Our Goal Is Love

Have you ever stood at the edge of something you’ve never walked before? A diagnosis. A move. A new marriage or an empty house. In Joshua 3, a whole nation stands on the bank of the Jordan River at flood stage. They are staring at water they cannot cross and a land they have never seen. God’s instructions are not what anyone expected. No bridge. No rafts. No map. Just a gold-covered box carried ou...

Every one of us knows someone who seems too far gone. Maybe that someone is you. In Joshua 2, two spies slip into Jericho, and their very first stop is the house of a prostitute named Rahab. It looks like the story is about to go badly wrong. Rahab lies to the king's men four times to hide them. And yet God uses her. Should it surprise us when sinners act like sinners? We have fallen hearts,...

We like to think of independence as a strength and self-reliance as a virtue. Those who have it should be admired and those who don’t need to learn it. But the Bible teaches us something different. At the end of Joshua 1, Israel’s new leader begins preparing the people to cross the Jordan. Joshua gives instructions to the leaders. The leaders carry those instructions to the people. Then he turns t...

Daniel was a man who faced one challenge after another. He lived in a world filled with stress, uncertainty, and opposition to his faith. Early in his life, he faced the threat of punishment because he would not defile himself by eating the king's food. Later, King Nebuchadnezzar's troubling dreams placed Daniel and the other wise men under the threat of death when no one could provide a...

A recent study from UC Berkeley found that only 20 percent of people who see a moral wrong will do anything about it. The other 80 percent notice and keep walking.  This message opens the book of Joshua at the moment of Moses's death; the Jordan is at flood stage, and one man is left holding everything God promised a nation. God's first words to Joshua are not comforting. They are honest...

Jacob is dead, and Joseph's brothers are terrified. They sold him. They watched him disappear toward Egypt. And for seventeen years they have lived under a brother who has every reason and every resource to settle the account. The only thing holding him back, as far as they can tell, was their father. Now their father is gone. So they do what frightened people do. They send a message ahead of...

This week we are in Genesis 25:19–28, in a marriage that started about as well as a relationship can start. Isaac was the son of promise. Rebekah came from a family significant enough that Scripture names her father and her brother. When they could not have children, Isaac pleaded with God on her behalf. They were doing the right things. Then God gave Rebekah a word about the twins in her womb, an...

Everybody wants to be accepted somewhere. It is why people join lodges and clubs. It is the number one reason young people join gangs. We are made for it. Ephesians 1:6 says God has made us accepted in the beloved. The Greek word behind that phrase appears only twice in the whole Bible. The other time is when the angel tells Mary she is highly favored. This message walks through four things. The p...

Last week we sat in the hard, honest mess of Abraham's household — the Hagar story, where fear and impatience turned a family in on itself. It wasn't a comfortable text. But it was a true one, because it looked a lot like our families too. This Sunday we move ahead roughly sixty years, past Abraham, into the life of his son Isaac. And what we find is unsettling: the same sin, in the same...

God promised Abraham a nation, and then more than ten years passed with nothing to show for it. Sarah was still barren and well past the age when any of it made sense. So she did what most of us do when a promise runs long. She stopped waiting and built a plan of her own. It was reasonable, and it seemed to work for about half a verse. Then it turned the house into a war zone. And the one who suff...

Join us as we wrap up Vacation Bible School with this sermon from Colossians 2:3.  No matter what we think we are looking for, "Jesus is the treasure we seek!"

A recent article in Popular Mechanics asked whether heaven has a physical address — somewhere out past the edge of the known universe, or folded into a dimension we can't yet see. It's a question people have chased for a long time, and science keeps coming up empty. This Sunday, we look at what Scripture says instead: that heaven was never a location to find, but a person to be with.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident." Most Americans can recite the line without thinking about it. But few have paused to deeply consider what our founding document actually declares. Fewer still have held these statements up against Scripture to determine just how unalienable these truths are. This week's message looks at that preamble directly. For 250 years, the promise of...

If God is all-loving and all-powerful, why does suffering exist? It's one of the oldest objections to faith, and atheist voices like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens have built careers on it. But what if the very illustrations these thinkers use to argue against God actually point straight back to him? In this message, Pastor Major walks through Romans 8 and three unexpec...

When Sebastian Berhalter made the U.S. World Cup roster, his father, former USMNT coach Gregg Berhalter, wrote him a letter. As Sebastian read it on camera last week, he couldn't get through it without crying, undone by one line in particular: “I'm proud of you because of who you are, not because of what you accomplished.” That same kind of declaration echoes from centuries earlier, spok...

This season marks the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.  While we celebrate the birth of our nation on July 4th, if you remember your history, you know the founding was anything but swift or certain. In the early months of 1776, the delegates gathered in Philadelphia were deeply divided. Some colonies feared the consequences of a full break with England and preferred to pursu...

Sometime in the fourth century, a monk sat in the Egyptian desert and made a list of every way the human soul could go wrong. That list became the seven deadly sins, and for 1,500 years, through the fall of Rome, the Reformation, and two World Wars, theologians, poets, and pastors looked at those seven and said: that’s the whole map. That covers it. Until now.  A recent article by James Parker in...

Ella Langley recently made history as the first woman to hold the top two spots on the Hot Country Songs chart for multiple weeks — surpassing Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, who each did it for one. The song at number one was "Choosin' Texas." The song at number two was "Be Her." In the song, Langley paints a picture of the woman she wants to become — someone who isn't stu...

Baseball lost one of its giants this week. Bobby Cox—Hall of Famer, fourteen consecutive division titles, one World Series ring, and. . . 162 ejections—died Saturday at the age of eighty-four. Tributes poured in from players, coaches, and fans across the sport. But it was a single line from one ESPN commentator that caught my attention.  "I can absolutely see Bobby Cox kicking dirt on St. Pet...

Every parent carries a question they can never quite put down. What will my child be in the future, and how do I prepare them for whatever is waiting on the other side of our home? Any mother who loves their child has wrestled with the fear that they would somehow get in the way of their child achieving their full potential. If only we knew what that potential was, we would be better prepared. We...

This Sunday we wrap up our Axioms series with one of the most practical principles we've explored yet: Decisions are made in small groups and confirmed in large ones.  Every church has felt the tension that flows from the blessing of diversity. How do we honor the diversity of gifts, perspectives, and callings God has placed among us while still moving forward together with unity and purpose?...

This Sunday we continue our journey through Ephesians as Paul addresses an important question for our church—why do we exist. Paul’s answer, and the implications, will likely surprise you.  This is moving weekend for Kim and I. After two years of being in the area, we are finally able to put  down lasting roots. There’s something different about a permanent home. It’s not just a place you sleep, i...

We live in a culture absolutely obsessed with purpose. There are entire sections of Barnes & Noble dedicated to helping you find yours. Personality tests that tell you whether you're an INTJ or an Enneagram 4. TED talks with hundreds of millions of views asking the question — why are you here? And people are eating it up, because the hunger is real. Everybody wants to know that their life...

Our life is rooted in belief. The question is—whose? Most of us have never stopped long enough to ask where our deepest convictions actually came from. We inherited them. Absorbed them. And somewhere along the way, we stopped questioning whether they were actually true. Philosophers call these beliefs axioms. Self-evident truths. Propositions so foundational they need no proof, because everything...