St. Paul's Howards Grove Podcast

Live Like You’ll Live Forever: confessing your faith with courage._ Living life according to God’s Word is going to make one appear odd in the eyes of the world, perhaps even evil. So why not just stay silent if that makes life easier? Why not keep our faith private? Answer: because we are going to live forever. Since we know we are going to live forever in the perfection of heaven…we don’t worry if being a witness for Christ brings hardship or even death. Luther knew that…thanks to Christ…he would live forever. So will we. Therefore, like Luther…let us live a life of courageous witness.

The Need for Followership: When the bathroom is all steamy after the morning shower, it can be impossible to see yourself in the mirror to get ready for the day – and then embarrassing to go about your day not knowing what you look like. It is even worse to go through life blind to God – it is deadly. Today’s worship is about seeing ourselves and our complete dependence on God clearly. Then we go about each day by Spirit-worked and gospel-powered faith looking to Jesus. The steam scatters and we follow him, “Seeing the Lord by Faith”. Our sermon comes from Mark 10.

_The Need for Followership: treasure him most._ People think that establishing priorities is about ranking things in order of importance. But it is more than that. Without proper priorities…one inevitably will pursue _that which is nice_ while downplaying _that which is needed_. Throughout Scripture believers are urged to prioritize. Jesus calls for prioritization when he says, _“Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness”_ (Matthew 6:33). Good news: followers of Christ treasure him most. Even better news: followers of Christ receive his forgiveness for all the times they haven’t.

The Need for Followership: Love can cause harm. Consider the wife whose husband wants little to do with church. When he wants her and the children to stay home Sunday morning, she complies without protest to the spiritual detriment of the whole family. Or consider the father who loves his child so much that he gives the child everything that child asks for. That father’s love is shaping that child to be a selfish, entitled adult. In our families, we need to love rightly, in a way that leads to blessings for those we claim to love. In Jesus we see perfect, self-sacrificial love: he loves us as we are, yet he also loved us too much to leave us as we are. In love he gave his life up so that we might be holy and blameless. He also shapes the way we love. Today we see that followers of Christ know how to love their families. Our sermon today is from Mark 10.

We need better leadership!” Have you ever said that? Jesus Christ is the leader of our congregation, our home, our lives. And his leadership is perfect in every way. Therefore, when things are amiss, what is needed is not better leadership...but better followership. In this series, we ask Christ to empower us with his Spirit so that we might better follow his lead. All music is covered for printing and streaming under: CCLI LICENSE #CSPL155743 [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/cspl155743] ONE LICENSE #A [https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/a]-722076