Last weekend I preached on a difficult passage from the Sermon on the Mount. While we often assume Jesus agrees with our views on most of our ideas, passages like Matthew 5:38-42 show us that we often don't agree with Jesus.
Essentially, this is where Jesus tells us that when others take advant...
This past weekend I preached a message on Jesus encountering a man possessed with an army of demons inside him (Mark 5). It was the perfect passage for Halloween week. I explored how Jesus put Himself in proximity with people in messy situations. Yet we tend to do exactly the opposite.
The craz...
Recently I had someone pass on an article from the author Richard Rohr that absolutely got my mind spinning. In it, he coined the phrase "The edge of the inside." The document was only two pages long but it gave words to something deep inside my soul. So I did the only logical thing for a communi...
This past weekend I preached on one of my favorite stories of Jesus. It's found in Luke 8. A synagogue leader named Jairus asks Jesus to heal his dying daughter, and Jesus is interrupted on the way there by a woman with a chronic disease. The story is a masterclass in being present and focused on...
There have been numerous ways I've shifted my thinking over the last few years, but one of the most significant is how I read the Bible. For most of my life, I searched for a verse or specific reference to feel confident in the decisions I made or advice I gave to others. This is a byproduct of the ...
Last year I dipped my toe into the podcasting waters, and it reinforced how much I like this medium. Then I started thinking about how fun it would be to start a podcast where I explore Christianity through the beauty of wine. And today I get to introduce you to Cabernet and Pray.
I'll use this ...
I finished my "Them vs. Us" series this past weekend with a message titled "Everybody Waves Back." I unpacked the story of Cain and Abel and pondered our responsibility to other people. When God asks Cain about the status of his brother Abel, I love how the Message paraphrase captures Cain's resp...
Last weekend I had the chance to preach on one of my favorite books in all of the Bible in week four of my "Them Vs. Us" series. The book of Jonah is so unbelievably relatable and borderline comedic in how the story plays out. Basically, Jonah has issues and baggage and I can relate.
Jonah gets ...
I preached the third part of my "Them vs. Us" series this past weekend. I titled it "Natural Enemies" after this brilliant quote from the theologian Donald Carson:
“Ideally… the church itself is not made up of natural ‘friends.’ It is made up of natural enemies. What binds us together is not c
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Some passages we come across in the Bible seem pretty obvious. But that doesn't make them any less troubling. Take for example a passage like Deuteronomy 23:6 "As long as you live, you must never promote the welfare and prosperity of the Ammonites or Moabites.” Wow, God really didn't like these p...
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