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Sermon Details
- Pastor Name: Jonathan Cornell
- Date & Time: September 14, 2014 | 10:00am
SERMON SERIES: Leap!: Taking Risks for God’s Kingdom
Imagine yourself standing on the edge of a precipice, looking down at a gently flowing river, cool, refreshing, and blue. Before you is a decision: to stay put, safely on the edge where I am in no immediate danger, where there is ground beneath my feet? Or do I look down, seeing the friends of mine swimming in the invigorating water that envelops them in its current and leads them gently downstream, and in that moment choose to jump?
This is one way of looking at the subject that we are going to be spending the entire fall studying and reflecting upon together. And that subject is faith. Faith is a willingness to step or leap from the place of safety into the unknown of where we must place our trust in God to catch us and carry us. This is the image I have chosen for us to view faith, like leaping off of the precipice or letting go of the trapeze and be caught and brought in by the gracious embrace of God.
This week within this community, there was a moment, an event, that has challenged us to think deeply together about our faith in God. When events that shake our very foundations occur, it’s important that we respond as a church. So as I sat down to prepare for this weekend, I knew that the text I had chosen was not the one for us. Though in God’s great mercy, about 6 weeks from now I was going to be preaching on another text that deals perfectly with what we are facing together as a community. Is it ok if I skip forward 6 weeks? (Don’t worry; we’re going to cover all the material in between in the weeks to come.)
This morning, we are going to talk together about a subject that some of us are going through at this very moment. It’s also a subject that every one of us will face at one time or another in our lives. That subject is hope in the midst of hopelessness. We will learn together what it is like to be in a circumstance where it feels like there is no light at all, and only darkness, and at the same time still feel hope. For some of you this may be immediately relevant to you. You may be going though something very difficult. For others of you, life may be pretty smooth, but I want to say to you there is still something here for you. Because every one of us will know someone (a friend, a coworker, a neighbor) who is confronted with an experience of hopelessness, and you will be God’s instrument of hope to that other person.
Download the entire transcript here: Lamentations 3 In This I Will Hope
