Psalm 27 strikes us with an unresolved ending, like a dissonant jazz chord: Wait for the Lord. Be strong, and let your heart take courage. Wait for the Lord. This morning we explore what it may look like to wait for the Lord, and how remembering his faithfulness in the past gives us courage to wait well.
Love One Another
Love is at the heart of the Christian faith. Jesus tells us the greatest commandment is to love God with our whole self, and the second is like it: to love our neighbor as ourselves. But it’s very easy to leave love in the abstract.
This morning Doran helps us to see more of the specifics. What does love actually look like, not just as an abstract idea, but as a concrete reality? How does love change your life?
Relationship and Right
How should Christians disagree? Disagreement is inevitable, especially in gray areas where right and wrong isn’t clear.
Paul gives us a window into two disagreements that early Christians faced: whether it was ok to eat meat, and whether they should still observe a Sabbath.
When we sacrifice our relationships on the altar of our rights or being right, Paul says we get it wrong. How will we relate to one another, and potentially disagree, as we think about our response to the coronavirus?
The Week After Easter
The week after Jesus rose from the dead his followers were in disbelief. Some had seen him, but most hadn’t. They were tentative. Afraid. Unsure what to think. Thomas famously insisted, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”
“Doubting Thomas” often gets a bad rap, but don’t we often feel the same way? When we have to see something to believe it, what happens when Jesus shows up? Can doubt and belief coexist?
In the Political Sphere Without the Political Spirit
God calls each of us to practice our faith in a way that promotes righteousness, justice, and mercy in the world—for Christians and non-Christians alike. It is an audacious goal.
Listen as guest preacher Neil Hubacker expands on how we can faithfully join God in such a bold calling.
How do we Respond to Evil?
In the past several weeks we have read news of three mass shootings in America. How are we, as Christians, to respond? What good can we possibly do, and what hope can there possibly be?
Sermon ends and pastoral prayer begins at 31:30.
Holy Confusion
Christians believe in the Holy Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit often gets the silent treatment. Whether we don’t understand the Spirit or fear what submitting to the Spirit might look like, we all have objections.
What happens when we acknowledge and face those objections? What happens when we let the Holy Spirit into our lives?
Are You Still Thirsty?
When we’re thirsty, we have to take something outside of us (water) and put it inside of us, in order to satisfy our thirst.
“Are you still thirsty?” Jesus asks.
God intentionally us to be thirsty beings. We are made to thirst for him, since Jesus, the living water, will fill us to overflowing.
Been Poolside Lately?
In John 5 Jesus asks a blind man a startling question: “Do you want to be healed?”
Still more startling is what Jesus does not ask the man: “What do you believe?”
Is it possible that God operates on his own terms and not ours? Is it possible that Jesus touches whomever he pleases regardless of whether we deem them worthy?
Believing is Seeing
After Jesus is raised from the dead John gives four quick sketches of some of Jesus’ closest followers. Eventually they all believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, but in very different ways. Yet Jesus meets each of them right where they are. He doesn’t demand that they reach up to him; he reaches down to them. As you listen to the four sketches, which is most like you?
Source and Resources
Sometimes we get sources and resources confused. Jesus teaches us in John 15 that he is the source of our life, not just a resource.
Our job as Christians is to remain centered in Christ—vitally connected to him. Our very life depends on it.
Our Plans vs. God's Plans
Sometimes life doesn't turn out quite like we think it will. We make plans, we anticipate certain events, and life takes an unexpected turn. For Bill and Ann Clemmer, life took several dramatic turns.
Hear from Ann, a missionary to the Democratic Republic of Congo, who shares about her life's twists and turns, and how God's plans are always better than our plans.