One of the best gifts that we have is the gift of the Scriptures. Unwrapping this gift is a rich process that involves action, searching, obedience, and humility. Brian dives into the joy and the blessing that are available to us when we choose to take this gift and to choose to listen and live by what it says.

Gene starts the new "Unwrapping" series with a look at creation and our role in it. Creation is not only a noun describing God's work, but a verb describing the invitation we've been given to continue His creation through the things we decide to do in the world. The most important aspect? Dreaming. Everything we've made and developed in the world begins as a dream, and our invitation is to dream of creating a "radically beautiful world that reflects God's radically beautiful love."

Our series has talked about various kinds of power, but there's a power we have as those who follow Messiah that is incredibly and overwhelmingly powerful. Sadly, though we have this power as a gift from God, we often don't activate it and, instead, don't experience the life available to us. Aaron dives into this dilemma with a very practical and purposeful look at how we activate this power and engage with the Holy Spirt.

One of the ways that God expresses His love towards us is by empowering us with that same power that He used to create the world and to raise Jesus from the dead. Yet we often have difficulty connecting with His power. In this message Brian focuses is on what we can do to receive God's power, learn from Him, and exercise that power in the world.

Power and weakness seem to be opposite sides of the spectrum, but a theme that runs through the Scriptures is the tendency of weakness to be a place of strength for God's people. Why is that and how do we live our lives in light of that? Gene gets into examples both personal and scriptural that shed light on this seeming paradox of power.

The Power of Meekness? "Meek" has come to mean something cowardly or spineless, yet, as Gene elaborates, this isn't the word we should think of when we think about the "meekness" that Jesus said would inherit the earth. As Gene elaborates, meekness is not only courageous, but it's an attitude that connects us to a source of power that fills us with joy and hope.

Power can be thought of in four major arenas in todays society: might, money, authority, and influence. All of these are "neutral" and become bad or good depending on how they're used. Brian also points out that the first three are a zero-sum game creating a hierarchy of those who have power and those who don't, but influence is different. Influence multiplies as its shared and becomes stronger the more others have it.

The greatest Wonder is without a doubt the Resurrection, but as Brian explains in this sermon, the Resurrection was not a one-time event. Rather, resurrection is a theme that runs throughout the scriptures and speaks to the core of what it means to be human. The process of life emerging through death and the invitation to participate in that wonder are the exact things that we need to truly connect with what God is doing and to experience the life of wonder we're meant to live.

Throughout the Wonders series we've been looking at the way that God demonstrates God's Presence to us. One of the most important ways that we experience this is when we face challenges and resistance. As Brian shares in this message, that's a place where we often see God's Wonders in action...

When we're talking about wonder one of the most important things to be aware of is that God still moves in wonder-working power. The question isn't whether this will happen, but how we'll respond when it does. Aaron lays out three kinds of responses to wonder: the expectant, the observer, and the skeptic and talks about how each of them have a role to play and a direction they need to move in order to appropriately experience the Wonder of God.