We are discovering that Trinity is more than an Orange City church, with members and visitors from a 20-mile radius in Northwest Iowa. We are honored to share Christ in our region and are praying for a move of God in each community.
That brings us to our Fall worship series: “Here’s the Church.” Our worship through September 18 touches on the most basics of being part of God’s church wherever we find ourselves — whether we are not yet believers in Jesus, or have been following him a long time.
We are discovering that Trinity is more than an Orange City church, with members and visitors from a 20-mile radius in Northwest Iowa. We are honored to share Christ in our region and are praying for a move of God in each community.
That brings us to our new worship series: “Here’s the Church.” Our worship through September 18 touches on the most basics of being part of God’s church wherever we find ourselves — whether we are not yet believers in Jesus, or have been following him a long time.
This week is a “hinge” Sunday. It’s the week between our summer series on Messy Grace and our fall series. And it is a very special Sunday. Our summer interns for worship and youth (Danielle Rossell and Eli Dahl) will be leading worship along with a number of high school students. We’ll witness how God has been at work in their ministry across the summer.
Three of our young men will share this week’s message — Matthew Jongerius, Caleb Arnett, and Ben De Boer. All summer our youth groups focused on leading a Spirit Led life as we follow after Jesus. Their message weaves that theme into our lives.
Welcome to August at Trinity! It’s hard to believe that summer vacations are soon over, practices and preparations for fall have begun, and school will soon begin.
But, before we turn the page on Summer worship, we have one more message on grace. Each week we’ve met a different character or heard a different story where someone’s life experienced a serious mess. Each week we saw God’s grace show up and restore what was broken, heal what was wounded, and, especially, point to our ultimate grace received in Jesus.
All summer we’ve been digging into some messy stories in the Bible. We are seeing again and again, in a variety of ways, how life gets messy. But we also see how God’s grace in the person and work of Jesus brings us healing and wholeness for his glory and kingdom.
This week’s mess is just, well, it’s just weird. This guy named Samson is chosen by God before he is born to be very special. He even seems to have super powers because of his long hair. If I didn’t know this was in the Bible, I would think it was some kind of new X-Men movie.
I’ve been working on this message for a couple weeks. For some, I think the word from Luke 18 will be familiar. But I think that for all of us, if we allow ourselves to listen to what the text is saying, this text will shake some junk loose in our soul. It will free us to be truly loved by God and experience whatever mess our life has become to be made beautiful by his grace in Jesus.
Messes come in as much variety as there are people. And each of us get messy in our own multitude of ways. Sometimes we screw up our lives, sometimes we are blind to the messes we make and need to wake up, sometimes circumstances beyond our control mess us up.
What about the messes we create for ourselves and others? Today, we meet a woman named Sarai in the book of Genesis. God made her a staggering promise about her life. Ten years later, the promise was slow in coming. She grew impatient and came up with her own plan. It made a mess… for herself, for her husband, and for their whole household.
We all need grace, don’t we? God’s grace is greater than any mess we find ourselves in. What’s messy about your life right now? Where do you need God’s grace in Jesus to clean house?
Messes come in as much variety as there are people. And each of us get messy in our own multitude of ways. Sometimes we screw up our lives, sometimes we are blind to the messes we make and need to wake up, sometimes circumstances beyond our control mess us up.
Jesus takes the frayed strands our lives and weaves a tapestry of grace. Jesus is not surprised at the messy places life finds us and he’ll never turn his back on us. No. Matter. What.
The message this week takes us to one of those hidden messes. In the story of the man with two sons, we see the mess of the younger son – the one who went off and rebelled against his dad. Sunday we’ll look at the mess of the older son. He was just as lost, maybe even worse. He stayed home, he did everything right, he never disobeyed. And he was messed up. Watch what happens when the veil is pulled back.
