Category Archive

Message by William Burch Life is absolutely FULL of things that we are well aware of coming our way! Bills, taxes, painful anniversaries are just a few. In this fallen world we are unfortunately always hearing of things happening to people that they did not see coming. In fact, these are some of the most painful things to hear about much less experience. I’ve heard stories of people working their whole adult lives for the same company and months before retirement they lose their job. Some people suddenly lose a spouse to tragedy. Former Heavy weight champion Mike Tyson was quoted saying, “It’s not always the most powerful punch that is thrown in the fight that can knock you out, but it’s the one that you don’t see coming.” All those other punches and jabs, no matter how powerful can be avoided by some fancy foot work and years of training on how to cover the face. It’s the punch they don’t see coming that can take them out. Many a boxer has been injured and even killed by the punch they never even saw. We have established how realistic this analogy is to real life, but that is not …

At the end of the day, as complex as Christianity seems, it’s all very simple.  Have you ever stopped and meditated on the subject of Science and how it pertains to every day life? It can be mind-boggling when you look at things as tiny as atoms, protons and photons. Some very brilliant men throughout history did their best to come up with explanations for how things such as gravity operate. Sir Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and others sought to understand and explain subjects such as gravity and how the earth reacts to certain things. In fact, the reason you can see anything today or experience and touch anything is because there are electrons, photons, neutrons, gluons, protons interacting with each other. If they did not interact with each other, you wouldn’t even know they were there. So the interaction causes reality. These particles exist as potential until they are interacted with by measuring or observing them. Until this happens they are not considered real. The interaction mixed with the particle’s inherent potential causes them to become real. There is something else that operates much the same way and its faith. We are all born with faith..small faith like that …

Being known as a person who calls on the name of the Lord. 

We have to do what it takes to get to Jesus!  The book of Jude is not one that we hear much about. In fact, it is literally comprised of one chapter, yet its message is as important as the rest of God’s Word. Jude verses 22-23 states, “Be merciful to those who doubt; save others by snatching them from the fire; to others show mercy, mixed with fear, hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.” This scripture is giving us a verbal roadmap of how to handle folks with different personalities in different situations. I bet just about all of us at one time or another have heard the cheesy car commercials about bringing in your car as a trade. They say things like, “Even if your car is no longer running just bring it in..just push,pull or drag it, but get it here!” If you think about it, this phrase that pertains to cars can easily be used about people and how they may need to get to Jesus. There are some people that you can just drop an invitation or a bit of encouragement about coming to church or about turning to God and they are …

How can we get God’s attention?

I’m Perfect & Complete walking with Jesus! Perfection in the secular sense can seem daunting, particularly when we look at our lives and see blemishes of regret, missed opportunities, and stains of shame. But remember, wholeness cannot come from a broken world. Wholeness comes from holiness – from being set apart. This is where Beyonce’s song lyrics resonate, “Perfection is a disease. You’re trying to fix something, but you can’t fix what you can’t see. It’s the soul that needs a surgery.” Perfection, in essence, is an internal matter, a matter of the soul, not external appearances or accomplishments. The Apostle Paul is an excellent example of this understanding. A Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee of the Law, respected and feared, he relinquished all his worldly gains for the sake of Christ (Philippians 3:7-8). He realized that worldly achievements, good or bad, were mere ‘fertilizer’. The idea of perfection is not about achieving a flawless state. Rather, it’s about completeness, about being whole in a fractured world. As Paul himself wrote, “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Philippians …

Each and every one of us are called by God for a very distinct purpose. Your calling might look very different from all those around you which can cause doubt, envy or even pride. Learning to trust that God knows what He is doing when He places a specific call on our lives, can save a ton of heartache. Today we are going to look at a man in the Bible who did NOT trust God’s sovereignty and paid a price for it. Our text can be found in Numbers 16 and it is about a man named Korah. Now this fella was the great grandson of Levi and first cousins to Moses and Aaron. He was very much familiar with the fact that Moses was rescued as a baby and adopted by the Pharaohs daughter. He obviously knew that Moses grew up being pampered in the palace while he and all the other Israelites were being beaten and enslaved by the Egyptians. Fast forward to when God used His mighty power to make Pharaoh release the Israelites and they were wondering in the wilderness. Moses, Aaron and Korah were all descendants of Levi which meant they were all set …

The Calling of God He’s the God of the calling. He knows what we need before we ever get there! If you have grown up in church or hung around with Christians for long, there is a topic you’ve likely heard about. This is one of those topics that a Christian could spend a great deal of time praying about. I’m talking about knowing the call of God on your life, recognizing that you have one and yearning to learn what it is. First of all, if you have been born again, you have a call on your life. Matthew 28:18-20 teaches us the “Great Commission.” Jesus is instructing His disciples by saying, “All authority in Heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” This is what we are all “called” to do. You could actually say that there are three separate callings from God. The first is the call …

Ancient Gods Despite mankind creating gods in our image since ancient times, there’s only ever been ONE God with ONE plan and One Design. We are going to do a dive into the New Testament and into the book of Acts where we find that the apostle Paul makes it to Athens. Now you history buffs may know some things about Athens, Greece during the days of the early church. This visit can be found in Acts 17:13. This section of scripture talks about how Paul immediately becomes aware that these people are inundated by a ton of gods. They had gods for everything! Some of the more well known ones are Aphrodite, the goddess of love and desire, Athena, the goddess of wisdom and Zeus, the king of all the gods. During this time there was an author from the very first century who lived the same time that Paul was living and and his name was Petronius. He was a Roman historian, author and satirist. He said this, “Athens is so full of deities that you may more frequently meet with a god than with a man.” That gives you an idea of how many gods they had. …

Super Natural Organic, Super Natural work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. When you hear the word supernatural you more than likely think of things that are extra terrestrial or something you see in a Marvel movie. However, it can also mean…”extremely or super duper” natural! We hear a lot about natural things when we discuss things like food. It’s not a synthetic or fake product, but an all natural product etc. It’s this kind of super natural that the work of the Holy Spirit should be in our lives. It shouldn’t be as scarce as a lunar eclipse, instead it should be something we are very used to. Sometimes we make the work of the Holy Spirit far more complicated than it needs to be. When we have to make decisions in our lives we don’t need to over spiritualize things, we just need to make a flipping choice. That is meant realistically, but the phrase will be easy to remember as well. Some big decisions are made by flipping a coin. Think about the Super-bowl and how a game that generates millions of dollars begins with the flip of a coin to decide who starts the game. …