Things to Ponder

Of course God wants us to be generous church in the world! But that starts in a specific spot - and its not the offering plate. In Deuteronomy, long before Israel ever harvested a crop, God called them to be a people shaped by remembrance and gratitude—because gratitude is the only foundation upon which true generosity can be built. In Jesus, we meet the profligate sower who poured out his life in...

Generous churches have a generous character before they are generous in the world. They understand that leaders cannot carry the work by themselves. When we operate in siloes because "it's faster," we rob our neighbor of the holy ground where their gifts are cultivated and their faith can mature. Generous churches extend charity by extending the call to all the baptized – helping people find their...

Before God moves the Church, He moves hearts. To experience God’s purposes, we must first let go of the lie that we can be in total control of our outcomes, that a tight grip on our lives can keep us safe and self-determined. Our God is a generous God, and calls us into a life of generosity by opening our hands, trading that which is temporary for that which will endure, so that we can live the li...

How we understand the Bible comes from how we understand Jesus. Just as Jesus was fully human and fully God, so the Bible is a fully human and fully divine book. Through the Holy Spirit, the Bible serves as a means of recognizing the risen Christ much like the disciples on the Emmaus road. And when we do, our hearts are set ablaze. May we fall in love with the Bible—a people eager to wrestle, weep...

The same creative Word that spoke the universe into being is actively shaping our lives. Jesus calls this “sanctification.” True sanctification isn't about mere moral self-improvement; it is God’s lifelong work of remaking us from the inside out as we are changed by His Word. Through the Scriptures, we hear, “You are welcome. You are forgiven. You are new. You make a difference,” and those words c...

The Bible can sometimes feel complicated, intimidating, or even confusing—but at its heart is a story that leads us to Jesus. Scripture tells the story of a God who creates, rescues, promises, and ultimately comes to us in Christ, the center of the whole story. We don’t have to master every page; we can simply open our hearts and ask, “Where is this story taking me?” As we listen to Scripture, we...

For all our talk of "home," we are so often somewhere else—turning over the past, fretting about the future—that we miss the life God has given us right now. But Christ is found in the present tense. Because Christ has died, was raised, and now lives in eternity, it is always “now” with Christ. We can’t be with Christ in the past or the future; we can only know his light in the present. Like a tre...

Following Christ does not always make life bigger, easier, or more impressive—it makes life deeper. In Christ, every action, every word carries spiritual impact. The Killers’ “The Getting By” reminds us that sometimes the holy work is simply getting up, putting another day in, and trusting that God is still holding us. Pay attention to the everyday places, people, and responsibilities around you,...

God’s love meets us in our darkest places, but true discipleship begins when we answer Christ's call to step out of the shadows and into transformative new life. Walking out of the tomb means having the courage to declare, "I'll know my name as its called again," slowly shedding our old fears, chains, and habits, and living into our identity in Christ. Though leaving the familiar darkness is uncom...

Our hearts are restless until they rest in God, and yet in the midst of pain, disappointment, and longing, we often wonder where God has been. The good news is that the story of faith is not simply that we go searching for God, but that God finds us—seeing us in our deepest cries, questions, and longings. And perhaps coming home means discovering that the God we thought we were trying to find had...

[Kahan] is homesick for the life somewhere else that he can see but can't quite access, and he's homesick looking backward, wanting to be back home, a place that makes sense. Neither looking for home out there, nor returning, actually brings him home. This is the human experience. We are constantly searching for “home,” a place to belong, but nothing ever fully satisfies. But Jesus steps into a ho...

How do we get so far from home? Evil rarely begins by tempting us to “sin.” More often, it whispers that the life God has given us isn't enough, stirring desires that leave us restless, divided, and far from home. Colby Acuff’s “If I Were the Devil” walks us down a path from our desires, to conflict, to imposter saviors, to a kind of numbness to the world and to God. But Psalm 73 offers us a praye...

Advent calls us to develop virtue as we wait for the coming of a Savior: hope, peace, joy, and love. But like the lights of a Christmas tree, unless they are “plugged in,” they won’t shine. Until they’re connected to the source, they can’t do what they were built to do. So it is with us. We weren’t made to shine on our own.

Isaiah coyly says, “The stump is the seed.” How can this be? Stumps are death. Seeds are new life. Seed is possibility. That is the beauty of God - in the midst of destruction, God has placed within Israel new beginnings. And so it is with us.

"Number our days" isn’t about living in anxiety or regret. It means to pay attention to them…God has created character, relationships, opportunities, disciplines into the next chapter for you. You don’t open up to a clean slate; you open up to the power of God at work in your life. Look back at your last chapter. What sits in your heart that you are delighted to share? What hidden challenges did y...

Martha asks, “Am I doing the right thing?” The Corinthians asked, “Is this allowed?” Paul asks a different question entirely, “What kind of person and community are we becoming?” He wants us to use a new filter: Does it build up? Does it give life?  Does it deepen love in Christ? We live in a world that is constantly competing for our attention, but the deepest question is not what captures our at...

Wisdom realizes we’re shaped less by what we think, and more by what we love. So before Scripture tells us what to do, it is serious about calling us to examine what we want. Which means wisdom is this: Decide today who you want to be tomorrow. Because the person you become tomorrow is being formed right now. Christ has never stopped working on you. Christ can see in you what you cannot see in you...

Wisdom is the applied knowledge, the practical understanding, we get as we live life, answers the question, “How do I live well? Just one problem. We gain wisdom looking backwards, but we have to live moving forward. Our world is flush with information, but desperately lacking in lived wisdom. Information technologies have not made us more generous, compassionate, or wise. Wisdom is aligning my li...

Pentecost demands our desires. It demands those messy, growling-belly parts of our lives we try to hide. When your heart says, “I  want... I desire,” the Spirit challenges us to hand those desires to Christ and say, “Lord, here’s what I want. Maybe this is from you, maybe not. Whatever - make my heart beat for your Kingdom.”

We need the imagination to see who actually sits on the throne. Our conviction is that in Christ is our hope, and the hope of the world. Christians says without apology that Christ is not identified with agendas and parties and movements, but that is he above all kings and all presidents and all governments of the world, and demands a higher allegiance. I am a citizen of heaven who happens to live...

Healing is tricky - there's a lot more to it than just "getting better." When Jesus heals Simon's mother-in-law, its not just that she's better; its that she is restored. One woman’s dignity became the public invitation for an entire community. We are restored so that we can stand at the threshold and meet the world,” offering dignity to a world that just wants to know someone cares.

A temple is a place where heaven and earth come mighty close together. In the aftermath of his crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus is building a new temple, a new place for sacrifice, a new place for reconciliation with God. But it’s not coming in the forms of bricks and mortar. It’s not fundamentally coming by building an organization or an institution. It is coming in you and me, “living stones,...

For all the bigness of the gospel, for all the grand proclamations that Jesus is drawing all things to himself, his way of sharing that news is surprisingly small. Jesus is at work in the local. The Church that is committed to the Jesus message and the Jesus method will be deeply committed to local. As my (Pastor Sam) grandmother once told me, “A pastor should smell like his congregation.”

The gospel stories of Easter aren’t merely recounting “what happened.” They show us the first moments of a new world breaking into the old. On the road to Emmaus, two disciples can't recognize the risen Christ because they were looking for victory in the ways of the old world. When the open the Scriptures and break the bread, they recognize Christ, who has brought new life that has defeated death....

Before Jesus sends the apostles to the world or gives them work to do, he gives them an experience of Himself. Because before anything changes out there, something has to change in me. God renews the world, beginning in the hearts of people. Peter describes it in 1 Peter—a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is not a metaphor for self-improvement. It is a wa...