You can bring life or death to that relationship by the words you choose. If we're not careful and don't seek the Holy Spirit, we can become bitter, and bitterness can mean death in a relationship because it grows. Pastor Mark talks about how his own bitterness was the issue that most negatively affected his and Grace's marriage for the longest period of time, and he regrets and grieves how this came out in his sermons during that time and asks for forgiveness.
This clip is excerpted from the sermon "Taking Out the Trash," part 5 of the Real Marriage sermon series. It was preached by Pastor Mark Driscoll at Mars Hill Church West Seattle and released online February 13, 2012.
This question was answered by Pastor Mark Driscoll and his wife Grace during the sermon Marriage and Women from the Trial series at Mars Hill Church. For more from this sermon, visit http://www.marshillchurch.org/media/trial/marriage-and-women
Dr. Alan Cairns served for 25 years as pastor of Faith Free Presbyterian Church, Greenville, SC, before retiring and being named Pastor Emeritus in 2007. Prior to coming to the United States, he pastored Free Presbyterian churches in Dunmurry and Ballymoney, in Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland. Dr. Cairns also held the position Professor of Theology in the Whitefield College of the Bible in Northern Ireland and lectured in what is now Geneva Reformed Seminary in Greenville. As both an author and expositor, Dr. Cairns is revered for his Christ-centered focus and gifts of scriptural insight.
It is always a joy to be able to turn to the word of the living God, in fact, the living word of the living God, to be instructed from the mind of God for our own blessing and for his glory.
One of the subjects that is at the very center of Christian experience is the matter of the will of God, the will of God. Throughout all of my life, I have heard people tell me they were looking for the will of God, searching for the will of God, trying to find the will of God. In fact, many, many years ago, I wrote a little book called, The Will of God is not Lost.Because it seemed to me that so many people were acting as if it was lost, as if God had placed his will in some obscure place, as if God were some sort of a divine Easter Bunny who had stashed the golden egg in some bush and all he did was sit in heaven saying, "You're getting warmer," or, "You're getting colder," as we meandered through the shrubbery of life trying to find the egg.
There are people who think that the will of God is the most undesirable thing, that it's like a diet. If it doesn't taste good, you can eat it. But the will of God is everything that you don't want to do, that God is sort of a cosmic killjoy who says, "There's one having fun, get him." As if God wants to make life painful and somber and sorrowful and hard. There are those who think that the will of God is sort of like, I guess you could say a serendipitous traumatic experience, like you're running down the street, trying to catch a bus, your foot slips on a banana peel and you land on a map of Argentina in the gutter. And, "Ah, I'll go to Argentina as a missionary, this is a divine calling." ]
There are people who approach the will of God in those ways. Some people think the will of God is like a lottery ticket. Not but a few are every gonna get one and if you get one, you become really, really blessed and most of us just throw away old tickets and never know what it is to win the will of God....
J.R. Miller - We Should Learn a Lesson from the old Heathen Artist
Hebrews 4:13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
Luke 1:5 In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. 6 Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord's commands and decrees blamelessly.
James Russell Miller was born on March 20, 1840 at Frankfort Springs, Pennsylvania and died on July 2, 1912. Besides authoring over 80 books, booklets, and pamphlets, Dr. J.R. Miller was the Editorial Superintendent of the Presbyterian Board of Publication and a very active pastor in a succession of churches.
The crucible of J.R. Miller's education was his service with the United States Christian Commission, an agency set up to minister to the troops, during the civil war. When the war ended Miller completed his theological studies and was ordained and installed on September 11, 1867. On June 22, 1870, when he was thirty, he married Miss Louise E. King.
The end of life on earth came without warning on the afternoon of July 2, 1912. JR's wife, Louise Miller, and their only daughter, Mary Wanamaker Miller (Mrs. W.B. Mount), were present, but it was impossible to summon the sons — William King Miller and Russell King Miller. One moment Dr. Miller seemed to be resting quietly; the next he was at rest.
JR Miller DD was one of the best selling Christian authors of his era. Rev. Miller's books had a total circulation of over two million copies during his lifetime and in 1911 the Presbyterian Board of Publication, under his direction, published over 66 million copies of its periodicals.
I was saying to someone the other day that I'm not sure that it is nearly as important for you that I preach as it is for me that I preach. This is the passion of my life, the joy of my life. And for the privilege of preparation itself if I never preached, I would give everything in this world because there's no joy like the joy of digging deep into the discovery of the truth revealed in Scripture and especially when it has to do with the most compelling person of all, the incarnate God, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Thus we find ourselves again in a gospel and it is now the gospel of Mark and I invite you to take your Bible and if you will, open your Bible to Mark chapter 3...Mark chapter 3. We're going to be looking at the last section of Mark chapter 3 verses 20 through verse 35. It's a prolonged section and it's a story within a story. So we're going to have to split it into two weeks. I would have to let you know that this week will be, in some ways, the simpler of the two and next week, perhaps, the more challenging and the more compelling and the more stunning teaching. But these are two very important portions of Scripture that are blended together by Mark in a unique way as a story within a story.
Many of you will be familiar with the name C.S. Lewis. C.S. Lewis, the great writer, the great thinker, the great Christian apologist has written many, many things that all of us are very, very familiar with. And in his effort at apologetics, he came up with a paradigm that has probably become somewhat well known, maybe it's more widely known even then its author, namely C.S. Lewis...