Plains Church Sermons: Recent Episodes
Kirk Taylor
In John 14, Jesus introduces the Holy Spirit to his followers. As we begin to dig into what Jesus teaches us about the Holy Spirit, we begin by learning that he is a person, he is given to those who keep God's commands, and he comes to give us peace.
God's commands in the Bible are an expression of his love for us. They are there for our good and safety, and when we obey them, we experience his love. His love fills us and empowers us to love others like he did, at great personal cost to ourselves.
Thomas gets a bad rap for doubting the resurrection, but he was really asking for evidence of what he was being asked to put his faith in. And Jesus gave him evidence! In fact, Jesus wants our faith to be built on evidence.
Jesus is the only way to the Father, and this is better news than we could ever imagine. We don't have to find a way to God. The Way has come to find us!
When Jesus washed his disciples' feet, it was an uncomfortable reminder of what it looks like to follow him--humility, service, and loving those who may not love you back.
We all experience anxiety from many sources. The Bible talks about anxiety that comes from need, while our modern age sees more and more anxiety that comes from excess. In all cases, prayer and Biblical wisdom can help us begin to address the anxieties in our lives.
Anger is a normal human emotion, but if you do not learn to control your anger, it will control you. We live in an angry age, and even many Christians seem to cherish anger. However, the Bible directs us to be slow to anger and to use anger to heal.
We cannot be spiritually mature without becoming emotionally mature. In this series, we are looking at 4 big emotions that can control us if we don't learn to control them. We begin with fear. Whether fear is rooted in shame, in our own inadequacies, or in giants around us, we take control of fear by looking for Jesus.
Faith is belief lived out in real life. We begin our study of faith by defining what the word means in real life settings. Faith requires action, faith grows through doubt, and faith plays a long game.
Jesus calls his Church to go and be active. From beginning with prayer to engaging our communities, a church is healthy when it exercises. No pew potatoes!
In order to be a healthy church, we need to have a healthy diet. In this sermon we talk about the practices we can implement in our individual lives and in our church so that we continue to grow up in Christ.
In America, we are taught to value what is big, and so we naturally assume that small churches are unhealthy churches. Many small churches (and small church Christians) develop inferiority complexes as we look at the big problems around us. Before we can be healthy small churches, we must know that God loves small churches and that his glory shines most brightly when someone small trusts God to do something big!
What does it look like when a local church begins to focus on God's Kingdom more than on its own existence? It looks like a river! A Kingdom-minded church exists to pass on the power and blessings of God to the world rather than bottling everything up inside.
Most of us probably feel like we never have enough time, and yet time is one of the most precious resources that we can offer to God. Seeking God first with our time means placing every aspect of our lives at God's service with flexibility and intentionality.
Since money easily can become a controlling idol in our lives, the Bible calls us to generosity to combat money's hold over us. In 2 Corinthians 8-9, Paul tells us to give willingly (and not under compulsion), and he reminds us that everything we have already comes from God.
When it comes to seeking God first, how can we surrender our families to God without sacrificing them along the way? We start by establishing priorities ahead of time and practicing faith together.
Our world offers us the false choice of living for today or living for tomorrow. Jesus gives us another option--to live for his Kingdom and his righteousness.
Jesus' final word from the cross was all about surrender. Instead of trying to get the last word himself, he gave the last word to his Father, who raised him from the dead on Easter morning. When we surrender to God and let him have the last word, his last word is always resurrection, redemption, reconciliation, or restoration!
Jesus' fifth word from the cross--"I thirst"--tells us of the physical suffering he endured for us. But even more than that, it's a reminder of our own thirst that points us toward the Living Water and the blood of the Lamb.
In his fourth word from the cross, Jesus tells us about the spiritual cost he paid to save us. Jesus fully identified with us by taking our sins on himself. Only when he had become fully like us in this way could he complete his rescue mission.
Jesus speaks seven final words from the cross that teach us the meaning and the measure of the cross. His first word is about forgiveness: there is no sin that cannot be forgiven by God, and we are to forgive others as Christ has forgiven us.
David was a great king, but he wasn't always a great leader in his own home. The most important discipleship in the life of a child happens in the home. Children will accept what parents do as normal, and so we must pay extra careful attention to what we model for them.
With our God, sin is never the whole story. With sin comes both consequences and the opportunity for redemption. That's because our God excels at bringing good and beautiful things out of evil and death.
We rarely 'fall' into sin. Often, the decisions you make leading up to sin will enable it. This was the case with David's affair with Bathsheba. Even though David's initial reaction was to cover up his sin, he learned that confession was the only way to be set free.
David is a man after God's own heart because he has the love of God in him: love that is inconvenient, faithful, and willing to take on risk.
Jesus was born to break chains--both spiritual chains and chains of this world. Since Jesus paid special attention to the poor and vulnerable on the bottom side of society, we should too.
Jesus has given us one command: to love others as he has loved us. The Holy Spirit helps us to overcome our selfishness so that we can love others sacrificially like Jesus.
Every person has worth, but sin often obscures the worth we see in ourselves and in others. The Gospel reminds us that we have worth! You have worth because God made you in his image, and you have worth because God loves and values you.
Sometimes we get so busy doing things for God that we forget all that he does for us in his grace. We are not benefactors of God, but servants who are blessed beyond imagining.
The danger of religion is that it can become a box that we think allows us to contain and control God. Instead of trying to control God, David surrendered to God. Instead of trying to move God, he allowed God to move him.
Grief is awkward and difficult for many people. As David mourns the death of Saul, he shows us how to grieve appropriately--expressing the immensity of loss even while having hope in Christ.
Life gets messy, and the conditions of your life are rarely going to be ideal for living out faith. God still works out his purposes for us even in the messy times of our lives.
In the disciple making process, only God makes things grow, but he gives us the tasks of planting and watering. Nothing grows without water, and one of the best ways to water for spiritual growth is through conversations that move from simple to serious to spiritual.
The early church in Acts focused on four essential elements in their gatherings: teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayer. We are going to experiment with what it would look like for Plains Church to focus on these four things in our Brunch Church services this year.
In farming, plowing comes before planting because plowing breaks open the hard ground to receive the seed that is planted. In the same way, prayer must come before outreach and evangelism , because prayer softens hard hearts so they can receive the word of God.
Not all open doors are from God. Sometimes God asks us to shut a door that seems good and follow him into the wilderness. These are the times that grow our faith and teach us reliance on God.
In the midst of this twisted story of lies and murder, David shows us the importance of running to sanctuary. We come back to worship God together week after week because we need his help, his sustenance, his strength and his grace.
Our lives are mixed bags of relationships that build us up and tear us down. In these chapters, David shows us how to put our antagonists in God's hands, and Jonathan shows us how to be true friends in the image of Jesus.
In this weeks sermon from the life of David, we talk about the overlooked and underestimated stones God has given us to take down giants in our own lives: prayer, scripture, worship, community, and confession.
To be people after God's own heart, we must learn to see as God sees. As God reminds Samuel in this passage, humans tend to look at external appearances, which can be deceiving, but God looks at the heart.
Before David became a 'man after God's own heart', Saul was a man who never understood God's heart. As we begin a new series on the life of David, we find that a person who is after the heart of God is someone who trusts in God's grace and responds with obedience.
God has given us his Holy Spirit to live inside us and be our Helper! Today, we look specifically at how the Holy Spirit helps us to pray and to know the will of God.
Our world is broken, and all of creation is groaning for the day when God will restore everything and set the world right. Romans 8 tells us that this restoration will happen when the glory of God is revealed in us. Today we earn that the glory of God is chiefly his character and his resurrection life, both of which are growing in us.
A big piece of our good news is that God has adopted us into his family and given us a place to truly belong!
As Christians, our hope is rooted in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. However, to share this hope with others, we begin by planting seeds of hope in tangible ways in our community.
While we can't directly create faith in our kids, we can do intentional things to create an environment where our kids can hear God's voice and experience his presence.
The heart of the Gospel is that Jesus has risen from the dead! But it doesn't just stop with Jesus... God intends to raise our bodies from the dead too!
Jesus invites us into a Kingdom that is very different than any country or nation on earth. One of the first things he asks us to do in his Kingdom is to rest. In this Kingdom life, being with Jesus is more important than doing things for Jesus.