The Local Church

Have you ever been so excited to tell the world something special has happened in your life? God enjoys making good news announcements as well. In fact that's what the Gospel is all about and the good news of Jesus was directly opposed to the good news of Caesar. Makes for a tension filled experience... which one will we believe?

Renewing your wedding vows after 10, 15, 25 years is often powerful because the couple renewing them intimately understands the cost of the vows. They also intimately understand the blessing and beauty that is bought with that cost. The same is true for Israel in Joshua 24 and true for us today as well.

Have you ever played in the waves of Lake Michigan only to suddenly realize that where you started is no where near where you have drifted to? In chapter 23 Joshua pulls together all the leaders of Israel to give both a warning and an encouragement. He reminds them what God has done and what will happen if they decide to align themselves with the gods of the culture around them.  The easiest...

In Joshua 10, the Israelites entered a battle against the joined forces of the Amorites, but it was God fighting on their behalf. YOU are the land being battled over today, just like that land. God has already said he's going to transform you and he's already given you His own son. How will he not do whatever you need to be transformed? The fight isn't yours—it's God's.

Forgotten birthdays, Shrek, and the Master of Disguise. The Gibeonite deception in Joshua 9 and the failures involved speak into our lives today and point us to the powerful reality of God's grace to receive and accept.

Have you ever done something you know you shouldn't so you tried to hide the evidence? When I was a paper boy for the Flint Journal I thought I could occasionally hide some ad's that I didn't want to take the time to deliver. It worked for a few years, until the day it didn't... The story of Achan and Ai reminds us that our sin never stays hidden and that it always affects those around us, especia...

It can be hard to reconcile the violence recorded in Joshua 5 and 6 with the God of love that we know today. Here, we see that the defining question is "Are you on Yahweh's side or everyone else's?". Because of our heart transformation following Jesus' teachings and today's cultural differences, we may not ever be comfortable with the violence we see, but the text holds several lessons that point...

Memory is one of the most important spiritual tools Christians can use in times of trouble. When crossing the Jordan into a new and marvelous (but equally intimidating) land, Joshua and the Israelites built memorials that would remind people of God's faithfulness for generations to come. Are you keeping a record of the ways God has been faithful? You will encounter something one day that seems BIG...

Have you ever felt like an outsider? Like everyone knew the rules and the language and the handshakes and you just didn’t? The story of the foreign born prostitute hero of Joshua 2 is both awkwardly cringeworthy and beautifully instructive. This unexpected story teaches us about what God is like and why that should change how we treat the outsider.

When you hear the question "Who helped you find and follow Jesus" what faces pop into your mind? These people invariably sacrificed their time, energy and resources so you could experience what they had. This is what three of the tribes did in Joshua 1:10-19 and there is a lesson in this seemingly insignificant story for us. Who are the people that your face will pop up in their mind when they hea...

Are you on the cusp of something new, a job transition, relationship, a move or new phase of life? This is where Israel found itself as Moses has dies and Joshua is asked to lead the fledgling nation into the Promised Land. There's three lessons we can learn from Joshua's commissioning as we start our study of the book named after him. Promises have consequences, even for God.

localchurchgr.org

12.19.21

Entitlement may be the ugliest thing on planet earth and yet most of us in the West struggle with it. As our world and lives continually speed up we need to learn how to how to keep our joy, peace and love even when we don't get what we want when we want it. Jesus practiced slowness or the discipline of humble patience as an antidote to entitlement and when we choose to practice slowing ourselves...

localchurchgr.org

localchurchgr.org

We are bombarded with noise, both external and internal so much so that we can rarely remember that last time we were silent. The enemy of your soul knows that the best way to keep you from experiencing God's presence and voice is to keep the actual and figurative noise level our lives constantly humming. Jesus modeled a resistance practice for us often going into the wilderness (eremos) as a plac...

Justin Bieber and the Jonas Brothers, Moby Dick, and Jesus healing a bleeding woman and the dead daughter of Jairus. Love is patient, which makes it incompatible with hurry. Jesus was full of patient love that challenges our hurried lives and invites us into something better (Luke 8:40-56).

We're both made in God's image and made from dirt... bursting with potential, yet absolutely limited. The myth of living life without being yoked together with some type of master is an illusion. The only question is what does your master promise and what do they deliver? Jesus wasn't the first teacher to say that he had a yoke, he was just the first to say that His was light and easy. If our live...

Ever since the sundial allowed us to measure time we've felt the need to fit more into the hours we're given. Nothing has made such a drastic impact on the pace of our lives and our attention like a few inventions that debuted in 2007. If the entire Bible hangs on two commands, love God and love others, then we are doomed if we can't re-learn how to travel at the speed of love. Love is neither dis...

Most people say they want to be generous with their income and yet Americans only donate approximately 2.1%  and Christian American’s are similar at 2.3%. Why does God ask his people to give and why is it in our best interest to do so? Spoiler alert: it’s not so we can feel good about ourselves. God doesn’t want something from you, he wants something for you. This is a tutorial on how to...

Covid has stolen something from us that is central to the human experience, the ability to look forward, dream and plan. We have found ourselves (rightfully) trying to make it through the next day or week, especially as so much changed and the future was hard to imagine. Join us as we begin to look up, look ahead and re-envision a preferred future. We believe God has given us a vision to reach the...

What's the difference between a collector of baking recipes and a baker? It's in the doing. Join us as Dr. Gary Burge gives us a biblical formula for how to hear God's voice in a way that not only transforms our lives but the lives around us.

Have you ever struggled with trying to listen to God and wondering if it's God's voice or your voice that you're hearing? There's a number of ways to go about understanding someone with a radically different accent than you're used to. Find a translator, spend more time with the person, and adding subtitles are just a few options. God has an accent, a unique way of speaking to us today and when we...

"Sometimes I just feel like God's guidance is confusing!" Have you ever felt this way? God does not speak in confusion, but God is mysterious. His ways are higher than our ways, His thoughts, higher than our thoughts. Although God is mysterious, He is also consistent. The ways He has spoken in the past are often the ways He wishes to speak to us today. Join us as we look at six of those ways and h...