Posts by Ryan Lenerz (Page 8)
Day 2: Living by the Spirit
Galatians 5 is such good news to anybody who wants to know how to be with God. You don’t need to follow a bunch of steps. You don’t need to be circumcised. You don’t need to be perfect. None of that matters. Instead, all you need is faith in Jesus Christ who died on the cross to set you free from sin. Granted, Paul immediately follows that statement up with a warning not to use your freedom to sin,…
Join Us on a 21 Day Bible Reading Plan
In yesterday’s message, we challenged everyone who calls Ashworth Road “home” to join us in reading the Bible together for the next 21 days. Our hope is that each of us wants to be more like Jesus at the end of 2015 than we are right now. And the only way for us to become more like Jesus is to spend time with him. Thoughtfully reading one select chapter of the Bible each day is one of the best ways to connect…
How to Find the Right Church
Coming out of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, it’s a wild time of the year for shoppers to find the best gifts for our families (and sometimes ourselves) at the best prices possible. We search the internet for deals at multiple stores and then run from location to location trying to gather the best of what is being offered by the retailers this year. Some of us love trying to find the best deals while others grow weary of this…
Making and Keeping the Right Friends
Most of us have friends we like and friends we don’t (and I’m not even talking about social media). Wait – friends we don’t like? Yup. In fact, this phenomena is so common, it has a name – “Frenemies.” These are the people who are your friends by association, who you actually don’t like because they do things behind closed doors that only your enemy would do to you. So the question is, why would you keep a friend who…
Impact Youth Ministry Year in Review
Our middle school and high school students did so much over the past year. Check out this Flickr slideshow of all that we did! Ashworth Road Flickr page.
God’s Gift to YOU!
“Salvation is a free gift from God to all people” That is the first line of our church’s belief statement on the subject of salvation, which was the topic of our youth study last night. As I read that line, one teen asked, “But how can you say salvation is for all people if we believe that some people are never saved from their sin?” Herein lies the issue which people often get confused about. When you mistakenly believe that…
Sin is Sneaky
Most of us who have attended church for awhile have heard the story of Adam and Eve being tempted by the serpent and eating the apple, thus committing the first sin of humanity (Genesis 3). It’s an important story to know and most of us like to imagine that story in our minds. But rarely do we take the time to really think about what it teaches us about sin. Sin is Sneaky The serpent told Eve that if she…
Why Creation Matters… And so Do You!
Most people, at some point in life, have to wrestle with the question of whether their life holds any value. For some, you question if you are worth anything because of how other people abuse and misuses you, and for others, because of the things you have done to mess up your lives. The good news of the Gospel of Jesus, however, is that it doesn’t matter why you are doubting if your life has value, but that your dignity,…
What Does it Mean to be a Friend
The word friend has become so complex. What does it actually mean? In today’s culture we have work friends we only want to see at work, school friends we only see at school functions, facebook friends we only want to spy on online, and frenemies, those we socially have to pretend to like. Some people have hundreds of “friends” while others struggle to find a single person they call “friend.” Essentially, the word has lost all meaning by meaning so…
Pope Francis Keeps Making Headlines
It seems to me that Pope Francis has been in the news more often in the past month than any pope has been in recent memory. You see, he is regularly speaking out about his beliefs, beliefs which push against the traditional stance of the Catholic church for centuries. At first, I found his comments to be refreshing, pointing in the right direction. In one interview, he spoke about how he wanted the church to be more focused on what…
It’s Hard to be a Christian Teen
In a room filled with rambunctious junior highers bouncing off the walls with anticipation for our first youth meeting since May, our first meeting since creating a newly renovated youth room and rebranding with a new group name, I launched a new ministry year here at Ashworth Road Baptist Church. Our goal this year is for each youth to see the bigger picture of His story – the bigger story that takes place in the Bible. As such, I…
How Would Jesus Vote?
As I finish up my last class of my seminary journey, Christian Ethics, I am being confronted with all sorts of issues related to the church, politics, and how Christians vote. I have read about abortion, capital punishment, war, marriage, poverty, politics, immigration, and racism. Before taking the class, I might have looked at each of these issues quite simply – yes, I support, or no, I am against it. But I have been surprised at how complex each of…