Bret Hammond

People who are going through difficult times are often told by others not to worry because, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” The words are said with the best of intentions but unfortunately no such promise exists in the Bible. We have no promise a pain free life or that God will go easy on us.

So what does God promise us?

“Forgive and forget.” Those words roll off our tongues with ease, but if we’re honest they don’t roll out of our hearts with ease. Forgiveness is a challenge and forgetting is downright impossible.

Grace calls us to remember. We remember so we can tell a greater story than just the story of our hurts. We remember so we can become a part of the story of grace.

“Judge not, that you be not judged.” If people know anything about the Bible they know that it teaches that you’re not supposed to judge other. The problem, of course, is that we do judge others. We judge them every day in a myriad of ways. What are we to do about that?

My friends are important to me. What amazes me, though, is I seem to be important to them too. They not only enjoy being around me but they support me, defend me and bless me in amazing ways. They do all this despite not all of them being believers.

There are Christians who actually teach that we should “Have nothing to do with non-believers.” But what does the Bible say? What did Jesus actually do?

“Charity begins at home” is one of those phrases that sounds like it’s from the Bible but when we dig in we find neither the words nor the concept within God’s word. So what did God actually say?

Did God say "money is the root of all evil?" Not quite. This verse is often misquoted. In reality it's not even about money.

It’s been called the most well-known verse in the Bible, “God helps those who help themselves.” The problem is it’s not in the Bible. The bigger problem is, you can’t actually help yourself. So what does the Bible actually say?

This summer we're going to look at a few misconceptions and misunderstandings about the word of God and dive into His amazing truth. It all begins in the beginning with God's simple message and a horrible temptation that still plagues us.

When a young man in our high school took his own life our whole whole community was devastated. The message I preached at his funeral was the result of years of working through a tragic suicide in my own family.

It's been a difficult weekend for our community. One of our high school students took his own life on Saturday. This is the message I shared the following day. Is your God too small?