WeR17;ve all set out to pursue what we think God wants, only to watch the road curve in ways that make no sense. How do you trust Him when His path seems to undo the very promise He gave? In Genesis 22, Abraham faces exactly that moment as God calls him to offer Isaac.
ItR17;s easy to hunker down when life gets complicated. WeR17;ll just manage whatR17;s in front of us and quietly wonder whether GodR17;s bigger plan still has a place for us in it. Genesis 24 takes us to the story of a family facing down that same question.
God told Rebekah before her sons were born that the older would serve the younger—yet in Genesis 25, Isaac loves Esau most. Nothing looks like itR17;s heading where God said it would. When the path to GodR17;s promises feels unnecessarily tangled, can we still believe heR17;s working?
We all arrive at Advent carrying something broken—a diagnosis, a fraying relationship, a season that feels anything but joyful—and our instinct is right: we want God to fix it. In John 6, the crowd feels exactly that after watching Jesus feed five thousand people, so they move to do something about it. The question the passage presses on us is whether we actually understand what problem he came to fix.
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.
When we struggle to translate from one language to another, weR17;re painfully reminded of the problems coming from the Tower of Babel. But do we remember the temptation of that situation, one that plays to our own ambitions still today?
Little sins that seem almost harmless still multiply until they leave us too blind even for grace. In Genesis 4, CainR17;s story is one of just such little sins and it serves as a caution as we tend our own “harmless sins.̶1;
When somethingR17;s keeping you up at night—an unexpected bill, a looming deadline, a need you canR17;t see your way through—itR17;s easy to wonder whether those worries are too ordinary to bring to God. Jesus is clear in the next part of the LordR17;s Prayer that simply isnR17;t the case.
When the warnings are there that weR17;re falling into sin, do we turn and go the other way? Or do we keep spiraling forward and crash?
We think we have everything under control and know how to anticipate our weaknesses, yet sin still sneaks up looking attractive and attacks when least expected. In Genesis 3 a crafty serpent made the forbidden tree seem good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desirable for wisdom.