Grace Baptist Church, Nokomis, IL.

One of the most basic things we believe about God is that He is omnipotent, which just means that He’s all-powerful. God is Almighty. He’s able to do anything and everything that He desires to do. People sometimes debate about whether we have freewill, and certainly there’s a degree about our will that’s free, but I think we ultimately have to acknowledge that our will is also limited. We’re not free to do anything that we desire. We can’t fly, breathe underwater, or snap our fingers and create a billion dollars. Our freewill…continue reading →

In Max Lucado’s book, “Life Lessons from the Book of Romans,” he wrote this: At the moment I don’t feel too smart. I just got off the wrong plane that took me to the wrong city and left me at the wrong airport. I went east instead of west and ended up in Houston instead of Denver. It didn’t look like the wrong plane, but it was. I walked through the wrong gate, dozed off on the wrong flight, and ended up in the wrong place. Paul says we’ve all done the same…continue reading →

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My hope this morning is for all of us to recognize Jesus as King. The Bible is clear that no matter what country you live in, or where you’re originally from, Jesus is King over all the earth, and God invites all of us to trust in Him, and find salvation and true, abundant, eternal life in Him. And yet, people don’t usually think about Jesus first when they hear the word “king.” There’s been a lot of discussion and disagreement over the years, and really over the centuries, about the relationship that…continue reading →

Benjamin Franklin famously sought to systematically make himself a better and more virtuous person. He made a list of 13 virtues, which included things like justice, industry, and humility. He would focus on one virtue per week for 13 weeks, and repeat the cycle over and over again. And although he admitted to not always sticking to his plan, he did find it beneficial to attempt. But I think the observation that he made toward the end of his life was the best thing to come out of it. In his autobiography, Franklin…continue reading →

I read this week that by the age of 18, young people have spent just over 11,000 hours in a school classroom. That sounds like a lot, until you also learn that by that time, they’ve also spent nearly 3 times that, almost 33,000 hours on screens. It’s estimated that the average person sees between 4,000 and 10,000 advertisements every day, which I didn’t believe at first, but really only works out to about 4 to 10 ads per minute, which definitely seems possible because of things like television and internet. So using…continue reading →

In January, I made it clear that I believe all will eventually be saved. And I invited you to question me on this. Don’t believe something just because I believe it. Search the Scriptures, study to show thyself approved, and hold onto the good. But since I preached that message, it’s been about 7 months, and I haven’t preached a full message on the topic again. But there are actually so many verses in Scripture that point to God’s plan to save all, that I simply can’t avoid the topic. And as the…continue reading →

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Most of us probably have heard and know that, “You can’t put God in a box.” We’ve all been guilty of this. Republicans, Democrats, Catholics, Baptists, even Atheists have all attempted to put God into a box that makes them comfortable. This book is a box for God. [Picture of Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology] I think I’ve shown you this book at least a couple times before. Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology really is a great book that’s more like an encyclopedia. It describes God, explaining much about who the Bible says God is…continue reading →