Once we rid ourselves of the motive of shame and guilt regarding our choice to be generous givers, and letting go of transactional thinking regarding faith entirely, we can have an honest talk about our money.

Why aren't more church LGBTQ friendly? Here are the reasons, how you can figure out where a church stands before you visit, and where to find hope.

During this teaching we continue to explore what it means to be people of faith motivated by the generous grace of God. We get a glimpse of ourselves and our potential in Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan.

Sometimes we mistake the moral code derived from our faith as the faith itself. The ethic might be good, but divorced from the heart behind it - the ethos - we are left at best with a moral system and at worst a legalism, with neither of them needing God to be involved in the least. An ethic developed in response to ethos, the rules of life born out of our Rule of life is the stuff of the Spirit of God. When it comes to how to live our life generally, and in terms of our relationship with money and material specifically, the different could not be more pronounced and the result not more stark.

Humanity's struggle to have a healthy relationship with "stuff" has been going on forever. Discovering how to resolve this natural tension does more than improve our bank accounts - it improves our lives, our relationship with God, and all life in the world.

Easter was confirmation that there is live post-grave at a time when such ideas were pipe dreams, and only limited to Kings and Caesars - not common people. It also served to further authenticate everything Jesus had to say about the nature of God being love. This is very Good News! But the Good News isn't limited to afterlife. In fact, resurrection is meant for us all right now. New, resurrected life is possible for all dead spaces in our lives. First, though, we need to be honest about those spaces, which then allows new, different life to emerge.

If we eavesdropped on Jesus' lengthy prayer in John 17, we would be blown away by the content, but we would be even more affected by the passion and love behind the words.

Everybody is spiritual. Jesus was one of the most influential spiritual leaders in history. What did he have to say about being connected with God?

If we build on the fact that we are all incarnate beings - earthy, fleshy humans imbued with the Spirit of God. But how does that inform our living? How did Jesus do it? Three meals give us some clues as to how to move forward.

Who do you trust to guide you in your spirituality? In the tenth chapter of John's telling of Jesus' life and its meaning, we get words from Jesus at a time when many leaders were not trustworthy or worth following. This teaching features Sam Altis, who was on staff at CrossWalk 2016-2017.