Mark 4:1-20, Isaiah 51:1-3, Psalm 32 We are in the first week of our Lenten sermon series. This Lent, we are going to talk about deepening our roots in Jesus. During Lent we will talk about different spiritual disciplines that help us deepen our relationship with God. During Lent there is a tradition of fasting. Last year I talked about fasting being sacrifice and blessing. This means that we can remove something from our lives in order to add something. One way to do t

Isaiah 58, Isaiah 62:1-5, Eph 4:1-6, 5:1-2, Psalm 51:1-17 In the letter I sent, I said that I would talk about fasting as preparation to become the bride of Christ, the church, but the sermon evolved differently than expected. We will still be talking about Ash Wednesday & Valentine’s Day, which seem like opposite things. On Valentine’s Day we celebrate our sweetheart, the love in our life. Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent. Lent is the forty days leading up to Easte

Luke 1:5-25, Isaiah 61:1-4,8-11, Psalm 126 Good morning! We are in the third week of our Advent series on Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. This week is the week for Joy! We light the pink candle today. Pink represents celebration so it is a reminder that we are preparing ourselves to celebrate Jesus’ birthday. As we prepare to celebrate Jesus’ birthday, it’s helpful to think about how God was preparing for Jesus’ birth. We see from our passage in Luke this morning, that God p

Psalm 23, Isaiah 40:1-11, 2 Peter 3:8-15a Good morning! We are continuing our Advent Series on Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. As I mentioned last week, we have new Advent candles this year, three purple and one pink. The purple candles represent Hope, Peace, and Love. This week is a purple week, for Peace. Today we light two candles: the candle of Hope for last week and the candle of Peace for this week. Purple signifies royalty. We are celebrating our Infant King. It is

1 Corinthians 1:3-9, Isaiah 40:25-31, Psalm 80 1-7, 17-19 Good morning! Wow! It is so wonderful to be back at Briarwood. I really missed you all very much. I was flattened by shingles. Fortunately, for me, the pain was not bad. The biggest issue I struggled with was fatigue: bone-dead exhaustion that affected my body and my ability to think. I feel so much gratitude to God for improved health. I had no idea that I took good health for granted until I got sick. I now