I am looking forward to preaching several times over the next few weeks at Rising Star Baptist Church in southeast Fort Worth and at The Word Church in southwest Fort Worth. Thanks to Pastors Ralph Emerson and Sultan Cole for inviting me.

I’m planning to do a series of messages on The Blessed Journey.

March 24 at Rising Star

The Blessed Journey: Beginning with Blessing

Mark 1:4-11

This is the story of Jesus’ baptism, and just like Jesus began his journey of public ministry with baptism and blessing, each of us begins our most important journeys with blessing.

April 7 at Rising Star

The Blessed Journey: Through the Wilderness

Mark 1:9-15

Jesus is baptized. He hears the voice of blessing. And then what happens? Does he get whisked off to a beautiful, distraction free resort experience? No. He is led straight into the wilderness. The next part of the blessed life is the journey through the wilderness. A blessed journey has to go through the wilderness.

April 14 at The Word Church

The Blessed Journey: To the City

Mark 11:1-11

On Palm Sunday, Jesus undertook a journey to the city of Jerusalem. The late Lord George MacLeod, House of Lords, Church of Scotland minister, founder of the Iona Community, said:
“I simply argue that the cross be raised at the center of the marketplace as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves; on a town garbage heap; at a crossroad of politics so cosmopolitan that they had to write his title in Hebrew and in Latin and in Greek . . . and at the kind of place where cynics talk smut and thieves curse and soldiers gamble. Because that is where he died, and that is what he died about. And that is where Christ’s people ought to be and what church people ought to be about.”

Jesus didn’t just go to the temple. He went to the city.