St. Luke Columbus

The more you mature in following Jesus, the more you live for others. Thanking God is first verbally directed to God and then is lived out by unleashing God’s love to others. True thanksgiving results in generosity.   Next Step: As an act of thanksgiving to God, commit to what your generosity through St. Luke will be for 2019.   Lessons: Psalm 100, Hebrews 6:1-2, 7-11, John 13:12-15   Watch: stlukecolumbus.com/livingforothers   Subscribe to our Youtube channel

As you manage your money: give to have joy, save to have peace, and live to have freedom. Discontentment, greed, and debt rob us of being happy with our money and enslave us. Submit your financial life to God by saying, “God, I don’t want my stuff and wealth to manage me. I want you to manage me and teach me how to manage my money.”  God’s answer is first give of the money that comes our way, with the Biblical percentage being 10%; secondly to save for the long-term, with the wise guidance being 10%; and thirdly to live with freedom on the rest.   Next Step: Figure out how you will manage your money to bring you joy, peace, and freedom.    Lessons: Genesis 3:1-8, 1 Timothy 6:6-10, 17-19, Luke 12:13-21   Watch: stlukecolumbus.com/happymoney   Subscribe to our Youtube channel

All Saints Sunday   Your resurrection matters. Our resurrection matters to Jesus, it matters to how we live today, and it really matters to what happens to us after this brief life. There is a recent trend among some followers of Jesus to downplay the importance of eternal life for the sake of emphasizing the difference following Jesus means in this life. While it is certainly important to have Jesus impact how we live now, this life is only “a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” Our resurrection to eternal life is what enlivens our living for today and is our greatest hope for our future.   Next Step: Fully engage in living each day to please Jesus empowered by your coming resurrection to eternal life.   Lessons: Isaiah 25:6-9, James 4:13-17, John 11:32-44   Watch: stlukecolumbus.com/yourresurrection   Subscribe to our Youtube channel

To get what you want mostin relationships, show the same mercy to others that God shows to you and do what is good in your relationships. You live mercy towards others, not because you have to be good enough, but as the obvious response to the mercy God has shown you.   Next Steps: Take the reformation step you most need right now.   Lessons: Jeremiah 31:31-34, Ephesians 2:1-10, Matthew 5:7   Watch: stlukecolumbus.com/crazy6   Subscribe to our Youtube channel

God’s Way of experiencing what we want most in our relationships is being impartial and sincere. Jesus taught and lived this ethic. Loving those who challenge us (our enemies or those who persecute us) is a radical response and display of God’s love. To get what you want most in relationships, treat others with impartiality and sincerely love those who challenge you.   Lessons: Deuteronomy 10:12-22, Romans 12:9-21, Matthew 5:43-48   Watch: stlukecolumbus.com/crazy5   Subscribe to our Youtube channel

To get what you want most in relationships, yield to others and break free from abuse.    Next Steps: Identify a relationship where you sense God is nudging you to yield more to the other and begin yielding. If there is abuse, break free from the abuse.     Lessons: Isaiah 61:1-2, Galatians 5:1, 13-15, Matthew 5:5   Watch: stlukecolumbus.com/crazy4   Subscribe to our Youtube channel

To get what you want most in relationships, listen, seek first to understand and effectively resolve conflicts. Definition of considerate: showing kindly awareness and regard for another's feelings and circumstances. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. This sermon will teach ten steps to resolving conflict, making use of insights from Crucial Conversations.   Next Steps: Identify a relationship where you need to listen and seek to understand more. If you are in conflict, try using the 10 steps for resolving conflict.     Lessons: Proverbs 18:2, 13, Ephesians 4:21-27, Matthew 18:15-20   Watch: stlukecolumbus.com/crazy3   Subscribe to our Youtube channel

To get what you want mostin relationships, don’t feed your anger. Stay in dialogue when you become angry by mastering your stories that trigger your anger. Understand what presses your buttons. When responding to a person’s words and actions seek to first understand their pain. This sermon will teach how to faithfully deal with your anger when someone presses your buttons.   Next step: Honestly look at any relationship where you find yourself angry. Seek to understand why you feel anger. Seek to understand the pain of the other person that may be motivating their behavior. Ask God to give you the heart of Jesus for that person and avoid feeding your anger.      Lessons: Proverbs 15:1-2, 18, James 1:19-20, Matthew 5:9, 21-24   Watch: stlukecolumbus.com/crazy2   Subscribe to our Youtube channel

To get what you want mostin relationships, understand and live God’s pure way of steady goodness. In our relationships we sometimes confuse what we sometimes think we want with what we really want most. What we want most in relationships is what God wants most for us in our relationships. This is God’s Way for our relationships. God’s way for our relationships is pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Integrity is God’s way to be pure in our relationships. God’s way of being pure refers towhen we behave with integrity in our relationships. All relationships are built on trust and trust is built on integrity. “Steady goodness” is a way to understand integrity. Behaviors that reflect steady goodness in relationships include following God’s personal morality commands, radical honesty, speaking kindly, and following through on our promises.   Next Step: Honestly determine where you are not acting with steady goodness in a relationship and change that

Don’t run away from the world because the world needs us. Sometime it is hard to be a Christian in the world. Some in the world have a very negative view of our faith. They think we are judgmental. In Jesus encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, we learn from Jesus how to be in the world. We learn that even when Jesus faced difficulties, barriers, weariness, and stress, he let his love lead him to give the woman what she needed most – the living water of salvation.   Lessons: 2 Corinthians 5:14-21, John 4:1-26   Watch: stlukecolumbus.com/intheworld2   Subscribe to our Youtube channel

Remember you are not of this world. Live the tension of being in the world but not of the world. Your identity and confidence rests in the eternal salvation Jesus has given you and that you have accepted through faith.   Next Step: Find your identity and confidence in the being connected to Jesus.   Lessons: Isaiah 42:5-7, Philippians 3:20-21, John 17:6-21   Watch: stlukecolumbus.com/intheworld1   Subscribe to our Youtube channel

Improve your working conditions by primarily serving the Lord and others in your work. We spend a significant part of our lives doing our work. For some, work can be the frustrating and painful toil spoken about in Genesis 3:17. For others, work can be a meaningful and fulfilling career. The difference comes down to for whom we understand that we are primarily working. We learn from Jesus teaching on the greatest commandment and from Paul’s teaching to slaves how to improve our working conditions by working at our labors with all our heart because we are primarily serving God and others.   Next Step: Repeat this mantra in your work, “Whatever I do, work at it with all my heart for I am primarily serving the Lord and others.” Short version: “This is for God and to bring God to others.”   Lessons: Genesis 3:17-19, Colossians 3:22-4:1, Mark 12:28-31   Watch: stlukecolumbus.com/work   Subscribe to our Youtube channel

Kim and Annie Colich are missionaries with Wycliffe Bible Translators, serving in Papua New Guinea among the Tami people. For many years St. Luke has financially and prayerfully supported their mission. Kim will be preaching that Jesus is our redeemer who has broken all the chains that bind us.    Lessons: Psalm 107:1-16, Acts 16:16-34, John 8:31-32 

Becoming more like Jesus means to give our lives to serve, invite, and give to meet the hopes and hurts of others. Our faith is active in love.   Next Step: Find at least one way to serve, one way to invite, and one way to give to meet the hopes and hurts of others.    Lessons: Isaiah 58:6-10, 1 Timothy 6:17-19, Luke 15:1-7

We were designed by God to be in close relationship, so why not seek it out. One of the first moves Jesus made was to form a life group of close friends that did life together. We are who we hang out with, so vibrant friendships with other Christ-followers is necessary to becoming a fully-devoted follower of Jesus. In strong life groups we experience the yoke of Jesus that is easy, his burden that is light, and find sanctuary for our souls.     Next Step: Sign up to be in a life group during the coming church-wide campaign.     Lessons: Genesis 2:15-23a, Hebrews 10:22-25, Matthew 11:28-30

Refresh: Learn, Live, Unleash This series will refresh our mission, vision, and discipleship path.   We come to worship to learn God’s Word and give God glory. Faith comes from hearing the word. Worship is our primary ministry for learning God’s word that leads to faith. Our response to what we learn of God’s love centered in Jesus is to give God glory through our worship of God.   Next Step: Determine what step would help deepen your worship experience and then take that step.   Lessons: Psalm 29:1-2, Romans 10:8-17, Matthew 28:16-20

While Jesus and his disciples were desiring time away to rest and talk about all God had just done through them, they didn’t turn their back to the needs of the people. They remained available to what God wanted them to do most. How about you? Have you had moments in your life where you felt God wanting you to do one thing, but you did something else instead? Why do we do this? What makes being available to Christ so hard? This sermon aims to give you tools to remain available to Christ every moment of every day, because living available for Christ changes lives for the better. It changes lives for the better today and for eternity. Lessons: Jeremiah 23:1-6, Ephesians 2:11-22, Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Jesus offers his disciples a template for prayer in what we have come to call “The Lord’s Prayer,” which begins by acknowledging God’s holy name and God’s kingdom. Jesus teaches his disciples that prayer begins not with what we want, but what God wants and desires. Prayer brings us into alignment with God’s will and rule, and we will receive what we need to live in God’s kingdom: the gift of the Holy Spirit.   Next steps: Try using the Lord’s Prayer as your prayer template this week, focusing especially on the first half of the prayer. Ask God to show you what it looks like to live under God’s kingdom and in accordance with God’s will. Invite the Holy Spirit to guide and strengthen you to live according to God's will.      Lessons: Psalm 138, Colossians 2:6-15, Luke 11:1-13

Death and death-like experiences are the reality in our lives. To ignore this reality is naïve and can bring ridicule from others. Jesus faced such ridicule when he ignored the realities that kept people trapped in death and death-like experiences. He raised them up to new life. Our stubborn Savior, Jesus, continues to ignore the death-like realities of our lives to give us the abundant life God intends for us to experience.   Next Step: Trust that Jesus ignores your death-like realities to give you new life. Repeat the “New Life Prayer” to increase your trust in what Jesus has done for you.   Lessons: Proverbs 3:5-6, 2 Corinthians 5:16-17, Mark 5:21-24, 35-42

Jesus keeps looking for us when we are hiding in fear. Many of us are held back from deeper intimacy with God and others because we fear being exposed for who we think we truly are. Jesus is our stubborn Savior who is relentless in searching for us and his perfect love casts out our fear. When we surrender to Jesus and open our whole lives to him, he embraces us as his own child with unconditional acceptance. We physically experience his embrace through other followers of Jesus who accept us and love us like Jesus.   Next Step: Identify anything you are trying to hide from the Lord. Surrender it to him. Find a few Christian friends with whom you can be real.   Lessons: Genesis 3:1-10, 1 John 4:15-19, Mark 5:21-34