Clark's Compelling Catwalk

Today, we wrap up our series on New Year's Resolutions by talking about Seeking the Common Good.

With all the turmoil that has been going on in the United States over the last year, one of big needs is to Heal our Land.  We have a lot of divisions, a lot of misunderstandings, and a lot of hurt feelings.  What can we as Christians do to heal our land?  What does the Bible call us to do and how do we do it?  Today we talk about what the Bible says and what each one of us can...

In this 2nd message on New Year's Resolutions, we are talking about Living with a Limp.  After the rough year last year, I think all of us are walking with a limp.  All of us have been hurt.  Many people are struggling.  But, the power of God can transform these difficult situations and use them to help grow our character and our strength and our resolve.  Instead of weake...

Today, we are starting a new four-week message series on New Year's Resolutions.  Today, is the first one, which is Growing in Your Faith.  As we have come through a difficult year, it is very important that all of us grow deeper in our faith, to give us the strength that we need to survive and grow through these hard times.

This is our end of the year message.  As we come to a close on the 2020 year, many of us are ready to turn the page, and hope that the new year of 2021 will be better.  Today, as we reflect back on what this past year has been like, we look at some passages in scripture, a sermon from 100 years ago, and an article on hope, to help us think through what God might be doing in our lives, du...

This Christmas Eve message is about The Misfit.  This message is about using our imagination to imagine what the Christmas story would have looked like from one of the Magi, who travelled long distances, to discover the newborn King of the Jews.  It's considering what they might have been thinking and feeling and looking far as they encountered this new experience with Jesus and how it m...

There are 3 key prophecies in the Old Testament book of Isaiah that talk about the Messiah's birth, the Messiah's impact, and the Messiah's mission.  We will look at what these say and what they mean for us today.

Psalm 110 was one of the most important Messianic Psalms in the Old Testament.  The Jewish people read this passage to see some clues about Who the Messiah would be.  This passage tells us that the Messiah will be the King, the Priest, and the Judge.  This helps us understand Who Jesus is and why His entry into our world at Christmas is so important.

For hundreds of years, the true identity of Israel's Messiah was hidden.  People don't know who He was or what He would do.  But, God gave them clues about who to look for.  The prophets in the Old Testament told them what to look for and the kind of person He would be.  One place where we find these clues is in Psalm 2.  In this message, we look at three things we are tol...

Today we are beginning a four week message series called Anticipating Christmas.  The four Sundays leading up to Christmas are called the Advent season.  They help us prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day.  Over these next four messages, we are going to look at some of the Old Testament prophecies about the coming Messiah that they Jewish people had, and see what...

Today, we wrap up our message series called Pay it Forward by talking about Thanksgiving Blessings.  Often when we think about our blessings, we think of things we have received.  But, we also need to think about the blessings from what we have given away.

Many people have been approached with options for where to invest our money.  We understand what that means.   But, do you know what your spiritual investment opportunities are?  God has blessed everyone who believes in His Son Jesus with time, talents, and treasures.  What are we to do with these resources?  Where are we to invest them?  How do we think about th...

Many years ago, scientists discovered they could make it snow.  They flew an airplane into a cloud, dropped some dry ice into it, and the cloud exploded with snow.  As Christians, God calls us to fly into the clouds of our world, and seed them with our faith, our understanding, and our generosity, so that we can make it snow God's blessings on our world.

This month, I am beginning a new series called Pay it Forward.  We are going to reflect on what we have to be thankful for.  We are going to think about how God has blessed us and how God wants us to pass on these blessings to other people.  Today, we begin by looking at Jesus' Parable of the Talents and how Jesus is telling us not to bury our talents.  What is a better respons...

Today, we wrap up our message series called The Journey by looking at the end of Moses' life.  The book of Deuteronomy was Moses' last speech that he gave to the Israelites before he died.  Have you ever been around someone whose death was imminent?  What did they say?  What would you want to say if you knew you were dying?  When we hear people's final words, it helps us u...

Are you afraid of the future?  Does thinking about the coming year make you feel nervous or relaxed?  Today, we return to our series on The Journey where we are looking at the life of Moses and the Israelites in the time of the Exodus.  In today's message, they have arrived on the edge of the Promised Land and they have an opportunity to take it.  But, people are overcome by fe...

It seems as if we human beings don't like rules.  We don't like other people telling us what to do.  We rebel against them.  This reaction has been around for thousands of years.  As we continue to look at the stories of Moses and the Israelites in the Exodus, we see that they rebelled against the rules, too.  In today's episode, we talk about the story of God giving them...

When Moses finally led the people through the Red Sea to the freedom from slavery, the people celebrated.  But, it didn't last long.  They suddenly realized they were in the wilderness - in the desert.  It wasn't like what they were used to.  They had gone off the map.  They weren't ready for it.  It made them anxious.  They complained.  But, it also led to...

I think all of us probably have a few unforgettable moments in our lives - those moments that were so momentous and impactful on us that we will never forget them.  Today, we look at three unforgettable moments in the life of Moses and Israel in the Exodus story and how they were shaped by them.  God works through these moments in our lives to shape us and to lead us in new directions.

We all have defining moments in our life.  These are significant events that shape who we are or the course our lives take.  In today's message, we are going to look at 3 defining moments in the life of Moses and what we can learn from them about how God is at work in the events of our lives to shape us into the people He created us to be.

Moses could well be considered to be the most important person in the Hebrew Bible, what Christians call the Old Testament.  He was the major figure who influenced the entire nation for hundreds of years after his death.  Today's message comes from Exodus 1-2, which describe his birth and the world he was born into.  The story of his birth is a story about the Fear of the Stranger,...

The story of Sacagawea and Lewis and Clark is similar to the Old Testament story of Rahab and the Jewish spies.  They are both instances of people going off the map, learning from unexpected people, working with unexpected people, and having to think outside the box.  These are stories that speak to what we are going through today and how God is changing us as we encounter new realities.

This is the 3rd message out of 4 in our series on Canoeing the Mountains.  We are looking at the story of Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery, to see how they learned to survive the wilderness.  Many people today feel like our the challenges and crises of our modern world are a present day wilderness.  How do we survive?  We will look at the picture of the Church as the...

When you go off the map into uncharted territory, you have to learn how to adapt.  When you encounter things you didn't expect, you have to adjust.  The story of Lewis and Clark is the driving metaphor for our world today.  As they experienced a complete different world than the one they were expecting to encounter, the same thing is happening to us today, too.  We are dealing...

The story of Lewis and Clark is an apt metaphor for our world today.  They went looking for the Northwest Passage that everybody assumed existed.  Everyone was sure it was out there somewhere.  They discovered that everybody was wrong.  All the experts and all the explorers were wrong.  When they got to the Lemhi Pass, instead of seeing the Columbia River that would take t...