Episodes
Wednesday Mar 27, 2019
S6E53: Repenting (With All Your Heart pt. 4)
Wednesday Mar 27, 2019
Wednesday Mar 27, 2019
Lent is a season of denying ourselves so that we can grow closer to God. In the reading from Isaiah today, God promises to the people of Israel rich abundance if they only repent, turn away from their sin and return to God. In today's message, we will examine what it means to repent, and why it is important to confess to specific sin in our lives in order to truly return to God with all our heart.
Isaiah 55:1-9
Recorded at Hudson UMC on March 24, 2019
S.D.G.
Monday Mar 25, 2019
S6E52: Loving Church
Monday Mar 25, 2019
Monday Mar 25, 2019
Recently, the United Methodist Church held a special session of General Conference at which our voting body affirmed our current statement on homosexuality. In response, many annual conferences, including Greater New Jersey (of which both Hudson UMC and Ebenezer UMC are members), had special sessions to discuss the ramifications of the vote at General Conference. In response to these, we took a look at what it means to be a loving church, using Christ as our example.
Luke 13:31-35 and John 8:1-11
Recorded at Ebenezer UMC on March 17, 2019
S.D.G.
Friday Mar 15, 2019
S6E51: The First Look (First Things First pt. 5)
Friday Mar 15, 2019
Friday Mar 15, 2019
In the Transfiguration we find Jesus meeting with and talking to Moses and Elijah, the personification of the Law and the Prophets. They were speaking with Jesus about his "decease" or his "departure," depending on which translation you read - yet the word is the same in the Greek and it is a familiar word: exodus. And so we find that we can draw many parallels between the salvation we find in Jesus Christ, and the salvation that the Israelites experienced in the Exodus. And what this means to us today is that God's heart is always for the deliverance of his people, and not their destruction.
Luke 9:28-36
Recorded at Ebenezer UMC on February 7, 2016
S.D.G.
Wednesday Mar 13, 2019
S6E50: God's Generous Heart (With All Your Heart pt. 2)
Wednesday Mar 13, 2019
Wednesday Mar 13, 2019
On this first Sunday in Lent we examine a passage from Deuteronomy and a passage from Romans that speak to the generous heart of God. Everything that we have comes from God, and every good thing we have received from God's own hand. From the air we breathe to the life we live, to the faith within us that brings us to salvation - indeed, salvation itself is an act accomplished by the will of a generous and loving God. Rather than give thanks just once a year, we ought to live our lives in thanksgiving to this God - OUR God - who loves us and provides for us all that we need.
Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Romans 10:8b-13
Recorded at Hudson UMC on March 10, 2019
S.D.G.
Monday Mar 11, 2019
S6E49: Return to Me (With All Your Heart pt. 1)
Monday Mar 11, 2019
Monday Mar 11, 2019
Ash Wednesday, the first day of the Lenten season, is a time to reflect on our own mortality. We wear the ashes to remind ourselves that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. This Lenten season we are focusing on the word of God from Joel 2:12 - "Yet even now, return to me with all your heart." Even when we have turned away from God, from the ashes of the wreckage of our sinful lives, God still invites us to return to Him. In this Lenten series we will be looking at the Old Testament and Epistle texts in a series called "With All Your Heart."
Joel 2:1-2,12-17; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Recorded at Ebenezer UMC on March 6, 2019
S.D.G.
Wednesday Mar 06, 2019
S6E48: The Glory of the Lord
Wednesday Mar 06, 2019
Wednesday Mar 06, 2019
Transfiguration Sunday is placed on the church calendar as the end of the season of Epiphany and the last Sunday before the Lenten Season. Why is this? As we will see in today's lesson, the Transfiguration marks a pivot point in each of the gospels and a turning point when Jesus' ministry goes from teaching and performing miracles, to the journey to Jerusalem and the cross. For the Christian today, it also divides two acts in our faith life. We begin our Christian walk learning who Jesus is, and the second act is learning to live the life Christ calls us to as our Lord.
Luke 9:28-36
Recorded at Ebenezer UMC on March 3, 2019
S.D.G.
Monday Mar 04, 2019
S6E47: Raised in Glory
Monday Mar 04, 2019
Monday Mar 04, 2019
Having established 1. that Jesus Christ has been resurrected, and 2. that there is a resurrection, Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 now turns to the topic of what our resurrected bodies will look like. He uses the example of a seed to show that what is sown is not what grows. In other words, we cannot know from the appearance of a seed what the tree that grows from it will look like. In the same way, all of what our resurrection bodies will look like is contained in our bodies, but we can also look at Jesus' resurrected body to know what we will be on that last day.
1 Corinthians 15:35-38,42-50
Recorded at Hudson UMC on February 24, 2019
S.D.G.