FBC Platte City

He pleaded earnestly with him, “My little daughter is dying. Please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.” -Mark 5:23 One of the distinguishing features of the Gospel of Mark is how quick paced it is, but yet in chapter 5 verses 21-43, Mark slows down and intertwines two stories that show how unhurried Jesus was as he did his earthly ministry. You know, timing is...

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. -Matthew 16:24 I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “There is no such thing as a stupid question.” Given some of the questions you’ve heard in your lifetime, you might disagree. But regardless of if you agree with that phrase or not, I think we all agree some questions carry...

I’m a simple guy. Just tell me what you want… Some verses just boil it down for me. ‘Seek first the Kingdom of God, all the rest will be added.’ (Matt. 6:33) When asked, ‘What are the works (plural) God requires? Jesus said, ‘The WORK (singular) of God is this—to believe on the One He has sent.’ (John 6:29) When Thomas said, ‘We DON’T know where You’re going. How can we know the way?’ Jesus answer...

I love finding a promise in one place in my Bible that puts me in mind of another. Joel 2 is famous because it’s picked up by Peter centuries later when he’s addressing the crowd on the explosive day of Pentecost in Acts 2 (this is also the event known as the Birth of the Church). What does it even mean when God says, ‘I will pour out My Spirit’? Who is this for, and to what end? Let me reframe th...

There are people I love—that I long to see fall in love with Jesus. People I love, whose lives are hard—harder than they need to be. People who are running fast down dead-end roads. I know this because I have run fast down dead-end roads. I have made my own life needlessly harder. I long to see the people I love find what I have found in Jesus.  We're talking about the story of Hosea and his...

The book of Daniel contains some of the all-time favorite scenes of the Bible— lions dens, fiery furnace, magical fingers writing on the wall. The common thread all the way through is that the one who thinks he’s in control is only making noise. God’s plan is bigger, stronger, longer, and ultimately prevails— every time. The trouble is, you never know how long ‘ultimately’ might take. Daniel 3 has...

There’s something about a shaded, sun-flecked, slow moving but strong river. You can see it’s life rippling under the surface. It’s living and active. It’s inviting. More than that—pulls me into it’s flow.   Read Ezekiel 47:1-12. It’s a captivating vision. The River of Gods flows from the presence of God in this vision. Knee deep. Waist deep. Then, too deep to cross. I want to breathe its air...

He then said to me: “Son of man, go now to the people of Israel and speak my words to them. -Ezekiel 3:4    Can you imagine today being told you can’t read a certain part of the Bible until you were the age of 30? That may sound ridiculous, but there was a tradition among the Jewish rabbis that they would not allow anyone to read the book of Ezekiel until a person reached age 30 because...

“He has driven me away and made me walk in darkness rather than light; indeed, he has turned his hand against me again and again, all day long. -Lamentations 3:2-3 We're looking at the book of Lamentations. Now, we might think the book of Lamentations doesn’t really relate to us today because we aren’t facing the same dire situation as Jeremiah and the nation of Judah with the fall of the city of...

“The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah.” -Jeremiah 31:31 In the book of Jeremiah, we find repeatedly this message of sin, judgement, and destruction. But toward the middle of this book (Jeremiah 30:1-33:26), we find a message of hope and restoration, and this all culminates in the description of the New Cove...

Oh, that my head were a spring of water and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night for the slain of my people. -Jeremiah 9:1 As we continue our series, Every Word All Year, where we are working our way through the Bible, we come across some tough topics. Some topics that we might prefer to avoid. And when it comes to the book of Jeremiah, you can’t escape God’s wrath and judg...

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations. Jeremiah 1:5 Over the next few weeks, we’ll be in the book of Jeremiah and as the book begins we find that God calls Jeremiah to be a prophet. Now, as we read those words, it can be easy to dismiss them and think they only applied to Jeremiah. I mean after all, you may be...

‘I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes.’ Isaiah 5:1-2 ‘Why isn’t this working?’ You know that you’ve entered in. Life was sweet, and good, and f...

O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. Psalm 63:1 I long to be longed for. I LOVE to be loved. God made me that way. You, too. All of us. But, if we are all that needy, no one on earth can meet all that need. I invite you to let Jesus be the one to love you like that. Truthfully, He’s the only on...

I lift up my eyes to the hills-- where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. Psalm 121:1-2 One of my all-time favorite book titles is Eugene Peterson’s “A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.” It describes the life I long for as a Christ-follower. The book is a study of the Pilgrim Psalms, 120-134. It speaks of being on my life’s journey with Jesus. T...

Oh, give thanks to the LORD, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever. Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, Whom He has redeemed from the hand of the enemy, Psalm 107:1-2 We’ve all got stories… Stories of being lost, confused, giving up—giving in. We have stories about the things that keep us bound, old habits we can’t seem to break—or new ones we can’t seem to keep. We have stories about bei...

‘Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost slipped. Psalm 73:1-2 I can’t tell you how often I come back to Psalm 73. A ‘Psalm 73 moment’ is a moment of doubt, or fear. It’s a moment you don’t invite everyone into—because not everyone would get it. It’s a moment of truth, but it’s not THE TRUTH about you. It’s a moment to move through, but not a...

‘Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love and your great compassion.’ Psalm 51:1 Psalm 51 pulls back the curtain on what makes David ‘a man after God’s own heart.’ It is a psalm of confession and repentance. We glimpse the broken heart of one who has broken the heart of God. Sunday we’ll spend some time with an ancient prayer pattern, the Prayer of Examen. Paul has this great line...

“Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.” We want to worship well in front of our kids—so they will know how. Worship with joy, and faith, and hope—so our kiddos will know what worshipping in hope looks like, even if you’re worshipping through ‘the valley of the shadow of death.’ We’ll be worshipping around Psalm 23. Quot...

“Blessed is the one…whose delight is in the law of the Lord” Psalm 1:1-2    Over the next 6 weeks we will be journeying through the book of Psalms. Now you might be asking, what does the word “psalms” even mean. It’s kind of a strange word, right? Well, it simply means “songs.” And this collection of songs was the hymnbook used in ancient Israel.   But this book has not only be...

The LORD said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; blameless and upright, fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity." Job 2:3 Dumb Things Christians Say: ‘God never gives you more than you can handle.’ Then to break the tension with awkward humor, ‘God has overestimated me this time.’ We’re going to worship this Sunda...

‘Who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" Esther 4:14 ‘You don’t know what you don’t know.’ It’s so obvious that I was offended the first time I heard it. But I keep bumping into this truth. It explains so much of my hesitation, my fears, doubts, and even shame. Sometimes I re-frame it in my head, ‘You CAN’T know what you don’t know.’ That’s when the cliché becomes...

‘All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.’ Hebrews 11:13 The presence or absence of God is the determining factor in my satisfaction with life.  When I’m longing for Him, and He’s nowhere to be found—I am inconsolabl...

The Glorious Presence of the Lord filled the Temple.’ 2 Chronicles 5:13 Highest Holy Day in the Old Testament—the dedication of the Temple. The preparations, expense, artistry, the sheer labor of it all. And when the time came, the presence of God fell on the place. Fell so thick, in fact, that the priests were pushed out. The Presence of God just took up all the space. Highest Holy Day in the New...

The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is this?” Matthew 21:9-10 What is so great about the timing of Palm Sunday this year is that we’ve been reading through the books of Samuel...