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Showing posts with the label Newspaper

Sermon - Trinity IX, 2026 - Luke 16:1-13

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The Parable of the Unjust Steward , Marinus van Reymerswaele, 1540 Christian Wisdom Seeks Eternal Dwellings Wisdom is forward thinking and focused on the goal Christian wisdom employs every treasure, heavenly and worldly, for the sake of reaching the goal If there is a hardest parable, it might be this one; throws people off every time. The parable presents a rich man with a steward who was found wasting the rich man’s possessions. The job of a steward is to be faithful with someone else’s possessions, and this guy wasn’t cutting it. So obviously, he got fired. What’s crazy is the rich man lets the steward hand in the books, and he doesn’t hunt them down and take them from him immediately. The steward does exactly what you don’t want the steward to do, which is why normally the books get taken from the steward: the steward cooks the books. He meets some of the rich man’s debtors, probably tenant farmers, and in order to ingratiate himself with the debtors he adjusts how much they owe, ...
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Algona Article - 2/9/23

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Cohabitation Before Marriage Living together before marriage has become very popular in the past couple of decades. So much so that the majority of the population doesn’t consider it wrong to live together, especially if the couple is planning to get married anyway. However, just because cohabitation has become common and popularly accepted doesn’t mean that it is okay or even morally neutral. The Word of God teaches us that marriage is the lifelong union between one man and one woman. Jesus said: “ Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” Marriage is God’s institution which He founded for our good. Marriage exists for the sake of raising children, for the chastity of the husband and wife, and for  mutual...
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God Created Man In His Own Image - Newspaper Article 11/3/22

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The Order of Creation is under assault. But what is the Order of Creation? God created all things and He created all things within a particular order so that everything might operate together properly. For instance, God created humans, animals, and plants; all of them are living, but not all of them are the same. God created man to have dominion over this creation, so we work the ground, kill the weeds and pests, cultivate crops, and raise livestock. Among mankind there is also order; God created us male and female, husbands and wives, parents and children, leaders and followers.  Different people are given different work to do based upon who God created them to be. Additionally, God created people differently with unique skills and characteristics unique to their station in life. This is apparent in our bodies, but it’s also evident in our personalities. Thus it really should go without saying, men and women are different from each other, they can’t do all of the same things, nor ...
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For Endurance, Encouragement, and Hope

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“Change and decay in all around I see.” Those words are from a hymn beloved by many: Abide With Me. When we look around, those words ring true. Our small towns and counties are shrinking and aging. People are confused whether they’re men or women. Children are adopting animal personas. Inflation has been crazy and now we’re entering into a recession. Our Christian churches are rapidly closing or getting smaller every year. In many ways it’s easy to be depressed and pessimistic about the future.   I think it’s obvious enough to most anyone with their eyes open that things are becoming worse rather than better, and so what I’ve said comes as no surprise. The question then is: how ought we to respond to all of this change and decay? For some people the response is anger and bitterness, to complain about everything incessantly. For others  the response is to ignore all of the problems and pretend that they don’t exist. But for many the answer is simply depression, a gloomy me...
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June 24th, 2022 - Emmetsburg Newspaper Article 7/7/22

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The SCOTUS finally overturned Roe v Wade, correcting a horrific error. It is with joy that we Christians give thanks to God for this momentous decision! This is only the first step, since abortion is still legal in a majority of US states, including Iowa. Nevertheless, this is a step in the right direction and a victory for life in our nation. The lie of abortion has harmed millions, killing children, hurting mothers, and teaching us that a person’s value is determined by their abilities. As Christians we confess that it is wrong to kill babies. God wonderfully knits all children together in their mothers’ wombs. Every life is valuable to God since He authored each life. God even took on our human flesh when Jesus was conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary. Jesus in the womb makes it clear that all lives are valuable: mothers, fathers, elderly, children, newborns, embryos, zygotes, and blastocysts! Christ took on our flesh in order to die upon the cross in our stead, and so led us ou...
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Let the Children Come to Me - Algona Newspaper Article - 5/19/22

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One of the Family,  Frederick George Cotman, 1880 (Note: this is a more complete version of the article that was published in the Emmetsburg Newspaper.) Approximately 800,000+ abortions are performed yearly in the United States. About 3,500 abortions take place here in Iowa each year. Think about those numbers for a moment. About as many people as live in Emmetsburg are killed before birth in Iowa. More people than live in Des Moines are killed yearly in the United States. Those are some sobering numbers. Another sobering number is the Total Fertility Rate (number of children a woman has in her lifetime) here in the US. In 2008 we were right at replacement rate (2.1), but now, just about a decade later, we’re at 1.64, the lowest in recorded history. How exactly this will impact our nation as a whole is currently unknown, but it won’t be pretty. Just consider how many things have changed here in Kossuth county since 1940 when our population was 26,630, to today when our population ...
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Let the Children Come to Me - Emmetsburg Newspaper Article - May 5th, 2022

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Here are a couple sobering numbers: Approximately 800,000+ abortions are performed yearly in the United States. About 3,500 abortions take place here in Iowa each year. About as many people as live in Emmetsburg are killed before birth in Iowa. More people than live in Des Moines are killed yearly in the United States.  The Total Fertility Rate (children a woman has in her lifetime) for the US was right at replacement rate (2.1) in 2008, but now we’re at 1.64. How exactly this will impact our nation is unknown, but it won’t be pretty. Just consider how many things have changed here in our county since 1940 when our population was 16,000, to today when our population is 9,000. These numbers reveal something about us and our nation: children are not our priority. But they are for Jesus: “ They were bringing even infants to Jesus that He might touch them. And when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to Him, saying, “Let the children come to Me, and do not h...
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The Fruit of the Womb are a Reward - Algona Newspaper Article

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Children are very often treated as a curse in our culture; we don’t want to have “too many” of them. Fertility is regularly treated like a disease, something which we medicate against. Unborn children are treated like commodities or science experiments. For example, Francis Collins, the former head of the NIH presided over, funded, ordered, or participated in experiments on human fetuses procured from abortions, such as a University of Pittsburgh experiment which grafted infant scalps onto lab rats. These are the types of atrocities we’d expect from Nazis, yet they’re taking place in our own modern day nation.  Approximately 800,000+ abortions are performed yearly in the United States. About 3,500 abortions take place here in Iowa each year. Think about those numbers for a moment. About as many people as live in Emmetsburg are killed before birth in Iowa. More people than live in Des Moines are killed yearly in the United States. Those are some sobering numbers. Contrast that with ...
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Emmetsburg Newspaper Article: The Transcendence of Christianity

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If you’ve ever been to a traditional Christian church service you may have wondered: “What’s with the chanting and strange clothes?” It all seems out of place today; archaic in a very modern world. We live in an age of electronic gadgets with screens everywhere. Our smart watches tell us our heart rate, we order pizza from our phones, and go to work from behind a computer. Even our tractors practically drive themselves these days! Everything is fast, casual, and modern; why not the church?! God says of His Christians in the Bible: “ But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people. ” Christians aren’t meant to be like the world around them. Christians are to be otherworldly because God is otherworldly, and so Christian churches are like nothing else in this world; they’re transcendent. When you step into the sanctuary, you’re entering a foreign embassy, belonging not to this world but to the Kingdom of God. The church isn’t lined with changing ...
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Male and Female - Emmetsburg Newspaper Article 4/22/21

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 “From the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’” According to God’s ordering, He formed Adam from the dust of the earth and Eve from Adam’s side. For all the generations which have followed, God created us according to this same beautiful pattern: man and woman, husband and wife, male and female, XY and XX. The differences between men and women God has established in nature; differences in genetics, physiology, abilities, vocations, and personalities. Men and women, while similar in many respects (and equal in regards to salvation and value), are not the same. God designed the sexes to be unequal to each other in order that they may complement one another. The differences between the two is what gives each their strength. The fact that men are to be men and that women are to be women is what gives our lives such vibrancy and vigor. One very significant aspect of this is that only men can be husbands and fathers, and only women can be their wives and be mothers to...
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West Bend, IA Newspaper - Christmas Letter 2020

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  The Word of Comfort Scientists can’t figure out what there was before the universe, but we Christians know, even a little child can plainly say: “ In the beginning was the Word. ” That Word has endured since before there was time and space and it will continue to persist even when all this universe is laid waste on the last day. God has given that little changeless Word to us for our endurance, comfort, and hope. This is really what Christmas is all about! That Word which gives us all hope and consolation through so many trials has become flesh and dwells among us. That Word became incarnate in the infant body of Jesus lying in the manger, in the adult body of Jesus hanging on the cross, and the true body and blood of Jesus in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. That Word which is eternal entered into the temporal, so that we who are mortal might put on His immortality!  But why? Why would He do this? In the words of the great hymn writer, John Gerhard: “Love caused your inc...
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