Queen Street Baptist Church: Recent Episodes
Queen Street Baptist Church
Sermons preached at Queen Street Baptist Church in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. Most of the messages are preached by Stephen Bedard. Visit us at www.queenstbaptst.org.
Acts 13:1-12 Introduction A few months ago, it was the twenty years ago that I was ordained. It was at Queensway Baptist Church in Brantford, and it took place on mystery last Sunday there before starting at a new church. It was a meaningful service but it really was one step in a long process…
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Acts 12:20-25 Introduction I’m going to give you a little bit of insight on how I go about picking passages to preach on. I enjoy preaching a series, preferably on a book of the Bible. I like this because it forces me to get outside my own area of interests and to be challenged by…
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Acts 12:1-19 Introduction It does not take us long before we discover that life is not fair. Children at a young age complain that things are not fair. They sense a disconnect when someone gets something good that they didn’t get or if they get punished and someone else doesn’t. It just isn’t fair! As…
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Acts 11:27-30 Introduction What is the question that the world is asking about the church? Believe it or not, the main question is not about which church is the true church. People are not lying awake at night wondering of the Anglicans or the Pentecostals or the Baptists have a corner on the truth. That…
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Acts 10:1-33 Introduction How common would you say prejudice is? We might be inclined to think that we are not as prejudiced as some other people. But then that is a form of prejudice. Here is an example. I find that Canadians point to Americans as people who have really struggled with racism. We hear…
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Matthew 28:1-10 A Frightening Morning I want you to imagine that first Easter morning, specifically from the perspective of the women. Perhaps you think of an early morning stroll through a garden with a few friends. That was not really what was happening. It was very early in the morning, so early that it was…
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Matthew 21:1-11 Introduction If you are a parent, or have at least spent some time with children, you will know that there is an ongoing lesson that needs to be taught. And that lesson is the difference between a need and a want. They need their favourite blanket. They need a bowl of ice cream.…
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Acts 9:19b-30 Introduction Has there ever been a time when you have felt rejected, like the whole world was against you? Perhaps the supports that once been there were now gone. Do you remember what that was like? And have you ever been in that position and someone came forward to support you? It may…
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Acts 9:1-20 Introduction I want you to think about the person you would most be surprised to become a Christian. It could be someone famous, perhaps a musician or an actor or a politician. Maybe it was someone who is a known criminal or is had had a particularly immoral life. Maybe it is someone…
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Exodus 3:1-15 Introduction Have you ever had an opportunity come your way that totally scared you? While you valued the opportunity, the task seemed beyond your abilities. When I think about these feelings, I automatically think about the anticipation of my basic training for the army. I did not have much time to process what…
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Acts 8:26-40 Introduction I have often felt like the story of the Ethiopian eunuch is one of the strangest in Acts. It’s not the picture of Philip running alongside the horse drawn chariot, listening to what the man was reading. Nor is it the way the Holy Spirit takes Philip away immediately after, making it…
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The Church scattered February 7, 2021 QSBC Acts 8:1-8 Introduction Back when I was in my mid-20s, I went on my first mission trip. It was with the organization Operation Mobilization. I was pretty excited to go overseas and preach the gospel. And I as feeling a bit overconfident as well, if I am honest.…
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Acts 7:54-60 Introduction Have you ever thought about what it will be like when you die? I don’t mean passing into the afterlife but in the hours and minutes leading up to it. I know that sounds morbid and yet it is something we will all experience. I have spent time with a lot of…
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Acts 7:51-53 Introduction Have you ever been having a conversation with someone and you realize that you have come to a crossroads? You can see the next thing that you plan to say in your mind. You know that if you say that, there is no going back. Not only will it change the direction…
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Acts 7:44-50 Introduction Many years ago, I was at a revival service here in St Catharines and I heard something that I have never forgotten. Interestingly, it was in his sermon but in his appeal for the offering. As he was asking people to dig deep into their wallets, he told us that God was…
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Matthew 2:1-12 Introduction You may think that Christmas is over but it is not. As the song says, there are twelve days of Christmas, starting on December 25 and ending on January 6. So Merry Christmas! When I think of Christmas, I often think of nativity sets. Each of us might be drawn to different…
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Hebrews 12:1-2 Introduction Throughout this season of Advent, we have looked at Jesus as our Hope-Giver, Peace-Giver and Love-Giver. We now come to Jesus as our Joy-Giver. It is not difficult to find the concept of joy in the Christmas story. When the pregnant Mary visited her relative Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the…
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John 13:34-35 Introduction I have a love-hate relationship when it comes to tradition. On one hand, I really love tradition. It may be connected with my appreciation for history, including church history. There is so much that we can learn from the past and tradition is an excellent way of passing on those lessons. Not…
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Introduction Last week, we looked at how in our dark times, our world is in desperate need of hope. We also saw that Jesus came as the hope-giver. That is Good News. What else do we need in these turbulent times? It just so happens that the second Sunday of Advent is that of peace.…
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Introduction This is the first Sunday of Advent. It is a time when each week we light a candle, bringing light out of the darkness and we reflect on what it meant for Jesus to arrive in our world. This is also the first Advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. If ever there was a time…
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Acts 6:8-15 Introduction I want you to think about a time when a person or a group of people were very upset with you. Not just slightly annoyed but downright angry. Now I want you to think about what it was that made them angry. How accurately were they interpreting the facts of what you…
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Acts 6:1-7 Introduction With this being Remembrance Sunday, I can’t help but think of conversations I have had in the past with veterans, especially of the Second World War. I was blessed in my previous church to have a good group of WW2 veterans that I was able to get to know and hear their…
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Acts 5:33-42 Introduction As many of you know, I have a great interest in military history. It is not to glorify war but to learn from what happens to humanity when put in the most difficult situations. There are often practical life lessons, and even lessons for us as a church, even if the weapons…
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Acts 5:1-11 Introduction Every once in a while I get the urge to write a devotional on the most disturbing passages in the Bible. There are a number that could be included and one of them would be the story of Ananias and Sapphira. This is the story of a married couple in the church…
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Acts 4:23-37 Introduction I remember being at a ministerial and I pointed out that John had been a Baptist. The Nazarene pastor reminded me that John may have been a Baptist but Jesus was a Nazarene. That’s when another pastor stated in heaven, we would all be the United Church. I’m not suggesting that any…
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Acts 4:13-22 Introduction You may or may not know that I took a number of years off pastoral ministry between my previous churches and coming to Queen Street Baptist Church. But of course we still needed to eat and so that meant I needed to get a job. At that point, I had been a…
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Acts 4:1-12 Introduction I will confess to you that I’m horrible when it comes to directions. Whenever we go on a trip, I completely rely on Amanda. My confidence in her surpasses that of any GPS. If I don’t have Amanda, I definitely rely on the GPS directions on my phone. But what did people…
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Acts 3 Introduction At some point in 2019, just a few people contracted a virus that we now call COVID-19. At the time it probably looked like a small thing. I don’t even know how sick those first people got. I am sure that if you could go back and explain to them all that…
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This is such an interesting time. Covid-19 is a history defining moment. I often tell my kids, this is a turning point of their lives. It will shape how they live their life, much like in previous generations of pandemics, or wartime, or those who have survived natural disasters…there is one thing that is true…
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Joshua 22:10-34 Introduction As some of you may know, one of my interests is blogging. A blog is a shortened form of web log and it is like a public diary or opinion column posted in the internet. I have been doing this for about fifteen years. Most of the time when I publish a…
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Acts 2:42-47 Introduction I want you to imagine you were doing a public performance of some kind. It could be a speech, some music, presenting something you have made, whatever you are passionate about. You present your skills to the public. After the performance, someone comes up to you and says, “I was just filled…
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Acts 2:22-41 Introduction Have you ever had a recurring dream? It may not be exactly the same dream but it is the same sort of dream or it happens at the same place or it includes the same people. I have had a number of recurring dreams over my life, usually repeating frequently during a…
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Acts 2:1-21 Introduction I am the pastor of Queen Street Baptist Church. But I am not a lifelong Baptist. In fact I have been baptized twice in my life and neither time was in a Baptist church. I was raised in the Anglican church for a long time that’s all I knew about church. I…
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Acts 1:12-26 Introduction I want to be careful in what I predict, but I want to say that I hope that this is my final congregation of my pastoral career. I realize that I still have a lot of time before I retire, but the thought of going through the process again is not appealing.…
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Acts 1:1-11 Introduction Have you ever been in the awkward experience of expecting someone to do something and you are not sure if they are going to do it? You are hanging on their every word and action, hoping that that they will get around to what you want them to do or say. It…
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1 Corinthians 14:1-19 Introduction Do you enjoy traditional worship? Before you answer that, we better be clear on what we mean traditional. At this point in time after months of online services, any in-person worship taking place in a church building, no matter how recent the songs, may feel like traditional worship. But perhaps you…
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Psalm 100 Introduction An important part of our church mission statement is that we are a people worshiping God in Jesus Christ. I don’t think that there is anything controversial about that. I would be surprised if someone tuned into this worship service and was shocked that we were worshiping God. But what does worship…
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Jude 1:17-25 Introduction Different people have different starting points for how they live their lives. Some begin from a place of reflection or of theory or of impulse. While I appreciate all of those things, I prefer more guidance and direction. I want to be told what to do, not necessarily how to do it,…
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In this service, Amanda Bedard shares with us from Acts a picture of what the Church can be like.
Luke 24:50-53 Introduction What were the most theologically significant events in Jesus’ life? That’s easy, just follow the holidays. What are the two biggest holidays for the Christian Church? Christmas and Easter, representing Jesus’ birth and his death and resurrection. Those are the events we really need to know. But what about the ascension? The…
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Luke 24:44-49 Introduction As many of you know, I am a chaplain in the Canadian Armed Forces reserves. I have long been interested in the military and their way of doing things. I even see a number of intersections with the military and the church. I don’t think I am too far off the track,…
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Luke 24:36-44 Introduction I want you to imagine that the risen Jesus was coming to visit you. Not a dream or a vision, but appearing to you physically. What would you do to prepare yourself? I suspect that one of the things that you would want to do is to get ready to listen. I…
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Luke 24:13-35 Introduction How did you come to know Jesus? Was it one big moment of coming to understand Jesus or was it a long process? I was once stopped by some evangelists who wanted to check to see if I was really a Christian. They asked how I became a Christian. I responded that…
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Luke 24:1-12 Introduction Have you ever heard that saying, “If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is”? This is a good general rule of thumb. For example, if you receive an email saying that someone from another country, who you don’t know, has left you one million dollars, you should be…
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Luke 23:44-49 Introduction On the day that we call Palm Sunday, Jesus entered into Jerusalem. This is often called the triumphal entry because it looked like Jesus was at the height of his ministry. People were cheering, they were throwing their cloaks and waving their palm branches and it looked like some of them were…
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Luke 23:26-43 Introduction In many ways, the current pandemic is happening at a terrible time. Not that there is ever a good time. But we are approaching Easter, the high point in the Christian calendar. COVID-19 is threatening to disrupt our Easter celebrations. None of us want that. In another way, it couldn’t have come…
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Luke 23:1-25 Please note the video and audio contain the entire service and not just the sermon. Introduction Last week we took a look at Jesus’ religious trial. There we saw that during his interrogation, it was revealed that Jesus was in fact the Messiah and the Son of God. This was important for the…
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Luke 22:66-71 Introduction As a young person, I loved comic books. For quite a while I had a number of thousand of comics. I started by reading army comics but eventually moved onto superheroes. While I no longer collect comics, I still enjoy superhero movies. If you pay attention to these characters, you will realize…
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Luke 22:54-62 Introduction It has been pretty rare for me to ever get first place in any competition. This was especially true in school when it came to any physical activity. I was a pretty scrawny kid. We were doing a number of different exercises one day in gym class and they were ranking how…
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Luke 22:47-53 You don’t know me but I’m one of Jesus’ disciples. Not just any disciple, but one of the big twelve. I was there from the beginning. I can’t even begin to tell you what it was like spending all that time with Jesus. He was like no one else I had ever met.…
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Luke 22:39-46 Introduction Bad things are going to happen to us. You may have some bad things happening now. If not, you have in the past and you will in the future as well. Get used to it. One of my pet peeves is the teaching that Christians are immune from suffering, that God will…
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Ephesians 5:15-20 Introduction The mission statement for Queen Street Baptist Church says “We are a welcoming community, growing spiritually, worshiping God in Jesus Christ and sharing God’s saving love.” The third part of that says that we exist to worship. There is nothing controversial about a worshiping church. It is something that we just take…
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Luke 22:14-23 Introduction When I think about my time growing up in church, it is interesting to note what stands in my mind. It is not so much Sunday school lessons as it was going to the altar to receive communion, or as we called it, the eucharist. I was raised Anglican and we celebrated…
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Luke 22:1-6 Introduction When we think of the story of Jesus, what do we think of? Some of us may automatically go to the crucifixion and resurrection. One of the reasons we have been doing this series on Luke is to show that there is much more to the story. At the same time, the…
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Luke 21:25-38 Introduction For those of you who are sports fans, you may know the anxiety of whether your favourite team is going to win. The situation may be that your team losing by a significant margin and you are hoping for a last minute comeback or it may be a very close game which…
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Luke 21:7-19 Introduction When I was a student in elementary school, I was not good at sports. But there was one thing that I was good at and that was running. When you are the smallest kid in the class, you get good at running. But I need to be clear, I was only good…
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Leviticus 23:23-25 Introduction This is our first Sunday of the New Year. But why do we have a New Year? Is it just for dating purposes or is there something else? If it is just to change the number on the calendar, why do so many people have celebrations? It is interesting that most cultures…
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Revelation 21:1-8 Introduction We live in a time when people are very careful about spoilers. If you are not familiar with spoilers, it is the careless sharing of information about a novel or movie that spoils the ending for people who do know the whole story. It would be like telling people ahead of time…
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Matthew 1:18-25 Introduction One of the things that I have enjoyed about Christmas are the nativity scenes. I like how we can bring together all the characters and participants in one place. And if you think about it, they all have their own special role. Obviously Jesus has to be there. And of course Mary…
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1 John 4:7-21 Introduction I have had a number of conversations with people recently about the emphasis on the message of God’s love in the church. No one is arguing that God’s love is unimportant. But we can observe that there has been a shift from seeing God as a harsh judge to God as…
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James 3:1-12 Introduction One of the frequent sayings from my childhood was the phrase, “Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me.” I can’t think of a more incorrect statement. As I look back over my life, I can’t remember much of the times that I was physically hurt by…
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2 Timothy 4:6-8 Introduction When our children were younger, many of their questions began with “How many sleeps until…?” Many of the questions were quite trivial and I started to just make up numbers. Then one day, one of the children asked, “How many sleeps until I die?” That shook me. I had no clue…
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This message was based on 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 was part of the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church.
Colossians 4:2-6 Introduction There is a lot of work that goes into sending military troops on deployment. There is more to it than just providing transportation and supplies. Rules of engagement must also be developed. What are rules of engagement? They are very specific rules on how the troops are to respond during a conflict.…
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Ephesians 5:21-33 Introduction Christians, especially conservative Christians, often claim to stand for “family values.” What those values are sometimes are rather vague. But the disturbing thing is that one can get in the media spotlight and preach family values and come home and not value family. There have been many unfortunate reports of bad relationships,…
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Galatians 2:11-14 Introduction In general, human beings work in extremes. This includes our attitudes toward conflict. On the one end of the spectrum are those who love conflict. It is not necessarily because of hatred or anger attitudes. It may be because they value precision and accuracy. It may be because they lack patience. It…
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2 Corinthians 4:7-18 Introduction If you wanted to achieve a certain goal, gain a certain level of effectiveness, what would you seek? I would suspect that most of us would seek a position of power and strength. We would want to have as many resources as possible and attempt to minimize weakness. We would connect…
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Romans 8:12-17 Introduction One of the biggest shocks to happen to me took place around fifteen years ago. My mother sat me down and revealed to me that I was adopted. Now my adoption story is a bit different than most. My mom was my birth mom but my dad adopted me. He was not…
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Acts 17:1-9 Introduction Is it a good thing or a bad thing to argue? That depends on what you mean by an argument. If you define an argument as an angry exchange that produces more heat than light, then arguments can be bad. As a parent, I will say that I have observed many arguments…
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John 3:1-8 Introduction What comes to mind when you hear the words born again Christian? I know what I hear. I think of a person who lived a really rough life, far from God. Probably involved in drugs and having a lengthy criminal record. The person encounters Jesus, has a dramatic conversion and a radical…
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Luke 8:1-3 Introduction What is the most important role in the church? Is it the preacher? While I hope my preaching is helpful, I could call in sick right before a service and you could still have an inspiring and God-honouring worship service. Is it the musicians? Some churches don’t use musicians at all. What…
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Mark 4:35-41 Introduction I would like to ask you a question. Is it good or bad to feel fear? I would like to suggest that you cannot answer that with yes or no. The answer is rather that it depends. Especially when they were younger, our children with autism didn’t feel fear. I watched Logan…
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Matthew 6:7-15 Introduction If there is one part of the New Testament that is well known, at least for certain generations, it is the Lord’s Prayer. In movies or television show, if they want to show a generic Christian, they might have them recite the Lord’s Prayer. Even though it was first said by Jesus,…
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Malachi 4:1-6 Introduction I have come to the conclusion that people are willing to put up with a certain amount of confusion and chaos if they know that some where there is a plan. You wouldn’t want someone tearing down walls and ripping up carpet in your home unless you knew there was a specific…
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Haggai 1:7-15 Introduction Have you at any time in your life imagined what it could be like to build your dream house? What would it look like? Personally I love the style of old houses. They have such character. Amanda and I have often found ourselves driving through neighbourhoods admiring those beautiful old houses. When…
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Habakkuk 3:17-19 Introduction My children are often trying to convince me to play video games with them. I mostly refuse as I don’t want to sit in front of a TV and play a game. But they also know there is a way to convince me and that is the offer to play a Virtual…
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Jonah 1:1-17 Introduction Have you ever been asked to do something that you don’t really want to do? I don’t mean something that is just not quite your thing, like being invited to a movie that looks boring. I mean something that makes you want to run the other way. Back before I was a…
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Amos 9:11-15 Introduction What are your thoughts on restorations and renovations? Do you love them or hate them? It might be a little of both. They can be inconvenient and they can be expensive. But when it is done, there is such a satisfaction, remembering where things were at and enjoying where things are now.…
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Joel 2:28-32 Introduction There are many things that I appreciate about Canadian society but one of them is definitely democracy. I wouldn’t want to live in a country where only one person or only a small group of people had all of the say. While we may sometimes complain when election time comes and we…
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Ezekiel 37:1-14 Introduction One of the fun things about being a parent is watching my children develop in their gifts and talents. Each one of our five children have an area in which they excel. The important thing as a parent is not for me to compare them but to celebrate their unique talents. I…
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Lamentations 3:13-26 Introduction Even a quick glance at entertainment, TV shows, movies or music, reveals that people are on a quest to experience love. There may be some disagreements about what that love looks like and how it is found, but we are agreed that there is something called love that is worth finding. So…
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