Wicked Good: Practices that Revive

We’re never given a guarantee that prayer will change our circumstances.  For sure, sometimes it does. Sometimes, for reasons unknown to me, prayers for a change in circumstance gets answered. Sometimes the sickness is healed. Sometimes the addiction ends.  Sometimes you find the job of your dreams or you find “the one”. Sometimes the relationship is healed and restored. But other times our prayer for a change in circumstance doesn’t get answered, and the sickness isn’t healed. The addiction doesn’t end. We don’t find the one. The relationship stays broken. We not only don't get the job we want, we lose the job we have. What gives? What difference does prayer make? Why even bother with it?

If we claim to love God, we will love what God has created. But creation care, it’s also part of how we love our neighbor. Who is our neighbor? Well in the New Testament, there are two definitions of neighbor. Our friends. And everyone else. So what does that have to do with creation care?

When we hear the word repent, many of us immediately think of street preachers and televangelists shouting about God’s wrath and judgment. Maybe even some of us think of our own experiences in the church - moments when we’ve felt shamed for our choices or thoughts or habits. And yet, we cannot escape the fact that, according to Scripture, repentance is a necessary part of experiencing God at work in our midst. So that begs the question: what does “repentance” actually mean?

Wicked Good: Practices that Revive

One Hope: God's Promise Through Isaiah

A few weeks ago, Pastor Brynn made a joke about how conversations with me have a tendency to wind up on the subject of Judgement Day. And you all laughed because you thought she was kidding. Well today, that IS where our conversation is going. Judgment Day.

One Hope: God's Promise Through Isaiah

The church is a web of relationships - and just like is true in any relationship, sometimes the church is hard to love. The second that we sense inauthenticity, we feel lied to. Cheated. We feel unsafe and tempted to run in the other direction. Christians are still fallible, broken human beings with diverse and diverging opinions. Fallible, broken human beings who can still hurt us quite a bit. How then, should the church respond to inauthenticity?

One Hope: God's Promise Through Isaiah