More Than Bread

Send me a Text Message! Just imagine that first Christmas.  No Christmas trees or Santas, no lights, lines, or ornaments, No Christmas cards, bell-ringers or stockings hung by the chimney with care. If we were there that first Christmas eve, we would gaze upon 2 poor homeless people, unmarried, spending the night in a lean-to shed attached to the back of an adobe house.  We'd see a young teen...

Send me a Text Message! I hope you can hear me say, don’t get so busy in the Christmas season, that you miss the story. Take some time out, a pause from the Claus, and let your mind and your heart ponder Jesus. Let your soul saturate a bit in Christ. Read the story. Did you know that only 22% of the adults in America feel like they could accurately retell the Christmas story. Read it in Matthew, L...

Send me a Text Message! Mary's song is a song of subversive hope for light in the darkness. And where does it start?  It starts with "My soul magnifies the Lord."  My soul is a magnifying glass for Jesus. Could we say that? When people look at Jesus through us does He look big or small? My soul magnifies the Lord. Here is what I hear in those words. Her God filled her up.  When she...

Send me a Text Message! Now if I started this episode by telling you that we are going to dive into the Christmas conspiracy…what would you think? It’s not political, it has absolutely nothing to do with q'anon…or any deep state stories. In fact I’m not even talking about consumerism or the war on Christmas. I’m not.   It's not the war on Christmas that I'm speaking about. It's...

Send me a Text Message! Christmas is the story of how God poured out his favor on the world, through a baby. That's an interesting word isn't it? Favor. "Hey would you do me a favor?" When we ask someone to do us a favor we're saying, "You don't owe me. I don't necessarily deserve this, but I'm wondering if you would do it anyway." Our prayers are...

Send me a Text Message! All of us at some point, should ask and answer this question, "Jesus are you the one? The Christmas story answers the question with an unqualified yes. And understand, if Jesus really is the one, if he really is who He claimed to be, then He is the single most significant person who every lived. He is preeminent in everything. And if He is preeminent in everything, tha...

Send me a Text Message! Do you ever get this sense around December 26th that something is missing? That nagging feeling that we've forgotten something we should've remembered.  Sometimes what we forget is simply this... "It's not my birthday, it’s his. Christmas is the celebration of Jesus' birthday. It’s his day. Now let me make it clear, we make such a big deal of  celeb...

Send me a Text Message! I don't care who you are, or how little, invisible or unneeded you feel.  You are not unimportant to God.  You matter and He knows you.  Jesus  once said, "He's numbered the hairs of your head." It's not because He has a hair obsession, He has a you-obsession.  If you feel like you are living in the margins of life, He is so close. He's attract...

Send me a Text Message! I've been reading the Gospel Christmas stories since I was a kid (and that's a long time). I've been preaching the Gospel Christmas stories for 35+ years, the same ol stories! And yet to be honest, they never get old. What we celebrate at Christmas is so wondrously holy. And even though there isn’t a single gospel Christmas story that I haven’t heard and prea...

Send me a Text Message! Our broken Christmas tree...I'm not talking about a crooked Fraser Fir; or a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. We're talking genealogy; family tree. Jesus's family tree is laid out in Matthew 1:1-17. Be honest, when you read Matthew's Christmas story, you start at vs 18. "Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows..." If you are like me, more tha...

Send me a Text Message! What's the message of Christmas? Back when our kids were still kids, we used to ring the Salvation Army bell together. I remember one Christmas down at the Corner Room, just watching the people go by...teenagers with shaved heads and nose rings...a yuppie and his significant other...college students of every shape, size and color...a jogger...a few young men going into...

Send me a Text Message! I wonder sometimes, if a lot of us like Christmas Jesus, more than we love grown-up Jesus? And so Christmas might be our once a year opportunity to think about this sweet cuddly baby Jesus who isn't old enough  to know our minds, or strong enough to change our ways, or holy enough to convict our hearts. But I believe that we miss the true story of Christmas, if we don&...

Send me a Text Message! Isaiah 64 is a lament. A lament is a prayer that cries out to God in desperation for His presence. It is a prayer that pounds on the locked gates of heaven. It is a prayer of deep pain, intense frustration and confusion about the absence of God.  And yet a lament is not just the hopeless cry of a discouraged people, or a frustrated venting. A lament is a profound statement...

Send me a Text Message! Christmas is a global, timeless, eternal story, but for a moment, I want to step back from that big overarching story being written through all time and space, that includes all of humanity and I want to talk about your story. Let's talk about your personal story. That's one thing I love about Christmas. When Christ was born, God got personal. And Christmas is a g...

Send me a Text Message! It was the birth of a baby. Don't get me wrong. I love babies. But if you are going to change the world, don't send a baby. Right? Until we take into account the ripple effect. It's almost easier to watch it than it is to explain it. We’ve all done it. You’ve taken a rock and thrown it into the water and you watched the circles rippling outward from the point...

Send me a Text Message! Jesus the light of the world, the light of life has come! Isn't that the story of Christmas?  But here's the most amazing part of the Christmas story of light. He invites us to join him. As I was studying Isaiah 9 this week, I had this thought. Here it is. When I think of the Isaiah's Christmas vision of Jesus. I'm reminded that Jesus is the Mighty God,...

Send me a Text Message! The ultimate goal of this podcast is that we would grow to love the one who is called the WORD of God and that as God covers us in His love, we would become a bit more like Jesus. If we keep going to scripture to listen and learn but we never lean into it. We never apply it. We never let it change us, then it’s been a colossal waste of my time and yours. But if you’re looki...

Send me a Text Message! This episode is a hard one. No ifs, ands, or butts, it’s a hard one. In this episode we are going to talk about the unmistakable and often necessary connection between suffering and joy. We’ll start with the last part of chapter 1 in Paul’s epistle of joy but we might roam a bit farther afield in God’s word also, because this is a good topic to get a broad sense of God’s he...

Send me a Text Message! What is your dream?  You have probably heard the phrase, "The great American dream..." It's all about gaining what we (think we) need for happiness, joy, comfort, success etc.  Isn't that we often live? Gain all we can now. We live to gain. I want to win now. I want the job now, security now, the most recognition now. I want to be the one. Maybe you know...

Send me a Text Message! The gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ...is all about the way in which the weakest, most despised, most difficult people in the world, can become through the power of God, the most beautiful, most radiant, people in the world. The gospel is all about how God finds gold in the garbage; how God does good things in bad times.  Or as Leonard Sweet puts it, "...whatever...

Send me a Text Message! We are in Paul’s letter from prison to his friends at Philippi. You know as I’ve been studying through Paul’s letter, thinking about his context and mine, I find myself in the last chapter of my life. I’m hoping it’s a long chapter, but if there are three acts to my life, I’m in act 3. So I think even more about finishing well than I have before. Paul’s words in Acts 20:24...

Send me a Text Message!  Paul's letter to the church at Philippi has power because his words of joy are the words of someone who has experienced unexpected barriers to joy.  His life was full of the kind of circumstances that tend to discourage and depress us.  Paul left a mark on others, at least in part because of his joy. He calls us to joy from the unexpected prison and circumstantial bar...

Send me a Text Message! There is a simple story in Luke 17 about 10 men who were healed of leprosy by Jesus. Not immediately in His presence, but on their way as they went to the Priest. They were healed on the way, and when they were healed, one returned to Jesus to say thank you. One returned and 9 did not. And my simple challenge in this episode is to "be the one." Paul begins his let...

Send me a Text Message! Perhaps few things are more essential for the life we long to live than the essential of joy.  Unexplainable, uncontainable, contagious and outrageous, extreme joy.  I'm not sure if I should try to distinguish between happiness and joy.  But I'm not talking about a pain-free existence. And I'm not talking about getting everything I want, when I want it. I&apo...

Send me a Text Message! As we look around us and even look within us, is it so crazy to believe that Paul might be right? A battle between God and evil rages around us. If so, how do we fight a battle we can't see, against forces we don't know, with weapons we aren't even sure we are trained for? I've experienced some battle, in fact more battle in the last few years than I can...