Digging In

There are times when we are desperate for help (we’re going through a difficult time, we’re in a slump, or our marriage is struggling, or a pandemic is occurring, or whatever), and so we cry out to God for help and we are willing to do whatever he tells us to do. But then when he gets us through it and things start to go well for us again, we forget about God and we just get back to life as normal...

Like the money manager in the story, your time in the game will come to an end, and then the only thing that will have any real lasting value is the relationships that you made while you were in the game. So many guys get caught up with the money, the big league lifestyle and the attention that you get from being a Major League Baseball player. But then once the game is over, all of this starts to...

If I had to pick one word that describes the way most people are feeling right now, it would probably be the word anxious. For most of this year, life as we know it has been completely disrupted. What the future will look like is a little uncertain. And this lack of certainty and this disruption to daily life naturally creates some level of anxiousness. Psalm Reading: Psalm 47:6-9 Scripture Readin...

We had spent the last several months going through the gospel according to Matthew, and so I wanted to wrap up that series with a bird’s-eye view of the entire account so that we could see the big idea that Matthew is trying to present to his readers. A big reason that I wanted to do this is that I wanted to challenge some of our popular ideas and preconceived notions about what the gospel is all...

In this teaching, Jesus is warning is his own followers and he is pronouncing judgement against the leadership in Jerusalem. In their own efforts to do what they thought was pleasing to God, God’s own people were blind to the fact that they were rejecting him in the process. That is a very sobering reminder for all of us. This was a difficult message to prepare for and not the kind of message that...

In this teaching, Jesus is clearing up some misconceptions that his own disciples had about belonging to his kingdom and exactly how the kingdom of God was going to go about exercising power, overcoming evil and conquering the world. In this particular teaching to his disciples, Jesus directly challenges our normal ideas about power and redefines greatness and status in a way that was just as revo...

In this teaching, Jesus is answering a question that many of us might ask today and he shares a story that should rattle us a little bit. Jesus is laying out a requirement for those who belong to his kingdom movement and he wants to make sure that his followers get it. What Jesus teaches us here is clear and straightforward and it has me checking myself to make sure I’m obeying him in this area an...