from Luke 3:21-22
When Jesus, the sinless One stepped into the waters of baptism, He stepped into so much more. Our understanding of this shapes our understanding of who we are and the life that is possible in life with Jesus.
w/ Vern Collins
Tag: Purpose
(March 22, 2020) “Trusting God’s Silence”
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
“Hearing God’s Voice” (May 5, 2019)
from Numbers 22:22-35
On a special one-off Sunday (which serves as a perfect insert in our “Encounters With Jesus” series), we recognize that as a school year wraps up, as people are preparing for transition, as one chapter ends and a new one begins, the question often asked is, “what is God’s plan for my life?”
From Creation, to the Heavens, to God’s Spirit, God is speaking…drawing us in…revealing Who He is to us. The question is, can we hear Him? Are we able to recognize God’s voice when it comes?
w/ Lory Beth Huffman
“As For You: A Life Worthy” (October 30, 2016)
from Ephesians 4:1-16
It does not take long in this life before we begin working to be seen as being worthy…worthy of affection, worthy of attention, worthy of responsibility, worthy of advancement, worthy of acceptance. Too often, we will go to great lengths to prove our worth, and too often come away feeling more unworthy for what we sacrificed in the process.
What if you began to live out of the worth you are already given in Christ? What if you rather than living to prove your worth, you strived to live a life that reflects the fact that you have already been called, “worthy.”
And what would it look like to do that in the context of the Body that is the Church?
w/ Vern Collins
“As For You: Identity and Purpose” (September 18, 2016)
from Ephesians 1:1-14
At any given point in life you may feel like you are in the midst of an identity crisis…if, “crisis,” feels too strong, then we could call it an, “identity challenge.” From the moment you become self-aware, you also become conscious of how that self fits into the world around you, and whether or not others’, “selfs,” like what they see in yours…
And it’s not just a constant evaluation of self that you have to worry about…as you get older, you then begin to ask what your purpose in this world is. That combined with the worry over identity and we are often left not sure if we like who we are because we’re not sure we know what we are supposed to do.
We begin our series through Ephesians by starting with these two basic struggles and find that in Christ we are offered the answer to both…
w/ Vern Collins
“You Asked For It: How Do I Interact With the World?” (September 11, 2016)
from Matthew 5:13-16
ou’ve likely heard that Christians should be, “in the world, but not of the world.” This saying comes from something Jesus says in the 17th chapter of John’s Gospel as he is praying to His Heavenly Father on behalf of His disciples. While this saying is not incorrect, too often we have a tendency to view it as the finish line when in reality, Jesus meant for it to be the starting point.
What if you began to think of being set apart as having purpose, rather than thinking about it as simply being sequestered from the rest of the world? Imagine what your life, leveraged in every situation for the sake of the Gospel, might begin to look like!
w/ Vern Collins
“Paul: Driven by the Gospel” (May 29, 2016)
from Romans 1:1-17
What drives you? That question is best answered with the question, “what day is it?” Simply put-what drives us is often determined by the season in life, the predicament, or the circumstance in which we find ourselves. It is determined by the life we seek for ourselves or the goals we have in front of us.
What if all of those things were filtered through a central driving force? What if your life were driven by the Gospel of Christ? What if it informed and determined everything else that drives you?
Week 2 in our series on Paul considers a life “set apart for the Gospel of Christ.”
w/ Vern Collins