Scripture: Nehemiah 1-2

Directors step up, cast a vision, and bring people in, unifying a team around something bigger than any one person. Directors in the kingdom of God see a need and step in to meet it. Nehemiah was a director: he heard Jerusalem was in ruins, he had a vision for what could be, and he took the initiative and leadership to make it happen.

Fewer things can destroy a life and a reputation as quickly as sexual immorality. Pornography, sexual impropriety, adultery—these lusts of the flesh are as old as humanity, and the temptations to indulge are as prevalent in the church today as they were two thousand years ago. Fleeing from sexual temptation should be a baseline way of living for followers of Jesus, but what would our relationships and communities look like if Chrisitans consistently lived with a radically counter-cultural sexual ethic of holiness and honor?

Christians are widely viewed as one of the loudest, most easily-offended groups in America today. When we see behaviors we don’t like, when public laws don’t match up with our preferred beliefs, when we are personally criticized or corrected, when others don’t live up to our expectations—the knee-jerk response within the evangelical church has become one of outrage and rhetoric. This is a far-cry from the heart of Jesus who taught us to turn the other cheek, and who, himself, endured accusations and abuse while maintaining a posture of confident humility. If the Church desires to make an impact in our culture today, we will need to recapture and embody the meek and mild love of Jesus.  

Theodore Roosevelt famously said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” Studies show that more than 10% of our daily thoughts involve making comparisons of some sort to other people. Whether to make us feel better about ourselves by emphasizing weaknesses in others or by making us feel worse about ourselves by fixating on others’ strengths, we can easily fall into the “comparison trap” where we are consumed with unhelpful thoughts that keep us from living the kind of life God intends. Paul exhorts the church to delight in our uniqueness—to live in the reality of how God created us—and to participate in God’s mission in the ways that only we can.

Scripture: Genesis 2:2-3

Eugene Peterson once wrote, “busyness is the enemy of spirituality. It is essentially laziness. It is doing the easy thing instead of the hard thing. It is filling our time with our own actions instead of paying attention to God’s actions.” Throughout Scripture we find that rest is an essential action of God and an essential attribute of God’s people. Our challenge and our invitation is to be people who understand not just how to rest from work, but to work from a place of rest.

We welcome our friend, Eddie Mwesigye, Pastoral Team Leader of Watoto Church in Uganda.  Watoto is living out the mission of making disciples, celebrating Christ, and caring for community. 

The mission of God’s people has always been for the blessing of the nations. This was the promise made to Abraham, it was the covenant to the nation of Israel, it was the vocation of Jesus, and it remains the purpose of the church. Standing passively, with arms hanging by our sides, is a posture that represents our failure to understand and embrace our calling as the people of God. We are to point forward, looking ahead to the day when God will redeem all things, and moving in our unique contexts with our unique gifts to see God’s will done on earth as it is in heaven.

Scripture: Matthew 6:25-34

Our tendency is to cling to things that matter to us. Our freedoms, our beliefs, our resources, our relationships: all of these things are worth fighting for, and so we grip them tightly. But Jesus models God’s abundance in his own life, acknowledging that the only real way to make a difference in God’s economy is by letting things go. Open Hands is a rejection of the scarcity mindset, and a trust in the abundance of God. It is a posture that desires to see and participate in God’s work here and now.

Scripture: Mark 2:13-17

Jesus was not concerned about his reputation. He raised the bar for Scriptural truth, but at the same time he spent a significant amount of time with people who would have been considered unclean and unrighteous. Too often, the posture of the church is to stiff-arm—to push away from people who make us uncomfortable or who don’t fit our tidy ideas about righteousness. But Jesus modeled a way of love that embraced the outcasts and the unclean, and in doing so showed us the real meaning of truth and grace. Our posture towards those around us, especially towards those who might challenge our comforts, should be one of arms-wide welcoming.