The TMP Podcast

God is sowing. Are we fertile soil? The seed of the Kingdom message (logos v19) is generously sown on all types of soil. God extravagantly spreads his love. This seed is representative of what Jesus taught us through his teachings, life, death, and resurrection. It is the Good news! But this Good news is not always equally received. It lands on paths (v4), rocky places (v5), thorns (v7), and final...

The Apostle Paul begins addressing the Galatians directly and pulls no punches: “You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” Paul is expressing his deep concern about what is taking place in Galatia, including: enslavement to religion, failure to live out the truth of the gospel, and threats to the unity of the community. The heart of matter that Paul is addressing is the bounded set approach o...

The Apostle Paul tells a story of confronting Peter (Cephas) in Antioch about his hypocrisy. Some Jewish Christians have arrived from Jerusalem, the mother church. Unable to overcome years of drawing lines of separation through their actions, they cannot eat with Gentiles. Instead, they sit at a separate table. This is a bigger issue than seating arrangements. Whether through explicit statements o...

Listening in on Galatians is like hearing one side of the telephone call. We get a picture of what is happening by looking closely at the mirror side of what the Apostle Paul is saying. Here in this section of Galatians—- we can gather that some where spreading false messages about the Apostle Paul. Paul mentions these other missionaries various times in the letter (1:6-9; 3:1-2, 5; 4:17; 5:7-12;...

The churches in Galatia are in “confusion”(1.7). There are brewing conflicts that are revealing the deeper problem at the heart of the matter: a distorted view of the Gospel. This has huge implications because the Gospel we live in, is the Gospel we live out. Some in the Galatian church were trying to make the Gospel a matter of circumcision and other works of the law. This was at odds with “the G...

In the ancient world, writing and sending of a letter was an expensive and arduous task. There was no stationery store. There was no UPS, Fedex, or Canada Post. There was no guarantee that the people who received a letter would be able to understand it, as only twenty precent of the ancient world was literate. All this required the use of scribes, readers, and couriers. This is all to say: letter...

The message often sent and often received is that the church desperately needs volunteers – so you should sign up and do what is needed to serve the purpose of the church / ministry team. This is a message of guilt and the focus is entirely on how a volunteer can benefit the church. Instead we should return to what scripture says about serving. That it’s a grand invitation to experience the very b...

Throughout scripture, we read stories of God’s faithfulness in times of challenge, sorrow and joy. Simeon and Anna experienced this first hand when, in their old age, they were blessed to see Jesus, the promised Messiah, with their own eyes. As we look back on the year that was and anticpate the one to come, we can be confident that Jesus goes with us and his faithfulness remains the same yesterda...

God is calling us to give more intentionally and relationally. That means giving more of our time, our energy, our memories, our talents, and our presence. It’s a both/and. Spend less money and give more of yourself to the ones you love. It sounds obvious, yet we seem to have drifted away from this liberating, straightforward truth: The Father gave his one and only Son.  God’s answer for the world...

When we allow Christmas to revolve around possessions, we raise barriers between our true selves and God’s command to love him above all things. This can make Advent more about the busy schedules and expectations we’re carrying than about preparing for Jesus. When our hearts are searching for something that can’t be bought in a store, we feel dissatisfied. So, what if we spent less? Instead of min...

Worship is not just something that happens at church. Worship is a state of your heart— which is expressed in our thoughts, words, and deeds. Look at the Christmas narrative and see how the central characters expressed their worship in a variety of ways: Mary was moved to sing a song of gratitude to God. Joseph obeyed and followed God’s plan. The shepherds stopped their work to go find and worship...

As our churches have wrestled with cultural disruption, injustice, global pandemics, and deconstruction, we’ve found ourselves ideologically and theologically separated from the folks we once joyfully worshipped beside. Small groups, families, and friends are experiencing division and disunity in their faith like never before. Many are wondering “What holds the centre? Is there something that can...

We know the Holy Spirit is God, a distinct and equal member of the Trinity. We know about the fruit of the Spirit and can recount the Pentecost story from Acts 2. But there’s a difference between knowing right things about the Spirit and experiencing the Holy Spirit. We need to experience the Holy Spirit, not merely talk about it. But the Holy Spirit’s activity is a challenge to our sense of contr...

We are excited to have Meghan Larissa Good teaching us this week. Our age is characterized by intensifying polarization. Largely because of theinternet, increasing numbers of people have fallen into echo-chambers where their beliefs are continually affirmed and radicalized and where their capacity to empathetically understand opposing perspectives, even their desire to correctly understand opposin...

We live in an individualistic world. We live in a time when we are more connected than ever and yet when loneliness is an epidemic. We live in an era where we have access to almost infinite information and people and news, all in an instant, and yet where community is crumbling, violence is increasing, and the world is becoming more polarized. Our rugged individualism has also reached into our fai...

We all carry around ideas, images, and experiences of God. It is important to unearth these stories, experiences, and pictures of God because the God we imagine is the God we become like. So what is God like? Some folks may have an image of God that resembles a deadbeat dad, a prosecuting attorney, or a master of puppets who secretly has some anger management issues. Ancient peoples imagined that...

We often believe that we are defined by our successes. While failure is an event, success is a process, not a destination. Our culture tells us that we have the power to create ourselves, and that puts the emphasis on independence and self-reliance. Success is seen as the individual’s responsibility alone. This creates a pressure to keep succeeding and base our self worth and self understanding on...

Jesus tells a parable about two sons in Luke 15. The younger son decides he wants his share of the father’s inheritance so that he can go off to the far country.  This was a huge social taboo, as an inheritance is not meant to be divide until your parents passed away. The younger son in demanding his share and turning it into cash was flouting convention, ignoring his God given responsibility to c...

One of the ways we can search out our identity is by basing it on what others say about us. We base our sense of self on what people think of us, or rather what we think they think of us. That sense of self exerts control over us, and so it affects how we live, and it influences whether we feel we have worth and value. If we do well in the eyes of others, we can feel good about ourselves. But if w...

One recent Harvard study found that one of the most asked questions in new social interactions is: What do you do?” The study found that “What do you do” has become synonymous with “Who are you?” Without thinking about it, many of us can attempt to find our identity through our work, relationships, productivity, and achievements. If we do well, or at least make it look as if we’re doing well, we r...

In our consumeristic age, is it any surprise that we try to build our identity through our possessions? “I am what I have”is a central statement of our consumeristic society.  We have been shaped to be consumers and to consume. Each one of us is told through thousands of daily advertisements that self worth and self understanding are found at end of the checkout aisle. This has led us to often mea...

Who am I? It seems that we all are seeking the answer to this question. We are all trying to find security and worth. There are some who find their identity from the outward opinions of others. Some search for their identity by searching inwardly and deciding for themselves who they are. We often find our identities from what we do, what we have, what we want, or even what others think about us. T...

So often people think the important thing is to have the right ideas about Jesus. Jesus flips the script on this sort of thinking when he closes his Sermon on the Mount with the parable of the wise and foolish builders. Jesus says, “Anyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.” The central question of this parable is this; wha...

In our day, we sometimes conflate appearance and reality. If someone tweets the right things, or has the right appearance on Instagram— we might assume a reality that is true of that person. But curiously Jesus says, ““Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” Jesus is saying that faithfulness is...

Jesus is nearing the end of his Sermon on the Mount. And as all good preachers do— Jesus begins to describe what is at stake if we choose to not to put into practice his teaching. There are two paths, one that is wide and easy and the other difficult. The narrow way is the way of walking with the person of Jesus. Jesus is the only way, truth and life. However, if all other roads lead to destructio...