Lawrence Street Church - Primitive Methodist - Lowell, MA

Episode Notes When God Passes By Text: Mark 6:45–52 Have you ever felt like God sees your struggle but seems to pass you by? In this message, we explore one of the most puzzling statements in Scripture: "He meant to pass by them" (Mark 6:48). At first glance, it sounds like Jesus intended to ignore His disciples in the middle of their storm. But a deeper look reveals something extraordinary. Throu...

What are you doing with what God has placed in your hands? In this message from Matthew 25:14–30, we explore Jesus' Parable of the Talents and discover that God isn't looking for comparison, perfection, or worldly success—He's looking for faithfulness. Learn how fear can keep us from fulfilling our calling, why faithfulness requires action, and how every believer has been entrusted with gifts, opp...

This is the final episode of the Ruth series. After three episodes of crisis, provision, and redemption, we finally see complete restoration. Ruth, who began as a desperate foreigner with nothing, becomes a wife, a mother, and a woman of honor. But the real miracle is Naomi's transformation. The woman who arrived in Bethlehem bitter and broken, calling herself "Mara," now holds her grandson Obed i...

Ruth takes a bold step at the threshing floor. Following Naomi's guidance, she approaches the sleeping Boaz and makes a vulnerable request: "Spread your covering over me, for you are a kinsman-redeemer." Boaz wakes, startled, but responds with honor—he doesn't exploit her vulnerability. Instead, he promises to act as her redeemer, though there's a complication: another relative has a closer legal...

Ruth is desperate. She has nothing—no inheritance, no resources, no connections. So she does what widows in her situation had to do: she gleans in the fields, picking up leftover grain after the harvest. It's hard work for meager survival. But then something remarkable happens. Ruth "happens" to end up in the field of Boaz, a man of character, strength, and means. And Boaz doesn't just notice her—...

What do you do when everything falls apart? When loss piles upon loss and the future looks hopeless? In this first episode of our four-part series on the book of Ruth, we explore one of Scripture's most powerful stories of faithfulness—and it begins in the darkest possible way. We meet Naomi, broken by famine, death, and exile. We meet Ruth, a young widow with nothing but the clothes on her back....

After Jesus' baptism, He was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to face the temptation of Satan. Jesus is not a passive Savior. He went looking for a fight with the devil. A fight that He won.

The contrast between Jacob and his son, Joseph, teaches followers of Jesus that we must choose to believe that God is sovereignly in control of everything that happens to us and that He has promised good to us through all that He allows.

Heroic Faith is distinct from regular Faith. Faith in Jesus, through the gift of grace, results in eternal life with God. Heroic Faith also leads to eternity, but focuses on bringing others along with you.

We all have dusty prayers that have long been not addressed by God - what we discover in the story of John the Baptist's birth announcement is the long memory of a God who keeps His promises to His people.

Many think that after the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the guilty humans saw their depravity and committed their lives to the pursuit of holiness and restoration. The reality is that they have devolved further away from God in their behaviors and pursuits.

When Adam and Eve sinned against God, God confronted them. He did not say, "How dare you sin against me!" or "I cannot believe you?!". God asked a question - He asked, "Where are you?". He was asking not where they were geographically, but where they were in relationship to Him.

As Jesus prepared to go to the cross and return to the Father, He promised the Holy Spirit and taught us what His ministry to us would look like through the Holy Spirit.

Jesus promised us that "In this life you will have tribulations." You may be in such a time, just coming out of one or about to enter one. King Jehoshaphat stood before God in such a time and said, "Lord, I do not know what to do, but my eyes are on you." This made all the difference and serves as a reminder and model for us.

As we consider Nehemiah's prayer, we see four elements of prayer that should be part of our lives: prayers of Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication.

God desired to accomplish something remarkable through Nehemiah, but first, He had to do something in Nehemiah. That thing was to burden him with love and concern for a people he didn't know and for a city he had never been to.

What would you do if you woke up this morning and all you possessed was what you had decided to thank God for yesterday? What would you have? Thanksgiving is not just a holiday—it is a posture we must adopt as recipients of God's unique and lavish gifts.

1 Corinthians 3:11-19 - Everyone will stand before God and give an account for their lives. Christians are no different, though the judgment will be different. Take care of how you spend your life and where you invest.

1 Samuel 8 - Israel demands a king like the nations around them.

1 Samuel 1 - The birth of Samuel the prophet. Hannah learns to value the Giver over the gift.