Topic: Pentecost

Like many holidays in America, the meaning of Thanksgiving has been totally lost by the majority of Americans. Thanksgiving only has meaning when you know what you’re thankful for, to whom you are thankful, and why you are thankful. Christians must be the first to give thanks to God, even when everything in life goes wrong.

The Rev. Stomberg and the Rev. Galloway discuss the importance of Christian responsibility. If Jesus tells us the world will get worse before he comes, then why should Christians try to make things better? Is secular culture responsible for the decline of the Church in the West, or is it actually Christians?

There is only one Kingdom that will last forever! And that Kingdom is the only place we can take refuge. Until Christ comes again, earthly kingdoms will rise and fall. Christians will face persecution, but our hope is in the one who reigns forever.

You can give all the money in the world to the Church and still not be right with God! True stewardship consists of giving God the best of our time and talents, as well as our treasure. Most importantly, right stewardship starts with the condition of the heart. And if we are spiritually fatigued, then our stewardship is going to be limited. We can’t give our best to God if we are running on spiritual fumes!

Do you ever grow tired of hearing the noise of the world around you? Our world has been saturated with evil since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden. For the Christian, it is easy to be discouraged by the many voices that speak out against the Gospel. Even greater is the temptation to give in to them. Here, the Rev. Galloway shares God’s reminder for us to be still, and trust in Christ.

For every Saint whose name we remember, there are a thousand more who silently served and suffered for the sake of the Gospel, and they are as much responsible for the advance of the Gospel as the great heroes of the faith whom we celebrate. We forget this so easily, and this is precisely why we need the heroes of the faith – to encourage us in the ordinary work of Sainthood. The ordinary life is a beautiful thing, because God ordains the ordinary to accomplish His divine and perfect Will.

Can you really be a Christian when you don’t pray every day? A recent Pew survey indicates that roughly half of all professing Christians do not pray every day. Without daily prayer, we cannot be truly happy. And when we pray, we should pray like the tax collector, begging for God’s mercy. We need to be people of real prayer.

It is said that our issue as Christians is not that we ask God for too much, but that we ask God for far too little. The same is true of our frequency in asking. Our problem is not that we come to God too much, but that we hardly come to him in prayer at all. Listen as the Rector encourages us to be persistent in prayer.

Here’s the great preoccupation of Americans: We do everything in our lives to avoid mortality. Are we not all going to die, however? We can’t avoid mortality, but we can enjoy eternal life in the presence of God, like the Samaritan and like Ruth, if we simply put our trust in Jesus Christ to save us.