from Psalm 30
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 Psalm 51
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/ Ben Fitzgerald
from John 15:9-17
Over the course of these 7 weeks, our prayer is that we are able to wrestle back from the world, and allow Scripture as well as the life of Jesus redeem for us what we understand love to be.
What would it look like to begin to prioritize seeking the loving heart of God over other things that we tend to make more important in our lives? What would it look like to allow ourselves to be truly loved by God…to prioritize reaching out in love for those around us? How might your life begin to look different? How might the church begin to look different if this is where the emphasis were placed? Not that seeking wisdom and the exercising of the gifts ceased to be important, but were never MORE important than the task of loving God and loving others…
w/ Jeff McClain
from 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a
Over the course of these 7 weeks, our prayer is that we are able to wrestle back from the world, and allow Scripture as well as the life of Jesus redeem for us what we understand love to be.
Paul didn’t simply tell the church in Corinth that love was to be the foundation of all that they do…he told them what that love is and is not meant to look like!
w/ Vern Collins
from 1 John 4:7-12
Enjoy this introductory message* for our “Love Redeemed” series delivered by Pastor Ed Glaize.
*pre-recorded ahead of Winter Storm Izzy.
w/ Ed Glaize
from Luke 1:67-80
There is a longing for home within each of us. Try as we might to fill that longing with promises of this world, with relationships, with achievement, or any other number of things in which we seek to find meaning and identity, there is only one place we are meant to be “at home.”
In the season of Advent we celebrate that God did not leave us to wander alone looking for home, instead, in Jesus He came to find us that we might find our home in Him.
On the 4th Sunday of Advent we are invited to consider all of the ways God has ruled and led and worked from a place of compassion and grace to lead us to the moment when Jesus would enter the world. Zechariah’s response, prompted by the Holy Spirit, is born out of such a realization.
What are the ways God has shown compassion and grace in your life?
w/ Vern Collins
from John 4:27-30, 39-42 and John 9:24-25
Psalm 85:6 reads, “Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?”
This longing undergirds our series and this season of revival we are asking God to bring. What is hindering your rejoicing? What is getting in the way of you living completely surrendered to the love and presence of God in your life? Where do you need revival?
We are naturally wired to share good news, and yet the BEST NEWS is one of the things we have the most difficult time sharing with others.
What has Jesus done in YOUR life? How are you telling other people about it? Inviting them to experience the joy that you have experienced in encountering and knowing Jesus…
w/ Vern Collins
from Isaiah 58
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!
As we consider God’s work of rebuilding both in our own lives and in the church, one of the questions we must be willing to wrestle with becomes, “who or what is forming us, and into what are we being formed?” There are any number of things in this world that we allow to speak into our formation…there are even a number of facets of our faith that God can use to form us. This week we look at the work of worship as a key part of the ways God longs to form us into the image of His Son Jesus for the world.
w/ Vern Collins
from 1 John 1:5-10 and Psalm 32:1-7
The season of Lent is a time of reflection. It is an opportunity to examine our lives before God and invite the Holy Spirit to reveal to us those things that are hindering our relationship with God and with those around us…and it is an opportunity to invite God to go to work in our lives…the hope which makes all of this possible is the Cross of Jesus toward which we are journeying.
But what if Lent wasn’t just about seeking forgiveness for and repentance from our sin…what if God was able to take our mess and redeem it? What if it’s not just about doing away with something, but about God taking our lives and turning them into something beautiful for His Glory?
For the 5th Sunday of Lent, we find ourselves wrestling with what it is that allows us to step out from under the weight and guilt and shame and into the freedom that Jesus makes possible. It’s simple really…and yet, so many of us have such a difficult time doing it. Truth Telling. Being honest about our sin and the dark places within us. While the world conditions us to find and live by our truth, there is an invitation to allow another truth to invade our lives. The question is, are we willing to receive it and to respond honestly about our deep need?
w/ Vern Collins
from 2 Samuel 12:1-10, 13; Psalm 51:1-4, 10-12; John 8:1-11
The season of Lent is a time of reflection. It is an opportunity to examine our lives before God and invite the Holy Spirit to reveal to us those things that are hindering our relationship with God and with those around us…and it is an opportunity to invite God to go to work in our lives…the hope which makes all of this possible is the Cross of Jesus toward which we are journeying.
But what if Lent wasn’t just about seeking forgiveness for and repentance from our sin…what if God was able to take our mess and redeem it? What if it’s not just about doing away with something, but about God taking our lives and turning them into something beautiful for His Glory?
In our 4th week of Lent, we consider perhaps one of our greatest obstacles to our relationship with God and with those around us…the unbearable weight of our guilt and shame. What if, in being honest about those things for which we are guilty, we could find freedom from the shame that keeps us far from God and isolated from others?
w/ Vern Collins
from John 13:1-17
As we approach the season of Advent, we approach a season in which (among other things), we consider the significance of the Kingdom that was inaugurated in His birth and through His ministry…but what does it mean to be a citizen of God’s Kingdom? What should mark our lives?
In His final moments with His disciples before His Passion, Jesus set an example of what posture in His Kingdom should look like. It is a posture of humility and self-giving love that is bent toward forgiveness and reconciliation.
Imagine how this could change not only your life but the lives of those around you.
w/ Vern Collins
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 Matthew 3:13-17
A life of following Jesus if full of challenges. There are many times that we wonder if it is all worth it. We might have doubt, we might have fear of what is ahead, we might wrestle with guilt over feeling like we’re not doing this well.
Unlike trips we might take in life: vacations, road trips to see a friend or some exciting place…what if in life with Christ the thing that sustains us is not the destination, but what is spoken over us at the beginning?
Imagine how your perspective of following Jesus might change if you allowed it to be sustained and rooted in the truth and good news of the beginning…that you are the beloved of God, and that God has called you into life…a life He promises to walk through with you.
w/ Vern Collins
from Luke 15:11-32
What is your understanding of God’s love for you? Is it something you simply know about, or is it something you have experienced for yourself?
In this story Jesus tells in Luke’s Gospel, our understanding of the love of God our Father might just be challenged…in life-changing ways…regardless of where you find yourself in relation to Him right now.
What if you knew God was calling you home to Him? What if you knew God was running toward you in the Person of Jesus? What if you allowed yourself to experience that embrace? What about your life might just change?
w/ Vern Collins
from Luke 19:1-10
(*including an invitation to the Lord’s Table, and to consider where we might invite someone to a fellowship meal this week. )
If the promise we have in Jesus through the Holy Spirit is that God is present with us always, then why is it that the hope we should have in that truth can seem so fleeting?
For one, we can point to the fact that we live such distracted lives…that’s it not Jesus Who is absent, it is we who are not paying attention.
For these 4 weeks we are going to look at the ways Jesus might be present with us. In knowing how Jesus longs to meet us in our day to day, we might just find that He is not only with us, He is working within us, while at the same time revealing to us the ways we might be a reflection of Who He is in the lives of people around us.
We begin with a familiar story found in Luke’s Gospel that asks us to consider the inviting nature of Jesus!
w/ Vern Collins
from Matthew 20:20-28
What is your ambition in life? That thing, or those things that you so desire to see happen, that you are willing to work diligently toward making it a reality…
In that pursuit, do you find that your ambition in competition with the ambition of those around you?
What if the lens through which you saw those around you led you not to think, “I need to be better than that person,” but instead led you to have the ambition of serving them in a way that reflects Jesus?
w/ Vern Collins
from Colossians 3:1-15
While we were created for relationship…first with God, and then with one another- in the hopes that those relationships would be a reflection of the fullness of Who God is…while this is part of the means by which we experience the full life that Jesus promises us…the reality is that relationships can be the source of some of our greatest challenges and deepest hurt in life.
In Paul’s letter to the church in Colossae, we get a window in to how we might just be able to live in to having healthier and more Christ-reflecting relationships.
w/ Vern Collins
from John 4:1-42
Have you ever considered the possibility that there is something you have in common with every other person in this world? Sure we could talk about our biological make-up, or the fact that we all call this planet home, but have you ever thought of your wounds as being the common ground you share with all other people?
What if the fact that you have been wounded, that perhaps you even still bear some woundedness…what if that were not only your point of connection with people around, but became a catalyst for the story you have to tell of Who God is in the way He has met you in those wounds and the way He has brought healing and wholeness to the places where you needed it most?
w/ Vern Collins
Testimony by Johnny Carson
