In this first sermon of our Throughline series, Greg reflects on our history as a church, and reaffirms our central theme of Love: our first and last and only job here on earth is to do all things in love. Just as love provides purpose to a marriage, it provides our mission as a church, as well as to us as individuals as part of the body of Christ.
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When God Fills His Temple
• Greg Boyd
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Greg begins by recalling his wedding to Shelley. They were both young and had no real idea what they were getting into. They didn’t just jump into a finished relationship, they grew into it. But it was all guided by the love that they share. Love has been the compass that provided direction through the uncertainty and the glue that held them together in their new life together.
Similarly, love has been the throughline of this church. We have likewise grown in this mission of love. Just as how central love is in a marriage, love is our first and only mission as a church and of us as people. We are called to mimic God, and God is Love. Therefore, it is our central, most important job to love all people just as God loves us.
Like the rain and the sun, God does not choose who to love, it shines down unconditionally on ALL living things. This is what it means to say that God IS love. This is who we are called to be as followers. We are called to say no to judgment or violence or greed or fear, and say yes only to love ALL people and all living things. As disciples of Christ, love must motivate our every thought, action and decision.
The criteria of how we are doing as a church is not how big we grow or how slick our program looks or how big the offering is. Our central mission and the single defining criteria of whether we are succeeding as a church is whether our members (you!) are learning to grow and live and act in self-sacrificial love for others, and let that love drive all that you do. This is how God fills his temple.
Hide Extended SummaryTopics: God's Will, Identity in Christ, Love
Sermon Series: Throughline
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Focus Scripture:
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1 John 4:8
8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.
13 thoughts on “When God Fills His Temple”
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"Woodland has been a HUGE blessing to us during this Covid season and we trust these powerfully positive experiences will continue for years to come! We have been seeking to follow Jesus for all of our adult lives - and the ministry of Woodland Hills is so encouraging to our continued growth. "
– Steve and Jennifer, from Colorado
What has happened to posting the videos online? Either WH is not posting the the two weeks for some reason, or not showing for Apple/Safari users! Also, “WHATCH ON THE BLOG” does not appear compatible with Apple/Safari.
Hi Craig,
We’ve been upgrading our equipment to high definition, but have hit a few bumps in the transition, mainly with the videos. We’ll be going back and getting them all up online, hopefully by early next week.
In the meantime, in Safari, you can watch last week’s video by going to the Sermon Downloads page, right-clicking “High Quality MP4,” and downloading it to your computer. You’ll be able to watch this week’s video in the same way by tomorrow morning.
Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks for bearing with us as we figure out these tech glitches!
Connor
Still not able to watch the latest sermon. No “watch on blog” or no “High Quality MP4 ” available yet ?
Hi Steve, we were a little optimistic in our timeline, sorry about that! We’ll have the videos up as soon as we can.
Connor
Thank You Conner !
Looking forward to that video
Sorry you are having difficulties
We are praying for a smooth transition
Connor just wanted to say that’s great news! I mirror these videos on my YouTube channel called In Christ, and many of these sermons have thousands of views but the quality has definitely been outdated and fallen behind the video quality of most out there, so glad to hear the quality will be increased. I was just getting to the point of sending a request to help support a possible upgrade.
For a sermon, the High Quality MP4 has always been very good; i only care about hd when watching movies, yeah? Greg is only preaching every third sunday, to my dismay; when i do see him, i will not care about video being so glorious that we can see every little hair that’s not on his head……hope getting hd isn’t costing the church any money
Never did get to see this sermon. Audio is available but no Video !
Should i resign myself to just listen to the audio or should i hold out and wait for the video to appear?
We would love to see this video, hope it will be uploaded soon! Thanks, Rudi
Hey folks – the video is up! And it’s embedded! We apologize that it took so long, but thanks for sticking it out with us. There will be some bumps-ups in quality over the next several weeks as we keep making adjustments, but for now we’ve found a happy-medium so we can get these videos online.
Thanks again!
Connor
Thanks!