Sermon Audio
“When the early church pondered Jesus, cadences of Elijah rang in their ears, because they sensed that Jesus was an enactment of a dangerous, healing, liberating otherwise that could not be stopped. And they remembered the earlier time when they had come face-to-face with otherwise.”
“The sovereign God who is in control of everything, is the same God who has experienced the pain I live with every day. No matter how deep the pit into which I descend, I keep finding God there. He is not aloof from my suffering but draws near to me when I suffer. He is vulnerable to pain, quick to shed tears, and acquainted with grief.”
“How long will you waver between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.”
“You have each left but one father and mother and home, and as you have done so you have gained without any effort or care countless fathers and mothers and brothers, as well as houses and lands and most faithful servants, in any part of the world to which you go, who receive you as their own family, and welcome, and respect, and take care of you with the utmost attention.”
“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.”
“The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.”
“And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend.”
“I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears”
“To whom do you vocalize the most intense, irrational—meaning inchoate, inarticulate—anger? Would you do so with someone who could fire you or cast you out of a cherished position or relationship? Not likely. You don’t trust them—you don’t believe they would endure the depths of your disappointment, confusion…The person who hears your lament and far more bears your lament against them, paradoxically, is someone you deeply, wildly trust…the language of lament is oddly the shadow side of faith.”
“It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon.”
“The Psalms contain the anguished journals of people who want to believe in a loving, faithful God while the world keeps falling apart around them.”
“Be careful as you climb the ladder of success or else on your way up you may pass Jesus on his way down.”
“Without this Moabite girl, Christianity would be without its Founder; Israel and the world would be immeasurably the poorer.”
“Thus she models one way in which divine and human actions work together: believers are not to wait passively for events to happen; rather, they must seize the initiative when an opportunity presents itself.”
““The Lord bless him!” Naomi said to her daughter-in-law. “He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead.” She added, “That man is our close relative; he is one of our guardian-redeemers.””
“But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.”
“We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”
“Were not our hearts burning while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”
“‘Death is swallowed up in victory.O death, where is your victory?O death, where is your sting?’For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power. But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ.So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless.”
“One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.”
“We are called to discover that no pain is ever useless. It is more like the manure spread on the ground. It smells horrid and seems only to be waste, but in fact it enriches and nourishes the earth, allowing it to bring forth new life. Nothing is lost. Jesus welcomes everything that is broken. If we give him our weakness he will transform it into a source of life.”
“I discovered an astonishing truth: God is attracted to weakness. He can’t resist those who humbly and honestly admit how desperately they need him.”
“Go to the people Live among them Learn from them Love them Start with what they know Build on what they have: But of the best leaders When their task is done The people will remark, ‘We have done it ourselves.’”
“Faith is the willingness to look foolish.”
“Jesus’ love, His bodily presence in the community, burned through racial barriers, reconciling Jew and Samaritan. In the same way, the presence of Christ’s Body in a community today could bring people together. ”
“To pray is to change.”
“The path of love is woven is sacrifice.”
“So true is this that one of the greatest dangers to our lives as Christians lies in imagining that “God cannot be here, in the things of each instant, because they are so simple and ordinary.”
“If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.”
Embrace Church | 1015 N Limestone St, Lexington, KY, 40505, United States