Trust is the Glue of Life

I want to begin this morning with a game called Jenga. Are you familiar with it? A Jenga game consists of 54 small wood blocks. To set up the game you stack all of the blocks in levels of three placed next to each other and at a right angle to the previous level. Once…

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Respect

This morning, we start a new series called, “The Elements of Healthy Relationships”. Every day we are in relationships with people. People we enjoy spending time with like family, friends, and even co-workers and also with people that drive us a little nutty. These people can bring stress into our lives. Some of these people…

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Finding God in the Most Unexpected Place of All

Lawrence Althouse, a retired United Methodist pastor, tells a story about when he almost missed an Easter service: “Many years ago, when I was working in a suburban New York church, I was asked to take part in an Easter sunrise pageant held at the Bronx River Parkway. At 5:15 a.m. I was zipping down…

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Will You Go?

“When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples 2 and said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. 3 If…

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A picture of Doug Scalise in a sweater

A Centurion – Finding God in Someone You Don’t Expect

For the last month in worship we’ve been talking about Finding God in Unexpected Places and those sermons were about finding God in undesirable circumstances like when we’ve been mistreated or can’t sleep, when our life gets turned upside down and we have to get used to a “new normal” or when we can’t get…

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A Little Girl and a Woman – When You Can’t Get Well

How do you feel about a trip to the doctor’s office? For example, do you look forward to it because you think it will help you live a healthy lifestyle or to feel better? Do you dread it because you’re afraid of what you might hear and what it might cost? Would you rather cope…

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Jeremiah – Seeking the Welfare of the Place You Live

Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be a person in the Bible? What would it have been like to be someone like Hagar, Samuel, Isaiah, John, Mary, Elizabeth, or Paul? It might be an amazing experience, but I know I wouldn’t want to have been Jeremiah. He had a tough…

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Samuel – When You Can’t Sleep

Many of the characters we encounter in the pages of the Bible, we see for a single moment, or only at one period in their life. Samuel is that rare person we learn about from before he is born, to childhood and adulthood to the very end of his life. In the book that bears…

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Hagar – When You’ve Been Mistreated

For the next five weeks we’re doing a series in worship and in small groups on Finding God in Unexpected Places. There are some places we kind of expect to find God – like in a worship service, reading the Bible, in our personal devotional time, when we’re serving others for God’s glory and to…

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