Union Church

One Verse, On Thought, One Quote - Crystal Cross

"May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works" Psalm 104:31

"May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works" "Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” - GK Chesterton

Life in the Desert: Sheep, Wolves, Snakes, Birds

Listen in as we look at Matthew 10:16 and see the heart of Jesus for his people in a hostile world.

 

One Verse, One Thought, One Quote - Randy Perham

"Correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will." - 2 Timothy 2:25-26

"Never cease loving a person, and never give up hope for him, for even the prodigal son who had fallen most low, could still be saved; the bitterest enemy and also he who was your friend could again be your friend; love that has grown cold can kindle.” Soren Kierkegaard

Life in the Desert: Real Relationship

Listen in as we begin our new series "Life in the Desert." Today we look at John 15 and see what abiding in Jesus looks like today.

Notes/Quotes/Questions:

John 15:1-11

Psalm 80:8-9 

Isaiah 5:1-4 

Psalm 80:17-19

“Prayer—though it is often draining, even an agony—is in the long term the greatest source of power that is possible.To pray in Jesus’ name is , essentially, to reground our relationship with God in the saving work of Jesus over and over again. It also means to recognize your status as a child of God, regardless of your inner state.” Tim Keller 

“But the truth is…God loves us too much to answer our prayers at any other time than the right time.” - Lysa Terkuerst

“God will either give us what we ask or give us what we would have asked if we knew everything he knows…Our time frames are not in touch with ultimate reality. Our perspective on timing compared with God’s is analogous to a two-year-old’s with an adult’s. God has good reasons for making us wait a long time to see some prayers answered.” Tim Keller

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” - Matthew 10:28-30, The Message

Where are you deriving identity and vitality?
What words are carrying the most weight?
Where are you searching for home/connection?
Where have you resisted/resented the grace of pruning?
What is cluttering closeness? 
Where is realignment needed?
In what ways do God’s word and prayer need to be integrated more wholly into your life?
What is Jesus inviting you into?

Meet Kei'Ana Nabor

Today, Jon introduces Kei'Ana Nabor, and you can get to know her story, how she met Jesus and her preferences on cats or dogs.

God is ____ - Just (will by no means clear the guilty)

Listen in as Anthony and Jon wrap up our series God is ___ and see the wrath and justice of God unfold through the story of scripture.

 

Notes/Quotes:

Screens:

 

Ex. 34:6-7

“One sign that your theology has become problematic is that you bible has become inconvenient.” Matt Smethurst

 

• “This whole question of divine anger (ira dei) has been the subject of some sharp debate in the history of the church. It became known as the question of divine possibility (the quality or aptness in God to feel, suffer, or be angry) or impassibility (the denial of those qualities). Under the strong advocacy of Gnosticism (a philosophy that combined Greek and Oriental ideas with Christian teaching and professed access to truth that was a mystery to outsiders) a doctrine of God emerged that took the strongest exception to any claim that God could feel or suffer anything or that He could be angry.”
• “believed that the God of the Old Testament was a ‘Demiurge’ (a god subordinate to the supreme God and responsible for the creation of evil) whose involvement in war, suffering, and judgments disqualified Him from being the God of grace and goodness whom Marcion found in most of Paul’s epistles in the New Testament.”
• “Lactantius, wrote his De Ira Dei, ‘The Anger of God.’ For him passions or emotions were not in themselves evil, but avenues of virtue and goodness when kept under control. Furthermore, God must be moved to anger when He sees sin and wickedness in men and women just as He is moved to love them when they please Him.”

 

• “He who loves the good, by this very fact hates the evil; and he who does not hate the evil, does not love the good; because the love of goodness issues directly out of the hatred of evil, and the hatred of evil issues directly out of the love of goodness. No one can love life without abhorring death; and no one can have an appetency for light, without an antipathy to darkness.”

 

• “our problem with anger is that we define it as Aristotle did, ‘the desire for retaliation’ or a desire to get even and get revenge for a slight or real harm done to us. With anger goes the idea of a ‘brief madness’ and ‘an uneasiness or discomposure of the mind, upon the receipt of an injury, with a present purpose of revenge.’ But Lactantius defined anger as ‘a motion of the soul rousing itself to curb sin.’ - Walter Kaiser

“Therefore knowing the terror of the Lord we persuade men.”     

(2 Cor. 5:11 KJV)

“Yahweh is forgiving, but sin is not. Sin is unforgiving—merciless, petty, and cruel. Our sin has consequences. We can miss out on blessing irretrievably. We can end up like Israel—forgiven, yes, but lost in the trackless desert waste.” - John Mark Comer

My thesis is that the practice of non-violence requires a belief in divine vengeance…My thesis will be unpopular with man in the West…But imagine speaking to people (as I have) whose cities and villages have been first plundered, then burned, and leveled to the ground, whose daughters and sisters have been raped, whose fathers and brothers have had their throats slit…Your point to them–we should not retaliate? Why not? I say–the only means of prohibiting violence by us is to insist that violence is only legitimate when it comes from God…Violence thrives today, secretly nourished by the belief that God refuses to take the sword…It takes the quiet of a suburb for the birth of the thesis that human nonviolence is a result of a God who refuses to judge. In a scorched land–soaked in the blood of the innocent, the idea will invariably die, like other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind…if God were NOT angry at injustice and deception and did NOT make a final end of violence, that God would not be worthy of our worship. - Miroslav Volf

One Verse, One Thought, One Quote - Hillary Horn

Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you - 1 Peter 5:6-7

 

"I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God. It changes me.” - C.S. Lewis

God is ____ - Keeping Steadfast Love and Forgiving

Listen along as we continue our series looking at the character of God from Exodus 34:6-7

 

Sermon Notes/Quotes:

 

Exodus 34:6-7

Isaiah 55:8-9

Isaiah 55:6-7

 

“The natural flow of the fallen human heart is toward reciprocity, tit-for-tat payback, equanimity, balancing of the scales. We are far more intractably law-ish than we realize. There is something healthy and glorious buried in that impulse, or course—made in God’s own image, we desire order and fairness rather than chaos. But that impulse, like every part of us, has been diseased by the ruinous fall into sin. Our capacity to apprehend the heart of God has gone into meltdown. We are left with an impoverished view of how he feels toward his people…So God tells us in plain terms how tiny our natural views of his heart are. His thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are not our ways.” - Dane Ortlund

 

“Forgiveness is not so much a word spoken, an action performed, or a feeling felt as it is an embodied way of life in an ever-deepening friendship with the Triune God and with others. As such, a Christian account of forgiveness ought not simply or even primarily be focused on the absolution of guilt; rather, it ought to be focused on the reconciliation of brokenness, the restoration of communion—with God, with one another, and with the whole creation.” - L. Gregory Jones

 

"Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship. Forgiveness is a catalyst creating the atmosphere necessary for a fresh start and a new beginning" Martin Luther King Jr.

Sermon Recap - God is Slow to Anger and Abounding in Steadfast Love and Faithfulness

Listen in as we recap our sermon from 7/26/2020 looking at who God is and how that transforms our lives and world today.

One Verse, One Thought, One Quote - Beth Garcia

"But we see Jesus." Hebrews 2:9 

 

"Welcome, child," he said.
"Aslan," said Lucy, "you're bigger."
"That is because you are older, little one," answered he.
"Not because you are?"
"I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger."
     -C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia