We are beginning a short series entitled Dethroning the Goddess of Money. This week Dave exposes a passion that can invade our lives, yet is totally acceptable in our society. Find out what generates the stress, anger, the fear, and the impersonalness that can destroy our homes and our lives!

We are finishing our series on Spiritual Leadership which focuses on the Christlike character that the Lord wants to begin to cultivate in your life. As a spiritual leader, you need to be someone who doesn’t get emotionally involved, charged up and go full blast in something without really being temperate and thinking things through. There is incredible potential for misunderstanding in the issue of temperance, but it is one of the character traits that Paul says needs to be part of spiritual leadership.

From dreams of winning the lottery to investment schemes that promise security in old age, money demands attention in the modern world. From courtroom to boardroom, money holds the power, but the rising cries against this deification of wealth indicate that we all know there is something wrong with this passion. We need leaders who place principles before bank accounts.

Have you ever spent weeks, maybe months or years, trying to reason with a divisive person with a silver tongue? Whether it’s your extended family, your church, or your business­­—almost every place has a person who divides. Maybe the best policy is to stop listening to their speeches, give them a straightforward rebuke, and then, if they fail to respond, avoid them? The Apostle Paul closes the most powerful statement of the Good News about Jesus Christ in the New Testament with some closing words about Uniters and Dividers and then blesses us all with the benediction. Our passage is Romans 16:17-27. It could save you hours of pointless conflict.

The Samsung 500 powers up at the Texas Motor Speedway today. What makes NASCAR fans brave even the threat of Fort Worth tornados is not the speed, but the connections. NASCAR has become the largest spectator sport in the country because they have rushed to fill a vacuum. In a culture with no front porches but large treated wood decks and stainless steel grills in the backyard—all defended by a high privacy fence, NASCAR invites thousands to an old fashion area wide celebration and tops it off with the roar of engines. Will the Church rush into this passion for connections or will we leave the relationship building to NASCAR and tailgate parties before an A&M football game?

You might spend years developing expertise in your field. Your skill might be undisputed, yet you could fail. I Timothy reveals an essential characteristic that, if not developed in your personality, may result in you finding yourself fired more times than you are hired. Take the next few minutes to make an investment in your life—discover what can keep you from stalling out your career.

Most Easter presentations take us from Gethsemane to the trials, to the cross and death, and then the tomb. The climax comes when a powerful, blinding light knocks the guards and then the women mourners to their knees. It’s dramatic and in fact Matthew does testify to an earthquake that turned the soldiers to stone, and two angels in lightning apparel that did appear to some of the women. In the midst of all this shaking and light it’s easy to overlook the fact that Jesus appeared quietly to another woman crying alone in the Garden and to a skeptic a week later.

The old Gospel hymn proclaimed There's Power in the Blood, but isn't all this stress on "blood" out of date in the emerging church of the 21st century? Who needs a bloody sacrifice when our advanced age reveals that all we need is to find our true inner goodness and potential? Human potential or Christ's Calvary sacrifice? Turn to Romans 3.25 and let's see whether the Apostle Paul believes there is still power in the blood.

For two chapters, Romans 14 and 15, the Apostle Paul struggled to get believing Jews and Gentiles to unite as brothers and sisters.But Paul doesn't just talk about the uniting power of Christ's blood, he lives it. In his conclusion of chapter 15 in vv. 22-33, he explains his present mission. He is on his way to Jerusalem with Gentile body guards to deliver a large material gift to the Jewish Home Church.

Opening our homes, making meals, serving guests--what do these old fashion skills have to do with leadership? We usually think more in terms of debating prowess, consensus building, and fund raising. The Apostle Paul was, by the Spirit, assigned the task of advising young churches in the first century how to choose their leaders, and he placed "devoted to hospitality" on the list. If our churches are going to feel more like warm homes than efficient corporate headquarters, we need to listen again to what this wise, old Apostle has to say about the need for a leader to open his heart and his home to even strangers. Listen this week to my message "Devoted to Hospitality" from Ephesians 6:1 and I Timothy 3:2.

It's one thing to be excluded from a pick up basketball game. It's another to be excluded when you come to church. Tragically, Sunday morning groups of believers can become one of the hardest games in town to crack. In the 1st Century Roman believers still keeping the Jewish law condemned those who didn't, and the "liberated" distained the "legalists." Why not simply divide the Church into a Jewish service where they played Jewish music and ate kosher and a Gentile service where they sang Roman praise songs to Jesus and ate ham? Why should believers in Christ welcome each other as family? The Apostle Paul in Romans 15:8-13 did not solve the problem of disunity by creating two homogeneous groups. Instead, he challenged them to think deeply about their true unity factor.