Sunday's Message

We have been at Damascus Church for about 6 months now, and we really like it!

Every week, the pastor Joel, preaches straight out of the Word of God. That, along with the amazing worship is what drew us here in the first place. And although every week he preaches a really good sermon, I think this last week was his best. I got so fired up!

We are discussing Revelation and the letters to the Seven Churches. This week was on Pergamum and the fact that while they were maintaining outward appearances, they had moved away from the Word of God and had allowed a spirit of tolerance and compromise to enter the church.

I think it spoke perfectly to what we are seeing in the church in America. Here is a link to the sermon if you are interested. Believe me, I have a list of people who need hear this! I think the church needs to get serious about the study of God's Word. It is the only thing keeping us from slipping into a deadly marriage with the world. It challenged me as well to be very serious about maintaining a time in the Word of God DAILY!

On a final note... he mentioned that this is a time of "grace and mercy". Having heard those words used ad infinitum, I got to a place where I began to hate "grace and mercy". I mean, I know it's in the Scriptures, but the way it was being used felt so... wrong. It felt like grace and mercy really meant tolerance and compromise. So when Joel said we need the Word of God to pierce our hearts and judge us NOW, in the time of grace and mercy, before the final judgement, it clicked for me. Rather than promoting tolerance and compromise, the grace and mercy extended by Jesus should be a wake up call to get our act together NOW. Because the era of grace and mercy is rapidly coming to an end! I would so much rather have God judge my heart now, while there is time to repent, than continue on, ranting about how grace and mercy covers it all, and have to face judgement when there is no time to repent.

I'm loving this series. Can't wait until next week!