will keep on fighting, for I know God is on our side."
As the clergyman started to leave the room, Mr. Lincoln held him by the hands and said: "I suppose I may consider this as sort of a pastoral call?"
"Yes," replied the clergyman.
"Out in our country," replied Lincoln, "when a parson makes a pastoral call, it was always the custom for the folks to ask him to lead in prayer, and I should like to ask you to pray with me today. Pray that I may have the strength and the wisdom."
The two men knelt side by side, and the clergyman offered the most fervent plea to Almighty God that ever fell from his lips. As they arose, the President clasped his visitor’s hand and remarked in a satisfied sort of way: "I feel better."
(From a sermon by George Bannister, Praying For America, 7/1/2010)
JACK NICKLAUS AND REPENTANCE
Jack Nicklaus is considered by most as the greatest golfer who has ever played the game. Once, when he was at the top of his game, he quit playing for 30 days to correct something with his game. He couldn’t correct it. He tried but to no success. Then he went back to his coach that taught him golf--and his game straightened out. He went on to win more major tournaments than any golfer in history.
What’s repentance? It is going back to the Lord and the cross. It’s telling Him you are absolutely dependent on Him to change and be forgiven. When the Prodigal Son came back home he didn’t just get a ring, a robe and shoes. The greatest thing he got back was his father.
(From a sermon by Ed Sasnett, Guard Your Heart, 4/13/2011)
Bruce Howell
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The story is told (by Ernest Hemingway) of a father and his teenage son who had a relationship that had become strained to the point of breaking. Finally the son ran away from home. His father, however, began a journey in search of his rebellious son. Finally, in Madrid, in a last desperate effort to find him, the father put an ad in the newspaper. The ad read: “DEAR PACO, MEET ME IN FRONT OF THE NEWSPAPER OFFICE AT NOON. ALL IS FORGIVEN. I LOVE YOU. YOUR FATHER.”
The next day at noon in front of the newspaper office, 800 “Pacos” showed up.
Clark Tanner
Leviticus 16:1-16:1
Luke 15:22-15:28
Matthew 5:8-5:8
Mark 6:30-6:44
1 Corinthians 6:19-6:20
Colossians 1:15-1:28
Colossians 1:15-1:28
Can you fathom this? The God of the universe, who holds all things together by the word of His power, who fills all things and is bigger than the universe; bigger than time, literally lives in you. Calls you His dwelling place. What a magnificent creation you are! What high and wonderful privilege we have been given, to house the Holy ...
THE FATHER’S REACTION TO THE PRODIGAL SON AND HIS ELDER SON MIRRORS THE ANSWER ABRAHAM LINCOLN GAVE TO A QUESTION HE WAS ASKED ABOUT HOW HE WOULD TREAT THE ALL THE CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS ONCE THE CIVIL WAR WAS OVER.
EXPECTING VENGEANCE AND EVEN THOUGHTS OF EXECUTION BECAUSE OF TREASON, LINCOLN SURPRISED ALL OF THEM BY SAYING, "I WILL TREAT THEM AS IF THEY HAD NEVER BEEN AWAY."
When he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1984, Harmon Killebrew said, “My father taught me and my brother to play ball in the front yard. One day my mother came out and told him we were ruining the lawn. My father told her, ‘We’re raising kids, not grass.’”
