NCC Daily

How does this kid in the Old Testament, under the inferior covenant, show his love to a king without condition and without an agenda? I honestly do not know, but I am challenged by this kind of unique and unconditional love.

You can bring that weariness this Advent season because the King creator is into trading beauty for ashes, shame for significance, and pain for peace.

God is with you. God is for you. Live today in the wonders of His love.

My prayer for us in this season is that we would learn to partner with Hope Himself. May the word hope have a whole new meaning to us. A new expression. A new experience. Hope has a name. Hope is with us.

My prayer for us all as we observe Advent together and as we prepare to gather with friends and family this holiday season is that we experience and recognize the hope that is Jesus. Christ, who came to the earth in the most humble of forms, to live a life full of hope for His people. For me. For you. May our weary souls rejoice. For we have a thrill of hope; a hope that is just what we need when...

Hope is expectant, forward-looking faith, and in such trying times, it can be hard to hold onto hope. That's why we need to surround ourselves with supportive community—other Christians who can point us to our hope in Christ when our hope dims, and for whom we can do the same.

God’s love is generous. My Grammy and Papa taught me so much about what it means to be a generous person. Their generosity throughout my childhood taught me what it meant to become a generous adult. They never ran out of love for us kids, and apparently, that meant the Candy Drawer never ran out of candy, even after Christmas, and even into adulthood.

There are three functions that I want to encourage us in from our Scripture as we prepare ourselves for the message of hope throughout this week. Being a hope bringer, being a hope carrier, and a hope establisher.

Biblical peace is more than just the absence of conflict. As a follower of Jesus, peace is an intentional action toward restoration in humanity’s brokenness. It’s not something we can just conjure up or manipulate, but in reality, it’s something that can only be achieved by practicing peacemaking (not to be confused with peacekeeping) in community.

The word for peace in Hebrew that is used throughout Scripture is shalom. The “peace” that shalom is speaking of actually has less to do with happiness or calmness and more to do with wholeness and completeness.

Peace is not found in the experiences of your life or the lot that you have been given. Peace can only truly be felt deep in your soul. So, what does it mean to me to have soul-level peace?

The Advent season is a season of waiting. Waiting for the coming of the revelation of God Himself in human form. The revelation of salvation. The revelation of the fullness of God’s love, joy, hope, and peace. Peace. The anticipation of the coming of peace.

We begin a season called Advent and a series called God With Us. Over the next four weeks, we’re talking about peace, hope, love, and joy. I think we need more of all four.

The Spirit of God is looking to rest upon you and our calling is to yield to this, give up and allow full control so the Spirit may lead us and when we do we can find rest.

There are so many disconnections when we don’t seek to understand the true character of the Trinity, but the disconnect I want to highlight most today is this: we are created in the image of a Triune God that is in community with each other.

I had asked the Lord to give me a life, not a job, not a career, but a life. I wanted what I did every day to mean something. My life Scripture became, "Here I am Lord, send me." from Isaiah 6:8. Well, the Lord took my prayer request seriously and I learned that God provides.

The best part about my life is not knowing where I’m going but being constantly surprised of what God is doing. I encourage you to raise your sail and catch the wind of the Holy Spirit. You’ll never regret it or whatever you leave behind because He always has better.

For this devotional, I’d like to talk about the idea that God uses the fruit of the Spirit in us to draw people closer to Him.

Today, I just want to bless you. I want to send you off with a blessing into the weekend. I don’t know what your weekend will look like, but I certainly want to do that.

God has married my heart with His in His mission for His creation with prayer, intercession and the prophetic to edify, encourage, and comfort as Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 14:3.

I like to use the sentence, I’m happy you’re here because saying that phrase is the action step I choose to take. It is so simple, a quick little “I am happy you are here”, and it reassures the overthinking mind and clarifies the tone of any situation. We are looking for genuine and honest interactions here, but how incredible would it be if we just said what we felt, and made sure people knew tha...

As I have encountered people in all walks of life during my assignments in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Argentina, Washington, DC, Chad, and now Switzerland, I have tried, imperfectly, to be the visible expression of God's love to those I meet. In many cases, it is simply by not ignoring them; but truly seeing them and engaging with them as one child of God to another.

Today I want to talk about how we, as Christians and the church, can impact the world by laying down the best foundations for people to encounter and interact with God. For that to happen, it is vitally important that we, the church, create places that have what I want to call, delicate eco-systems—where soil is rich and full of nutrients and the Spirit is present, but where if the wrong things ar...

While we are believing for at NCC, and doing big things in our communities—addressing ongoing violence, caring for survivors of sexual exploitation, providing compassion and care for the most vulnerable; Jesus says "whatever you do for the least of these, you do unto me." So, we believe it begins, empowered by the Spirit, with small acts of love.

About ten years ago I emerged from a particularly rough period in my life and ministry with several valuable lessons that God taught me. One lesson was about the gospel and the kingdom of God. In the Old Testament, the Israelites built monuments to remember lessons learned. The tattoo on my forearm is a “personal monument” for me to remember the lessons. The design is a Trinity or Celtic knot.