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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
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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
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What is at the Door
Worship Service: Children & Adult - November 03, 2024
Right at the door, right at the passage from our homes out into the world, lies a choice. It is a good choice! A choice we get to make every single day. Join us as we look at what is at the door or maybe, who is at the door. | By Rev. Charles E. Blair | Westville, RSA
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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
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Being Fed By Ravens
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - October 20, 2024
Our Story is about a Raven sent to feed Elijah. Why a Raven? This bird is a scavenger. It feeds on dead creatures/carrion. Yet today, it is a choice bird that the LORD uses to take care of Elijah. Is there more to the story than meets the eye? | By Rev. J. Bheki Dube | Westville, RSA
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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
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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
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Doing No Harm
Worship Service: Informal Family - September 29, 2024
The Lord gave us the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20) because He loves us and wants to keep us safe. Not doing evil (that is, doing no harm) is the first part of caring for others (True Christianity 435). | By Rev. John L. Odhner | Bryn Athyn Cathedral Undercroft
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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
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Abide in Me
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - September 15, 2024
There are many ways we can think about what the Lord wants for us. One of the ways the Lord frames it is that He wants us to abide in Him so that He can abide in us. During the service we will be exploring how we can live our lives in a way that allows for the Lord to most fully abide in us, where we can feel His presence and experience His joy | By Rt. Rev. Bradley D. Heinrichs | Westville, RSA
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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
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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
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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
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Meeting God in Nature
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - August 18, 2024
There’s something beautiful about being in nature, surrounded by trees and flowers, hearing the birds singing, watching as the sun lights up the clouds. It can feel like a truly spiritual experience. And in fact, it is: every last thing in nature is a reflection of the spiritual world, and ultimately, of the Lord. Nor is this just a symbolic connection: the life we see all around us is actually created and sustained by spiritual life from the Lord. Our relationship with nature is an opportunity to reflect and connect more deeply with the Lord. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
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God's Healing Forgiveness
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - August 11, 2024
We all have times when we become paralyzed by evil and falsity. We want desperately to be good but for some reason we cannot seem to let go of harmful thoughts and feelings. The Lord’s forgiveness offers us a way out of this spiritual paralysis: when we raise our thoughts to Him, He heals us through His forgiveness, and in that healing we find freedom for our minds. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
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Remove Those Earrings
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - August 04, 2024
To love the Lord means to love to do what He commands (John 14:21-24). That is because He is what He commands, for His commandments originate from Him, so that He is present in them, and is thus present in the person on whose life they are engraved, and they are engraved on a person by his willing and doing them. (AR 551) | By Rev. J. Bheki Dube | Westville, RSA
See Event (46m 08s)
Childhood Spirituality, Part 2 - Heavenly Innocence
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - July 28, 2024
We can all agree that childhood is a time of great innocence. We see it in the faces of infants and in the behaviour of little children. The Teachings of the New Church say that this innocence comes directly from the Lord, and at heart is a simple willingness to be led by the Lord. This same innocence is not restricted to childhood; in fact, the more we as adults lean into a willingness to simply be led by the Lord, the more we return to the innocence of childhood; with the difference that because it is something we consciously choose, it can be deeper and stronger even than the innocence that we had as children. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
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Childhood Spirituality, Part 1: A Foundation for Life
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - July 21, 2024
“Grow up!” “Don’t be such a child!” “Act like an adult!” These are all familiar messages that we start to hear as we get older. We are encouraged to leave behind the things of childhood and enter “the real world.” And there is a truth in this way of thinking. But the Lord also says almost the opposite: “unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). Although we do leave childhood behind, there is some spiritual element of childhood that it is essential for us to hold onto. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
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The Decree of Shame: The Story of Daniel in the Den of Lions Retold
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - July 14, 2024
A Decree of Shame condemns and sends an innocent, God-fearing man to a Den of Lions with the hope he dies there. But then, there is our Lord, our God. His presence changes the narrative and brings an unexpected twist that brings nothing less than legendary and continuous happiness. | By Rev. J. Bheki Dube | Westville, RSA
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Heaven Is Not For Sale
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - July 07, 2024
You can’t buy your way into heaven, no matter how much wealth you amass. That won’t come as a surprise to most of you. Yet somehow, subconsciously, we end up trying. Every time we feel entitled to reward because of our good deeds, we have diminished good deeds to a mere currency with which we can buy a slice of heaven. Every time we feel slighted for the ill fortune that befalls us in spite of our goodness, we have reduced God’s living Providence into a mere balance sheet of good countered by evil. It is only when we realize that goodness is its own reward that we can be free from the allure of heaven as a reward. Heaven is not a reward; heaven is the natural result of a life of goodness. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
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Put Your Trust in the Lord
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - June 02, 2024
With the recent elections many of us are reflecting on the future of this country. There is a decent amount of fear and worry, along with some hope perhaps. But how are we to think of these things spiritually? Sometimes we separate the political from the spiritual as if they are totally distinct parts of life. But the realm of laws and governance is supposed to be a support for a moral and spiritual society. If that support is shaky, morality and spirituality suffer. But regardless of the despair or hope we may feel, the Lord calls us to remember to put our trust in Him, and believe that He is still in charge, regardless of the apparent outcomes. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
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A New Way to See the World
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - May 26, 2024
The Lord asks us to see in a new way. Maybe that is why healing from blindness was a such a common miracle. But it was not physical blindness the Lord healed but spiritual blindness as well. | By Rev. Charles E. Blair | Westville, RSA
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Hannah: A Woman Who Gave All
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - May 12, 2024
And she made a vow, saying, “LORD Almighty, if you will only look on your servant’s misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the LORD for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head.” (1Samuel 1:11) | By Rev. J. Bheki Dube | Westville, RSA
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The Battles We Never Fight
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - May 05, 2024
Have you ever seen a person who struggles with some particular evil and thought to yourself, “I’m so glad that I’ve never had to deal with that”? It helps to put our own struggles into perspective when we can see how much harder other people have it. We could put much of this up to chance: we happened to be born into a certain family, at a certain time in history, in a particular location. But on closer inspection, none of this is random chance: all of us, like it or not, incline towards the same struggles and challenges as anyone else. It is only through the Lord’s almighty power that we can be held back from falling headlong into unimaginable evils. Today we will explore the ways that the Lord fights battles on our behalf that we will never be aware of, and how much we have to be grateful for. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (35m 05s)
Giving and Receiving, Part 2, How to Be Helped
Worship Service: Childrens Talk & Adult Sermon - April 28, 2024
Everyone needs help; none of us can get through life on our own. And yet when help is available there are many times when we don’t take advantage of it. Why is that? Why especially do we not take advantage of the help that the Lord offers? We’ll explore what gets in the way and how to have a better attitude towards the help that we are given by other people. | By Rev. Joel C Glenn | Westville, RSA
See Event (16m 38s)