Spiritual gifts are very important to the Church, but sometimes our natural talents get short shrift. But God created us in the first place with natural talents! And if we’ve developed them over the years, He will use them just like He uses spiritual gifts, so we are blessed and in turn bless the Kingdom of God and the world that He loves so much. Some of you may already know your natural talents. Others may be so deeply engrained in your life that you don’t even recognize them as a talent. “Everybody can do this!” you protest. Probably not. Do Natural Talents Have Anything to Do with Spiritual Gifts?…

The MOST important thing that will ever happen to you–EVER–is your conversion. Accepting Christ. Not everyone can point to a single day and time; sometimes you just realize that you decided to believe, and you did. Others of us can point to a time or season, place or age. Because when you accept Christ, you’re a whole new creature, a new being. The Bible isn’t being fanciful or metaphoric, that’s exactly what it means. The doctrine of conversion is called “justification”, because we asked the Lord to forgive our sins and come into our lives. “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that…

When I write sermons, I talk them first. I say things out loud as it I were speaking to you. As themes and wisdom and truths come to me, the sermon beings to take shape. The I dictate the first draft so I have a record of it. I adjust, put in illustrations and stories, get rid of the tangents no matter how fun they are; and all the time I’m talking listening to the Lord’s direction while I’m talking right out loud. Good thing the dog is used to my wondering around the house passionately proclaiming the word of God! Until Friday morning. I was practicing this sermon in…