This Sunday morning, we begin our celebration of the season of Advent. The word "Advent" is derived from the Latin word adventus, which means, "coming" or "arrival." Scholars believe that during the 4thand 5thcenturies in Spain and Gaul (France), Advent was a season of preparation for thebaptismof new Christians at the January feast of Epiphany. During this season of prepa...

Imagine that you're a visiting a new Bible study group. You're introduced to the group, there's some small-talk, then what seems like hours of prayer requests for people you don't know anything about followed by a brief opening prayer. And then the group leader says, "Open your Bibles to the book of Obadiah." Before you were nervous; now you're terrified. Where is the boo...

Thanksgiving and courage go hand in hand. In fact, the giving of thanks leads to courage. We see this in Acts 28:15, where we see that Paul "thanked God, and took courage." Paul needed courage. On his journey to Rome to testify of Jesus before Caesar, the ship that was supposed to take Paul there was shipwrecked off the coast of Malta. All 276 passengers survived, but i...

Years ago, when we lived in Nashville, our church sponsored a family of refugees from Vietnam. They knew some English, but were a long way from being fluent in our language. We found an apartment for them as well as jobs for the mother and her son, Phuong who was about twenty years old at the time. Our congregation worked with this family of refugees in a number of ways to...

This week we're going to see what God is saying to us in Acts 27. It's the story of Paul's voyage to Rome and of the shipwreck that occurred on the way. This story presents some sticky theological questions for us. We're going to focus on a few of them. Sticky Theological Question #1Why does God not always intervene and change our circumstances? The Lord Jesus had appear...