Eager anticipation, anxiously awaiting the arrival of a little baby, another precious gift from God -we were a bundle of emotions. This was our fourth child. It had been more than four years since our last baby was born, and for parents who wanted these gifts from God this was a long time. We had even started wondering if three was to be our limit and then, finally, God opened His hand and granted us another gift.
May the freedom that Jesus purchased with His blood on the Cross drive us not away from God into ourselves, but draw us out of ourselves in gratitude and faithfulness to Him. May what we do with our bodies glorify HIS righteousness and not our rights. Amen, may it be so!
A hurricane has a lot of power … .If you could somehow imagine that kind of power, you still would not be close to imagining the power of God!
The acceptance of abortion in America and even in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) is evidence that the high view of life, held and practiced by Christians and defended by the church fathers and teachers down through the centuries, is being forsaken. We offer this analysis with the prayer and hope that it will cause those, especially in the Lutheran family, who support the abortion ethic to prayerfully reflect and reconsider their views. We offer this as encouragement to the many faithful believers and congregations within the ELCA who support the ethic of life that they will continue to pray, love, and work for change.
The writer of Ecclesiastes said that there is a time to be silent and a time to speak. What divine wisdom!
It was not the kind of telephone request that any pastor wishes to receive. But to a young pastor, fairly new in the ministry, it seemed to present an even greater challenge …
Someone once said, “If you don’t have anything to say, don’t prove it by talking!” That can be good advice! Sometimes, as we read in Ecclesiastes, there is a time to be silent! But if you do have something to say—something wonderful, something filled with hope, something life changing—then it is no time for silence. It is time to speak!
This sermon is going to be backwards. I am going to start at the end of the text with the wonderful message that says our bodies, which belong to the Lord, have been purified. Let’s look at the two parts of that message.
“Yeah, but abortion is a political issue, and we shouldn’t be talking about it in the church.”
Listen carefully to the apostle’s inspired words of encouragement: “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”