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Where is your heart? – Matthew 6:19-24 By Pastor Lee Hemen April 28, 2019 When I was going to seminary one of things we were told to look at very closely was the reason why we wanted to be a pastor in the first place. And one of my instructors bluntly told us that if we could not confidently say we were called of God we should go do something else. He continued by relating that our calling was what would keep us grounded during tough or good times because it came from the Lord. Ministering was not a “job” but when it became one, and it would sometimes, we could rely on our calling from God to strengthen us. It would show us where our heart truly was. Jesus wanted his listeners to understand that following God was more than following a set of rules. After Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead everything would change concerning an individual’s relationship with God. What became important was not past history or one’s heritage but rather if you could confidently say you trusted the...

Fasting! – Matthew 6:16-18 By Pastor Lee Hemen April 14, 2019 There are some Christian disciplines that have gone by the wayside in our day and age. Of course becoming a hermit and forcing every bit of personal contact out of your life is not what Jesus meant when he said for us to “go into all the world”. And I confess I like zippers, buttons, and running water. However the disciplines of giving and prayer should be practiced. Today we are going to look at the discipline of fasting and why Jesus spoke about it. I remember the first time I led a group of youth to fast. After the first four hours some of them were already going into fits about being hungry and that it was not such a good idea for them to do. We did it to focus on world hunger and our fast was only for 24 hours. You would have thought it was for 24 days! Let’s discover what Jesus taught about fasting… READ: Matthew 6:16-18 We have to understand why Jesus mentioned fasting here and what it meant for the Hebrew people befo...

Praying! – Matthew 6:5-15 By Pastor Lee Hemen April 7, 2019 When asked what believers need to do the most the answer always is to “pray” and this is good advice. If one’s prayer life is nonexistent their relationship with God is basically nonexistent. As a new believer having been brought up in a faith that taught that prayer was by route, meaningless, and automatic to discover that it was actually speaking with God was amazing to me. It changed my life dramatically. Praying is the heart and life of a Christian’s faith walk with God. In Luke’s gospel we learn that “One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.’ (Luke 11:1 NIV)” And here in Matthew’s gospel we discover the same prayer being offered by Jesus as part of his sermon. Jesus did not mean for his example to become a formula or a mantra we were to use until it became a mind-numbing chant. Let’s discover what Jesus tau...