I had the privilege of preaching again on Sunday, January 25th. I had actually written the sermon for a service back in February of last year, but at the last minute decided that it wasn’t right for the audience or the setting. Instead, it became the jump off point for my latest book project.
As our pastoral staff prepared for the coming of 2009, our lead pastor was searching for a theme for the year. In October we relaunched our home groups program by team-preaching on three of the tribes of Israel. One of those sermons was about Joseph, and the topic of the message was Fruitfulness. Out of that message came three words: fruitfulness, increase, addition. From those words came our theme for 2009: Fruitfulness: Living lives of increase and addition. With the lead pastor ready to launch the theme, I found the opening I needed to preach a sermon entitled, “The Useless Tree.”
Now, I’m not going to tell you a lot about that message because you can listen to it if you’d like. Instead I’d like to share some extra thoughts that came out of a time of prayer this past Sunday night. We have started a four-week emphasis on prayer on Sunday nights, and I quickly found myself jumping into a routine that I enjoyed in a previous church. Out of that time of prayer came the following reflections on Ezekiel 47:12.
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