Browns Bridge Church

When it comes to guilt, many of us naturally lean in one of two ways: we wallow in it by reliving the past, or we deny it by making excuses. In either instance, guilt is causing us to be out of balance. The apostle Paul reminds us that, because of Jesus, guilt is not the boss of us.

We all monitor our behavior to some degree. This keeps us out of trouble and helps us in our personal and professional relationships. But Jesus invites his followers to take monitoring a step further.

Fear is real. We all experience it. Fear of being judged, fear of not living up to expectations, fear of saying the wrong thing, fear of not having enough money—the list goes on and on. But God never intended for us to live in fear. “Fear not” is the most used command in the Bible because fear prevents us from experiencing the life God wants us to live. That’s why we need to pursue courage—the thing that allows us to move beyond fear. Courage precedes our “difference-making” moments.

Have you ever replaced an appliance, a piece of furniture, or even a car, and felt the excitement that comes with owning something new? When something is new to us, we treat it differently and it makes us feel different about ourselves. The old item gets tossed, forgotten, or abandoned and the new item is given a place of honor and treated as something more valuable than the thing it replaced. This principle is evident in so many areas of our lives, even in our faith.

We all have something sitting around the house that we just can’t throw away. We haven’t worn it, looked at it, listened to it, or used it in years, but we hang on to it. Why? We talk about spring cleaning, tidying up, and purging to get rid of the old, but there’s always something we just can’t part with. We need to ask ourselves why we are keeping this thing—what difference does it make, and is it time to let it go?

Have you ever asked someone you cared about, “How are we doing?” It’s an important question. It defines the relationship. Until we answer it, our relationship stalls. What would God say if you asked him, “How are we doing?”

Following Jesus’ crucifixion, his followers expected what anyone expects after someone dies: that they would remain that way. But one of Jesus’s followers, John, gave an eyewitness account which summarized the main event surrounding Christianity: Jesus rose from the dead. In this seventh and final sign that John documents, he makes the case that Jesus is exactly who he claimed to be.

At different points in our lives, many of us wonder why a good God would allow bad things to happen. And without a clear response, that dilemma could cause us to question God’s existence altogether. The gospel writer John documented an occasion where Jesus not only brought his friend Lazarus back to life, but demonstrated how God can exist in the midst of a world of evil and suffering.

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There are many products we buy, use, and put our confidence in without having all the information or fully understanding how they work. In the Gospel of John, we see a man begin to follow Jesus based on limited information. This man, who was born blind, said he only knew one main thing—and that one thing was enough to make him curious about who Jesus really was.

Perhaps one of the most famous signs performed by Jesus is feeding over 5000+ people with five loaves of bread and two fish. Those that followed Jesus thought he was finally getting to the point of what he could do for them. They were more enamored with the signs instead of what the signs were pointing to.