Welcome to Youngsville Free Methodist Church

As I begin today’s reading I am reminded that in the last reading we were talking about loving your neighbor.    This passage makes more sense when we look at it through the lens of love.

Among the usual deep and helpful words of Paul to the Romans there are a couple of comments that I have a hard time explaining….

Nothing can ever separate us from God’s love.   Paul is emphatic about that, right?    Well then, how do you reconcile his thought that some people are created to be destroyed?

Paul addresses at least four things here: The importance of faith, the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice, the obligation we have to live in obedience and the war that this understanding sets up in our body.

behind!   Should be caught up later today.

A word to the leader:  Even if you do your job well, there will still be people who think the worst of you.  I mean, if they crucified Jesus and didn’t appreciate Paul….what can we expect?    Today’s passage makes me think about suffering and ministry, and how it all glorifies the Lord.

The first thing that goes through my mind as I read this passage is that Paul recently had reason to believe that the Church in Corinth had strayed away or was drifting.   Today it seems like he is celebrating in the knowledge that the report wasn’t true.    That makes me think of something….

Well, well, well.      Just yesterday I mentioned that I believed that Paul called himself an apostle because he received a direct commission to do so from Jesus, and today that’s how he begins his letter.    It’s almost as if we’ve read this book before….

Today is the first Sunday in Advent for 2017.   How amazing to be reading about the birth of Christ and the resurrection of Christ in two different settings!

Something about the way that the New Living Translation phrases these familiar lines makes it easier to understand.     The most common mistake is the think that 1 Corinthians 13 “stands alone” when it really was meant to be read with chapters 12 and 14.   I’m glad they are together here.