Sermon: "Bet Your Life", Hosea 11:1-9 (November 12, 2023)

As you all know, I had a minor medical procedure on Friday, which is temporarily impacting my voice. I’m so grateful to for the help of our currently serving leadership so that I don’t have to talk for an hour straight this morning, but I still felt it was important to preach the sermon myself. Since most of my weekend has been taken up by the procedure and recovery, I’d originally planned to recycle a sermon on Hosea that I wrote four years ago. But apparently, as is so often the case, the Holy Spirit had other plans.

Liturgy: Hosea, Hosea 11:1-9 (November 12, 2023)

  *You are welcome to use or adapt any of my resources for free, but I ask that you provide proper citation AND comment on this post to let me know.*

Hymns:

GTG #60, “Your Endless Love, Your Mighty Acts"

GTG #435, “There's A Wideness in God's Mercy”

GTG #39, “Great Is Thy Faithfulness”

Sermon: "Finding Our Center", Hosea 11:1-11/Colossians 3:1-11 (August 4, 2019)

I’m tired. Is anyone else here tired? I don’t mean “tired” like “I stayed up way too late last night finishing this sermon and am looking forward to my Sunday nap” tired. I mean “tired” as in “Everything feels hopeless” tired. As in “How long, O Lord?” tired. As in “I don’t even know where to start” tired. It may sound like I’m being overly dramatic, but how many of YOU have felt this way, at least once, over the last year or so? Most of us, I bet, at one time or another. It feels like it’s gotten to the point where you could spend all day every day fighting for what you believe is right and never feel like you’ve made any difference at all. There’s just too much that’s wrong in our world. It’s overwhelming and disorienting.