Most people instinctively know the difference between ordering at a restaurant and eating at a friend’s table—yet that same distinction somehow disappears in how they approach God. Proverbs 3:9 calls believers to honor the Lord with their wealth and the first fruits of all their produce, not as a business transaction or a path to guaranteed earthly blessing, but as an act of worship that reshapes what winning actually means.
We instinctively read our circumstances as a verdict on where we stand with God—ease means favor, famine means failure. In Genesis 26, Isaac is stranded in exactly that famine, holding a promise that the land and its people seem to be disproving, and God’s answer to him isn’t immediate relief but something harder to trust.
We cruise along thinking everything seems worth rejoicing in—until something smacks us over the head and forces the question of what really matters. Paul faces that same reckoning in Philippians 3, listing every credential and mark of status he once counted as gain.
We turn onto the lane that looks like home, only to find barriers on both sides and nowhere left to go. Foot still on the accelerator, locked on the road to death, the only hope we have is mercy—and Ephesians 1:7 speaks right into that place: in him we have redemption through his blood.
Bold faith can feel clearest in a crisis; the harder question is how to live when the rush is over and ordinary life must begin again. Matthew 2:19–23 meets Joseph at precisely that point: Herod is dead, God calls his family home from Egypt, and the road ahead still demands careful listening. What does faithfulness look like when obedience is clear, but the next step is not?
Grace saves us—we don’t deserve it, can’t earn it, and have no grounds to boast about it, as Paul makes plain in Ephesians 2:8–9—so what does it look like when a community of undeserving people actually lives that out together as the church God is building?
The decorations come down, the calendar turns, and Christmas recedes into memory—but Matthew 2 insists there’s something that doesn’t go out of season. And if the Gospel doesn’t go out of season, are we keeping ourselves focused on where it is pointing us?
When we’re desperate for direction, we tend to reach for whatever voice sounds most confident, be it horoscopes, politicians or just about anyone who seems to know something we don’t. Deuteronomy 18 speaks to our searching, reminding us God has never left His people without a trustworthy voice to follow, and what He promised there points somewhere specific.
The holidays can bring back the empty chair, the family hurt, the memories of when everything felt joyful—and before long, sorrow and anxiety begin to take over. The words of Romans 8 help us in times when grief feels stronger than truth.
In an uncertain world that is frequently perplexed — at best — about the Bible and those who follow Jesus, we have hope: the early church faced the same things. Join us as the FaithTree Men’s Bible Study begins a new adventure through the Book of Acts, looking at how God enabled His Gospel to spread across the world using His peopleR30; and how He continues to use us today.