We have all had moments in our lives when we've felt lost and unsure of the next best step to take. Maybe, we had a big life decision or maybe we were headed in one direction and everything fell apart. Or, maybe it was a simple moment where things felt a bit off. In those moments, people may have offered you the advice to pray for discernment or direction, but that's hard to do when you feel like prayer is a difficult concept to understand...let alone practice. Many of us ask the question, "What is prayer, and how does it help me find my way?" This week, we begin a series entitled "Finding Our Way: Praying the Psalms." The Psalms are a collection of prayers in scripture written by people trying to find their way. Those who wrote the psalms, often referred to as psalmists, have a lot to teach us about prayer and the different ways prayer can help us both lose and gain our bearings. Join Pastor Sarah this week as she shares how prayer can help us understand our important feelings of disorientation. Sometimes being lost is the best way to find ourselves.

This Sunday, we wrap up our series on authenticity and "Becoming Who We Were Created to Be" by talking about "Why We Do What We Do." Therapists, spiritual directors, and life coaches tell us that asking "why questions" are the most difficult, because they get at our motives, our dark sides, and the many realities underneath the waterline that we might not be aware of or even want to face. They also make us uncomfortable. Authenticity is about bringing our whole self into relationship with God and others, but this can be scary and often leads us to creating false "life compartments" where we can keep parts of ourselves separate from other parts, living in very dis-integrated ways. The good news is that integration is the result of authenticity. We can only truly appreciate our lives if we are living as fully integrated people. Authenticity invites us to bring every part of ourselves into the light – where healing, growth, and joy can actually take place. In 1 Corinthians 3:10-16, we get a creative glimpse at the type of materials we might be using to build our lives and how those "materials" will stand up to the pressures and fires of life. We'll also see how "going through the fire" might be the most revealing thing in moving us to becoming more authentic people. (Message by Michael Bischof)

As we continue our series this Sunday, we will ask how being authentic with what we do helps us become more aligned with who we were created to be.  Studies say the average person over the course of a lifetime spends an estimated 90,000 hours at work. Work, broadly defined, is how we spend about a third of our total time. That's a lot of time!!!! Every person's "work" looks different, but we all have some vocation and some way of spending the majority of our time. Maybe, you have a full-time job or career in a more conventional sense; maybe you are a student; maybe you are retired; maybe you are a stay-at-home parent. Maybe what you do for a living is not the thing that you live to do. Whatever your circumstances, chances are you are engaged in some sort of a vocation—a way of spending time that is meaningful and engaging. Even if you are retired, you are still engaged in the world and invest your time in different areas. What we do with our time matters! God cares about the way that we spend our time. This week, Pastor Sarah will share how being authentic helps us use our God -given passions and purpose to participate in the restoration of the world and how those 90,000 hours matter! 

One of the biggest questions each person spends their life answering is, "Who am I created to be?" Last week, we began asking that question by retelling the story of Jesus being baptized by his cousin John. In this story, Jesus' authentic identity is revealed in the statement, "You are the beloved with whom I am well pleased." That's Jesus' base identity even before he has done anything. As we remembered our own baptisms, we recalled that our identity is the same. We are the beloved. Directly following this story, Jesus' true identity will be challenged by temptations. In the same way, we often lose sight of our authentic selves as the world around us presents different identities. Pastor Sarah shared that being authentic isn't always automatic and requires intention and practices that remind us of who we were created to be.  As a church community, we started a challenge to spend 21 days practicing activities that seek to help all of us know ourselves and challenge us to become who we were created to be in the first place. If you haven't had a chance to start the challenge, no problem at all. You can hop in anytime and feel free to e-mail the office at [email protected] to get a book mark that lays out the week's challenges. This week, the challenges asked us to look at WHO we are in relationship to ourselves and others. This Sunday, Pastor Sarah is going to continue in that theme as we look at Psalm 139, a deeply intimate psalm that connects us to how God sees the deepest parts of who we are. Don't miss this week as we continue to challenge ourselves in 2020 to be more authentic and connected to our belovedness!

We are heading into the third week of a new year, 2020! Lots of folks who made resolutions on January 1st are beginning to let go of their resolve and going back to old habits. We've all heard the statistics indicating that most resolutions don't work, and yet, many of us still make resolutions. Why is that even against the odds we are willing to hope we can do or be something different? As people who want to live into the way of Jesus, we seek to have the kind of eyes that see potential for positive change everywhere, even in the midst of what can seem like some devastating statistics, and even more devastating news headlines. This kind of audacious hope is what began the process of revitalization at First United four years ago. The church may have looked close to shutting its doors, but with Kingdom eyes, there were glimpses of what could be. This same hope is what compelled us to create our vision statement - "First United exists to remind us that we are already loved by God and called into genuine relationships as we follow the radical way of Jesus." For many people, the idea that God has already loved them is in opposition to the messages they've received in the past. The previous messages suggested that in order to be loved, they have to do or be something. At First United, we see following the way of faith is simply being reminded of what has always been true - you are deeply loved, and that changes everything. 

This kind of hope is rooted in a deep sense of purpose and sense of self. It requires us to know our identity and be deeply connected to the divine image of God where that identity comes from. This week, we start a series based on a 21 day challenge Pastor Sarah created for Abingdon Press. The challenge asks us to become more authentic in order to live out of that identity in ways that can change our own lives and may even inspire change in the people around us. This series "Becoming Who We Were Created To Be" looks at several places in scripture where identity and purpose are discussed and will help us see the potential in all of us to live out of that authentic self. We begin this week looking at the story of Jesus' baptism. Jesus' identity was made clear as the beloved and out of that, his ministry began. What could our lives look like if we lived out of our own identity as the beloved?

Can you believe we are in 2020? What's hard to believe is that we've been in the 2000's for 20 years!  When the Times Square ball dropped at midnight in the year 2000, many had a sense that something was about to happen. The world was about to change. For some, this change was welcomed. For others, the change created great fear and anxiety. The fear was heightened by the concern that computers wouldn't be able to handle this new calendar. Many wondered...could the changing of one number lead to the crumbling of all our digital systems and wreak havoc on the world? Thankfully, a catastrophe didn't happen! Fast forward to this New Year's Eve. For some of us, there was a sense that the world was changing once again. We entered a new decade...the 20's.  Rolling into a new decade causes us to pause, review, and evaluate where we have been and where we hope to be. This evaluation often gives us a new sense of purpose and a new understanding of ourselves. We often call these epiphanies - a new way of seeing our lives and the world around us.  This week at First United, we will be celebrating what many traditional churches call "Epiphany Sunday" - a time to reflect on the coming of the wise men to visit Jesus. This Sunday is set aside to remember a time when the world experienced a shift in the way things were seen. On Epiphany Sunday, people saw a new light and a new way of approaching God and one another. As we head into 2020, join Pastor Sarah as we talk about a new way of seeing the world around us.

Christmas has come and gone. We have heard the messages of hope, love, peace, and joy that remind us all why Jesus was born. Now what? The celebration of Jesus' birth was never meant to end on December 26th, but the reality of his birth should live in our hearts throughout the year. We will explore the concept of praise and how simple praise can lead us into a joyful 2020. GUEST PREACHER: Lamont Hartman is the former lead pastor of Emmaus Church, a multiethnic, multigenerational church plant in Santa Ana, CA. Lamont's vision/ministry is to see people live out the ministry of reconciliation, seeing people reconciled to God, to one another, and to the local church. Lamont is father to three beautiful children, Selah (10), Elsye (7), and Jackson (5). For a piece of candy (anything sweet), his kids will quote bible verses.

All you need is love - or at least that's what The Beatles tell us. Love can be a vague ideal, and it comes in many forms and is expressed in numerous ways. This is the last Sunday of Advent and of our series on what God can't wait for. It seems only fitting that we save the thing that God can't wait for the most...LOVE. In fact, it's the very reason our church exists...to remind people that God already loves them. But, love isn't just the gushy feeling we get when we encounter someone who is easy for us to care for.  Love always requires courage, and when we think of the Christmas story, there are countless moments that required loving courage. This week, we are going to hear how Joseph is a model of the kind of love that God is asking us to share with each other. To love something is to allow it to affect you which is risky and requires courage. In the middle of this divisive time in history (which in some ways mirrors the time of Joseph and Mary), we are going to need the kind of courage that is willing to believe that God is with us - Emmanuel. 

The psalmist says, "The one thing I ask, the one thing i seek, is to dwell in the house of the Lord forever, to gaze on his beauty…."   I would love to do that, too… but can you tell me where I'm supposed to put my gaze? Where is the Lord? Where is the Christ that I can come to and be healed and transformed? Often you can know something about someone by looking at what they love. So perhaps we can catch a glimpse of the invisible God bhttps://amzn.to/2PeUE4Hy gazing on what It loves, and in that gazing discover the Christ that has come to us! Emmanuel, God with us! GUEST SPEAKER: Scott Erickson is a touring painter, performance speaker, and creative curate who mixes autobiography, mythology, and aesthetics to create art and moments that speak to our deepest experiences. Using his passion and commitment to craft, Scott has been a working artist for over a decade, and has had his work appear on CNN, National Geographic, and various magazines, newspaper outlets, and book covers. He is the co-author of Prayer: Forty Days of Practice and May It Be So, a Spiritual Director to brave women and men, and a professional dishwasher for his food blogging wife.

As we shared last week, Advent is a season of waiting that prepares us for Christmas and the coming of the Christ child. Advent connects us to the people of Israel who were waiting for the promised Messiah, and this season seeks to slow us down, to be focused, and to be intentional about what we are waiting for. Yet, Advent is not meant to be passive. Instead, we are to be focused on how to take action, because there are things that God can't wait to bring into the world. Last week, we talked about how God can't wait for us to experience hope. This week, we are going to talk about how God can't wait for us to experience peace. Peace can seem like such a vague notion, but the book of Isaiah (Isaiah 11:1-10) describes peace in very specific terms. Peace will look like wolves and lambs lying down together and all kinds of other seemingly impossible natural occurrences. More than this, a child will lead them into this peace. A peace like this requires action - repentance. This week, Pastor Sarah will share how repentance (or turning around) is something we can do today as a way that leads to peace whilst we wait.