from Psalm 121
Walter Bruggemann says of the Psalms: “On the one hand, Israel’s faithful speech addressed to God is the substance of the Psalms. The Psalms do this so fully and so well because they articulate the entire gamut of Israel’s speech to God, from profound praise to the utterance of unspeakable anger and doubt. On the other hand, as Martin Luther understood so passionately, the Psalms are not only addressed to God…They are the voice of the Gospel, God’s good word addressed to God’s faithful people.”
Where do you need to be given permission to be honest with God? With what you are feeling. With your frustration. With sadness, or disappointment, or fear, or anger. With great joy and thanksgiving. This summer journey with us as the reality of what it means to be human collides with the goodness and unending faithfulness of God.
w/ Jacob Lancaster
from Psalm 100
Walter Bruggemann says of the Psalms: “On the one hand, Israel’s faithful speech addressed to God is the substance of the Psalms. The Psalms do this so fully and so well because they articulate the entire gamut of Israel’s speech to God, from profound praise to the utterance of unspeakable anger and doubt. On the other hand, as Martin Luther understood so passionately, the Psalms are not only addressed to God…They are the voice of the Gospel, God’s good word addressed to God’s faithful people.”
Where do you need to be given permission to be honest with God? With what you are feeling. With your frustration. With sadness, or disappointment, or fear, or anger. With great joy and thanksgiving. This summer journey with us as the reality of what it means to be human collides with the goodness and unending faithfulness of God.
w/ Vern Collins
from Lamentations 3:22-24
In our seven week series, “All Things Made New,” we consider the work that Jesus is doing in this world…a work that we don’t have to wait until time has reached its fulfillment to experience, but that we can experience and be a part of now!
When trying to live into the new life that God has made possible in Christ…when trying to bring His New Kingdom to bear on this earth, what happens when the troubles and trials of life seem too much to bear?
We look to each day as a gift…and each rising of the sun as a tangible example of God’s mercy and faithfulness.
w/ Ed Glaize
from Lamentations 3:13-26 and Colossians 1:15-23, 2:6-7
In Isaiah 43:18-19a we read, “Forget the former things do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” In Revelation 21:5, we hear the words of Jesus captured by John, “He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’” Since the beginning, God has been in the business and the process of taking that which is broken, and rebuilding it…making it new!
In the third week of our series we are invited to consider the integrity of the foundation on which we are seeking to build our lives, and even on which we are seeking to be about building God’s church. Following our time considering what it might look like to clear the way for God to build something new, when those things that we don’t need or that God doesn’t want for us are stripped away, we are brought face to face with the steadfastness or the integrity of our foundation.
What if the foundation on which you were building your life and on which we are seeking to build God’s church became the firm foundation of God’s faithfulness instead of the shifting sands of what this world prioritizes.
w/ Vern Collins
from 2 Kings 23:1-3, Jeremiah 31:31-34, Matthew 22:34-40
As much as we want to see things change AROUND us, and as much as we might like to see some things change ABOUT us in this New Year…the reality is that we will never truly find fulfillment unless we are willing to see things first change WITHIN us.
As we begin this new year, let us consider what it might mean to renew our commitment to relationship with God…or let us consider what it might mean to be open to a relationship with God for the fist time.
Wesley Covenant Prayer:
I am no longer my own, but yours. Put me to what you will, place me with whom you will. Put me to doing, put me to suffering. Let me be put to work for you or set aside for you, Praised for you or criticized for you. Let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and fully surrender all things to your glory and service. And now, O wonderful and holy God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, you are mine, and I am yours. So be it. And the covenant which I have made on earth, Let it also be made in heaven. Amen.
w/ Vern Collins
from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, Isaiah 43:1-3, 18-19, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18
How might you walk through seasons of challenge differently if you knew that you were not alone? How might you do so if you knew that God was with you? What if the challenge of this season is not meant for discouragement, but for hope…hope that God is not done with you…hope that God is doing a new thing?!
May you fix your eyes in Him in this season of challenge.
w/ Lory Beth Huffman and Laura Byrch
from Matthew 4:1-11
In a time of testing, what is the way you choose to cope…to be comfortable…to get through to the other side of the testing? Is it the path that seems easier, or is it the way God would have you walk in order that you might experience more of Who He is in your life?
w/ Vern Collins and Lory Beth Huffman
from Psalm 89:38-52 and Jeremiah 29:1-14
There is a difference between seeking to discern God’s voice in your life, and feeling like God has gone silent.
Silence from God, if we’re not careful, can affect our relationship with God in incredibly difficult ways. We might begin to question God’s love for us, we might begin to question God’s faithfulness, or whether or not God even cares what we are walking through. Too often, these feelings or questions, left un death with, can lead us to no longer seeking God…
And yet, what we find in our passages from Psalm 89 and Jeremiah 29, are both the permission to be honest with God about how His silence hits us, and direction from God in the midst of those seasons of unknown.
May we approach Him with boldness, and dig in deeply in the place where He has us.
w/ Vern Collins, Jeff McClain, and Ben Fitzgerald
from Exodus 19:1-8, 32:1-14, 19-20
As we continue our series on trusting God, we see God’s grace and sovereignty in inviting us to consider what it truly means to trust God in the midst of such a time of Global and national unrest as we navigate a season of new normal with the onset of COVID-19.
Not only in this trying time, but even in your own every day life, what does it mean to trust God’s leading? What does it look like to trust that God is still good when things around us don’t seem to be? What does it look like to trust that God is not only with us, but that God is still leading us?
w/ Lory Beth Huffman, Laura Byrch, and Ben Fitzgerald
from Genesis 22:1-19
Sometimes it seems that one of the most difficult areas in which to trust God, is in whether or not we will be provided for. If I surrender my life to him, will I truly have all I need? Will I have the kind of income I want, the kind of house I want…what about relationship? So often, when we think of provision, we find our thoughts wrapped up in material possessions, but what if what God promises to provide goes deeper than the material?
Can we truly trust that God will provide all that we need? What if the trials and the challenges in our lack, is not God ignoring our plea, what if it is God teaching us to walk in faith?
w/ Vern Collins
from Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-13, 21-24
In Psalm 16, David says to the Lord, “Your boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places,” but the reality is that many of us don’t think of boundaries in our lives as being pleasant, rather we tend to think of them as being restrictive. So in order to be able to pursue life as we feel it should be, we begin to create a truth for ourselves that is often outside of God’s Truth for us.
What if we began to see God’s Truth…the boundaries that God’s Truth creates, not as restrictive, but as gracious…as permissive…as life-giving?
w/ Vern Collins
from Psalm 96
What is worship? Is it just singing? Is there a right way to worship? Does our worship truly matter? Does it accomplish anything?
What if worship became more than what we participated in, or what we try to stir up within us…what if worship became our response to God’s faithfulness…to God’s goodness?
Not only do we find throughout Scripture that worship is simply not optional, we begin to see that its true power if found when it happens in the context of community.
w/ Vern Collins
*Try reading Psalm 103 each morning this week, focusing on God’s faithfulness and the grace offered you each day, and see how worship might begin to come as a response.
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Our Ambitious Prayer for the church (adapted from Jonathan Leeman’s “18 Things to Pray for Your Church”)
Heavenly Father, as we seek to be a church that reflects the hope of Your Son, Jesus in this world, our prayer for this church is…
That it would grow in being distinct from the world in love and holiness, even as it engages outsiders.
That faithful elders would use Scripture to train members to do the work of ministry.
That a hunger for studying the Gospel would form among members so that they can guide and guard one another in it.
That a culture of discipling would form in which making disciples is viewed as an ordinary part of the Christian life.
That adult members work to disciple children and teenagers and not just leave the journey of discipleship to programming.
That the church’s songs would teach members to biblically confess, lament, and praise.
It is with the help of the Holy Spirit and in the Name of Jesus we ask these things, Amen.
*We regret that technical difficulties prevented us from capturing the entire message. We pray that you are still blessed by what is available.
from Revelation 2:8-11
w/ Jeff McClain
from Isaiah 30:8-18
As we begin this season of Lent and our new series, “Broken,” you are invited to come to terms with, to name the brokenness in your life. Sin is the great equalizer…not of are exempt from its effects, and yet in Christ we find that not only does God know something about our brokenness, but is willing to enter in to it.
Over the next several weeks we are going to consider how our sin creates brokenness in different areas of our lives…beginning with how it affects your relationship with God. While you are being invited to come to terms with your brokenness, know that God longs to bring healing…that God longs to and promises to take that which is broken and redeem it, turning it into something beautiful.
w/ Vern Collins
from Daniel 3
If someone asked you Who God is, how would you answer that question? How would you describe God to the world around you?
Particularly now when this world is hurting, when so many questions surround the acts of hate and violence that seem so prevalent…what would you tell this world about who God is? How would you describe God?
What if it wasn’t an explanation that this world needed, rather an introduction?
Do you know God in a way that you would allow you to introduce God to this world?
w/ Vern Collins
from Genesis 6:5-22
In week 3 of our “More to the Story” series, we look at one of the most well known stories in all of Scripture…the story of Noah. While there are any number of questions surrounding this account of Noah’s building of the ark and God’s bringing of the flood, we find that there is a questions posed to us…
In this world where we might say (save for a promise and a rainbow) we’re probably due for another wiping of the slate…what if in looking back at the account of Noah, we begin to see it, not as an issue of morality, but one of theology…does creation still allow God to be God? Does humanity still allow God to be God? Are you, in your life, allowing God to be God?
w/ Vern Collins
from Luke 4:1-13
Life is full of transitions. Transitions in work. Transitions in relationship. Transitions from one stage of life to another. They are simply part of the rhythm of life.
When transitions in life go smoothly, they are little more than one thing ending and another beginning. When transitions become difficult, however, they can begin to feel more like an interruption or a road block to whatever may be coming next.
As we begin this new series on transitions, we find from the story of Jesus’ time in the wilderness, that not only is can we find purpose in transition, but that God is faithful in the midst of them.
w/ Vern Collins
