Cornerstone Atl Weekly Sermons

Everyone of us goes through life with a nagging sense that something's missing. There's a feeling of emptiness that leads to attempts on our part to fill the emptiness. For those of us that consider ourselves good and moral, it's easy to think that our biggest battle is to stay away from immoral pleasures in favor of immoral pleasures. However, the author of Ecclesiastes seems to think different. Innocent pleasures, don't always make for innocent pursuits. Sometimes our pursuit of very innocent things, can distract us from our true purpose of finding our true pleasure in God. We have to remember that we have an eternal palette that will swallow up every earthy pleasure and still leave you as an empty person. We were never meant to fill up on earthly pleasures but something more. God's gift to us is that earthly pleasures are only to serve as signposts towards the real pleasure--Himself!

Knowledge is power. It's a statement that we're all too familiar with. We know how powerful knowledge can be because we know the pain that ignorance can cause. We've all known the regret that comes along with the statement, "if only I knew then what I know now." Lack of knowledge about certain things seems to be the source of pain and loss in many of our lives. Knowledge, seems like something that would make our lives better. Until we look at the book of Ecclesiastes. The Author of the book gives us interesting thoughts on knowledge. Knowledge may drive us to answers, but we often find that agony is sitting in the passenger seat. In a broken world, it seems like the more that you learn, the more you lament. Far from solving all of our problems, knowledge tends to create additional problems. How should we treat the pursuit of knowledge in a fallen world? Is there any place where this pursuit of knowledge won't ultimately let us down?

The garden of our ideal life is littered with disappointments. Nothing in the life that we have is disappointment proof--regardless of how hard we work to make it so. When it comes to the business of living, we find ourselves moving from asking "how do I accomplish my goals" to "why do I exist? what am I even working for?". As we start our series in Ecclesiastes we see that the author of the book found himself in the same place. His conclusion is a sobering one, but it's only the starting point.

When it comes to interacting with other people, our preferences can easily become our prejudices. It's easy to be drawn to people that are impressive and distance ourselves from people that are unimpressive. In James chapter 2, we are reminded that God doesn't play favorites and that is the best news that people like us could ever hear.

How Christ came into the world, reveals why Christ came into the world. His birth in a manger served as a megaphone to announce to the world the reason for His coming. And if we understand that, it will drastically change the way we look at the world around us.

In Jesus, we get the best picture of what God's intention was for creating humanity. Jesus shows what it truly means to be human.

Our attention to others shows our attitude towards their Creator.

It's only a high view of God that yields a right view of man.

As we continue our series in Romans 10 we're reminded that salvation is something that is never out of reach.

When it comes to religion, people often tend to think that sincere intentions are the only thing that matters. Our attempts to please God, if misdirected, could actually keep us from God Himself. As we look at Romans 10, we'll see that chasing righteousness on our own only ensures that we'll never find it. However, Jesus offers us a better solution and a better hope.

When we truly see as God sees, then we'll feel as God feels. As we finish our series in the book of Jonah, we see how God patiently provides his perspective to us--reminding us that He wants more than compliance from us, He desires to produce compassion in us.

The hope of Christ's return in the future, gives us great energy to be all about His work in the present.

All of us have received good advice in the past about ways that we can prevent trouble in our lives. The bad news is, when we fail to take that advice and find ourselves in present trouble we can often feel helpless and hopeless. What do you do when you've it rock bottom and you have no one to blame but yourself? If we look at the life of Jonah we see that even weak prayers offered to a willing Savior can actually accomplish something significant.

Some problems in life can be solved simply by ignoring them, they tend to just go away. Other problems simply get worse. When we find ourselves having problems with the way that God wants to run our lives, that's not a problem that we can just ignore. God won't be ignored and is bent on confronting us. Quite frankly, that's the best news that we could ever imagine. God shows the depth of His compassion by chasing people who don't deserve an ounce of it.

The fact that God speaks to us is a truth that has become all to familiar. This familiarity has caused that great truth to lose its force. We can get so preoccupied with a desire to hear from God that we forget that the most important thing isn't hearing from Him, but heeding HIs words. As we start a new series in the book of Jonah, we take some time to understand that how we treat God's word, reveals what it is that we really think of Him. Do we think He's a friend or foe?

The church is under attack, but not how you might think. When we think of the most dangerous pitfalls to the health of the church we usually think of external forces. However, there's an internal danger that threatens the effectiveness of every church. Simple neglect. Left unchecked it can cause major disunity. We look at Acts 6 to see how the church dealt with it and what our role is in maintaining unity.

In the world that we live in Christianity is often critiqued. Because of many bad examples, people tend to think of hypocrisy when talking about the church or the Christian faith. However, as we look at the life of Jesus we see that Christians should be marked first and foremost by a humble posture of service. Pastor Trip preaches from Philippians 2 and encourages us, based on Christ's example, to let go, get down, and to lift Jesus up.

What does God want from me? It's a question that shapes everything about our lives, but we'll never get to a meaningful answer if we start with trying to find out what actions God wants. Before we can give God what He wants, we have to know who God is. Service doesn't start with what you do, but who you worship.

There is a god-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man, and only God can fill it. The world that we live in all addresses this gap and attempts to fill it with things that fall very short of providing us with contentment. Our guest preacher William "Duce" Branch helps us see how God satisfies us completely in Christ.

Pastor Trip preaches on the importance of words in the life of the Christian. We're reminded that if we want to see the state of our hearts, the best way for us to do that is to look carefully at our words.