Peace Seymour Weekly Messages

This world is dark. It is broken. We must often suffer. Especially those who are followers of Jesus endure suffering in this world. For the sake of Jesus and his Gospel, we are called to live differently. We are called to live lives not for ourselves, but for Jesus, which often means, discomfort, awkwardness, pain, suffering, and even death. Yet, we live as witnesses of Christ's love. We endure wh...

We often think of evangelism as coming down to a single moment. As a one-time opportunity that we say our piece, then we pack it up and call it a job well done. Yet, often people come to their own conclusions. They walk through their life alone, seeking whatever truth they may come to, without the help and guidance of others. As people of faith, we know that our God walked with us. We also, ought...

We often make mistakes when proclaiming the Gospel. We either think we need to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, killing people with the law and speaking them to life with the Gospel. Or we get uncomfortable, shy, and we don't end up saying anything. In our world today, neither are probably helpful in proclaiming the truth about Jesus. Rather, we ought to be unafraid to s...

We often want to be present with others that we want to be present with. It's easy for us today to disconnect or distance ourselves from those that we don't want to be close to. We "forget" to text back, we walk down the other aisle at the grocery store, and we generally avoid and ignore those we'd prefer not to be close with. Jesus does the opposite. Jesus invites the broken, the hurting, the und...

This world is dark, cold, and full of suffering. Anyone can see that. This world is not a happy place. Bad things happen. Mistakes are made. Powerful people control the world and the weak are caught in the cross-fire. For many, this world is dark. People try to find the light, yet all light seems, at some point, to fade. Is there hope in this world? Yes, there is hope. This hope shines into the wo...

It's easy to forget a lot of things. In the mess of life, we often lose sight of and forget the implications and truths that come with God's promises. We see difficulty and hardship in front of us, we go through tough stuff, and when that happens, we can sometimes forget that we are God's children and we are confident in his promises. God calls us to remember. Throughout the Bible, 'remember' is t...

Often in life, we think it comes down to us to succeed. We think and act as if it depends on us to do enough. To make ourselves good enough. To achieve and be successful, whether that's in our work, our family, or as a follower of Jesus. We often act like it all comes down to us. The truth is, it's all about what Jesus has done, not us. Jesus' success overcomes and erases our failures. We have no...

There's always cliques, groups, and clubs that we want to be in and a part of. We want to fit in. Yet much of the time, we don't, or we exclude those who don't fit what we want to see. We often can feel alone, excluded, and left out at school, in our community, even at church. Even so, Jesus always has a place for us. We are welcomed into the greater family of the church! Jesus has made us a part...

Pastor and Orphan Grain Train - Indiana Branch Manager in Jonesville, Gene Ernst, joins us to share how Jesus intended us to love one another, and also, how he has loved us in an even greater way! Pastor Ernst will walk us through the parable of the Good Samaritan, and encourage us as we love our neighbors as Jesus has called us to do, even as he has loved us in a deeper, wider, and more powerful...

We often hear it said that God doesn't give us more than we can handle. Yet, life often dumps much more than we feel like we can handle in our laps. The issue becomes that we are forced to look inwardly to bear our burdens, and yet we cannot do it. There are some things for us that are too much to bear. Jesus has borne all our sins and sorrows. We are freed from our burdens of sin by Jesus. In the...

Often in life, we think God will work good in our lives no matter what. If you look at the life of Jeremiah, you can see that that's really not the case. Yes, we have hope in Jesus after this life, but that doesn't mean life is going to be good. We will experience hardship and difficulty and we may even have horrible and senseless things happen to us. We can be tempted to think that God will event...

Many of us feel as though we can be in control over our lives. We handle most of our lives, but every so often, something is too big for us, so we allow God to come in and handle it. The truth is, everything is too big for us, and we need God constantly in our lives. On the flip side, we can use dependance as an excuse for dismissing God's calling to us, because he's going to do his will anyways,...

Trinity Sunday is the day in the calendar of the church that we celebrate, remember, and engage with the truth that God is one God in three distinct persons. We especially remember that Jesus is God from eternity, and that he as God the Son, became man, that we may have eternal life with him, the Father, and the Holy Spirit in the new creation that Jesus will return to gather us and the whole chur...

Broken relationships are constantly a part of life. There's no escaping them. There are conflicts, fractures, divisions, in all aspects of life. They're unavoidable on this side of eternity, because of our sinful condition. Jesus shows us what true love looks like, by loving us even though we are unlovable. We then, with the love we have been given, are called to love others. It's through this lov...

When we disagree with someone or are in conflict with them, we tend to distance ourselves from them. We tend to try to get away from the situation, ignore it, and move on to something else. We don't want to engage in the situation because it's difficult, hard, and we may get hurt. We keep more distance than necessary between those we are in conflict with. While in some relationships we do need to...

Forgiveness is a dying art. We don't often want to forgive others. We make up excuses why we shouldn't have to forgive, or why we are justified in our withholding forgiveness. We wait for our emotions to be in the right place. We withhold forgiveness so that we can have leverage over another person. We are still too angry with them and cannot forgive them. Forgiveness is a choice. It's actually a...

As broken, fractured people, accountability is something we often try to shirk. We don't want to be held accountable for our sin and for our actions. We want to simply move on, remember that we have forgiveness in Jesus, and go on to the next thing. We need to confess our sin, but often we do not do it, because we don't like to admit our faults, face our mistakes, and bear the consequences. When w...

Fairy tales are just that, they are make believe stories. We may say that they aren't real, they typically have a lesson to be learned, and they are supposed to change or inform us about how we live in the real world. The magic only goes as far as the last page of the story. Wistful child-like wishes for dragons, knights, evil villains being defeated, and happily ever afters don't really exist. Th...

We all carry difficulties of many kinds. All of us have pains that we simply have to learn to deal with. We have misfortunes, sufferings, and all kinds of problems in this world. Even when we have roses in our lives, we always remember our thorns. As good as life is, there are bad things that happen to us. When all we see is our problems in front of us, we can't ever foresee the end of those probl...

The Gospel can't be preached, unless we acknowledge what the Gospel is an answer to. The problem we have in this world, is that we suffer. We live tragic lives. We have problems that we can't fix. In order to truly understand the Gospel, we have to truly suffer. We have to see our troubles, our mistakes, our sins for what they really are. To hear the Gospel, we must be brought to the end of oursel...

Jesus died. His death signifies the rejection of God. The turning away from God's good intentions and desires for us to be our own gods. As a result our flesh and our lives are temporary. We have pain, we experience death. We see the pain in the lives of those before us, like Job, and in our own life. Jesus lives! God has raised Jesus from the dead, that even as we die, we would rise with him! Mor...

Death is a part of life and a part of this world; though this is not how it should be. God never wanted us or anyone to die. He wanted us to live and be with him for all time. But our sin ruined that reality God made for us. We rejected and rebelled against God in our sin. Jesus himself was rejected, and we as humanity killed him. God uses Jesus' death, in order to save us. Jesus joins us in death...

There is much to be afraid of and fear in this world. We fear the storms and waves of this world. We know that while we have trust in Jesus, there is no promise that we will not suffer in this world. There is pain, suffering, and things that can happen to us that we fear. We often rely on ourselves to save us, but our own bravery or ability is not what saves us. In fact it is not enough to save us...

We are guilty of sin. We feel the burden of our wrongdoing and choices in life. We have to bear the consequences of our actions that include our actions that have hurt us, hurt others, and the punishment for those actions. We feel not only guilt, but also shame over who we are and what we have done. We feel unlovable, ashamed, and we know we are guilty. Though we are guilty, Jesus removes our guil...

There are many hurts and sicknesses we deal with in this world. There is acute, surprising, unforeseen hurts and injuries that we encounter. There are also chronic diseases, nagging hurts that won't go away, and life changing events we don't know how to come back from. Life is difficult, it's rough on us, the world is broken and people and things can hurt us. Jesus heals all our hurts. Jesus came...