A man bought a brand new Ferrari. He wanted to get a blessing for it, so he went to see his priest. “Father O’Malley, can I have a blessing for my Ferrari?” “Certainly, my son, but what’s a Ferrari?” The man was so incensed that the priest wasn’t impressed with his new car that he went right up the street to the next priest he could find and asked him the same thing. “Father Schmidt, can I have a blessing for my Ferrari?” “Naturally” the priest said, “But what’s a Ferrari?” Frustrated and in desperation, the man went to a third priest. “Priest Dibble, can I have a blessing for my Ferrari?” The third priest said, “Wow! You got a Ferrari? A Ferrari can go 0 to 100 mph in 5.5 seconds and has won 21 Grand Prix races this year. And a Ferrari sells for $180,000. Can I have a ride in it?” The man was impressed with this priest’s knowledge of a Ferrari and took the man once around the block. Then he asked, “Now, can I please have a blessing for my Ferrari?” The priest said, “Sure, but what’s a blessing?”
Sometimes we’re a lot like the last priest, we know more about cars, football, television and worldly things than we do about blessings. Paul wants us to know just how blessed we are to be a child of God. We are blessed beyond belief. Ephesians 1:3-10 give us a lot of the reasons why we’re spiritually blessed. Here are 5 of them.
- God has Chosen Us! (vs.4)
- God has Adopted Us! (vs.5)
- God has Freely given Us His Grace! (vs.6)
- God has Redeemed Us! (vs.7)
- God has United Us (vs.10)
This is a brief summary of last Sunday’s sermon that you can catch on podcast, download and listen on your computer, or just listen to it on the website (it even works with dial-up). I hope you’ll get a chance to swing by and listen if you want. Click here —-> (It’s GOOD to be a Child of God.)
One of the funny stories I’ve included in this lessons is, “Do you want me to spank you?” It’s a story about my 3rd son Connor. When he was little, he was SO strong-willed. We tried everything on our strong-willed child including Dobson’s book, “The Strong Willed Child.” He was so strong-willed that the book only worked when I spanked him with it 
If you can’t hear the story on the sermon link, I’ll try and share the story with you here in the next few of days.
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HOW TO DOWNLOAD A SERMON: For those with dial-up, see if this works. Click on the link to go to the sermon. By the “play” button you’ll see the three words: Send To Friends, Download, Permalink. “Right” click with your mouse button on the word “Download” and then click “Save As.” It will save it will download and save to your computer (make sure you know where you save it). It may take a few minutes to download, because it’s about 31 mega-bites. After listening, just delete it from your computer.
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Also, if you haven’t learned about Bloglines you’re missing out. Bloglines is a program you can use to read everyone’s blogs, and it will tell you who’s updated with new posts. Pretty handy little program. You might want to check it out.
I am a Christian husband and father, who moonlights as the minister for the church of Christ in Childress, Texas. My wife Lea and I have been married for 21 years. We are doing our best to raise our 4 boys, who are all growing up way too fast.
What’s a blog?
I’m doing a gospel meeting on Ephesians in the fall; I just might steal, err plagiarize, err borrow some of these ideas.
And the use of a reader program is definitely a plus. I’d have to drop out of the blogosphere without one.
Grace and peace,
Tim
I love the picture, the points and would love to hear the spanking story. I can relate to the book working best as a tool (or rod).
Kathy
can’t wait for spanking story…so i will share one of my own..
whenever our son is climbing or standing somewhere he shouldn’t because it is dangerous, my wife says, “we don’t want to go to the hospital”
well…
we were eating out monday night and our 3-year old was being rambuctious (no nap that day). my wife kept telling him to keep his feet down and not to push against the table. We don’t spank alot and definitely not on public for fear of the govt (our state social services got in trouble for not keeping up with some neglect/abuse so they are on the warpath now) but my wife threatened a spanking and our boy replied, “and go to the hospital…”
he was closer than he realized.
brian
Trey,
I listened to your blogcast last night. Really enjoyed it. I also signed up for bloglines. Exactly how does that work?
Monalea aka www
Who in the world can keep up in blogland without bloglines….the down side is that I read so many in bloglines that I sometimes miss out on the conversation inside the comments…..
Monalea … after signing up go to the left hand side of the page and click on “feeds” and add your favorite blogs!!!
Trey,
I have tried and tried and cant seem to get the podcast to download–are you sure you really preached?
Peace
neva
Neva,
I updated my post on how to download and listen from your computer. I hope this helps and works.
I have high-speed internet and it took about 4 minutes to download. With dialup it’ll take a little longer.
Love that you spanked him with the Dobson book. Here is a story from my “spanking archive”.
Rylan wanted to take off his seatbelt in the car line while waiting to pick up Ashlynn. I told him no and that if he took it off, I would spank him. As he took it off, he said, “Well, I want to get up and your spankings don’t really hurt, so go ahead and spank me then.”
I did spank him, and I my never know if it hurt, but he did keep that seatbelt on. I may need to get me one of those Dobson books.
trey-
Thanks for helping spread the word that-
IT’S GREAT TO BE US!
Thanks Trey
n
Now, is this a ploy to enhance your possibility to be ‘Blogman of the Year’?
I do appreciate the opportunity to listen to other’s sermons. I just don’t have a lot of time to do it.
James
James – No ploy or push or plug … just trying to get the Gospel out to others in a way that might be helpful to some.
Trey,
Great post.
I love blog-man of the year…. is that anything like frog-man of the year. ha ha ha
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