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 Nehemiah 1:1-2:6
Much of our time, energy, and attention are spent reacting to someone else’s urgent or to our own need to achieve or acquire or accomplish. We have deadlines to meet, meetings to make, assignments due, bills to pay and on top of all of that we set goals and have ideas for things we’d like to accomplish and overcome.
This is life, right? But is this really the “full life” Jesus came to offer (John 10:10)?
What if the picture we grabbed on to for who we could be come or what our situation or the situation of the world around us could look like isn’t born out of our own need for validation or comfort or security…what if it is born out of something that God plants in us?
What if God has a vision for you? A preferred future born out of His call to live life to bring Him glory and invite others into His story?
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 Deuteronomy 34:1-12
How do you deal with disappointment? Do you dwell on it, or move past it? Does it make you angry or do you numb yourself to it just to keep functioning? You’ve worked toward something, planned for something, dreamt for a long time of doing something…only to be let down? How do you deal with the disappointment?
What about when it seems to be God Who is the One leaving you disappointed? What happens when it is God Who is the reason for your dreams being dashed or deferred?
Rather than allowing it to shake the foundation of your faith, what if you took a bigger view of your life…and a bigger view of the work that God can do in and through it?
w/ Vern Collins
