Union Church

Union Church AZ
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Sermons and content from Union Church in Prescott, Arizona.

  1. 5D AGO

    Acts 28:1-16 - Snakes Bite

    Listen along as we near the finish of our journey through Acts. Notes//Quotes: Mike reading - Acts 28:1-16 “No crowd gathers for Paul’s preaching, and no description illumines the situation of those believers who journey out to meet him. That minimalistic assessment should not obscure the importance of Paul’s thanksgiving in v. 15. The journey all along has less to do with what will happen in Rome than with the God who directs Paul to that place.” - Beverly Gaventa Map Picture (attached) “God is always trying to give good things to us, but our hands are too full to receive them.” - Augustine, City of God Col 1:19-20 “There are no ‘if’s’ in God’s world. And no places that are safer than other places. The center of His will is our only safety – let us pray that we may always know it!” Corrie Ten Boom

    36 min

  2. MAR 2

    Acts 27:1-44 - Small Ship, Big Storm

    Listen along as we continue our series through Acts. Notes//Quotes: Acts 27:1-44 - Jack Title: Small Ship, Big Sea “Chiding is indeed cruel, and brings no comfort; but if it be tempered with some remedy, it is now a part of the medicine.” - John Calvin “Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisors they succeed” (Prov. 15:22) “We do not worship a deistic God, an absentee landlord who ignores his slum; we worship a garbageman God who came right down into our worst garbage to clean it up.”  - Peter Kreft Oh Maker of the mighty deep Whereon our vessels fare, Above our life’s adventure keep Thy faithful watch and care. In Thee we trust, whate’er befall; Thy sea is great; our boats are small. We know not where the secret tides Will help us or delay Nor where the lurking tempest tides, Nor where the fogs are gray. We trust in Thee, whate’er befall, Thy sea is great; our boats are small. Beyond the circle of the sea, When voyaging is past, We seek our final part in Thee; Oh bring us home at last. In Thee we trust, whate’er befall; Thy sea is great; our boats are small. - Henry Van Dyke

    1h 4m

  3. FEB 22

    Acts 26:1-32 - Power and Purpose

    Listen along as we continue our series through the book of Acts. Notes//Quotes: Acts 26:1-32 First-century Pharisees excelled in everything we admire spiritually. They were zealous for God, completely committed to their faith. They were theologically astute, masters of the biblical texts. They fastidiously obeyed even the most obscure commands. They even made up extra rules just in case they were missing anything. Their embrace of spiritual disciplines was second to none. - Larry Osborne “Christ did not die for the good and beautiful. It is easy enough to die for the good and beautiful; the hard thing is to die for the miserable and corrupt.” - Shusaku Endo, Silence “You can rebel against God and be alienated from him either by breaking his rules or by keeping all of them diligently. It's a shocking message: Careful obedience to God's law may serve as a strategy for rebelling against God.” - Tim Keller “Goads is a greek aphorism that reflects the futility of resisting a greater power, in this case the power of God. The aphorism reveals the crisis: Paul has been acting upon his own perception of God’s will, all the time resisting God’s will.” - Beverly Gaventa I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic-on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg-or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. We are faced, then, with a frightening alternative. This man we are talking about either was (and is) just what He said or else a lunatic, or something worse. CS Lewis “Love God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love to God will do nothing to offend the One who is Beloved.” Augustine “By and large a good rule for finding out is this: the kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. ... The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet” F. Buechner Faith in the gospel restructures our motivations, our self-understanding, our identity, and our view of the world. Behavioral compliance to rules without heart-change will be superficial and fleeting… We can only change permanently as we take the gospel more deeply into our understanding and into our hearts. We must feed on the gospel, as it were, digesting it and making it part of ourselves. That is how we grow.” - Tim Keller

    40 min

  4. FEB 16

    Acts 25:1-27 - Political Purgatory

    Listen along as we continue through the book of Acts. Notes//Quotes: Acts 25:1-27 - Faith  Title: Political Purgatory “…He is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel.” (Acts 9:15) “The soul that is not united solely to the will of God will find neither rest nor sanctification in any self-chosen means — not even in the most excellent exercises of piety. If that which God Himself chooses for you does not suffice, what other hand can minister to your desires? If you turn from the food the divine will itself has prepared for you, what viands (archaic for food) will not prove insipid to a taste so depraved? A soul cannot be truly nourished, strengthened, purified, enriched, or sanctified, except by the fullness of the present moment.” - Jean Pierre de Caussade “This is an important point about the interaction between God's purposes and our praying. Sometimes when we pray and wait for God to act, part of the answer is that God is indeed going to act but that he will do so through our taking proper human responsibility in the matter. It's hard to tell in advance, what the answer will be. There are times when it is “the Lord will fight for you and you've only to keep still” (Ex. 14:14) and other times when it is “be strong and very courageous for you shall put this people in possession of the land I swore to give them” (Josh. 1:6). Discerning and discovering which applies in which case, a note that even in the latter case God is giving the people the land which Joshua is giving them is a major element in the discernment to which all Christians and especially all Christian leaders are called.” - N.T. Wright “God is too wise to be mistaken. Too good to be unkind.  And, when you can’t trace His hand, you can always trust His heart.” - Charles Spurgeon “Lord, I would run for you, Loving the miles for your sake. I would climb the highest tree to be that much closer. Lord, I will learn also to kneel down into the world of the invisible, the inscrutable and the everlasting. Then I will move no more than the leaves of a tree on a day of no wind, bathed in light, like the wanderer who has come home at last and kneels in peace, done with all unnecessary things; every motion; even words.” - Mary Oliver

    42 min

  5. FEB 8

    Acts 24:1-27 - Are We There Yet?

    Listen along as we continue through the book of Acts. Notes//Quotes: Acts 24:1-27 The resurrection completes the inauguration of God's kingdom. It is the decisive event demonstrating that God's kingdom really has been launched on earth as it is in heaven. The message of Easter is that God's new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you're now invited to belong to it. - NT Wright 1 Thess 4:1-8  2 Peter 3:13  The church’s growth; it is life in “the way of Christ,” distinctive and hopeful. Christians, were growing in numbers because they were distinct from the “unjust”—living patiently in relation to their neighbors and enemies, doing good to them, and waiting for them to come to faith - Alan Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church It doesn't matter if life is long or short, it isn't time that's the problem, it's the speed. Far too much happens when you're alive. everything goes so fast, how are you supposed to have time to be a human being? - Fredrik Backman Waiting requires living by what I know to be true about God when I don’t know what’s true about my life. - Mark Vroegop

    39 min

  6. FEB 2

    Acts 22:30-23:35 - The Second Speech

    Listen along as we continue through the book of Acts. Notes//Quotes: Acts 22:30-23:35 - Jack Title: The Second Speech “[God] upholds heaven and earth with all creatures and so governs them that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, indeed, all things come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.” - Heidelberg Catechism  “The doctrine of providence teaches Christians that they are never in the grip of blind forces (fortune, chance, luck, fate); all that happens to them is divinely planned, and each event comes as a new summons to trust, obey, and rejoice, knowing that all is for one’s spiritual and eternal good.” - J. I. Packer “And yet I decide, every day, to set aside what I can do best and attempt what I do very clumsily--open myself to the frustrations and failures of loving, daring to believe that failing in love is better than succeeding in pride….“Hoping does not mean doing nothing. It is not fatalistic resignation. It means going about our assigned tasks, confident that God will provide the meaning and the conclusions. It is not compelled to work away at keeping up appearances with a bogus spirituality. It is the opposite of desperate and panicky manipulations, of scurrying and worrying. And hoping is not dreaming. It is not spinning an illusion or fantasy to protect us from our boredom or our pain. It means a confident, alert expectation that God will do what he said he will do. It is imagination put in the harness of faith. It is a willingness to let God do it his way and in his time. It is the opposite of making plans that we demand that God put into effect, telling him both how and when to do it. That is not hoping in God but bullying God.” ― Eugene H. Peterson

    47 min

  7. JAN 25

    Acts 21:37-22:29 - The First Speech

    Listen along as we continue through Acts. Notes//Quotes: Acts 21:37-22:29  Matthew 5:9-11, 5:43-46 ”Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says “Love your enemies,” he is setting forth a profound and ultimately inescapable admonition. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies– or else? The chain reaction of evil–hate begetting hate, wars producing wars–must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Romans 9:1-5 1 Peter 3:8-17

    38 min

  8. JAN 19

    Acts 21:1-36 - Travels, Tensions, and the End of the Beginning

    Listen along as we continue our series through Acts. Notes//Quotes: Acts 21:1-36  The same forebodings marked Jesus’ journey—the same strong resolve on Jesus’ part, the same misgivings on the part of his disciples. In the Gospels Jesus’ predictions of his coming passion provide the ominous tone. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ journey is particularly marked by sayings regarding Jerusalem as the place of rejection for God’s messengers. In Jerusalem Jesus was arrested and executed. In Jerusalem Paul also was arrested and his life put in extreme jeopardy - John Polhill Map “The primary reality of which we have to take account in seeking for a Christian impact on public life is the Christian congregation. How is it possible that the gospel should be credible that people should come to believe that the power which has the last word in human affairs is represented by a man hanging on a cross? . . . The only answer, the only hermeneutic of the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live by it.” Leslie Newbigin It will be a community of praise in a world of doubt and skepticism. It will be a community of truth in a pluralist society that overwhelms and produces relativism. It will be a selfless community that does not live for itself but is deeply involved in the concerns of its neighborhood in a selfish world. It will be a community prepared to live out the gospel in public life in a world that privatizes all religious claims. It will be a community of mutual responsibility in a world of individualism. It will be a community of hope in a world of pessimism and despair about the future. “Are we to blame Paul for his obstinacy or admire him for his unshakeable resolve?” John Stott 1 Cor 9:19-23   “We can only thank God for the generosity of spirit displayed by both James and Paul. They were already agreed doctrinally (that salvation was by grace in Christ through faith) and ethically (that Christians must obey the moral law). The issue between them concerned culture, ceremony and tradition. The solution to which they came was not a compromise, in the sense of sacrificing a doctrinal or moral principle, but a concession in the area of practice.” - John Stott The church is beautiful because the lens through which Christ regards her is his cross – the focal point of blood, righteousness, forgiveness, union, justification, regeneration, and grace. God could have chosen to make his beauty known exclusively through breathtaking landscapes, undulating oceans, and sublime sunsets. Instead, he has decided to display his radiance within the hearts of the crown of his creation, humanity. - Dustin Benge

    41 min
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Sermons and content from Union Church in Prescott, Arizona.

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  • Creator
    Union Church AZ
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2026
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2019 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Union Church