The Big Dream Podcast by Meadow Heights Church

Hallowing God’s name is less about the words we do or don’t say and more about living out our Father’s love. When we bear his name by loving (everyone at all times) in all we do, his kingdom comes and his will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

Prayer is how we participate in the life and activity of God who is always present and at work in and around us. We are changed as we surrender to God in prayer. But prayer is also how God shares God’s power with us to change what happens in our world. God acts in response to our prayers because God delights to involve us in the work.

The beauty of our life with God will never outrun the beauty of our vision of God. But as we behold God’s beautiful love revealed in Jesus, we become more like who we see.

In a world full of noise, stimulation and indulgence, spiritual practices help us grow in awareness of God and alignment with reality. They free us FROM the enemy’s hold and free us FOR real life.

If we practice for recognition, we already have our reward. But when we practice to form Jesus-like character, that reward is both now and forever. Our motive matters because we always reap what we sow.

Spiritual practices are not just the homework of the Christian life. They free the Spirit’s transforming power to flow through us and into the world.

We live in the story that best helps us make sense of the world. When we choose to inhabit the story of God’s people that’s been unfolding for thousands of years, we get to live as the much-loved children of God. Our spiritual practices help us become the person the story tells us we are.

Jesus doesn’t expect us to be perfect people. Jesus is calling us to become the kind of people who are capable of living in perfect unity with one another.

The more we get our life from Christ, the more we can understand broken people just trying to get their core needs met in false ways. By the power of the Spirit, we can view others, even our enemies, the way Christ did, with compassion and hope for restoration rather than with judgment.

We tend to justify doing anything to our enemies except love, which only harms them and us. But loving our enemies is not just for them; it’s for us. Nothing transforms me more than loving people I don’t like or who don’t like me.

We want to retaliate against and resist those who interfere with our desires because we assume that violence solves problems. Jesus’s call to self-sacrificial love must override and restrain our instinct for retaliation. Since love means “to will the good of another,” we can’t perpetrate violence against someone and love them at the same time.

Our first instinct is to respond to evil done to us with the same evil done to them. Jesus invites us to imagine a new way of being human that doesn’t plot revenge but reflects God’s generous love instead. Love creates ways to challenge evil without engaging in evil.

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We all pass on something we love to someone we love. Nothing is more important for us to give to the next generation than an understanding of who God is and how God loves. Since the love of God holds everyone and everything together, to leave this task undone is to fail at what matters most.

Excessive and unnecessary words invite mistrust and create loopholes to get out of our commitments. Speaking the simple truth frees us to live in love and build trust with those around us. For links and more info, visit: https://www.meadowheights.com/hub

The goal of marriage is not to avoid divorce but to learn to love in a way that reflects the love of God. A healthy marriage takes steps to keep moving in that direction. Although the ideal is to be with one person for life, in a broken world the ideal sometimes gets broken, too. It’s only by God’s grace that any of us get married, whether for the first, second or third time.

Our culture has sold us a myth that marriage is the fairy tale ending to our search for romantic love, but Jesus shows us what true love really means. When we remember that we are brothers and sisters in the family of God first, every relationship in our lives is an opportunity to learn what it means to love each other like Jesus loves us.

We all assume that as long as lust stays in our heads it’s not hurting us, God or anyone else. But we cannot imagine someone as a much-loved child of God and a sexual object at the same time. Jesus compels us to live by love in our imaginations as well as our bodies.

Because Jesus’s death and resurrection include everyone, we can choose to see anyone with eyes of hope and not judgment, starting with the person in the mirror. Although we still often live out lies about who we really are, that false self is dead and our true self is now free to live in the newness of life.

Confession is a lifestyle of truth-telling about ourselves. It’s about becoming aware of our whole selves so that we can live as we are, in both our weaknesses and strengths. When we practice this together as a community, we experience healing and the freedom of honest relationships with each other. What a gift!

Reconciliation seems unrealistic and sometimes impossible but must be radically pursued. Our humility with God and openness to his Spirit will result in mutual submission to each other. Then we will enjoy life in the freedom of God’s love and offer others the same.

Reconciliation seems unrealistic and sometimes impossible but must be radically pursued. Our humility with God and openness to his Spirit will result in mutual submission to each other. Then we will enjoy life in the freedom of God’s love and offer others the same.

Cultivating anger, whether acted upon in violence toward others or only imagined in our minds, is playing with fire and ends in destruction. God’s better way of being human transforms us from the inside out by starting with our heart, not our behavior.

Cultivating anger, whether acted upon in violence toward others or only imagined in our minds, is playing with fire and ends in destruction. God’s better way of being human transforms us from the inside out by starting with our heart, not our behavior.

The whole scripture story tells the most glorious good news the world has ever heard. If we associate the Bible with bad news, scary news or shaming news, we must learn to read it the way God inspired it to be read. What appears to be inconsistent with the character of God is there to reveal the love of God. Even what looks like bad news is good news in disguise!