Community Christian Church

This is an interview Stephen did with Dr AJ Culp, the author of, Invited to Know God. In it, they discuss the importance of developing good habits, how prayer is the key to knowing God, and how the sabbath is an incredible gift of resistance in a world of constant work.  

Songs allow us to experience not only God’s past actions but also God’s current and future reality. Songs powerfully get stuck in our heads and can stay with us throughout the day. Songs are, therefore, a powerful tool in the war against sin and the reformation of lives. Never underestimate the power of song in the formation of our lives.    Deuteronomy 32 is a song, written by God, to teach and r...

Whether intentional or not, you are being formed/trained into a person who loves. The only real questions will be: What am I being trained to love? And, how do I love rightly? How do we become people who love rightly? We centre our whole selves on Jesus (with all of our heart and soul). We fix our eyes on Jesus and develop new habits that lead us to know him and be like him. But, this is only poss...

Deuteronomy and the New Testament ground the hope of humanity in the very same thing: God’s grace. We are invited to know God through his grace. In Jesus, we are invited into the story of God’s redemptive work. We are invited to worship God as the promise-keeping, saving God. We are invited to experience the new life God desires through the Law of Christ written on our hearts and empowered by the...

We are invited to know God through His covenant. God’s covenant is rooted in His unchanging, unfailing, and perfect love. It’s not a question of whether God will keep His part of the covenant, but whether we will keep ours. God desires to be our God and for us to be His people. 

We know and remember through the body, not just our brains. Chapters 12-26 invite us to know how we should live in the light of God’s revealed character and past faithfulness.  One of the primary ways we know and learn things is through our bodies. The instructions of 12-26 are meant to be lived, to become habits—ways of life. This would give the people of Israel a lens for understanding the world...

You and I were created to worship; therefore, It is never a matter of if we will worship, rather it is always a matter of what we will worship. Worshipping God rightly is important; worship is a way to give God his deserved glory, but more than that, it is also the place we encounter God and are invited to know him more deeply.

One of the primary purposes of Scripture, A.J. Culp says, is “to produce a ‘world’ for the faithful to 'live in.'” Scripture is not simply a mine of information nor is it merely a thought for the day. Rather, it is the foundational story that one builds their life upon and imagines themselves in. Chapters 1-4 of Deuteronomy are a deliberate travelogue that brings us to key events in Israels histor...

Jesus is most concerned about the condition of your heart.

Mark has been showing us that his statement in 1:1 is not hyperbole, but fact. Jesus may be like Moses and Elijah, but he is far greater than either of them. Only God has the power to order and tame the chaos. As the Spirit hovered over the waters and brought order out of chaos so too does Jesus.

Mark shows us that Jesus is the rightful king and the true leader of Israel, not evil Herod. The main motivations of the kingdoms of this world are pride and selfish gain but Jesus’ motivation was compassion. Jesus is the one who shows genuine hospitality to his guests. He rules with compassions and gives in abundance. 

The message of the Kingdom is good news that followers of Jesus should share with a sense of urgency. However, we see that this message will not always be seen as good news because it stands in opposition to the kingdoms we build on our own power.

None of us want to be people with whom Jesus is amazed by our unbelief. A good step in following Jesus is to ask the question, "in what ways is Jesus amazed by my faith?"

Desperation is often a catalyst for faith. In our story Jesus takes that which is unclean and makes it clean;  that which was dead now lives.

Jesus is a restorer of dignity and giver of renewal. Jesus sees people one at a time.