We all love games, particularly card games that have wild cards, trump cards.  But life is not a game, is it? Today Nancy discusses a particular conundrum with which we all must negotiate.  This is our second to last Sunday on 1st Corinthians Chapter 13.

When Henry Ford first built his Model T automobiles, there was an incident when the massive electric generators that ran the production plant failed.  None of the engineers or production managers, having attempted everything in their arsenal of knowledge, were able to succeed in getting them running.  They called on Henry who in turn phoned Charlie Steinmetz, the inventor and creator of those massive generators.  After tinkering only several minutes, wallah, everything was once again running smoothly.  Long story short, his bill was $10,000 (today's equivalent of $1,000,000.  When receiving the bill, Henry objected, so Charlie modified the bill and returned it three days later.  It read "Cost of tinkering $10.  Cost of how to tinker $9,990.
Total: $10,000.  Henry paid the bill immediately upon receipt.  Thank Jesus that He is the One who understood exactly how to tinker, saving, preserving, and fixing our lives, both now and for eternity, at His great cost.

Last week Pastor Gerry discussed the Father, and today we learn more of His Son and what He has done for us.

Gary Wilson, our pastor from 30 years ago, is graciously standing in for Nancy for the next several weeks.  This week, his first topic explores the depth of God's seeking of us and the depth of our need.  We are in Ephesians. 

We're in our fifth week of 1st Corinthians Chapter 13 and you'd think we'd be done.  But no, hang on.  Today Pastor Nancy peels back the onion a little more.  How do we keep from damaging relationships and begin repairing those that have some rebuilding to be done. That's a biggie.  Beginning with restraint is a good start.

Love is an amazing force.  It even causes the most hardened of criminals to confess their crimes.  Let's listen as we open God's word in Corinthians.

There are so many aspects that can be and will be discussed in Chapter 13 of this first letter Paul wrote to the Corinthians.  Last week we began with some of the dynamics that are the foundation of our topic, but the most foundational is the fact that God loves us.  Truly grasping that understanding is our focus this morning.

We're in our second week of discussing the depths of what love is.  While we're focusing on the 13th chapter of Corinthians, we're not prepping for a wedding (the usual use of this chapter).  We'll be going a bit deeper this time, but first we have some foundational groundwork to lay before we can build on our subject. So while we'll not be directly in Corinthians this morning, we've got some fundamentals to cover.

Unfortunately, the church, with a capital C, in America and certainly throughout the world, has been sorely affected by COVID.  And you can bet that Satan and his minions are not going to let up.  And don't think they won't.  Once they have you down, their next move is to step on your neck. So what's our plan; what's our counter punch. We're going to be doing a deep dive in 1 Corinthians s13 for the next few weeks.  No, this isn't a wedding; an often used scripture on those festive occasions.  As we're going to see, Paul wrote that chapter in the midst of some difficult, or at minimum, delicate circumstances in Corinth.  Let' listen as Nancy begins our discussion.

So much of life is made of circumstances that drive us to make choices.  The challenge is making the right ones, "right" being those that drive us closer and closer to Jesus.  He is the one who conforms us to being more like Him.  That's the goal, isn't it.  Let's listen, as our guest Gerry Wilson, now retired and back from California. who also served as our pastor at Friends Church 30 years ago, shares from Paul's letters just how we might fight the battle... and win.