Church at the Center

What Are You Waiting For? Peace

Isaiah 11:1-10

What if there's no such thing as world peace?

Rev Jennifer A G Layte

What Are You Waiting For?

Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 8:18-25

What does it take to wait well? 

 

Rev Jennifer A G Layte

Listen! The Secret to Good Communication

James 5:12-20

Prayer is the practice of telling—and living—the truth: the truth about our circumstances, the truth about who we are, and the truth about our relationship with God.

Rev Jennifer A G Layte

Listen! What We All Need But Are Afraid to Ask For

James 5:7-11

James believed Jesus was coming back. He knew that people waited for centuries for Jesus to show up the first time. Jesus’ return is a certain thing, but what is also certain is that no one knew then, and no one knows now, exactly when it will be. And the other certain thing is that waiting for Jesus to return and finally set everything right and fulfill completely the Kingdom He set in motion through His people, the Church, requires patience. And the patience that’s required as we wait for our King to come and rule in person, is the same patience that we need to have with ourselves and each other as we wait for the King to have more complete rule over our own individual lives.

Rev Jennifer A G Layte

Listen! The 3 Sisters

James 3:13-18

"Basically, when you boil it all down, we have communication problems. Which lead to all the other problems. Forget about first-world problems. These are just plain world-problems. And they happen, James says, when we get our “wisdoms” mixed up—trying to bring kingdom-of-the-world wisdom into the Kingdom of God. You can tell the difference, James says, by humility."

Rev Jennifer A G Layte

Listen! Taken for Granted

James 5:1-6

International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church

"Throughout his letter, James has been drawing this distinction between rich and poor Christians, and in these verses we see his strongest indictment yet, of the rich. A few weeks ago, we saw how he pitted the kingdom of the world (ruled by money and power) against the Kingdom of God, ruled by Jesus and introduced by Jesus’ people. By this point in his letter, James has completely taken the gloves off. Money and power cannot be an influence in the Kingdom of God, he’s showing us here. If we try to combine the rulers of the world with the Kingdom of God, someone’s gonna get hurt—and it’s going to be the people who don’t deserve it—the people Jesus especially came to raise up and heal and help and change the world through."

Rev Jennifer A G Layte

Listen! Everything In Its Place

James 4; Luke 15

Prodigal Son says:

Rev Jennifer A G Layte

Listen! What You See and What You Get

James 2:14-26

"our message is that God came to earth, lived with us, died for us, and came back to life, in order to reconcile all things. Jesus died to save us from our sins, and our sins (and everybody else’s sins) have caused conflict and outright separation—between us and God, between us and each other, between us and creation, and even within our own selves. Jesus came to take care of the debt we owed. That debt was a splintering of His good creation, so the salvation, the rescue, that comes from His bearing the brunt of it all and forgiving us, is not just heaven or some other reward sometime later. Salvation isthat eventually all things will be reconciled, mended, brought back together in unity in Jesus Christ the way God always intended. And so of course our faith and our deeds must be reconciled, too! Because the Christian message is reconciliation, Christian faith and Christian action can’t be two separate things."

Rev Jennifer A G Layte

Listen! Picking Favorites

James 2:1-13

The Kingdom of God looks upside-down to the kingdom outside it. In the Kingdom of God, it’s the poor who are the ones cherished by God, who are courted by Him, who are to be the leaders, who are to receive special honor, because when we don’t have money, we don’t have this other wannabe king getting in our way, trying to distract us from the real one. When we find ourselves lacking in material possessions, we become rich in faith because we can’t rely on anything or anyone but God to help us do what we need to do. And when we learn to live like that, then when money comes our way, it’s easier to resist its lordship and just treat it as the tool or resource from God that it is, not something that gives us our meaning and purpose, not something that dictates how we communicate or who we honor, not something that drives us or a goal that we run to."

Rev Jennifer A G Layte

Listen! Watch Your Mouth

James 3:1-18

"The Word of God is what/Who actually creates. And when God made us in His image, He gifted us with speech, too, just like Him. Powerful speech, just like His. So now that we ourselves are marred with sin, words don’t become less powerful, but they are a strength that has been corrupted, just like all our other strengths. If the Holy Word is the power to create, then our corrupted words have the power to destroy."

Rev Jennifer A G Layte