Grace for New Life

Becoming the person that God envisions us to be will require that we learn to lead & learn well.  That is challenging because different styles of leading are required at different stages of the learning process. By following Jesus & learning from the way He led, we help fulfill the mission He gave us of helping make disciples from all nations.

All of us have three different kinds of relationships: an Up relationship with God, In relationships with the people with whom we share our life, and Out relationships with the wider community. But we tend to be weak in one kind of relationship, resulting in a life that is flat & out of balance. Jesus came to give us a rich, full life and he is the One who brings balance to our relationships.

Failure to function as God designed us can lead to burnout or a wasted life. But with a life-giving rhythm of rest and work that is anchored in and attuned to Jesus, our life can be sustainably fruitful.

Following Jesus can seem like drudgery if we don’t learn from Jesus and pattern our life after His. But by using the Kairos Circle when special moments happen in our lives, we can more fully follow Jesus and an abundant life with Him.

Sometimes there are bad things that happen in life with no apparent redemptive quality. Yet God the Son came into this world for times just like these. For when it seems that all is lost, with Jesus, we always have the consolation that he is God-with-us.

On our own, we are unable to see beyond this finite existence & when we encounter unsurmountable challenges, it can feel like darkness is closing in around us. But Jesus is the Light of the World who came to show us that there is more to life than what we are living right now.

Though we often trust in other things to save ourselves, what we have & our hopes and dreams for the future, God sends us signs, large and small, to invite us into a deeper relationship with him. Because of his greatest sign, the gift of Jesus, we can trust that God loves and accepts us just as we are.

With all the challenges and turmoil we experience in life, we yearn for peace. Jesus brings us peace by healing and completing us. As we let God recalibrate our beliefs in worship & the Holy Spirit aligns our behavior with those beliefs, we able to live in peace & share that peace with others.

It is difficult for us to be helpless in the midst of personal turmoil. But Jesus brings hope into the midst of turmoil. He is with us and He is working things out for the best for us in the end. Therefore, we keep our eyes on Him and we wait in faith.

People often dream of a better future, but we want it on our terms and in our timing. The Bible helps us to reset our dreams, aligning them with God’s dream for all creation and trusting in Jesus to fulfill that dream at just the right time. With our eyes on Jesus, we dare to dream extravagant dreams of how we can partner with Jesus in filling the new heavens and earth with people who have faith i...

Lists are significant when they are connected with the power and authority to preserve or give live in the face of death. In today’s passage, we read about a Book of Life that lists the names of all the people who will be given eternal life with God forever. Through His one, perfect sacrifice, Jesus has written our name in the Book of Life and erased any record of our weaknesses and failures. Ther...

Sometimes it can seem like the bad guys are winning and standing on the side of goodness seems pointless. But God has promised that, when the time is right, He will bring about the fulfillment of all things, including the banishment of evil. Therefore, we have hope, and our life story finds fulfillment in God’s grand story of the renewal and restoration of all things.

Because of our uncomfortableness with death, we tend to deny or solve it. But our human efforts to deal with death only burden & bind us. God has solved our death problem by sending Jesus to undo what has been done and repair the damage done by death. Therefore, we rest in Jesus as a new person headed towards Resurrection Life.

There are times when the challenges of life overwhelm us and we feel like dry, life-less bones with no hope. But our God is a God who can breathe the Holy Spirit into us and bring the dead back to life. Therefore, we have hope.

Sometimes we find ourselves in situations that overwhelm and disorientate us. It can feel like we are strangers in a strange land. But God's people have been in situations like this before. God encouragement to us is to keep listening to Him for He has a good plan for our lives with a hope-filled future.

All of us have situations in life when we are filled with fear & fear can prevent us from doing the right thing. But faith in the God who saves will help us to have the courage we need to move forward in the face of fear.

All of us have a reservoir of shame that surfaces when it gets pricked. But God invites us to identify our emotions & use them to discover our own shame story & evaluate our beliefs & assumptions. God’s grace & love gives us the courage & truth we need to replace false beliefs & assumptions with truth, and then live a new story with a new ending.

Our society has changed so rapidly over the past few decades that it seems like our old ways of navigating human sexuality issues no longer work. But in the past in times like these, Christians were able to be a great blessing to the world around them as they rested in Jesus’ love & let Him live His life through them. Jesus will help us to be faithful in a changed world.

Jesus' appearance to his followers in the Upper Room after his resurrections how Jesus is able to come into our life and replace our fear and anxiety with his perfect peace. When Jesus steps into the room, he changes everything. Presented by Dr. Jim Gimbel, President of Concordia Lutheran Seminary, Edmonton AB.

The pain we suffer when others sin against us means it is hard for us to forgive them, especially when forgiving them means we agree to pay the cost of their forgiveness. But it is easier for us to forgive others when we realize the worth of what God has already forgiven us.

The topic of human sexuality can be a messy one to wade through. But we need to delve into this topic and see what God says on this matter so that we can live out our personal sexuality with integrity and faithfulness.

Sometimes it is hard for us to go to God and pray. As Jesus teaches about prayer, he tells us that because of our heavenly Father’s perfection, graciousness and goodness, we can pray dependently, shamelessly and expectantly.

We think ourselves to be wise. But Jesus knows that we need a major renovation in our heart so that we have a character, love and goals that aligns with His and, with His help, enables us to proceed through life thoughtfully and with wisdom so that we are able to make a difference now that will last forever. Jesus is ready and willing to begin that renovation.

We think that we know ourselves accurately, but we often read ourselves wrong. In the Story of the Great Banquet, Jesus shows us humility will help us to read ourselves accurately and see the mercy and generosity that God has for us.

Sometimes it is hard for us to understand why bad things happen in this world. In the story of the Wheat and the Weeds, Jesus not only explains why this is so, He also shows us how we can part of making a greater eternal difference for good in the world.