Higher Aim With Dr. Curt Dodd

In today’s message, we will continue our conversation about the church at Ephesus and what we can learn from John’s writing to them. The book of Revelation is a book of encouragement and hope when we’re struggling and facing tough times, so there is much to be gleaned from this book, particularly when it comes to the church at Ephesus, so let’s dig in.

I really believe the message of Revelation is hope in the midst of unbelievable trials. It offered encouragement for believers who were being persecuted, who had no idea what tomorrow held. And it gave guidance and direction on how to reclaim your lost love. In the message, we’ll take a closer look at the letter to the Church at Ephesus and see what we can learn from their journey on how come back to our first love.

If you are a father, or you hope to be a father someday, God wants you to bless your children. More important than providing for them financially and physically, He wants you as a father to learn how to bless your children. So with that in mind, I want you to think about how you can be honoring and blessing your kids. If you want to bless your children, I encourage you to do each of the things we will talk about in this message.

Billy Graham once said, “The influence of a mother upon the lives of her children cannot be measured. They know and absorb her example and attitudes when it comes to questions of honesty, temperance, kindness, and industry.” This is such an important reminder for all of us as we celebrate our mothers this time of year. And in light of the fact that we learn so much from our mothers, I figured it would be wise for us to look at the story of Mary, the mother of our Savior, because there is so much we can learn and glean from her story. So in this week’s message, I want us to take a look at some of the specific takeaways from Mary’s life.

As we celebrate Easter Sunday, we need to understand that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was a wake-up call for believers. It was a declaration about the most impactful event in all of history. I pray that you will see what God wants you to see and understand how powerful the resurrection is. It's not just an event; it is the event for all time and eternity! So with that in mind, I want to share several key things that we need to embrace and embody when it comes to the resurrection of Jesus.

In our world today, because of this coronavirus pandemic outbreak, we have lost something very special, culturally, personally, and spiritually. We have lost fellowship and personal intimacy with others. In its place, there is social distancing. Because of that, we have lost being able to connect with other people. Fellowship is a very powerful thing. Sometimes, we don't appreciate it until we have totally lost it. So in this message, I want us to look at how important fellowship is so that we can understand to appreciate and pursue it, even in the midst of our current circumstances.

In this message, I want to address one of the biggest fears we face as human beings: the fear of failure. Surprisingly enough, there are pros and cons to failure. Sometimes, failure is a great teacher. But other times, failure creates unbelievable pain. Life is not pain free, at all. We know that. However, through the power of the Word of God, we can make sense of our pain; and yes, even make sense of our failure. So as we look at God’s Word today, we’re going to examine the lives of many prominent, biblical figures and look at how the dealt with failure. As we do, I would encourage you to take note of what stands out to you about their story and think about what you can learn about failure from each of their lives.

As we continue our discussion on prayer, I want us to focus specifically on what it looks like to pray for our fellow believers, whether that be other believers in our community right now, or the next generation of believers that will come behind us. These people need our prayers, and I want us to make it our goal to pray for them daily so that the Lord would use them mightily for His glory to further His Kingdom.

If there was ever a time you needed to be praying, it is now. Praying to God and spending time communicating with Him should be a regular part of your daily routine. However, many people are intimidated by prayer. They don’t know where to start and what to say. They don’t want to “bother God” with their requests and issues. Thankfully, we have someone to look to when learning how to pray. Jesus gave us a great example of how we should approach prayer when He prayed The Lord’s Prayer, found in the Gospel of Matthew. So with this prayer as our model, let’s look at four things you can include in your daily prayer time.

Drinking the cup that God often provides for us is difficult. Even though God's plan is for you to do His will, maybe what He has offered you to drink right now is too difficult in this season of your life. But you must decide whether you will make the difficult decision to do what God has called you to do or choose to navigate out of it. God has given each of us a cup from which to drink, so in this message, I want to help you and encourage you as you accept the cup you’ve been given and move forward in obedience to God’s will for your life.

As we continue our conversation on learning to love, we’re going to take a look at a few other ways we can love others the way Jesus did during His time on earth. It’s not enough to just show up for people, like we talked about last week. In addition to that, we have to exercise several other characteristics of Christlike love if we want to love well. We’ll break down each of those characteristics in this message.

There is not one of us on the face of this earth who has it all together in this aspect of loving. Do you know why? Because we have a tendency to be very self-focused, self-centered, and self- absorbed. Most of the time, we are concerned about how other people are receiving us. We are wondering what other people think of us. That is not love. That’s a self-focused, self-centered life. If we want to learn to love, we need to look at the example Jesus set for us. So in this week’s message, we are going to take a look at the first thing we need to do if we want to learn how to love more like Christ.