Friendship is a key ingredient for a godly, flourishing life, and yet modern life is often lonely. Why can't we find and keep friends? What makes a quality friend? Who should I not be friends with? The Bible answers these questions.

God reserves honor for our parents, even those who are the most broken. He sees value in them where you and I may not be able to. He offers them love and forgiveness without condition. So we are to honor them, that it may go well with us.

In the Kingdom of God, children are not things to be managed or projects to be completed. They are full persons, with emotions, opinions, wills, personalities, and a capacity for relationships as complex as you and me. Children cannot be dismissed.

Relationships are inherently broken because of sin. But God wants our relationships to experience repair, and so He gives us the roadmap: Peace, Forgiveness, Reconciliation and Restitution.

Relationships cannot flourish without truth-telling. In order for us to be fully known, we have to be willing to tell the truth about ourselves, to ourselves and to others. Grace makes this possible.

God designed humans for relationships. Both with Himself and with others. What makes relationships flourish? What keeps them from flourishing? These are questions we wrestle with every day. Many of our relationships are shaped by our fears. God wants us to experience a perfect love that will drive out all of our fears.

Jesus, the Messiah has come! He is ushering in a new kingdom and a new covenant. But, is He and His message what the people are looking for? The religious leaders, The Pharisees, seem to think Jesus' claims are false. They seek to have Him crucified and succeed, but that is not the end of the story. Jesus raises from the dead and inaugurates a new kind of community, the church.

The nation of Israel has waited 400 years for a Messiah, hearing nothing from God. This week the story begins with the birth of a baby, Jesus, whose name means "The Lord is salvation". He is the rescuer the people have been waiting for, but is He who they thought He would be?

When we pick up the story this week, humans have gradually multiplied into a very large number. The story says that all humans were acting in rebellion against God and with evil toward one another. Because of this, God sends a flood to destroy them. He saves one man named Noah and his family and then makes a promise to a man named Abraham called a "covenant". The story then follows Abraham's descendants, a nation called "Israel".

This begins a 4 week narrative through the entire story of the bible. In the beginning of the story, we learn about a character named God who alone always does what is good, right and perfect. The story takes a tragic turn when God's creation, humans, rebel against Him and eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The story already begs some difficult questions: Is this God a good God? Can we trust Him? Can we relate to these humans? What would we do if we were in the position of God or the humans in the story? Would our responses be similar or different from the characters?