Pay Attention to Your Spirit | Sermon Preview
This weekend is the final message in our Summer Sermon Series, Finding God’s Will. We’ve considered how using scripture, reason and tradition can help us find God’s will for our lives. These are great resources you can use to answers questions like, “What does God want of me? From me? For me?”
We’ll finish our series by talking about how our experiences with God can help us answer those questions, too.
Here are the two passages of the Bible we’ll talk about this week:
Ephesians 2:1-10
From Death to Life
You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.2 Chronicles 36:22-23
Cyrus Proclaims Liberty for the Exiles
In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, in fulfillment of the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord stirred up the spirit of King Cyrus of Persia so that he sent a herald throughout all his kingdom and also declared in a written edict: ‘Thus says King Cyrus of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may the Lord his God be with him! Let him go up.’
What was the last experience with God you had?
Here’s a funny clip to get you thinking.