Rev Chris Roth

Ruth 2:1-16, Acts 6:1-7, John 13:1-20 At the 10:00am service we were blessed to have Pastor Rick Abma speak to us about service- to learn more about him go here: http://www.rickabma.com/ https://goodneighbourcoffee.ca/   This week we are continuing with our sermon series on the spiritual disciplines, and today we are looking at the discipline of service. Service is an act of other-centeredness. It is exerting our energies for the benefit of another. There are a lot of practical examples of how we can serve. We can serve at a homeless shelter, or we can listen to someone in pain, we can serve a parent with a chronic illness, we can volunteer to clean at the church- or any number of other ways we can serve God, our church, our neighbour, our friend, or our enemies. The overall outcome is humility. The author and pastor Richard Foster says that being a servant enables a person “to say no to the world’s games of promotion and authority”. It frees us from the game of having to feel

Psalm 19; Phil 4:4-9; Matt 6:25-34 We are continuing with our sermon series on the spiritual disciplines. This week we are looking at the spiritual discipline of study. My hope is that as we explore these that we will each take a look at our Rule of Life- which is our spiritual exercise plan- and update it. What is our plan for going as disciples of Jesus- what do we do daily, weekly, monthly, seasonally, yearly. What is our exercise plan? how are we purposely putting ourselves in the place where God can transform us. When Jesus was asked what the greatest command was, he said,  ‘“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind ”  (Matthew 22:37).  If Jesus gave that as the most important command, then we should probably give that some serious consideration. What does it mean to “Love the Lord your God with all your mind”? I suspect it means something like- using our mental powers to gain insight and wisdom to grow as discip

2 Kings 6:8-23, Rom 8:18-30, Matt 6:5-15 We are continuing with our sermon series on the Spiritual Disciplines. This week we are looking at the discipline of prayer. Prayer is such a massive topic that we really can only scratch the surface. There are a lot of good books out there on prayer if you want to dive a bit deeper. One I would recommend is called “Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home” by Richard Foster. He delves into many different types of prayer. And just as there are many kinds of prayer, there are also a number of different kinds of techniques to enter into prayer that Christians have used throughout the centuries (I will place a few of these below). Prayer is absolutely foundational to the Christian life. Jesus was a man of prayer- as were his followers. Therefore, so should we be.  With so much variety around prayer it might be helpful to have some specific and practical helps. This is what I tend to suggest. (I realize that many of you have your own

Ex 19:1-9 Galatians 4:19, 5:16-26 John 15:1-17 There is a vision in the Bible of a people created in the image of God who will be a blessing to the earth. We see this in the creation of Adam and Eve when God creates the human beings and tell them to be fruitful and rule the creatures of the earth. It has become popular to think of that as a bad thing, but what if humans ruling the world could be a blessing to the world? In God’s blessing of Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 12 God blessing them to be a blessing to all the families of the earth. God doesn’t bless them for their own sake alone. Their blessing is for the benefit of the world. Exodus 19 expresses this as well. God desires that the people keep his commandments so that they will be a priestly kingdom and a holy nation, which implies a kind of leading of humanity. Jesus is right in line with this. He wants to renew this original vision for humanity to be a blessing for the world. At the end of Matthew Jesus