Vienna Assembly Of God Sermons

It's about loving Jesus. If your love for Jesus is hot, if your spiritual formation practices are authentic, if you are attuned to the presence of God in your life, if you are receptive to the correction of scripture, we can figure the rest of the stuff out. If we find ourselves in disagreement about some life choice that I'm making or that you're making, I can find peace and reconciliation in my trust in the God that can still the winds and the waves.

In cultivating freedom, it is okay to start small, offering our next best yes.

How do we embrace a theme of "Live Free" while navigating struggles and seeming lack of freedom? It's not just about me.

Practicing sabbath is a gift from God to his freed people.

Friends, we live in a "free country" and yet we each experience a long list of things that we would like to be free from. Truly free in Jesus is the freedom we long for deep inside.

You are golden!!! Your faith is more precious than gold!!! YOU are a precious stone in God's spiritual temple, and your obedient life to God is building something that will never fade away.

We need to understand that Jesus is ending this sermon with a serious call to action. It is not enough to have heard these teachings, but we have to "do" something.

To be a disciple of Jesus requires obeying all the commands of Jesus. Paying attention to all his teachings. As we look today at the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, we have to start with asking ourselves how we relate to these teachings. Are they optional? Are they goals to set for sometime in the future? Are they fiction? Can they be disregarded?

The Beatitudes are a pronouncement, based on observation, that a certain way of being in the world produces human flourishing and felicity. These were common in ancient literature, including in Jewish texts. What is uncommon is who Jesus described as the ones who are flourishing.

The Sermon on the Mount provides a lot of guidance for everyday living. But it does so with the end firmly in mind. This is an important understanding for biblical theology - we are never just living for the here-and-now, even while we are encouraged not to worry about tomorrow. We have in view God's grand purpose to redeem and restore all of creation and to bring his people into full and right relationship with himself and each other.

The women came to the tomb that day carrying spices. Those spices represent several things: grief, tension between faith and doubt, tradition and duty, and questions. What have you brought to the tomb?

We are considering Gethsemane, and Jesus' prayer there, and looking at it through the lens of Philippians 2.

Even when face to face with a resurrection miracle, there are those who doubt. Jesus prayed a specific prayer before calling Lazarus out, and it was for those struggling to believe.

Prayers of blessing are much more than just hoping to get something good for yourself. The blessing of God opens channels of favor and paths of right-living within our hearts, and flows out into our families, our church, our community. We need to seek the Lord's blessing.

Prayer is about talking with God about what you need. And he knows what you need. And he's a loving God who is intensely interested in receiving your sincere prayers and answering. It's not a formula, it's not a guarantee of everything going your way, but it is an invitation to relationship with God.

As we prepare to enter the season of Lent, a vital practice of prayer is listening.

Give something back. Give something forward.

In our consumer culture, saturated by advertising and manipulation, we are accustomed to being baited and targeted. Was this what Jesus had in mind when he said he would teach his followers how to fish for people?

God sees you. And he is not content with that - he also wants you to see him.

On this Epiphany Sunday, we take a quick look back at Pastor Brenda's six-year anniversary, and then see the work of the Holy Spirit through today's readings.