It’s easy to be busy with the Christian life—programs, good intentions, real effort—and still be missing the one thing that keeps it all from exploding. In Ephesians 1:15–16, Paul looks at believers whose faith in Jesus is visibly pouring out as love toward one another, and what he does in response is the piece we most often skip.
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?
It’s easy to look across the room and thank God we’re not like that person—the failure, the compromiser, the obvious sinner. In Luke 18, Jesus tells a parable to confront such self-righteousness in us.
Comfort, institutional preservation, and tribal identity can crowd out obedience to God’s call in our lives. Do we hear His call to reach those in need of His Grace and to live in the “risky repentance” that involves?
Most of us know our own dirt isn’t the curated kind—and suspect it may be too much to clean up. In Matthew 9, Jesus walks past everyone with the polished-for-consumption sob story and stops at a tax collector’s booth, a man whose sin was public knowledge, and says simply, “Follow me.”
When corruption seems everywhere, it is tempting to imagine that the world just needs a few good people willing to play Batman and set things right. But Psalm 14:3–4 says everyone has turned aside, forcing a harder question: What happens when the same sin we fight in others begins corrupting our own good intentions?
Please join us in devotional journey as we look at some gifts far more incredible than a partridge in a pear tree. These are the gifts from our God as Paul describes them in the Letter to the Romans. This devotional has twelve readings exploring the ways Jesus coming into the world is for us.
Pastor Tim wraps up our series “Renewed” looking the call to live peaceably. (And yes, that includes some hot coals on peoples’ heads.)
Pastor Tim continues our series from Psalm 1, looking at what it means to be a “tree planted by streams of water.” It tells us more about God’s care than we might think at first!
Pastor Tim turns to Romans for Memorial Day Weekend as we continue our 52 week journey through 52 Verses from 52 Books!