Count Your Many Blessings

July 12, 2009 ?Proper 10 Ephesians 1:3-14 What do you do when problems keep you awake at night? Toss and turn? Take a pill? From that grand old hymn by Johnson Oatman to the ballad popularized by Bing Crosby, the best advice I've found is to count your many blessings, naming them one by one. Paul did exactly that when he wrote to the church at Ephesus. Consider with him all the ways God has blessed believers.

Wonder-Working Power

July 5, 2009 ?Proper 9 Mark 6:1-13 Preaching before my home church was intimidating. I saw the faces of Sunday School teachers whose classes I had disrupted, friends who knew me in high school and family members who had wiped my nose and other body parts as a child. While they encouraged their preacher boy, the message seemed to lack the power experienced in other venues.