Audio sermon by: Gordon D. Venturella | 25:30 min

What is our attitude about giving? Do we see it as an obligation or an opportunity? A priority or a problem? Have you noticed in life that there is always some problem that presents itself and then when you get over that one, there is another one. If you wait until everything is perfect, if you wait until everything is settled, if you wait until all your financial issues or time issues are resolved, you'll never give anything to anyone. If we don't take it upon ourselves to manage our finances, to manage our talents, to manage our time, and make giving of ourselves and our resources a priority, then we will ultimately miss out on a fulfilled life.

Does fulfillment in life come from acquiring or from giving? How do I receive ultimate fulfillment in life? Do I do it by getting more or by giving more?

Five key issues that will help us achieve fulfillment in life:

1. Settle the issue of giving according to priority or problems.
2. Settle the issue of giving according to opportunity or obligation.
3. Settle the issue of who is in control of my life.
4. Settle the issue of leadership.
5. Settle the issue of love.

When you want to know for a fact what it is that you love, follow the money trail. Not only do we need to know where our money is in order to budget effectively, you and I need to know where our money is, so we will know where our heart is.


Download mp3: Obligation or Opportunity

Subscribe to Sermons From the Edge Podcast

Audio sermon by: Gordon D. Venturella | 33:26 min

Our lives are comprised of a series of choices made over time and affected by time. The future is, in many ways, determined by the choices that we make in the present. All of our choices are routed or grounded in some faith stance.

You look at your bills, you look at the things that you'd like to buy, and then you look at your checkbook and you think, this is a drop in the bucket for everything I need to pay for. Finances and the stewardship of them is a subject that Jesus talks more about except for the kingdom of God. It is the number one reason given by couples as the reason for getting a divorce. It is the souce of countless heartaches, deprivation, and poverty on a global scale.

In this sermon, Gordon offers encouragement to those of you who are attempting to be a good steward and challenges those of you who have never taken the time to look at the choices you make and the effect that it has on your future. You can't achieve lasting fulfullment without being a giver. You can aquire but you can't receive fulfillment.

There is no living without giving.


---

“You don't get more because you have less, you get more because you handle more in a faithful way.” -Gordon Venturella

Download mp3: Making Choices

Subscribe to Sermons From the Edge Podcast

Audio sermon by: Gordon D. Venturella | 18:28 min

Life is fragile. With the ring of a doorbell, life can change forever. You get up thinking about your schedule for the day and in a heartbeat it’s changed. It doesn’t matter how important your agenda was for the day; it all gets rearranged.

You can take your vitamins, exercise every day, never drink and drive, wear your seatbelt, eat right, and not smoke, and the Grim Reaper is still there. The great interrupter stills roams around. If this life is all there is, then at best there is uncertainty, and then, the Grim Reaper.

Death is almost always inconvenient. It’s almost always an interruption. It’s not something that fits easily in to our palm piloted life. Death is starting out in to the light of the day and being enveloped in darkness.

Easter is about recapturing the light.

---

"I remember the year I lost my three friends. Above all else I want Easter to be true because of its promise that someday I will get my friends back. I want to abolish that word irreversible forever. I suppose you could say I want to believe in fairy tales." - Phil Yancey

Download mp3: Before & After

Subscribe to Sermons From the Edge Podcast

Audio sermon by: Gordon D. Venturella | 20:31 min

Palm Sunday is all about enduring the harsher realities of life. It’s what happens after the honeymoon is over. It’s the first irate phone call after you’ve moved in to the new office. It’s what happens after the sale has been made - and you call the service department. It’s the distraction you must endure to get where you need to go, the detours you must go around to get to your destination. It’s what it takes to cross the finish line victorious.

It's about life in the trenches.

In this sermon we're going to take a look at some of the highlights of the passionate week that Jesus had ahead of Him, any one of which could have been a distraction to accomplishing His mission.

Maybe you have a Passion Week ahead of you. And maybe you will encounter some of the same distrations that Jesus did. If so, you’ll need to make some resolutions, in order to make it to the end of the week.

---

"I have no rights of my own to be offended. I voluntarily gave them up when I became a Christian. I don’t have time to take offense – I only have a mission to accomplish. Everything else is a distraction." -Gordon Venturella

Download mp3: Life in the Trenches

Subscribe to Sermons From the Edge Podcast

Audio sermon by: Gordon D. Venturella | 23:26 min

Most people who emigrate from one country to another are doing so in search of a better life. Whether we're talking about the first pilgrims to this country hundreds of years ago, or today when Chinese immigrants stow away in a ship in unsanitary conditions, I have to think most do so in hopes of a better life.

What would be a better life?

Deep down, if we were honest, we'd admit that we're making decisions about that question every day. Would it be better for me to respond ethically on the job, or just make a run for the money? Would it be better for me to invest my time and money in the church? Or in other pursuits? Would it be better for me to work here – or there? Should I live in this kind of house or that kind of house? Where should my children go to school? How much education do I need?

In this series about the real teaching of the real Jesus we will see what He has to say about a better life. Crowds are gathering about Jesus, and I have to believe they're concerned with what we're concerned with:

Will this man mean a better life?

Instead of playing to the crowd, Jesus skipped the parables and granted his audience a full-blown philosophy of life: We call it the Sermon on the Mount. In it Jesus talks about immigration we all need to make. It's immigration from the Kingdom of this world – To the Kingdom of God. In this passage He challenges us to take the risk and live like citizens of a different Kingdom.

You decide for yourself whether or not it's a better life.

---

"To be a Christian, to immigrate to a New Kingdom, one must take up his cross, with all its difficulties and agonizing and tension and carry it until that very cross leaves its mark upon us. Ultimately it's the mark of a better life." -Gordon Venturella

Download mp3: Are You Feeling Lucky?

Subscribe to Sermons From the Edge Podcast

5 of 50 episodes displayed
View All Episodes >
(45 more)