Dranesville Church of the Brethren

Repentance is the key to understanding what God is doing in history.

Pastor Joey answers a question about exactly what kind of angel Satan was (if, in fact, he was an angel?)

The coming of Christ spells the end of long suffering and futility, but it happened before we got our act together.

Christ's coming has given our lives meaning.

Christ's coming has given our lives meaning.

We should prepare ourselves for Christ's coming this Advent.

We form our identity in community.

Jesus brings us humility to save us from pride

It is very difficult to maintain your identity as a Christian in the kingdom of this World.

1 Samuel teaches us not to trust in human might but the God who saves with the weak.

Guest speaker Calvin Park from Brownsville Church of the Brethren.

The wisdom of obedience is the best way to know what God wants.

Our spiritual lives often require us to wrestle with God.

God has given us a community to help teach us how to live as Christ did.

Until Christ brings the whole truth, many things will be a matter of perspective. This includes our relationships with others. But Christ will one day bring purity and simplicity.

Cover Credit - “A picture of an optical illusion. Taken at the Phaeno Science Center in Wolfsburg.” Diarb2008. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

In Christ, all our sins are forgiven. Including the sins which your brother or sister has committed against you.

There is a fine line between zeal and jealousy.

Self-control shows that we have been transformed by the Spirit.

In the coming of Faith and the Holy Spirit, our time of training is over.

God is bringing the salvation of the world through the Church.

God calls us to wait on him for vengeance, or we will be just like all the other kingdoms of the world.

Life becomes way more complicated when you cut people off.

The kingdom of this World is an enemy of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, but we are called to love our enemies and pray for those that persecute us.

Love and Obedience in the Church are the only necessary conditions for God to use us for his victory in our community.

Something important happened at Pentecost which can only be explained by the Holy Spirit.

Lament is necessary to keep us from being too satisfied with this world.

We have a choice of whether to serve the Kingdom of Jesus Christ or the Kingdom of this World.

We need. to have our eyes opened by Christ.

Jesus has power and compassion to heal us from our every ill

We are not saved from suffering, but saved in order to suffer for the sake of this world.

The Resurrection promises New Life if we choose to die with Christ.

The coming of Jesus to Jerusalem unites Heaven and Earth.

God does not give us a performance review like a boss, but loves us as a father.

To have God as your father you must recognize your fellow Christians as your brothers and sisters.

Repentance gives us the opportunity to experience infinite and ever-increasing joy.

True freedom comes from slavery to Christ.

Gratitude is key to wisdom.

God is working in this world, even if it isn't always through miracles.

Confidence is the reasonable reaction to the reign of God.

For the Church to be the center of the community it must take on the responsibilities of the center of community.

What it means to truly believe something is to stake your life on it.

False humility is thinking less of yourself, true humility is thinking of yourself less.

We could not live justly on our own, so Christ has brought us out of darkness and into light.

The Birth of Jesus brings us joyful confusion

Salvation is purely a miracle, which enables us to become new people.

Often the best way to know God's will is to do God's will in the ways you already know.

Take the time in Advent to prepare for Christ's return

True authority comes from being chosen

Humans look pathetic compared to the power of God, yet God saves using humans.

We have every reason to rejoice and hope because Jesus Christ is Lord of Heaven and Earth

God wants us to turn toward him instead of turning away in shame

Leadership is one of the most distinctive aspects of the Christian way of life

Christ demonstrates for us a different kind of leadership than the worldly one.

Political leaders are not worth worshiping.

Sometimes the decisions we make about who we trust after a crisis are more important than the decisions we make during a crisis.

The idols in our life are falling around us to worship God, but do we notice?

Truly believing something requires us to act on those beliefs and to see the world through those beliefs.

Worship where we celebrate when we should mourn is not true worship.

God often calls us to show love for him that sacrifices the things he gives us.

A key to life is recognizing that God's approval and blessing is all that matters

We are called to a kind of leadership like what Jesus modeled.

Christ only began to do miracles to teach his church when he ascended into heaven.

In the cross, God showed a new wisdom and a new way to live, which happens to be the way of life of the trinity since the beginning

Justice and righteousness requires your whole life, so it is costly.

As New Creations, we are ambassadors of a different world and kingdom to this one

We are called to a particular vocation, which may seem small but is huge in the grand scheme of things.

We are called to conquer the world in a different way

We are called to give our whole selves to God, not merely a sacrifice

We have the best news there is, so there's no need to be shy about telling it.

Giving is a lot easier when we have found something that captures our imagination

We have an obligation to walk in love and satisfy one another's consciences

The gospel is something that is lived out in community

Life in the church requires a constant reminder of the gospel

Our ultimate victory is peace within the Church

If Christ's kingdom is a different kind of kingdom, then we are different kinds of citizens.

It's easier to love your brother or sister when you remember that they were once "far off" and now have been brought "near"

The Resurrection of Christ leads to New Life, but it can also lead to death.

You can't make sense of Jesus' life without his death

In Christ, our pleasures and our duty can align

It is only by confronting our sin realistically that we can find our cure.

During Lent, it is easy to get discouraged, but the hope of the Resurrection is the guarantee of what we are promised.

God takes sin seriously, but he has given us a way to be free of it.

God calls us to true repentance and faith, not its appearance.

Work and providing for ourselves and others is a major contributor to human dignity in the image of God. Economic activity has major spiritual impacts that we should attend to.

Work is a major contributor to our dignity as humans in the image of God. Our economic work has spiritual effects that we should attend to.

Sabbath rest is a celebration of creation that gives dignity to our work.

The Early Church had to make peace and figure out its place in a world turned upside down, and the modern Church needs to do the same thing.

Jesus' miracles point us to a different kind of glory, both for God and for ourselves.

Jesus came to create a New Israel, and he promises us new beginnings as well.

The arrival of the Messiah causes us to make difficult choices about where our loyalties lie

The death of Jesus has been in view from the very beginning. It is the revelation of God's glory

Jesus' parents foreshadow the character of Christ himself, who bore our shame and brought reconciliation

For the 162nd anniversary of the Battle of Dranesville which took place on the Church's property.

We should never give up our hope for peace

The birth of Jesus is world-changing news.

Our hope in Advent is that God would rend the heavens, come down to us, and save us.

We see money as a way the raw material that we use to turn physical things into spiritual things, and lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven.

The purpose of the law is the love of God and neighbor, but we can easily lose sight of the forest for the trees.

Message for Prayer Service for peace in the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine

If we are all justified and saved in the same way, then there is no legitimate division between us.