2021 Messages - Wonderful Mercy Church

People Must Know!

December 26, 2021 • Dirk Duhlstine

How good is the Good News? God’s gift for us that we celebrate every December is the greatest gift of all time. Some gifts need to be nurtured, some gifts need to be shared, and some gifts keep on giving. In this year-end message, we explore Christ’s coming, a gift to change the world and our lives.

The Baby Who Threatens the World

December 19, 2021 • Graeme Sellers

The world would have no problem with Jesus if he’d just stay in the manger. That little baby poses no threat unless he gets out, gets loose, grows up, and becomes all he's destined to be. If he is who he says he is, from the very being of God with all attendant authority, he becomes a threat to every established human institution: political, economic, educational, religious. All of them are in jeopardy, for they require an allegiance only he legitimately commands.

Christmas Is What God Is Like

December 12, 2021 • Graeme Sellers

When we read the Christmas story, when we hear it, when we re-enact it in our worship, we are invited into an astonishing revelation of what God is really like. Christmas shows us what God is like—just as he trusted Joseph and Mary with his well-being, we can trust him with ours. Our lives, our fate, are safe with him. This is who God is—like his earthly parents, there’s nothing He won’t do, no part of Himself he won’t spend to care for us.

The Supernatural Origins of Christmas

December 5, 2021 • Graeme Sellers

Seen through the lens of its supernatural origins, with its many fantastical elements, it’s rather remarkable that we believe the Christmas story at all. Being a part of a community of faith, where the story is believed and revered and passed down from generation to generation, it’s easy to lose sight of how this narrative sounds to others. Our friends and neighbors hear it as religious mythology and shake their heads at our naïveté. Which prompts this question: why do we believe it? One answer is this: because of the supernatural work of Holy Spirit.

The Prayer & Thankfulness Connection

November 28, 2021 • Graeme Sellers • Philippians 4:6–7

Thankfulness changes the atmosphere and content of our thought life. It’s hard, if not impossible to give thanks and complain in the same breath. Thanking changes thinking. It reroutes the pathways of our thoughts, delivering us to a better destination. Arriving at this better place happens most expeditiously when thanks and prayer link up.

Keep It Real

November 21, 2021 • David Hammerslag

As we have looked at prayer these last weeks we have learned that we should keep it short, keep it real, and keep it up. Keeping it real may be one of the hardest shifts for us to make. The narratives, the stories we tell ourselves, about prayer and the God we pray to, may be an issue. We may have been formed to believe that we need to be good, active, and right in prayer and that we need to prove our worth. Those are false narratives. We need to learn God's narratives about prayer, that we should be honest, present, and known in prayer, and that it is in prayer that we receive our worth. When we can shift from our false narratives to God's true narratives we will be able to keep our prayer real.

The Waiting Place

November 14, 2021 • Lindsay Elizabeth

Prayer is one of the most normal things we do, but that doesn't mean it's easy. It's hard work, prayer, especially when we are waiting for the answer we are hoping for.

The Prayer of Agreement

November 7, 2021 • Graeme Sellers • Matthew 18:19

Praying in agreement is a supernatural transaction. As divided and angry as the evangelical church is these days, we might think the supernatural aspect is that two or three of us would actually agree on something, anything. But that’s not it. Jesus tells us that agreement-prayer is a higher form of communication and it sets things in motion that don’t happen through individual effort alone.

The Taize Prayer Experience

October 31, 2021 • Lee Meyer

As part of our series on prayer, we enter into a Taizé prayer experience this morning. Taizé prayer is a unique form of prayer; it's not “worship” as we commonly think of it. Taizé prayer creates an environment for communion with the Living God through… • Quiet, meditative listening prayer • Hearing selected readings from Scripture • Simple, repetitive songs that voice words of faith and hope • Silence that opens the heart to the mystery and presence of God • Helping us become more aware of our inner life and alert to signs of the invisible.

Prayer & Presence

October 24, 2021 • Graeme Sellers

When speaking with his friend, Martha, Jesus tells her that busyness in serving cannot take place of quietly abiding in him. It’s so easy to be all about the work! But Jesus says, "One thing only is essential, and Mary has chosen it—it’s the main course, and won’t be taken from her.” Jesus reveals the secret of life, the one thing, and Mary has found it. So, what is it? The presence of God, and prayer is our passkey.

How Do We See Jesus?

October 17, 2021 • Roger Cunningham

How do we see Jesus? This was the question the Greeks brought to Phillip and it is a question on our hearts today. Roger Cunningham of Santiago, Chile invites us to consider three ways we can see Jesus: through intimacy, through the Word, and through obedience to do the works of Jesus.

Keep It Up

October 10, 2021 • Graeme Sellers • Matthew 7:7–11

When Jesus exhorts us to continually ask, seek, and knock, he is not saying to pray harder or better, and maybe then God will be persuaded to act. He’s saying something quite different: “Keep it up. Don’t stop. Keep your prayers short and to the point, and don’t play act or perform. Just keep going after it.”

Normal & Necessary

October 3, 2021 • Graeme Sellers • Matthew 6:5–9

Prayer is the most normal thing we do as sons and daughters of the Father. In Mt. 6:5-8, three times Jesus says “when you pray.” Jesus assumes we’ll pray, and that we should. “When you pray…” indicates that prayer is not too lofty an assignment for us, as if some are cut out for it while others are not. Prayer is for us, for people just like us—it is not the province of captains of spirituality.

The Rock From Which We Were Cut

September 26, 2021 • Graeme Sellers • Isaiah 51:1–3

We are at a point in which we need a rescue only God can orchestrate, one that sees him changing our future and turning our wastelands into gardens. Here’s what God would say about that: it won’t happen because of the books we read, the plans we devise, or the intelligence we apply. It will happen as we “look to the rock from which we were cut and to the quarry from which we were hewn.” And what is that rock? Prayer.

Finances and the Fear Factor

September 19, 2021 • Graeme Sellers • 1 Kings 17, Matthew 6:25–26

One thing causing us not to take the biblical approach with finances is fear: the fear that we won’t have enough. This fear causes us to hold on to what we have, and tightly! We cannot release because we fear we won’t have enough and will not get any more. It keeps us from being able to genuinely celebrate another’s success because it breeds an inherent belief that somewhere down the road, his/her success takes away from our chance to succeed, and we do not want them to get our piece of the pie.