New Era Christian Sermons 2018

Sermon 19–2nd Timothy 4 The 4th Chapter of 2nd Timothy is, in many ways, the most interesting chapter. It definitely has all the qualities of a formal good-bye. It has a clear 5-part structure which is summarized as follows: The 1st section gets right to the point—uppermost on Paul’s mind is the necessity of inspiring his young protege with missionary zeal. He does not promise Timothy a rose garden, rather the opposite—he warns—but even so, he charges Timothy to:  “ be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine. . . . .But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.” The 2nd section begins his farewells with a self-justification. Although Paul does this quite a lot in 2nd Timothy, I don’t think it indicates anything like a petty self-centeredness: I believe that Paul takes a righteous pride in that fact that, through all his trials, he has remained...

Something Happened Easter 2011 I was raised in the Nazarene Church, a fundamentalist denomination on the far right of a continuum between Episcopalian and Southern Baptist. I went to church 3 times a week. I got to play on the church pianos before and after church and during Thursday night choir practice, but other than that, I got nothing from the experience but guilt and condemnation. Due to my eccentric Asperger's personality I felt rejected and misunderstood by my family. My mother’s only care was for my eternal salvation, her only real world was the church, so, aside from daily warnings about Hell, she had nothing to say to me. She was proud of me for singing those Sunday school songs I performed so well, but, outside that limited repertoire, even my musical identity made me a stranger to her. She had some kind of vague idea that music was important to me, as it was to her, but, like my father, she could not imagine music as a modus operandi in this wicked world, and...