Pastor of Community Engagement
Sermons by John O'Connor (Page 2)
In the early Church, there were three religious practices that were practiced regularly; Giving, Praying, and Fasting. Some where along the way, fasting fell off the bandwagon and became more of a diet plan. When we deny our selves the physical gratification of food, and put our trust in the word of God, the hold that the physical has on our lives begins to lessen. And the growth towards the spiritual, increases greatly. It’s time that we start making Fasting a priority in our worship.
Community is often under-prioritized, because we naturally tend to gravitate towards hanging out. But are we building the right community, the community God intends for us to have with one another. In this lesson, we are first going to look at how the early church (Acts 2:42-47) built their community together. Second, we are going to read through 1 Corinthians 13, at how the church at Corinth needed to shift the priority of their community from valuing talents and gifts to valuing Love above all else. A love the leads us back to Christ.
Through out our life, we are faced with times of abundance and times of great need. In our last sermon of “Separate but Connected”, we are reading through Philippians 4:10-23. Paul here not only models a Spiritually Mature Contentment, but shows us how we can obtain it. Today let’s strive for a spiritually mature and content Christian life.
Unity is a huge theme throughout Philippians, and actually it is a huge theme carried throughout a lot of what wrote in his letters. There is a personal cost as well as a corporate price that we pay when we do not prioritize unity in the church body. Today we are going to discuss the ways we should approach conflict, and protect ourselves from falling into faithless worry.
This week we will be in Philippians Chapter 3, dealing with the first 11 verses. Paul here is warning us of false righteousness, giving us an example of his own self-righteousness, and describing what and who is true Righteousness. What is your faith placed in today? Is it Flesh, or Faith in Jesus Christ?
We are starting a new chapter in our “Separate but Connected” series. Paul begins chapter two by pointing out the example that Christ left us. Our motivations affect our sacrifice, our service, our selflessness, and it ultimately affects the unity we either share or don’t share with fellow Christians. It’s time we took a good look at ourselves to see if we are Living for Christ or ourselves.
Today, we’re going to take a few minutes to think about a time later in Paul’s life—the time when he wrote this letter to the church in Philippi. We find more information about this time in Acts 28. If you were to read that passage, you would discover that Paul is writing this letter almost certainly from the city of Rome where he is imprisoned. But as we will soon see, the ministry of preaching the gospel could not be contained with his incarceration. No! God used his imprisonment to advance the gospel even further than before because the gospel is unstoppable!
We are excited to start our new sermon series called “Separate but Connected”. We will be reading through the book of Philippians, observing how Paul and the Church of Philippi interacted with one another while not being able to be in each others presence. As we go read through the first 11 verses, Paul brings to light what it is to have True Fellowship with one another.
Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? These are all crucial questions that we must ask ourselves before we hit send!