Atlanta Westside Presbyterian Church

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When our relationship with God goes sideways, God pursues us to repair it. In the 8th century BC, God sent the prophet Micah to Israelites who had grown spiritually complacent, economically corrupt and socially unjust. Micah’s “covenant lawsuit” called them to clear the air, review the facts, stop bargaining, and sync with the heart of God.

The book of Job is not just about why bad things happen to good people, but about how to trust God in a world where all kinds of things happen that we don’t understand. By asking Job dozens of questions, God presses Job to recognize the natural limits of his own understanding and the necessity of trusting him. Yet instead of making Job smaller, this dependence actually expands his dignity and his...

The strange story of Balaam illustrates four vital principles for how those who trust in God should relate to those who don’t: 1) People change people. For good or ill, the people we spend the most time around will inevitably shape our perception of what is possible, desirable or good. 2) If you belong to Jesus, you are blessed – but only because of grace. Balaam’s prophecies and their fulfillment...

God asks Moses, “Who made your mouth?” to shift his focus from his own limited self-knowledge to God’s own powerful knowing. And so we also see that God knows our story, because he’s the one writing it. We see that God knows our capacity, because he made us and is with us. And we see that God knows our frame, because he is does not leave us alone. All this is only possible because of Jesus, the Gr...

The first question God asks humanity is still the central question for all of us: Where are you? – that is, Where are you in relation to God? To help us answer it, God asks three more questions. The second, Who told you that you were naked? invites us to consider what other voices we are listening to to define reality, other than God’s? We can never silence those voices, but we can pursue habits a...

The incarnation of Jesus transforms our experience of Given Family, adopts us into his Eternal Family, and challenges us to build an ever-changing Pilgrim Family along the way. Your Given Family is the family you grew up in, whether biological, adopted or otherwise. Your Forever Family is the family of God, into which you were adopted through faith in Jesus, and with whom you will spend eternity....

Christians should enjoy stuff more than anyone else in the world, because Jesus shows us the heart of the One who made it all. At the same time, we should distrust stuff more than anyone else, because Jesus showed us what our hearts are capable of doing with it. We enjoy stuff by receiving it as an undeserved gift from the God who made it and by sharing it with others who don’t deserve it, either....

Your body is very good because God made it, Jesus has one, and the Holy Spirit lives there. It’s easy for us to live under a spiritualized worldview—like it’s only the spiritual things that are really good and important to God. But since he is the Good Creator, all of creation, all of this physical stuff, is infused with his goodness. Even though that goodness is damaged by sin, God still cares ab...

What distinguishes the true Gospel from false gospels, and faithful messengers from false prophets, is the cross of Jesus. Just as Paul bears the “marks of Jesus” (v. 17) in the scars on his physical body, so Christians today ought to bear evidence of the death-and-resurrection pattern in our lives. Two ways to uncover the real patterns in our lives are to ask: Whose opinions matter most to us? an...

Believers saved by grace through faith in Jesus have the power of the Holy Spirit to help us grow in actively bearing each others’ burdens. Because God has ordered the world so that we generally “reap what we sow,” he challenges us in at least three specific ways: 1. You should make a habit of helping people carry their burdens, no matter who they are or what they believe, but the category of peop...

Christians justified by faith in Jesus are no longer under the burden of law-keeping, but we are called to fulfill the “law of Christ” – that is, to love one another the way Jesus loves us. To do this, we must recognize the difference between a burden (v. 2) and a load (v. 4). A burden is too heavy to carry alone, whereas a load is a reasonable personal responsibility that must be carried alone. L...

The Christian life is a fight between the desires of what Paul calls the “flesh,” or the sinful nature, and the desires of the Spirit. The desires of the flesh automatically produce ugly “works,” like fungus, that dominate and divide us. The desires of the Spirit, on the other hand, draw out beautiful fruits of character that pull people together in relationship. If you are a Christian, the Spirit...

Faith in Jesus rewrites our family tree, making spiritual freedom not only our inheritance but our birthright. Apparently the Judaizing Christians in Galatia were claiming to be the “real deal” because they descended from Abraham and Sarah. Actually, says Paul, those who try to earn God’s favor by keeping the law are not children of the free woman (Sarah), but of the slave woman (Hagar). As a resu...

In this selected passage, we get a glimpse into the heart of a shepherd. Paul is perplexed about the Galatians because he wants them to believe and walk in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He pleads with them to follow his example by reminding them of their mutual love and to know his jealousy for them. Even though his tone is firm, a shepherd’s tone reflects the Father’s jealous heart for us.

If you want freedom and rest, you will live in slavery; but if wanting God is the center of your life, you will find freedom and rest and more than you can imagine.

Trying to keep the law is like being a slave, but living by faith in Jesus is like inheriting a fortune. Jesus bought this inheritance for us by crawling under the yoke of the law and climbing onto the cross to redeem us. Forgiveness is just the beginning of the inheritance, which includes the Holy Spirit’s assurance that we belong to him, the privilege of participation in the “family business,”an...

We all want the freedom to be uniquely ourselves and yet fully accepted and valued by others. Paul captures this vision in verses 26-29, arguing that it is only possible through faith in Jesus – not by performing works of the law. He first defends this claim by showing how God’s promise to Abraham precedes, and therefore supersedes, the law that came 430 years later. Next he shows why God gave the...

Paul resumes his defense of the true Gospel with a simple contrast: To live by works of the law is to be cursed, whereas to live by faith in Christ is to be blessed. Easy choice, right? Yet every human heart still naturally gravitates toward living by law. To convince (or re-convince) us, Paul first reaches back to four Old Testament scriptures that expose the futility of living by law. Then he th...

If Peter and the Galatian Christians could be foolishly "bewitched" by a false, legalistic gospel, then we can, too. In fact, most Christians default to living as if we are saved by grace and then sanctified by works. Paul dismantles this disastrous error, reminding us that the same grace that saves us also sanctifies us. It's why the Holy Spirit enters us at conversion and continues working in us...

Paul rebuked Peter for a seemingly minor inconsistency: refusing to eat meals with Gentile Christians. However, the heart of the Gospel was at stake. As Paul goes on to explain, no law, whether the Jewish Torah or any man-made standard of behavior, can "justify" sinful people – only faith in Jesus Christ can. Faith unites us to Jesus so thoroughly that we are both crucified and raised with him: Cr...

Paul was not defending his apostleship for his own name's sake, but for the truth of the Gospel that he was called to preach to the Gentiles. It mattered because Paul was aware of the Gospel's benefits: its nature, freedom, and unity. The nature of the Gospel was to reach the nations. The freedom of the Gospel was in Christ purchasing our freedom from the curse of the law. The unity of the Gospel...

Christianity is not just a rescue religion, but a revealed religion that depends on the authority of Scripture. Here Paul insists on what no one else can claim today: that the Gospel he preached was revealed to him directly by Jesus. To defend this bold claim, he simply tells his own story, which shows that he’s not telling us what we want to hear, nor what he wanted to hear, nor what anyone else...

Nothing is more serious than getting the Gospel wrong, and we are all in danger of it. Before revealing how the Galatians were distorting it, Paul subtly outlines the true Gospel: the good news that because of the death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s old plan has now inaugurated a new era of history, making a new family of people with a new record and a new relationship and a new future that is...

The trippy visions of Daniel 7 are meant to comfort and encourage believers that God is actively ruling the world, no matter which terrifying or wicked forces may be at work in it. The vision also introduces the enigmatic figure of the Son of Man who receives dominion from God (the Ancient of Days), and then shares that dominion with the “saints” who trust him. Centuries later, Jesus claimed this...