Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Haggai: Rebuilding the Church; Rebuilding Lives

When I got the call that I had been voted in as pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Hartwell, Georgia, I was very excited. But after the excitement wore down, the reality set in, and I began to wrap my mind around my preaching plan. I started reading through books of the Bible to figure out how I would start my ministry at Calvary Baptist Church, after all, starting well is very important. I finally read the book of Haggai, and I fell in love. I decided to preach a 4 week series on the book of Haggai. I asked the church on my first Wednesday night of going through Haggai if anyone had ever heard a sermon, let alone a series, preached from that book. I was not surprised that no one raised their hand. In fact, I can't remember ever hearing a sermon preached from Haggai! The setting of the book of Haggai is that the nation of Judah has come back to Jerusalem from bondage. God gives them a message, "It's time to start rebuilding my temple." In my series, I preached on how we no longer have a physical temple. The temple was where the presence of God was as well as the place to worship God; in the New Testament time our bodies and the church take on those roles respectively. So, the application we can get from the book of Haggai is in the way of rebuilding our lives and rebuilding the church for the glory of Jesus Christ. The series was very well received by the church.
When I write a sermon, I normally write it out word by word, in order to wrap my mind around it correctly. Now that I have the finished series completely written out, I would like to be a blessing in sharing it with anyone that would want it. The finished product is 32 pages long. I am selling it for 99 cents on amazon as an ebook. You can find the book here. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope it is a blessing.
Don't forget to check out our new church website. I am very excited about finally having it up on the web!

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