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The story...

Illustration
Fourth Sunday of Advent - A
Matthew 1:18-25
Mark Ellingsen
The story of Mary's pregnancy and eventual virgin birth is a problem for some American Christians. We miss the main point of the story -- that Jesus has a human body and that that makes us beautiful! A national survey conducted in 2012 by StriVectin found that the majority of us (55%) are dissatisfied with our looks. Even those of us secure in our looks can find something about ourselves we wish were different. But when you stop and think that God took on a body like ours and joined it to himself, that sends a powerful message about what God thinks of all our bodies!
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New & Featured This Week

The Immediate Word

Bethany Peerbolte
Ron Love
Christopher Keating
Dean Feldmeyer
George Reed
Thomas Willadsen
For June 7, 2020:
  • Trinity of Love, Grace, and Fellowship by Bethany Peerbolte — It seems the Trinity has modeled for us that there is more than one way to be unified with another. Once we have love or grace or fellowship, the other two are easier to get at.
  • Second Thoughts: A New Beginning by Ron Love — A new beginning is what we desire, but some still wear fig leaves.

Emphasis Preaching Journal

Ron Love
Bonnie Bates
Frank Ramirez
Bill Thomas
M Adryael Tong
Mark Ellingsen
Genesis 1:1-2:4a
Mark Ellingsen
An eternally loving, life-changing Triune God!

Genesis 1:1--2:4a

StoryShare

Peter Andrew Smith
Let us make people in our own image. Jessie narrowed her eyes and read Genesis 1:26 one more time. Let us make people in our own image. She shook her head and tried a third time, but the words still didn’t make any sense. There was only one God so why did it say “in our image”? She typed the verse in a search engine and read some of the explanations she found.

The Village Shepherd

Janice B. Scott
Toby was playing with his favourite toy. His family's new television had come packed in a large cardboard box, and now the box was empty Toby loved playing with it. Today it was a bus. Since his family had a car, Toby had only once travelled on a bus. It had been the highlight of his life. Now his big cardboard box was a bus, and Toby was the proud driver. Sometimes he would allow it his baby sister Samantha to sit in his bus as a passenger. But if she started to cry he got fed up and turned her out.

SermonStudio

Schuyler Rhodes
Have you ever been hard at work on something? Perhaps you're like the pastor who sits laboring over a sermon or drafting a statement for this or that, or reading the latest biblical articles. Whatever it is, you are concentrating, focused, and suddenly you're aware that someone, somewhere is watching you. One day I was reading through a sheaf of mail in my office when suddenly I could just tell without even looking up that someone was peering though the curtained door to see what I was doing.

CSSPlus

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. (v. 19)

Good morning, boys and girls. Did you know the earth had a little tummy? (let them answer) It does because I looked up how far it was to go around the earth at the middle and it is 24,901.55 miles. (show the globe or map) But if you go from the North Pole to the South Pole it is 24,859.8 miles. This means that the earth is 41.75 miles further around than it is tall.

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