Most of us are quicker to panic over a dying phone battery than over a dying spiritual one—we coast along, confident weR17;re fine, while the indicator drops lower than weR17;d ever admit. As Jesus calls a written-off man in Jericho, He challenges all of us on this: “Do we know how much we need Him?̶1;
You can spend hours in an old adventure game, testing gems in random combinations, unsure whether the puzzle has any answer at all. That sounds familiar because we wonder the same thing about life. Isaiah 40 speaks to people wondering if God has left us with a random jumble of puzzle pieces and assures us thereR17;s something more.
What if zeal aimed at God can still be working against Him? The future Apostle Paul had plenty of zeal as he persecuted the church, but he would soon learn that isnR17;t enough.
ThereR17;s always one thing weR17;d rather not put on the table when God asks us to give something up—and we usually know exactly what it is. In Luke 18, a rich man walks away from Jesus grieving because that one thing is precisely what Jesus names, and the disciplesR17; stunned question in response—̶1;then who can be saved?̶1;—turns out to be our question too.
What does it mean when God calls us to “knowledge̶1; as a way to bolster our faith? What is GodR17;s knowledge like? ThatR17;s the subject of this weekR17;s Steadfast.
God calls us to self-control and endurance. What does that look like? How do we do it? Pastor Tim considers that with an exploration of our continue struggles with these things from the very beginning.
Selfishness is sneaky—it feels like commonsense in the moment. As the disciples sat right in front of Jesus, they struggled with the same self-centered question we all are challenged: “But what about me?̶1;
As Pastor Tim takes us to Matthew 24 for our new message series on the End Times, we need to think of two risks we face when dealing with the future: apathy and obsession. In contrast to these, Jesus instructs us on how to have the right mindset about the future.
We easily draw safe boundaries around God’s grace, welcoming those who seem familiar while overlooking those who feel foreign or difficult. Yet the distant wise men of Matthew 2 and the rejoicing Gentiles of Acts 13 confront those boundaries: Jesus came to reach the world. Who might God be placing beyond our comfort, yet within the reach of his good news?