Sacrificial Giving, Part 1—by Jacques Genis
April 6, 2025
Sermon recap:
Giving is an act of trust. It is also not an obligation but an act of worship. Give from the heart, not as a duty, but as a way to express gratitude. Giving is about unity n the church, it is motivated by grace, not guilt, and a spiritual act of joyful worship. Jesus demonstrated sacrificial giving through his actions, leaving us an example to follow. You can watch the full service and sermon on our YouTube channel, the lesson starts at 48 mins.
Because Jesus reconciled us to God through the cross, we are called to pursue reconciliation with God, one another, and the world around us.
Jesus reconciles us to the Father and teaches us to extend his grace, helping us forgive one another, heal relationships, and walk together in peace.
The physics of the pendulum Picture an old grandfather clock in a quiet hallway. Its long brass pendulum swings steadily: tick, tock, tick, tock. Now give that pendulum a hard shove to the right. It does not simply glide back to the center and stop. It races right past the middle and sways just as far to the left. Left to its own momentum, a pendulum never rests at either extreme; it finds peace only when it hangs still at the center, held by gravity and its fixed point. The church behaves in much the same way. Push her too far toward one side of a truth and she does not gently settle into balance, she swings. Often for a whole generation toward the opposite error, and then back again, wounding people at both ends of the arc. And here is the crucial thing the clock teaches us: the pendulum comes to rest not by being frozen in place, but by being held. Balance is not the absence of force; it is the fixed point that keeps opposing pulls in tension so that the weight can finally hang still.