Stress happens. We all feel it. It steals our joy, interrupts our sleep, affects our relationships, and wears us down. We can't escape the things and people that cause it. We can't medicate it away. So we must deal with it. But how? How do we attain peace in life? With compassion and biblical insight, pastor Vance Pitman calls us away from anxious living to a life of indescribable peace by applying truths from God's Word to the stress we feel in our - schedule - budget - relationships - decision-making - emotions - and circumstances Discover the freedom and peace that are yours when you no longer allow stress to dominate your life and instead take hold of the soul-satisfying, joy-producing, fruit-bearing life that God intended you to live.

Teaching Outline + Study Guide for The Book of Job

Before considering the important part of the sermon, let's take a look at today's Gospel lesson and ask, what's wrong with this picture? What takes place in our Gospel story that does not reflect the way things usually happen in the world? If were teaching a class, I would now stop talking, and there would be a long period of silence, while you look through the biblical text on your bulletin insert, to try to find something unusual. But to ensure that this sermon ends before it's time for Sunday School to begin, I'll save some time by pointing out that it is highly unusual for two pregnant women to meet and for one to say to the other, "You're going to be the mother of someone whom I'll be calling 'Lord.'" Normally, Elizabeth--or anyone else--would not know such a thing in advance. Right? The reference is to Jesus, of course. Elizabeth calls him "Lord," and that fact provides a clue to what is going on here that you, as an average person-in-the-pew, would not even begin to imagine. At least, I didn't, until I went to seminary. You see, among the Jews of Jesus' day, Jesus was called "Master," or "Rabbi," or "Rabboni." He wasn't called "Lord." "Lord" was a title used by Greeks, and it was a popular title applied to Jesus when Christianity spread out of Palestine into Greek-speaking areas. But it wasn't a title that people who actually knew Jesus called him. So when you see Jesus being called "Lord" in the Gospels, that is a clue that that passage reflects the practices of the early Christian Church and does not come from Jesus's own time. (In case you didn't realize it, the Gospels were not written by people who took notes while the events of Jesus life were taking place. For better or worse, the Bible was developed through a much more complicated process).

The Book of Micah confronts idolatry, superstition, confusion, alienation, inhumane acts against one's neighbors, and desolation of one's being at the most profound personal and societal level. When preaching through this prophetic book, John Calvin had no more difficulty applying Micah's prophecies to his sixteenth-century countrymen than do preachers today. Calvin's twenty-eight sermons on Micah were preached in no political or theological vacuum. They were powerful Christian directives, meant both to instruct and edify Geneva's citizens, writes Benjamin Wirt Farley. Many of these are mirrored in his sermons and are either alluded to indirectly or occasionally referred to openly from the pulpit. These sermons make clear that, for Calvin, the Word of God is clearly the immutable, incontrovertible, and irrefutable truth of God, Farley continues. It is a verite certaine that supercedes all other forms of truth, the sole authoritative basis for faith and life. Any departure from it, or reliance on any other foundation, leads to the very sins denounced by Micah.

This book is a collection of eight Lenten sermons from this important Church Father on the Book of Genesis, delivered in fourth-century Antioch. They offer insights into an understanding of the Fall and redemption which are quite distinct from those developed in the West after St. Augustine. The sermons touch upon a range of moral issues such as compassion towards the poor, the role of prayer in family life and the place of the Christian in wider society which are as relevant now as then. - Publisher.