The Big Dream Podcast by Meadow Heights Church

To learn from Jesus without practicing what he says is a foolish and unstable way to live your one and only life. Wise people build their lives on an unshakable foundation by choosing again and again to love like Jesus and live as Jesus.

Choosing life over death requires discerning between true and false influences. Seeing the good or bad fruit they produce empowers us to choose the influence we want to follow.

In Christ, God has already chosen life for us all, but he lovingly lets us choose when and how much we experience the new life he gives. Why would we miss out by going down the wide road when the road less traveled leads to more and better life both now and later?

Because the way of life is a person, discipleship to Jesus is an experience of loving and being loved. We come alive in God’s kingdom when we choose to practice God’s love, not by our devotion to theories and ideas about God. Our choice to practice love or not determines whether we’re moving closer to or further from the invitation of Jesus to become human again.

We anticipate with great hope the day that God’s justice fully arrives and forever changes the world. Trusting God to be the judge frees us to live in love. By learning a life of love now, we’ll be prepared for a future when only love will remain.

No judgment doesn't mean no feedback or input, but it does mean we don’t see ourselves as superior to others. Instead, we live in mutual relationship with them, humbly giving and receiving feedback. It’s in the absence of judgment that we are free to help each other grow and flourish in love.

Fake news about God, ourselves, others and reality lies at the root of all that is wrong in the world. When we act on these lies, destruction always follows. But when we see and act on the truth about God and ourselves, we will also see the truth about others and reality. The truth frees us to live fully in love.

We are constantly tempted to place ourselves in the center of everything, creating a false orbit that traps us in perpetual judgment. But when we recenter our lives in God and receive his love as the grounding force that provides everything we need, we’re empowered to love people instead of judging them.

The culture teaches us to respond to judgment with judgment in a never-ending cycle, fueling more and more anger and hate. Jesus invites us to the slow burn of love that’s kindled by a commitment to remain in love in the midst of judgment.

There’s no need to work harder or climb higher to get more love, because we have all the love we can live in right now. We are learning to live in that love, so we practice love to become more loving.

God’s love is directed to us, dwelling in us, and flowing through us—back to God, to ourselves, to others, and to all creation. As the much-loved children of God, we become an unstoppable source of God’s love that changes our world.

Everything depends on disciples who learn from Jesus how to love like Jesus and live as Jesus. Such disciples resist a culture of division and judgment since we cannot love and judge others at the same time.

From the cradle to the cross, our faith is grounded in the scandalous story of a God who dives into our mess to love us at any cost. To live in such shocking love is to give it to others, as well.

Life is hard. But when we practice surrendering to the love of God in all situations, we can learn the worry-free life Jesus invites us into.

God meets us in the good, bad, and ugly of our real lives, and he cares more about all of it than we do. Because God is always with us and at work, we can let go of worry and surrender to his loving care.

When we live in the fear of not having enough, we become enslaved by greed and injustice, convinced we have to take care of ourselves. But when we believe Jesus and trust that God always has enough to graciously care for us, we are set free to love and serve others with generous hearts.

Life in the love of God lasts forever. When I choose to treasure his presence in this life, I’m already learning to enjoy him in the next one. Love is the one treasure that cannot be destroyed and that I will never lose.

If we see what our eyes are trained to see, it matters who I trust to train me. The life I get will be shaped by the trainer I choose.

Greed is deceptive and so subtle we may not even know we have fallen into it. Surrendering to the law of love offers us a way to escape the trap of greed.

We see what our eyes are trained to see. Learning how to see aright leads to inner transformation from darkness to light.

I can live for the approval of others or from the love of God that’s already mine. The first is exhausting because it never ends, and the other is transforming because it never stops. The reward is what happens in me, not what people see. But the treasure I want is the treasure I get.

When prayer is unanswered, we can’t assume it was because God said “no.” We trust that prayer accomplishes much, whether we can see it or not. When a prayer that aligns with God’s will doesn’t bring about God’s will, or when anything happens contrary to God’s will, we only know that our prayers make some kind of impact, moving the world toward God’s ultimate dream.

In a broken world, temptation is a normal part of our lives. But because God is always present and at work, we don’t have to face those temptations alone. Our response to temptation is an opportunity to become more or less like Jesus, and we get to choose what we want more.

The self-sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus declare that the sin of the whole world is abolished and forgiven. We experience that forgiveness when we acknowledge that we need it and trust that we have it. But if we refuse to release those who’ve wronged us, our capacity to enjoy our own forgiveness is diminished.

Our culture of abundance may lead us to believe that we can take care of ourselves. However, when we recognize that our Father is the giver of the daily good in our lives, we learn to live out of gratitude for those gifts. Then our prayers of petition can move beyond me to we and we can partner with our Father to become the answer to some of those prayers.