Second Stage Ministries

The word is CHANGE for 2017.  2016 taught me a lot. God has really spoken to me throughout this year. There have been some ups and downs in this year, but it has been in those up and down moments that I have seen a lot of what God is doing in my life.  The weeks leading up to Easter this year were amazing in the area that I serve in at my church, and Easter weekend was totally phenomenal. But that wasn't where I learned the most. I learned a lot toward the end of the summer about what God is doing in my life. There was a lot going on in my life over the summer, and I could just quit and given up on God and everything. But I saw what that did to other people. My hard time was not a time to desert God, and I am glad that I didn't.  I kept moving forward trying to see what God could show me through all of this. The lessons that I prepared for the fourth and fifth grade students at church in July, August, September and October were some of the hardest that I h

For this special Christmas day post, I have just posted the Christmas story from Luke 2.  Jesus’ birth was the most important event in the history of the world. The Bible tells us this about the birth of Jesus: 21 “She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” – Matthew 1:21 NIV He will save the people from their sins. This birth was not just the birth of a baby. This was the birth of the Savior of a broken world. Please read the text below. ________________________________________________________ The Birth of Jesus In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register. 4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the h

This is post 2 of a series where we are looking John 3:16. If you haven't read the first post go to the link here --- . Please read John 3:16 again and we will be looking at the underlined text. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son , that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16 NIV He GAVE - The Greatest Act 1 Have you ever been given something really awesome and you didn't know what to say? Maybe it's a toy that you received for Christmas when you were a child. Maybe it was a needed amount of money so you could pay a bill. Maybe it was a car that a friend let you have after you were in a car accident. Maybe the person in front of you at McDonalds paid for your food. Maybe someone gave you another chance after you messed up. We have all been given something in life. Something that we didn't really deserve. Something that we didn't have to pay back. But it changed our life. God did th

For the rest of the month of December, I want to take some time and look at the story of Christmas in a different way. Over three weeks, I want to, look at 26 words in the book of John that tell one of the greatest stories ever told. If you haven't figured it out yet, we are going to be looking at John 3:16. For this series of posts, I have divided the verse into three sections that we will be looking at each of the weeks. Take a moment and read the verse below: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16 NIV The first section that we are going to look at is "For God so loved the world". God - The Greatest Being 1 God is the greatest being in the universe. We can see evidence of Him when see all that was created. Everything that we see had to have been created by someone. This all didn't just all of a sudden exist. For example, the phone that you are r

During an experimental gathering for South Bend City Church, a new church plant in my area, we read the following passage of Scripture many different times. Each time we read it, each time we had a few minutes of silence to ponder the words in the passage. So read the passage below, and I will tell you what I found in those moments of silence. “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” Matthew 11:28-30 MSG During those few moments of silence this is what I kept repeating; Come, get away with Me, rest with Me, walk with Me, work with Me and keep company with Me. So I wanted to briefly look at each of those in this post. Come and Get away with Me This is an invitation