Iowa City Church Podcast

Give a listen to one of our elders, Jerry Anthony bring a close to 2023 and challenges us for how we can follow Jesus' instruction about bearing fruit in 2024.

We all want to forget the year 2020, especially those spring months when the COVID virus and the fear of the unknown began to move around the globe. However, in the midst of that pandemic we learned where people go to find peace. The Bible. During the hardest moments of 2020, Bible searches soared online and a record number of people turned to Scripture for passages addressing fear, healing, and justice. The YouVersion Bible app saw searches increase by 80%, totaling nearly 600 million worldwide. YouVersion found Bobby Gruenewald said, "Through every hardship, people continue to seek God and turn to the Bible for strength, peace, and hope. While 2020 is a year so many say they'd like to forget, we see it as a year to remember how God used the Bible app to help so many people who were searching for answers." Overall, the app tracked 43.6 billion chapters of the Bible read in 2020, with half a billion verses shared, its highest on record. So for many people, reading Scripture is a way that they find peace in their moments of stress and anxiety. What do you do to find peace? Finding peace is something that a lot of people, maybe even you, are trying to find. The unfortunate reality is we end up pursuing a lot of unhealthy comforts which in the end don't bring peace, and instead hook us into habits that hurt. This is one of the reason why Scripture admonishes us to practice discipline, and self control in our pursuit of finding the peace that only Jesus can give. This is why this Christmas season we are practicing some of the disciplines of advent. Advent challenges us to make space for Jesus in our lives by preparing for his coming through worship, prayer, fasting, Scripture reading and acts of generosity. On Sunday we will continue with part two of our advent sermon series by discovering how we can find true peace in our lives when we make room for Jesus in our chaotic lives. To join us on the journey give a listen to part two of Make Room.

During the month of December we all make room for Christmas. We make room for a tree and decorations. We make room in our schedules for buying and wrapping presents. We make room for parties and family get togethers. We make room for Christmas cards and delicious treats. However, this question does need to be asked: Is anyone, making room for Jesus? As much as we should enjoy all the extra events of Christmas, the truth is none of what we invest all of our time on ultimately gives us the hope our souls desperately crave. The Christmas trees die and shed their needles, food is eaten, gifts are broken or forgotten, decorations come down and the bills begin to arrive only to bring on the "blues" of January. That is unless you have made room for Jesus. With this sermon we are going to embark on an Advent Christmas series designed specifically to help you make room for Jesus. If we aren't intentional with how we use our time and resources, it doesn't take long for the important things in life to be quickly forgotten. So what's the plan? Advent. If you aren't familiar with the concept of Advent, the term comes from the Latin word, adventus---which means coming. It's been used by the church over the centuries as a discipline to prepare for the coming of King Jesus; both his first coming and his second coming (click here if you want to learn more) For the month of December we are going to practice some of the disciplines of Advent by worshiping together, working through a Bible reading plan together, practicing prayer and fasting...all with the expressed goal of making room for more of Jesus in our lives. To be a part of the journey, get started by listening to part one of Make Room.

In doing research for this sermon series I came across a fascinating article studying the connection between gratitude and altruism. It appears God actually wired people with a neural connection between being thankfulness and generosity. In Mind & Body magazine, Christina Karns writes in detail about the research being done in tracing the mental link between gratitude and altruism (Why a Grateful Brain Is a Giving One) Here's a summary of the article: "In a sense, gratitude seems to prepare the brain for generosity. Counting blessings is quite different than counting your cash, because gratitude, just as philosophers and psychologists predict, points us toward moral behaviors, reciprocity, and pay-it-forward motivations. Apparently, our brain literally makes us feel richer when others do well. Perhaps this is why researchers have observed that grateful people give more. Gratitude might be good for us—but it is good for others as well." As we stop and consider the implications of this research it doesn't take long to see this connection between gratitude and generosity popping up all over the Bible. Probably the one that immediately stood out to me was Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, giving thanks to his Father in Heaven and then proceeding to give himself generously as a sacrifice on the cross. Why should any of this matter to us? It matters because Black Friday and Cyber Monday are often more important to us then being generous. Our culture focuses more on getting and hoarding then generosity. To break this cycle and become generous, all we have to do is look to God and science to see that it starts with developing a grateful heart. On Sunday we will wrap up this series by looking at a specific incident in the book of Exodus where Israel demonstrates this connection between gratitude and generosity. To be a part of the conversation give a listen to part three of Thanks & Giving.

I recently came across an article about Richard Stearns, the president of World Vision, as he reflected on his visit to a church in Port-au-Prince, Haiti a year after the devastating earthquake. The church's building consisted of a tent made from white tarps and duct tape, pitched in the midst of a sprawling camp for thousands of people still homeless from the earthquake. This is how he described the church and the lesson he learned in Haiti: In the front row sat six amputees ranging in age from 6 to 60. They were clapping and smiling as they sang song after song and lifted their prayers to God. The worship was full of hope … [and] with thanksgiving to the Lord. No one was singing louder or praying more fervently than Demosi Louphine, a 32-year-old unemployed single mother of two. During the earthquake, a collapsed building crushed her right arm and left leg. After four days both limbs had to be amputated. She was leading the choir, leading prayers, standing on her prosthesis and lifting her one hand high in praise to God .… Following the service, I met Demosi's two daughters, ages eight and ten. The three of them now live in a tent five feet tall and perhaps eight feet wide. Despite losing her job, her home, and two limbs, she is deeply grateful because God spared her life on January 12th last year … "He brought me back like Lazarus, giving me the gift of life," says Demosi … [who] believes she survived the devastating quake for two reasons: to raise her girls and to serve her Lord for a few more years. I find Demosi's response of gratitude to God remarkable! How can a woman who lives in those conditions not to mention the loss of her limbs find a reason to thank God? In my context, I find myself lacking gratitude because my WiFi isn't working and the coffee ran out. How pathetic in comparison! The truth is while most of us would think that we are in a better position then Demosi, it's actually Demosi who has something to teach all of us: How to be thankful no matter what the circumstances. In this episode, we will study a section of the apostle Paul's Thessalonian letter (1 Thessalonians 5:16-24), which teaches us how to develop a discipline of giving thanks in all circumstances.