Words like ‘comfort,’ ‘luxury,’ and ‘premium’ fly around us every day. Turn on the television and you’ll hear countless commercials offering to sell you the latest in style and ease. But then you open up your bible and read Jesus’ words to “deny yourself, pick up your cross daily, and follow me.” That doesn’t sound […]
Life is full of choices. What to eat…what to wear…where to live…who to marry? All of these choices effect our lives in some way – sometimes in small ways, sometimes in large ways. But everything in life comes with choices. We’ve been talking about following Jesus, about moving from being a causal fan of Jesus […]
Jesus is walking down the shoreline one day and sees two sets of brothers. He simply pauses and says “come follow me” and they all drop everything and go with Him. Did you ever stop and and wonder why? What made four grown men with family and community connections drop everything to follow a man […]
On Easter, followers of Jesus from all around the world gather to worship our Risen Savior. As we dip into the Resurrection story each year, it’s interesting to observe how few followers Jesus had the first Easter morning. Over the course of a few days, all of the disciples had left Jesus. Peter even denied […]
I love a parade! Who doesn’t? The floats, the bands, and especially the candy! But what about a parade of one? Can you imagine one “float” holding an entire city’s attention? It sounds kind of boring…yet that’s exciting the type of parade that took place on the first Palm Sunday and it CAPTIVATED the city […]
Everything has a beginning and an end…every book, every movie, every person we know or encounter has a start and a finish. We hold this as constant in our ever-changing world. But what if we were wrong? What if there was more than we perceived? What if our lives, as we understand them, were not […]
On a mountainside one sunny day, Jesus said “love your enemies.” In these three words, He completely flipped the world upside down. We’re all very good at having enemies and hating our enemies…it pretty much comes naturally to most of us. But what does it look like to love our enemies? To give up our […]
Have you ever read a book that didn’t end the way you expected? Or maybe you’ve seen a movie that just exceeded all your expectations? We walk through life constantly making assumptions and anticipating things to go a certain way. Yet when it comes to a life lived for Christ, we quickly learn that things […]
Self-driving cars are the next big thing! Or so they tell me. To be honest, I’m a little uncomfortable giving up control to a machine to drive me to work. Granted, I think the automated parallel parking sounds amazing but complete control over driving…I’m not so sure. Control is a hard thing to give up. […]
The Lenten season is here. Six weeks set aside each year to prepare our hearts for Easter. Traditionally, we are called to “give something up” for Lent. These simple sacrifices help to focus our minds on the ultimate sacrifice by Jesus for us. As we give up sweets or meat or even Facebook, we reflect […]