 I stand to climb up on the mountain of God’s Word, over all the problems we face today in the valleys of this world, and preach to you that same message that the people of God needed to hear all those thousands of years ago, still just as powerful and wonderful for our revival with the truth of our good and mighty sovereign God. 
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 In this psalm, there is a great verse that was probably preached in multiple churches across this land on this last Sunday, and I, too, preached it, but I preached it in its context and according to its original meaning for the relationship between God’s blessing on this American nation and His blessing on us as His spiritual nation.
 For Mother’s Day, I hold up to you two Godly women who left a lasting legacy in the life of their boy who grew into a man who God mightily used in the advancement of His kingdom and the enduring life of His church.
 As one particular key truth of the gospel was being attacked in Corinth, Paul felt it was necessary, by the prompting of the Holy Spirit, to review the whole gospel for the Corinthians. In doing that, Paul gave us all a wonderfully simple outline of the gospel, so that we can say to one another and our neighbors, “This is the gospel.”
 As we look at the new year ahead of us today, we focus on a passage in Scripture where resolve to wisely live for God is the clear point. We see here a resolution for more than a trimmer waistline or a tighter budget. Here is a resolution for the right kind of life as the people of God.
 Everything is changing, because Someone has come Who is changing everything. He has changed everything. The prophet Isaiah, by revelation of God 700 years before this Child’s birth on that first Christmas, foresaw just how that Baby did change everything.
 Counting our blessings is good for getting our heads above the clouds of disappointment and discouragement—for keeping pep in our step. But in our relationship with God, there is an important step beyond perking ourselves up, and that is the point of today’s message.
 God is calling, Satan is prowling, Christians are cowering, and the lost are perishing. Therefore the churches of America need sweeping revival and reformation, and I do not mean that we need more butterflies and buttery devotionals. God promises us that His plan will stand, and His help will come. So again, we gather around the prayer of a man who prayed this for himself to learn how to pray for ourselves.
The churches of America need sweeping revival and reformation. What we want God to do in this world must start with what we are doing with God in our prayer closets, wanting our spiritual cups to be overflowing because of God pouring out more than we can contain. We now gather around the prayer of a man who understood that.
 God has loved us with a grand vision of Himself. We need His truth to clear our sight of Him and His Spirit to revive us with His wonder. Contemplating how God is working on the massive scale of redemption caused Paul to break into this great doxology—this praise of Him for His mind-blowing work in His providence.
 In this one very simple, straight-forward Proverb, we see that God has strong feelings about the wicked and for the righteous. And the difference between them could not be more stark—more drastic—than the difference between the blackest night and the brightest day.
 We Christians should be standing up for fatherhood as God intends it, and that starts with studying God’s revelation of Himself as the Father. All of us—dads and moms, husbands and wives, dads and kids—need to learn from the Father what fatherhood is supposed to be.
 We must memorialize the fallen. However, as with all things, we Christians must ask how we put our Lord first in this. We should only put Him first in a way that is biblical, and I will show you here in Scripture how we are to put Him first on this Memorial Day.
 We see some of God's perspective on motherhood in this one verse about the first mother, and in looking at this, we need to check our own attitudes toward motherhood and think carefully about what this has to do with the Gospel.
 Perhaps the most profound words a person may ever speak will be when facing his impending time to die. In thinking about why he was ever born and what his life was about, what might he say for the sake of those that survive him? When Jesus stood before Pontius Pilate, He looked into the face of the man that would kill Him, not with the actions of his own hands, but with the authority of his words. Leading up to that fateful point when Pilate handed Jesus over to be crucified, in their exchange, Jesus had something eternally profound to say about the reason He was born into this world to live in this world for the short time that He did. Jesus answers the question we should be leading the world to ask anew every Christmas: Why was Jesus born? What Jesus says in this one verse should re-calibrate our perspective on the reason for this season.
 Each holiday should be a type of revival with lasting effect. Regarding that, this is a simple message about a simple practice that is essential to our daily walk with God and our daily happiness.
 Too often, the passage we know and love as the Great Commission is preached only with other-worldly application—only with heavenly application. The Great Commission has direct application to where we are in this nation, for the great revival and awakening it desperately needs.
 Do we truly see and sense the wonder of the risen Lord—how He transcends our natural realm—our base existence? As we focus on what He says about Himself, may the Holy Spirit magnify Him in our sight.
 Jesus’ claim is clear and concrete: He Himself is our hope in facing death. This comfort and assurance that He offered to Martha and Mary 2,000 years ago is ours to celebrate today.
 The people on the other side of this issue will tell us that they believe in the sanctity of marriage, but they expand it to include same-sex unions. In fact, they will tell us that they are actually fighting for the sanctity of marriage for all. We must be sure of and stand strong on the biblical sanctity of marriage.
 Some of us think that government is a lost cause in a world that is sinking into hell anyway, and we might as well keep our own little corners of the ship as clean and comfy as possible. Others of us think that it is our God-given duty to be critical, castigating crusaders, constantly trying to straighten every little crook in the crooked stick by throwing fist-shaking fits that they cannot ignore. Through Paul, God shows us that neither of those approaches is His intent.
 Dad has been downgraded. This is something more sinister than a mere downgrade of status. This is the intentional trivializing of fatherhood for the sowing of dysfunction into what God designed as the nuclear family—the unraveling of what God designed in the nuclear family as the foundation of civilization. We need to push back and get back to a biblical view of the relationship between children and their fathers.
 Generally, everyone loves Mom, but love for motherhood has declined from generations past. While moms should be having a great time on Mother's Day, motherhood is seen by too many as a hindrance to great times to be had. We Christians need to check how far that kind of thinking has tainted our view of motherhood. We need to go back to the beginning and take a fresh look at the essential calling of motherhood.
 What if Christ has not been raised? What if He is still dead somewhere in an unmarked grave? That is what the scoffers tell us must be the case. What is at stake for us if they are right? I will show you from Paul how we are to hit that head on, putting it all on the line with nothing left to salvage if we are wrong.
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Scripture quotations marked LSB are from the Legacy Standard Bible.
Scripture quotations marked NASB are from the New American Standard Bible.
Scripture quotations marked CSB are from the Christian Standard Bible..
Scripture quotations marked ESV are from the English Standard Version..
Scripture quotations marked NKJV are from the New King James Version.
Scripture quotations marked NIV are from the New International Version.
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Scripture quotations marked LSB are from the Legacy Standard Bible.
Scripture quotations marked NASB are from the New American Standard Bible.
Scripture quotations marked CSB are from the Christian Standard Bible..
Scripture quotations marked ESV are from the English Standard Version..
Scripture quotations marked NKJV are from the New King James Version.
Scripture quotations marked NIV are from the New International Version.
.....