Live From Grenoble

This is a sermon I preached on the Facing UP series at St-Marc’s. We usually do a study series during Lent that the entire church is invited to participate in. To do this, we have had a light “lenten lunch after the church service, consisting of a soup and bread with a piece of fruit. The series has been well received, with a good turnout for each sermon.

The series focuses on the idea of facing up to various challenges to faith in our lives, such as temptation, injustice, materialism and family problems.

I find this series exciting as well a practical.

The other sermons in the series can be found here.

Facing Temptation Sermon

There is also a study guide I wrote for this sermon.

The purpose of guide to discern principles that are helpful to keep us from falling under the power of various temptation. Best done in a group setting, the idea is to look at each category, then write down some various principles to help us when we are tempted in this area. Another idea is to hold a debriefing sessions at the end of the study to discuss any conclusions valid for the topic of temptation in general.

Here it is:

Temptation Guide

Drop me a note or make a comment on your thoughts.

We were having a discussion at a study last week on the topic of the trinity. This is an area that I’ve wrestled with a few times, trying to make some sense of it.

I thought I’d put some of these thoughts down on paper (so to speak) and share them with you. Give me some feedback if you like, I always like getting mail.

Here goes:

1. The trinity exists in love, love for each other. This is important, because it means that God didn’t have to create anything in order to have something to love. The father, son, and Spirit already have love for each other. In contrast, e.g., in Islamic thought, since Allah is one, in order for him to love, he had to create something to love, such as the heavens, earth, humans, etc.

2. The idea of trinity ultimately come from God revealing himself to us. Which means, if you want to get some idea of what the trinity is about, it has to happen in the context of a relationship with the father, who sent the son to reveal him, and the spirit whom the father and son sent into the world and poured into us, so that he could make the father and son know to us.

This means that from the outside, God appears as one person to us. From inside a relationship with God through Christ, we become aware that there are three persons in the Godhead, each eternal and co-existing with each other.

I came up with what I think is a practical explanation of how this works, I think.

If I look at a house from the outside, basically all I see is a building, the entire structure. The building is “one”, so to speak. I really have no idea of the building, other than what I see and perceive as I look at the outside.

Let’s say that I am invited into the house. Inside the house, I now have a completely different perspective of the house. Although the house is “one,” I can now see how the house is laid out and I can see various rooms and the functions that they serve.

We see God in the same way, which means that a relationship with God through the son by the power of the Holy Spirit gives me a completely different understanding of how the trinity works and functions.

So, in order to begin to understand the idea of a trinity, I have to see the trinity from the inside.

Nothing really profound here, but it helps me to at least get a handle on it, to get a glimpse of how God can be three persons yet one.

What do you think?