The Big Dream Podcast by Meadow Heights Church

The Bible is not just a text to study or a checkbox on our “good Christian” to-do list. It is a way to hear from God and allow his spirit to work in our hearts and minds. Reading the Bible through the lens of Jesus helps us find our place in the story again and again.

Jesus redefined reality by claiming to be the center of the scripture story. As we surrender to the love of Jesus, we enter this new reality and our lives are transformed.

Jesus both loves us and shows us what love looks like. The most basic task of being human is to receive his love, live in his love, and imitate his love. Anything else is worthless unless we do everything in love.

When we embody the way of Jesus and live as salt & light in our everyday lives, God’s kingdom breaks through in real time that which is bland and tasteless gains fullness and flavor; where there is darkness, light begins to shine.

God’s people are ordinary people who bless others by ordinary means. Simply living in the way of Jesus, we shine hope in the darkness and people are drawn toward the goodness of God.

Light shines; it doesn’t try to shine. And when transformed people just live and love like Jesus, we illuminate what a Good God is doing in an often dark and chaotic world.

As we embrace the way of Jesus’s kingdom, the Spirit will work through us to be the salt of the earth. In a world bitter with hate, sickness, and strife, we will be flavor-givers, seasoning things up, making life around us more tasty as we love and live in the way of Jesus.

A brand new year is a special gift! Let’s start 2023 together on Day One.

Christmas is a never-ending story. When we surrender to God’s love, we embody Christ’s Spirit like Mary embodied Jesus the first Christmas. Emmanuel is “God with us,” but the Spirit is “God in us.” Wherever we are, there he is!

Christmas is the love story of a Father and Son saying goodbye to each other in the community of perfect love they inhabited. Then Jesus said hello to our world, bringing God’s love with him in human form so that love could overflow to everyone, everywhere, for all time.

Christmas is a justice story. Our Savior personally lived a life of poverty, exile, and oppression so that not only does he free people from injustice - he also understands them. The Christmas story invites us to join Jesus by coming alongside our impoverished and oppressed brothers and sisters.

Christmas is the story of a one-person invasion and conquest against a sinister enemy entrenched on an entire planet. Bethlehem is the beachhead for God’s campaign to regain the territory lost in the cosmic battle against evil. The birth of a baby is the unlikely beginning of the end of the Great War between the kingdom of love and the kingdom of darkness.

When we fail to notice the giver of goodness in our lives it will rob us of the good life of gratitude. But, when we remember that all good things are because of God we respond to him with thankfulness and the good life of gratitude will overflow into the lives of others.

When we live and love like Jesus, we refuse to make enemies of others or adopt an “us vs. them” mindset. When we opt out of the game of deciding who does and does not deserve love, we no longer fit on either side and will be persecuted as a result. But we rejoice to know that we are moving in the direction of God’s coming kingdom!

Our first instinct is to divide the world into people who are like us and those who aren’t and to protect those differences at any cost. Jesus invites us to live as sons and daughters of God, members of one human family who belong to each other. Together we search for common ground and work for the common good.

Chasing our ‘best life now’ by pursuing fortune, fame, fun, and fullness lures us down a path that leads away from God. When we resist the pull of those empty idols and move toward God’s kingdom instead, our best life is found - now AND forever.

Our world offers continual distractions that overwhelm us and keep us from purity of heart. But when we have a single-minded focus on God and his love, we will notice him at work in and around us.

In a culture of perpetual judgment, we humbly acknowledge the brokenness we have in common with everyone. We give to others the mercy we receive from God and find even more of the mercy we need. What a beautiful way to be human!

The trap of hungering and thirsting after idols leaves us empty and restless. The fullness of life is longing for and chasing after what we can only find in the love of Christ.

When we live as equals with every human as a much-loved child of God, we no longer compete for value. Being secure in God’s immeasurable love, no more and no less, makes us the owners of everything that can’t be bought.

The good life in God’s kingdom is ours when we feel like we’ve lost something we hold dear. When we mourn the mess that is, we allow God to comfort us with the beauty of what will be.

The really good life isn’t for the pretty and perfect who keep it all together. It’s when we’re broken and at the end of our rope that we have more room for God. We are blessed when we trust that the imperfect are already perfectly loved.

Life’s big questions deserve serious attention. It matters whom we trust to guide us when everything is on the line. The person, story and teachings of Jesus convince us that he is the unique expert we should follow as if our very lives depend on it. Because they do. Seriously.

Orange Sunday

Our human God finally and fully breaks the chains of sin and death and restores the original goodness we were created for. His resurrection brings to life our choice to join him and each other in the renewal of all things.