Series: Reading Between the Lines

Understanding how you’re ‘wired’ is a key component of living a healthy and balanced life. As informed as you may be about the physical, social, and financial spheres of life, you can still feel lost if you don’t know the person God has uniquely created you to be.

Money is one of those things we rarely talk about and yet it plays such a significant role in our day-to-day lives. But maybe talking about it is what we need to avoid letting its role become either too significant or not significant enough.

This week, we will look at friendships and the power they hold in our spiritual lives. As Thomas Merton writes: "We are members one of another and everything that is given to one member is given for the whole body." We will study this principle in the story of a paralyzed man whose friends' faith led Jesus to heal him.

It’s easy to think about our spiritual life as being completely separate from our physical life, but that’s just not the case. To live by faith is to live faithfully in these bodies we’ve been given, with their beauty and their flaws, with their strength and their weakness. “Therefore honour God with your body.”

Brandon SpeakingIn an airline emergency, we’re told that we need to secure our own oxygen mask before helping those around us. That’s not a bad way to approach life as a whole, unless by taking care of ourselves we forget about our fellow ‘passengers’ altogether. What can we do to avoid slipping into self-serving patterns?

Philippians 4:10-14

There’s no way around it: sometimes life is just plain difficult. And yet even so, the Bible presents us with images of those who are in the depths of despair rising up and soaring victoriously. Are we somehow excluded from this kind of blessing, or can that be our story, too? 

Isaiah 40:1-2, 27-31

Some of Joshua’s most well-known words often serve as both a declaration of faith and a piece of kitschy home decor at the same time. But the context in which they were first uttered was as real as it gets, and if we let them, these words will continue to present us with a choice and a challenge for ourselves and the people we love.

Joshua 24:1-15

As important as Paul’s advice about avoiding worry is for the well-being of our souls, it can be difficult to actually live it out when life overwhelms us. But as long as we keep God involved in our circumstances, the peace we long for won’t be far away.

Philippians 4:4-8