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Heavenly Imbalance
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - March 23, 2025
“Everything in moderation” seems like a sound rule for life. After all, anything, even something good, can become harmful when taken to an extreme. Yet this common-sense truth finds surprisingly little support in the Lord’s Word. As just one example, Jesus says, “no one can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24). There is no moderation or balancer here: rather pick a side and wholeheartedly follow it! This Sunday we will look at how a blind devotion to moderation can be harmful and why thinking in terms of prioritisation is a more heavenly outlook. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (22m 13s)
Pearls of Wisdom
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - March 16, 2025
What would you be willing to give up in order to get the Lord's truth? Sometimes it seems like we don't have to give up anything: all we need to do is learn a little! But to really take in the truth and have it become part of our lives, we need to be willing to let go of other wants, points of view, and habits that get in the way. We have to be like the merchant in the Lord's parable who was willing to sell all that he had in order to acquire the pearl of great price. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (25m 56s)
Half Measures
Worship Service: Children & Adult - March 09, 2025
When Saul was commanded to destroy all the Amalekites and all their possessions, he only half obeyed: he destroyed all the worthless possessions, but kept the precious things, and spared the king. Yet he still claimed that he had obeyed the Lord. How often do we only follow the Lord halfway, but claim that we have done everything He asks? And how do we come to a place of wholeheartedly separating ourselves even from the evils that we really love and are attached to? | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (19m 17s)
Being Forgiven - Sorry Doesn't Cut It
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - March 02, 2025
We have all needed to be forgiven at one time or another. It's tempting at these times to think a simple "I'm sorry" will suffice. But when it comes to forgiveness "sorry" just doesn't cut it. Although when we say sorry it may be heartfelt it does nothing to change us or our situation. It is when we recognize our fault and make an effort to change that we can receive real forgiveness. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (18m 15s)
Back to Basics: Part 3 How Does the Bible Work?
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - February 16, 2025
The Bible, the very Word of God, is our link to the Lord and His Teachings. And yet, it is not always obvious how it works. What are we to make of the confusing parts? Or the contradictions? Why is God so obtuse in revealing Himself to us? A large part of the answer to these questions can be found through understanding the spiritual sense that lies beneath the surface of every verse of the Word. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (38m 15s)
Back to Basics: Part 2, What is Salvation?
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - February 09, 2025
Salvation is at the heart and soul of Christ’s message. But what actually is it? Salvation is meaningless if we do not understand what we are being saved from and how we can achieve that salvation. The New Church teaches that all of us have an inclination towards evil that would destroy us if we weren’t protected by the Lord; and that to be truly and fully saved, we need to look to the Lord, reject evil, and live a good life, based on His teachings. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (24m 05s)
Back to Basics Part 1 Who is God
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - February 02, 2025
The most important question that almost any religion tries to answer is, “Who is God?” In our day to day lives we may find other questions more pressing, such as “how do I keep my temper when my three-year-old scrawled crayon all over the wall AGAIN?” But how we see God actually filters into how we see all those basic day-to-day questions of life. So who is God, and how can we come to know Him better? That’s what we’ll explore this Sunday. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (34m 25s)
Belonging to the Lord
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - January 26, 2025
What is the Lord’s? In a broad sense all things are the Lord’s: He created and sustains everything in the universe. Yet we also feel as if we are our own masters. There is an innate sense that what goes on in our minds and hearts is ours and ours alone. Yet even here all that is good and true belongs to the Lord. Miraculously, when we acknowledge that truth and live it, we can actually feel more, not less, ourselves. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (25m 59s)
Overcoming Avoidance
Worship Service: Children & Adult - January 19, 2025
Avoiding is something we all do. We do it with small things, like when we ignore our body’s signals that it’s time for bed or when we procrastinate on the dishes. We do it with bigger things, like when we put off that important but difficult conversation we need to have or when we put future decisions out of mind. And we do it even with the most important things in our spiritual lives, when we know we have an issue but it is to challenging to face. But if we are to grow spiritually we cannot put off or ignore our flaws. We need to address them head on. This Sunday we will look at some of the reasons we avoid spiritual challenges and what we can do to overcome that tendency. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (19m 48s)
From Blindness to Sight
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - January 12, 2025
We are all born into ignorance. None of us knows how to do this thing called life well. But the Lord provides the tools that allow us to learn and to improve. We will never have perfect knowledge of right and wrong; but we can come to better know the truth, and so know better how to live good lives. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (15m 43s)
Looking Forward
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - January 05, 2025
The challenge with the future is the unknowns. It is easy to see how the Lord led us even in hard times when we look back. It is more of a challenge to look forward and trust that the Lord will continue to lead us. And this is as it should be: the Lord asks us to plan for an uncertain future, and work towards it, so that He can direct us down the right path. When we find the right balance of planning and trust we can face what is to come with confidence. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (24m 04s)
Countless Blessings
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - December 22, 2024
The Lord’s birth in a lowly manger in the crowded town of Bethlehem was set in motion by a census ordered by Caesar Augustus. Everyone was required to return to their home town to be registered, which meant that Joseph had to return to Bethlehem with Mary. This census, a fairly innocuous historical event, carries a deeper spiritual meaning: it represents the human tendency to put our worth in material things, to count them up and compare our worldly success with that of other people. This mindset crowds out the Lord, and ironically, it is only when we let go of our own success and ascribe all things to Him that we can receive the true success and happiness that we want. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (21m 18s)
Trampling the Serpent
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - December 15, 2024
There are prophecies of the Lord’s coming scattered throughout the Old Testament. Many of these are well known: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given…” for example. But the first prophecy of the Lord’s coming is much more obscure and less well known. It is spoken by Jehovah to the serpent in the Garden of Eden: I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall trample your head, And you shall batter His heel. Not your usual Christmas cheer perhaps, but this prophecy describes the purpose of the Lord’s coming: to confront the selfishness that rises like a serpent within each of us and trample it down until we can be saved from it. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (18m 16s)
Good News to All People
Worship Service: Informal Family - December 08, 2024
To kick off our Carol Sing we will begin with a worship service in the church for the whole family. The news of Christmas was not just for a few people, but for all people, no matter who or where or when. Although “all people” covers a lot of diversity, we are all united when we come to the Lord together. We get a taste of this when we sing joyfully about the Lord together: all our individual voices are joined into one voice, united in our common love for the Lord. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (17m 48s)
The Word Became Flesh
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - December 01, 2024
In two of the Gospels the Christmas story is told in the familiar way: Jesus was born to a virgin, Mary, born in Bethlehem, and visited by Shepherds and Wise Men. Yet the Gospel of John tells the same story in a far more enigmatic way: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." (John 1:1, 14) What was this “Word”? And what does it mean for it to have become “Flesh?” These details tells us something important about the Lord’s coming into the World, and even about how we still relate to Him today. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (31m 49s)
Abundance and Famine, Part 2, Perservere
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - November 24, 2024
Hard times will come, no matter how prepared we might be. We cannot avoid them. What we can do is put our preparation to use, so that we can persevere through the hard times. In fact, through this perseverance we are strengthened in both love and wisdom, and may come out the other side better people. Even if we feel that we are inadequately prepared for the challenge, the Lord always provides what we need in order to get through it. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (22m 31s)
Abundance and Famine Part 1 Prepare
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - November 17, 2024
We have a tendency to think that whatever we are going through right now is how things will always be. But whether you are going through a time of blessings or of hardship, this too shall pass. In this two part series we will look at how we can prepare for hardship in the good times, and persevere through hardships to get back to the good times. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (24m 18s)
True Freedom
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - November 10, 2024
In the western world we tend to value individuality above almost anything else. The freedom of the individual is sacrosanct. The Lord also values individual freedom. Without the freedom to make personal choices we would not be able to choose heaven over hell. Yet that does not mean that all freedom is equal: one kind of individual freedom leads to hellish anarchy while the other leads to heavenly order. If we want to follow the Lord, we need to spend time distinguishing between the two. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (24m 27s)
Picking and Choosing
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - October 27, 2024
We all want to be good: but how do we decide which good things to do? No matter how much we do, there is always more to be done. When faced with just how many needs there are in the world we can become overwhelmed. We cannot possibly do it all. In order to be good we have to constantly make a judgment call about what good things we will do, and just as importantly, what good things we will not do. We’ll talk about how to make those choices this Sunday. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (28m 21s)
Water into Wine
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - October 13, 2024
In the Gospel of John, Jesus’ first miracle consists of turning water into wine. While this miracle is powerful in it’s own right, it also represents a spiritual process that we all must go through: just as Jesus turned simple water into good quality wine, the Lord can transform the basic ideas we know into a way of life. What were once simple truths can become the good habits that lead to heaven. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (19m 31s)
Are You a Pessimist or an Optimist?
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - October 06, 2024
Are optimists better than pessimists? Are pessimists just realistic while optimists are naïve? What about the Lord? Is He optimistic about our potential, or does He bemoan the woeful nature of humanity? We have those two broad categories of people that conflict with each other. And at times they may be useful. But this Sunday we will look a little beyond these two categories to try to find a more spiritual view of society, humanity, and our future. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (23m 07s)
Bringing Evil to Light
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - September 22, 2024
What’s the point of reflecting on your inner life? The things that go through your heart and mind? The problem is that evil that remains hidden will ultimately actually change who we are as individuals. The Lord wants us to work on our inner selves, our motivations and intentions, so that we can become truly heavenly people, in other words, people who do not just act heavenly, but who are heavenly at heart and in mind. In order for this to happen, the evils that exist within us must be examined, brought to light, and dealt with openly. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (24m 25s)
How the 5 Senses Mislead Us
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - September 08, 2024
Many religions have taught that there is virtue in denying yourself pleasure. The idea is that pleasure distracts us from what truly matters and entices us to live selfishly. And that is very true. But there is also a kind of pleasure, even worldly pleasure, that can fit perfectly well into a wholesome, spiritual life. The point is not to deny ourselves for the sake of denial, but rather to deny pleasures that take us away from the Lord and embrace the ones that allow us to delight in the Lord. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (26m 27s)
Digital Well-Being
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - September 01, 2024
One of the most ubiquitous modern “idols” is the screen. It sucks us in with its promise of satisfaction, pleasure, and escape, only to rob us of time, energy, and connection. Ironically, even as we devote so much to a lifeless mass of wires and plastic, we disconnect more and more from the life-filled, flesh-and-blood people around us. We must relearn how to prioritize people, and above all the Lord, and have technology once again become a servant in pursuit of that priority. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (37m 44s)
The Lord is My Shepherd
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - August 25, 2024
The 23rd Psalm is one of the most well-known portions of the Bible. In it, the Lord is compared to a shepherd, providing for all our needs and guiding us through dark places. This Sunday will be spent contemplating the deeper meaning we can find contained within these powerful words of Scripture. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (34m 27s)