The Wilderness Years, and the Power of God—by Mark Ottenweller
Mark Ottenweller • December 12, 2022
Sermon summary:
God displayed his power by speaking creation into existence. He spoke the word and it happened
He also shows his power in your life and how you were made. He parted the Red Sea, made the sun stop in the middle of the sky. And through Jesus, he showed his power by healing and raising people from the dead. Jesus died for our sins, and can heal us spiritually, emotionally, and physically.
Through the Holy Spirit, he raised us to new life. We need to teach our children by proclaiming his power and strength, and use the Spirit to help us deal with sin.
Practical: Thank God every day for saving and healing you. Ask God to pour our his Spirit on you=power to grow.
Watch the full service
here:
Because Jesus reconciled us to God through the cross, we are called to pursue reconciliation with God, one another, and the world around us.
Jesus reconciles us to the Father and teaches us to extend his grace, helping us forgive one another, heal relationships, and walk together in peace.
The physics of the pendulum Picture an old grandfather clock in a quiet hallway. Its long brass pendulum swings steadily: tick, tock, tick, tock. Now give that pendulum a hard shove to the right. It does not simply glide back to the center and stop. It races right past the middle and sways just as far to the left. Left to its own momentum, a pendulum never rests at either extreme; it finds peace only when it hangs still at the center, held by gravity and its fixed point. The church behaves in much the same way. Push her too far toward one side of a truth and she does not gently settle into balance, she swings. Often for a whole generation toward the opposite error, and then back again, wounding people at both ends of the arc. And here is the crucial thing the clock teaches us: the pendulum comes to rest not by being frozen in place, but by being held. Balance is not the absence of force; it is the fixed point that keeps opposing pulls in tension so that the weight can finally hang still.