Big Idea: It is time to grow up and act your age and live in the fullness of life that being a child of God guarantees us.

Big Idea: You can choose to follow the rules or follow Jesus, but only one leads to life and freedom!

Big Idea: When we begin a relationship–a friendship, a romantic relationship, a relationship with new family–it’s usually easy in the beginning. You focus on what you like, and enjoying each other’s company. Unfortunately, as relationships grow they often require more from us, and we can become weighed down by our obligations. God wants us to continue to enjoy him! No amount of work is going to earn us more of God’s love. But choosing to enjoy God more will help us experience more of his love in our lives!

Big Idea: We all want to be loved. And we are willing to go to great lengths sometimes to earn the approval of others. But more than anything else, we should be willing to compromise our need for the approval of others in pursuit of God’s approval.

Big Idea: We are going to come across other people in the church who think or do things a little differently than we do. How do we respond as brothers and sisters in Christ to someone who has a different method or who has been called to a different purpose than we are?

Big Idea: The Bible teaches us the importance of following the law. As Christians we need to be obedient to God; but our obedience can never be a replacement for the free gift of grace that God gave us when He sent Jesus to this world and to the cross. Let’s not let our opinions, our traditions, or even the rules that God once allowed to be the way that people interacted with Him to distract us from the entire message of His word: that He loves us so much that He sent Jesus as our redeemer, our restorer, our savior. The law condemns us, but Jesus sets us free.

Big Idea: We combat uncertainty by trusting in what we are certain of through our faith in Jesus. If we increase our faith in God, our emotional responses to feelings like anger, guilt, fear, and uncertainty will begin to be more aligned with His will for us, helping others to feel His presence.

Big Idea: We all get angry sometimes. Where we get into trouble is when our expression of anger doesn’t line up with God’s design for how we express our anger. It’s ok to be angry, but we need to be certain that we are angry about things falling short of God’s expectations, not our own expectations; otherwise we are sinning in our anger. We need to identify what angers God, and move quickly toward him and slowly toward expressions of anger; we need to be grieved before we respond, and seek God’s guidance every time our actions are due to anger. Only then will we be modeling the grace of God founded in an understanding of his righteous anger.

Big Idea: Life doesn’t turn out like we thing it should sometimes, and the emotions of pain, loneliness, and suffering can enter in. But when Jesus enters the story, the emotions of pain, loneliness, and suffering can have meaning; and your story can end even better.

Big Idea: We all feel tired sometimes. But if we talked about how sometimes we feel angry or guilty or uncertain in the same way we talk about being tired, people close to us would probably show a lot more concern! We have normalized being busy; but our job as Christians is to make sure that the things we are doing are honoring God above all else. We need to be willing to take inventory of the things we are doing, stop doing the things we aren’t supposed to be doing, and make an investment into rest and refueling, and into identifying people who can help us be busy in the right ways–the ways that imitate Jesus.