We tend to end up in echo chambers, surrounded by people who look and think a lot like us. The danger of this is that we don’t learn how to be challenged. The spiritual consequence is that we end up missing God – imagining God in our own image rather than learning to let God challenge us. Judas illustrates the reason we need to learn to be vulnerable, to open ourselves to strange friendships.

How do you resolve conflict? Chances are, however you approach a fight, you learned it from your family. Our families shape us for good and for ill. Herodias, the Evil Queen of Jesus’ day, illustrates for us the cost of generational sin. How can we overcome the sins we inherit from our families? And how can we leave a legacy of life for those who come after us?

If we know the end of the story, we know how to live in the middle. We conclude our series on the Apostle's Creed by exploring how each of the statements in the Creed shape us. How do they help us live now as a people who will live with God forever? How can we begin now reverse engineering our lives to flourish as God intended?

In this week's sermon, we talk about change. How we change. But more importantly, how we help others change. Because the reality is, you and I can't change anyone (even ourselves). We are changed when the Holy Spirit changes us—when God transforms us from the inside out.

n this week's sermon, we're suggesting that God's return is somewhat like the king coming back in the story (illustrated in the intro). We want our good and wise God to come back, to put an end to injustice and evil. And we don't have to be surprised when our king return because God told us exactly what we should be doing as we wait.

In this week's sermon, we discuss that to be human is to be vulnerable. We see that vulnerability is part of how we image God in the world, and that we cannot have the authority God created us to have unless we choose to be vulnerable. Today is not about avoiding risk, but embracing risk and trusting that God is faithful to bring life when we are faithful to follow his calling on us.

Today we explore what it means to be human, and we'll see that while to be human is to be limited, it is not to fail. We'll see that to be human is a sacred calling and that God wants us to live tall and proud to be human.

Today we spend some time in Genesis 1 as a basis for understanding that human beings, made in the image of God, matter. In the wake of artist Chris Cornell's suicide, it has become more and more difficult for our culture to believe that life has a purpose. Which is why we need to confess God as Creator. To say, "I believe in God the creator" is to announce that we believe life has meaning, that we have a purpose, and that every single one of us matters. Our confession pushes back the darkness in our lives and in our world.

In this week's sermon, we are saying that Belief Matters. But beliefs that don't transform us, change us to be more like Jesus (or better reflect God’s image) aren't good for us - the Bible actually calls them worthless. We'll see that beliefs only matter when they shape our behaviors. Belief only matters when it makes a difference in how we live. Belief only matters when you can see it.