Bethel Covenant Church Podcast

Five of our confirmation students shared passages from scripture.  Its worth a listen!  Where are we fixing our eyes these days?

Sometimes the greatest barrier to a life of discipleship is our fixation on comparing ourselves with, criticizing, and trying to control others.  When Peter tries to point the focus onto someone else, Jesus calls him right back to his and our call.

Jesus shows up to unstick Peter from yesterdays mistakes.  What it's too late are you stuck in?

The presence of doubts and difficult questions silently frustrate and discourage many Christians.  They can even lead to a brittle kind of faith focused on winning arguments instead of encountering Jesus, but what if there is more to faith than thinking perfectly?

He is Risen Indeed! Once a year on Easter we celebrate the ressurection with a call and response, but that is with hindsight.  On the first Easter morning, no one was ready to answer back just yet it was met with joy, but also fear.  We look at not only the miracle of the Empty tomb, but the miracle that it is STILL good news for cowards, failures, and enemies of Christ like us.

When Jesus walked into Jerusalem everyone shouted Hosannah it means "Save!"  And people are still shouting it today.  What if we are right to cry out, but wrong about what we need saving from most?

Lamentations ends without resolution.   When Jesus comes only a few people are able to see him as the answer to Lamentations 5 because they are so busy trying to make it on their own.  What are we missing when convince ourselves we have the answer instead of looking for what God is really doing?

We continue our series in Lamentations with chapter 4.  Often a crisis or a disaster doesn't change us as much as it reveals what is below the surface.  After a year of let downs where can we plant our feet?

When everything fails what can we hold on to?

When things go wrong we go looking for someone to blame. Lamentations 2 offers another way. Its the same one Christ chose and it leads to freedom.

The book of Lamentations is NOT fit for a verse a day calendar, but neither are our lives.  Join this lent as we dive into how God is present in more than the beautiful pictures of life we try to paint for others.  What is in your closet?

We finish our series on the Lord's Prayer.  Jesus offers a response to the world's darkness that transforms the way we can respond to evil.  

Jesus invites us to take a look at a bill we cant pay. 

We dig into three big ways praying the Lords Prayer challenges the way humans tend to understand the world.

We move on to the second line of the pray Jesus taught.  What if Jesus came not save the earth by subtraction but addtion?  Do we have our direction backwards?

The way you pray says a lot about the God you pray to.  In the Lord's Prayer Jesus invites us to pray in a new way that reflects what's true about our world and our God.  Over the next few weeks we will break down this prayer line by line to get a better picture of who God is and what it means to live like he arrived in the person of Jesus.

Leanne Peterson our missionary's to Ukraine shared some updates on ministry and really brought the word!  Its worth a listen!

Everybody has a story about what kind of world this is, who is right and who is wrong.  God's story turns those on their head.

We turn to the most unlikely heroes in the Christmas story.  Why on earth would God choose unreliable characters like shepherds to be amoung the first to hear word of the coming new king?

Jesus was not the first to be called son of god, prince of peace, and bringer of good news. What does it mean to really believe that the baby in the manger is God, and the most powerful men and women on earth are not?

We focus on Mary this week.  Every single aspect of Mary's biography suggest she should be far away from anything important that happens in the world. The bottom of every ladder that matters, but God chooses her for the most important role any human has ever had before her.  She is not surprised, why not?

We look at how God shines impossible light into the lives of Zechariah, Elizabeth, and all those longing for something better.

We hear the story of Jesus facing off in the desert against the devil.  In this strange story he confronts three of the greatest ways human beings get pulled away from what God wants for us, how Jesus passed the test on our behalf, and what it looks like to live like that is true. 

How will we respond when God offers us something?

No one wants to face loss, uncertainty, and tragedy but what if the flames that we face aren't the end of the line? What if they are the one place we are most likely to meet God?