Jeremy R. Geerdes Posts

So yesterday, I discovered that Biblical joy is not necessarily caused by things that are going on in my life, but should definitely be the result of seeing the awesome things God is doing, regardless of whose life they’re happening in. I guess that, as a pastor, I can verify that notion because I feel […]

When I started my word study of “joy” last week, I didn’t really have any particular form that I was going to follow. Of course, I wanted to see what the Bible had to say about joy – about what it is (and is not), looks like (and doesn’t look like), is obtained (and lost), […]

Yesterday, I started my word study of “joy” by trying to form a preliminary idea of what I’m dealing with here. Check it out here if you missed. Unfortunately, as I look back at all that I learned yesterday, I realize two things. First, knowing the number of times that joy and its variants appear […]

As a Christian, I am fully aware that joy is supposed to be one of the nine components of the singular fruit of the Spirit. In other words, all believers are supposed to exhibit joy in ever-increasing measures. I’ve also seen and heard countless times that joy is not contingent on our present circumstances but […]

So, I’ve come to the end of my journey through Joshua. And, as is fitting with any good message, I am compelled to make a choice. In what is quite probably the single most familiar verse in the book, Joshua confronted the people with the word of the Lord and bid them, “Choose for yourselves […]

Joshua’s time on earth was coming to an end. After serving at Moses’ side for forty-plus years, leading Israel to conquer much of the promise land, and then providing general leadership for “a long time” (vs 1), Joshua knew that his life was nearly over, and so he gathered the people around him and started […]

I will admit that I have a natural tendency to act first and ask questions later which has, on far more than one occasion, gotten me into trouble. There have been plenty of instances in my experience that have been something other than what they appear, and so you would think that I would learn […]

Joshua 21 marks the completion of the distribution of land among the tribes of Israel. The final tribe to receive land is Levi, which was to receive no dedicated block of territory as its own but, as priests, would be given specific cities and towns within the allotments of the other tribes. Forty-eight towns and […]

Joshua 20 establishes a policy that seems foreign to me: cities of refuge for people who unintentionally killed a neighbor. It just seems strange to me that someone would need to seek refuge for an accident, but in Semitic cultures such as ancient Israel, it was common practice that, if someone was killed, a family […]

So, I’m changing the title of this week’s message from what was printed in last week’s bulletin. Simply put, we’re doing clean-up on three things that I think are important to catch if we’re going to live the real and full life Jesus talked about in John 10:10 at work. And for the record, these […]