This past Sunday, we explored our third core value at Hope Church- We live like Community is Essential. We are living through what many have called an epidemic of loneliness, where social connection and authentic community are becoming increasingly rare. Unfortunately, the church is no exception to this trend. The church in our day is often viewed as an event or social group that leaves many Christians unfulfilled. However, in Scripture, we are given a vision of how the new community of Jesus, the body of Christ, can exemplify unity, dependence, and maturity in our socially disconnected age. 

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This past Sunday, we explored the first two of our five core values at Hope Church: We live like the Bible is True and that the Gospel Changes Us. While many people have various ways of understanding the Bible and its role in the Christian life, at Hope Church, we believe that the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus. And as we explore that story (Creation, Fall, Israel, Jesus, New Creation), we uncover good news or  “gospel” that has transformed lives and communities all over the world. 

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This is Sunday we talked about the mission statement of Hope Church and how we practically live that out as a church body and as individuals.

Mission Statement:
We exist to bring hope to our community by practicing the way of Jesus until it is in Nashville as it is in Heaven.

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This past Sunday, we explored the role that suffering plays in our spiritual formation, or how we are “shaped by suffering.” While many of us don’t like to consider how our suffering might be used for our spiritual maturity, the consistent teaching of the New Testament is that suffering is one of the primary means God uses to form the character of Christ in us. In the letter of 1 Peter, we are instructed to yield our suffering to God, knowing that it has the capacity to shape in us a resilient faith, a deeper joy, and an eternal hope.

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This past Sunday, we celebrated Jesus's resurrection and the hope we have in Christ because of the empty tomb. Many of us are tempted to grow overly familiar with this ancient truth. Still, just like Jesus’ disciples on the Road to Emmaus, we constantly need to have our “eyes opened” to the truth of the risen Christ, who is the only source of life and salvation that we can place our faith in. As we turn our eyes and hearts back to the resurrected Jesus and seek to become like him, we will discover his resurrection power at work in us in ways far greater than we can imagine.

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This past Sunday, we celebrated Palm Sunday together, marking the beginning of Jesus’ journey to the cross and, ultimately, the empty tomb. As Jesus carried out his ministry, there was growing anticipation that he would restore the kingdom of Israel, free the Israelites from Roman occupation, and take the throne as a new king. However, Jesus would make clear that his kingdom was “not of this world” and that his crown would be one earned through suffering. Jesus’ subversive kingship presents us with a choice: Will we try to make Jesus the king we want, or receive him as the king we truly need? 

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This past Sunday, we continued our teaching series on suffering by exploring how to walk faithfully in the midst of it. While there is no formula or guidebook for faithfully enduring suffering, we find in Scripture wisdom about how we might persevere despite our pain. When we look to Jesus and his anticipation of the cross in the Garden of Gethsemane, we’re given a picture of what it looks like to wrestle with our pain while eventually yielding it over to God and his steadfast love for us. 

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This past Sunday, we began a new teaching series exploring the problem of evil and the resulting suffering it produces in our world. Questions about why God allows human suffering are some of the most personal and emotionally challenging that we face as apprentices of Jesus. When we explore the Scripture, we see that God consistently empathizes with the pain caused by evil and knows that it may even cause us to question him. Yet, in that pain, we’re reminded that we worship a God who is not the author of evil but the author of its remedy. And that remedy is the cross of Christ and the empty tomb, which makes way for the New Creation. 

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This past Sunday, we reflected on the spiritual practice of silence and solitude that we find in the life of Jesus and the wisdom that it can offer us in a culture of busyness and noise. When we examine the life and ministry of Jesus, we find that he “often withdrew to solitary places to pray” (Luke 5:16) and that solitude was a place of strengthening and preparation for his public ministry. As we regularly practice solitude, we will discover what Jesus knew: that it creates space for prayer, frees us from the urgent and expected, and clarifies our calling. 

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