It's Better When You're Here!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series at least half as much as I have. Taking the things we often accept as truth and holding them up to Scripture has challenged my faith, and I hope it has challenged yours too.

As we close Out of Context, we turn to a phrase that has become increasingly popular: “Praises go up, blessings come down.”

It sounds encouraging, but it can quickly drift into the prosperity gospel—the idea that if we have enough faith, pray the right prayers, or praise hard enough, life will go our way.

But the prosperity gospel is neither prosperity nor Gospel.

As we look at Job 4, and as we prepare to begin a series on generosity next week, we need to be clear: our level of blessedness is not a reflection of how well we praise God.

So instead of saying, “Praises go up, blessings come down,” maybe we say this: Praises go up. God has come down.

Passage: Job 4:7-9, 12-14, 17 CEB

This series is all about the sayings we treat like Scripture—even when they are not. Some are meant to comfort. Others just look good on a coffee mug.

This week, we are firmly in coffee mug territory: “Love the sinner, hate the sin.”

In Matthew 7, Jesus warns us about focusing on what is wrong with someone else while ignoring what needs attention in ourselves.

So maybe we need a simpler alternative: Love the person. Put the love into action.

Not from a distance. Not with an asterisk. Put the love into action.

Today, let’s take this one Out of Context.

Passage: Matthew 7:1-5 NRSVUE

This week feels strongest if we emphasize that the phrase is usually well-intentioned, but can quietly place an impossible burden on people.

Last week, we began our Out of Context series by looking at one of those phrases that sounds biblical, even though it is not: “God helps those who help themselves.”

This week, we turn to another saying that usually shows up when life is at its hardest: “God won’t give you more than you can handle.”

It is often spoken with love. It is meant to comfort someone who is hurting, overwhelmed, or afraid. But when life becomes an overwhelming sequence of events and we already feel scared and alone, those words can sound less like good news and more like another responsibility we are somehow failing to carry.

Because what happens when life actually is more than we can handle?

1 Corinthians 10 is often used to support this saying, but the passage is not promising that we will never face more than we can bear. And when we live as though God has given each of us some hidden superpower to endure everything on our own, we take on a responsibility that was never ours to carry.

We end up exhausted. Beaten up. Isolated. And sometimes stuck in the very places from which Christ came to set us free.

So today, I have a replacement. It may be a little less quippy, but I think it is a whole lot more biblical:

God won’t leave you when life is more than you can handle.

Because the promise of our faith is not that life will always be manageable.

The promise is that we will never have to face it alone.

Let’s take this one Out of Context.

 Passage:  1 Corinthians 10:12-17 CEB

The Bible gets blamed for a lot of things it never actually says.

Some sayings are meant to comfort us. Some are supposed to sound wise. And some are just Christian-sounding enough that we assume they must be somewhere in Proverbs.

Over the next several weeks, in our new series Out of Context, we are going to take some of these familiar phrases off the Hobby Lobby wall, dust them off, and ask: Is this actually Scripture? And more importantly, is this actually good news?

We begin with a classic: “God helps those who help themselves.”

It sounds responsible. It sounds motivational. It even sounds vaguely biblical.

There is just one problem. It is not in the Bible.

And Galatians 6 gives us almost the opposite picture. The Christian life is not about proving that we can carry our own weight. We are told to carry one another’s burdens. To show up. To help. To be honest enough to need one another. Because sometimes the help of God looks a whole lot like the people of God.

Passage: Galatians‬ 6‬:‭1‬-‭10‬ CEB‬‬

Over the last two weeks, we have been asking what truly defines us as the people called Shepherds.

We began with Hope—an audacious, active hope in Jesus Christ that we are called to share with the world. Then last week, we turned to Light and asked what it means to be a lighthouse: a people who point others away from the darkness of sin and death and toward the life we find in Christ.

And now, we come to the heart of it all: Love.

At Shepherds, we say, “With God’s help, we embrace and connect with all people and together experience the Love, Light, and Hope of Jesus Christ.”

But the love Jesus describes in John 15 is not greeting-card love. It is not simply being nice, saying the right thing, or feeling warmly toward someone.

This is a love that sacrifices. A love that shows up. A love that stays. A love willing to lay itself down for someone else.

We have been given that kind of love by Jesus Christ. So the question as we close this series is not whether Christ loves us. The question is: What will this church do with the Love Christ has given us?

Passage: John 15: 9-13 CEB

Last week, as we began our Defined series, we talked about the hope we have in Jesus Christ—and how that hope is not something we simply hold onto for ourselves. It is something we actively share with the world.

At Shepherds, we say: “With God’s help, we embrace and connect with all people and together experience the Love, Light, and Hope of Jesus Christ.”

This week, we turn to the Light.

Romans 6 reminds us of a hard truth: sin leads to death. Sin pulls us into darkness, convinces us that there is no way out, and leaves us stumbling through places we were never meant to stay.

But the light of Christ leads to life.

God does not shine that light into our lives simply so that we can see. God shines it so that we can find our way out of the darkness—and then help others find their way too.

So what if the church became a lighthouse? A people who stand in the darkness and boldly point toward life. A people whose words, actions, and presence shine with the Love, Light, and Hope of Jesus Christ.

May we be a lighthouse.

Passage: Romans 6: 1-11 CEB

We are coming out of a series on evangelism, where we have talked about what it means to share good news in a world that desperately needs it. And now, we are turning the question inward.

What defines us?

At Shepherds, we say: “With God’s help, we embrace and connect with all people and together experience the Love, Light, and Hope of Jesus Christ.” That is our mission statement—but over the next three weeks, we are going to ask what those words really mean. What does it look like for that mission to shape who we are, how we live, and how we show up in the world?

This week, in Romans 12, we begin with hope. We are a hopeful people. Not because life is always easy, and not because everything always works out the way we want, but because our hope is rooted in Jesus Christ.

And if we have been given that kind of hope, then we have something worth sharing.

So as we begin this new series, Defined, let us ask again: Who are we? What defines us? And what would it look like for the Love, Light, and Hope of Jesus Christ to truly define everything we do?

Passage: Romans 12: 11-17 CEB

This is our final week in this series on Evangelism, and I hope over these last few weeks we’ve learned a little more about what it actually means to be an evangelist—what it means to tell good news in a world that desperately needs some.

But the truth remains: it can feel a little different when the invitation becomes specific.

It is one thing to talk about Jesus. It is another thing to look someone in the eye and say, “Come with me to my United Methodist Church.”

And yet, that kind of invitation might be more powerful than we realize.

In John 9, we meet a man whose life has been changed by Jesus. He does not have every theological answer. He cannot explain every detail. He simply knows what happened to him.

“I was blind, and now I see.”

That is evangelism.

Not proving that we know more. Not winning an argument. Not having every answer.

It is caring enough about another person to tell the truth about what Jesus has done in us—and then inviting them to come and see for themselves.

Because no one will care about what you know until they know how much you care.

And if we learn to live that kind of evangelism, I really do believe it can change the world.

Passage: John 9:7-17, 25 CEB

ast week, I shared with you the crazy vision I believe God has given us for Shepherds: a network of churches, never larger than 300 people, connected across neighborhoods by one common message—the Love, Light, and Hope of Jesus Christ.

But if that vision is going to become reality, then we have to learn how to tell that story.

Because we live in a world filled with doubt, pain, cynicism, and more bad news than we know what to do with. And honestly, people are not looking for another argument. They are looking for something true. Something hopeful. Something worth listening to.

In John 1, Philip doesn’t give Nathanael a perfect theological explanation. He simply says, “Come and see.”

Maybe that is where evangelism begins.

Not with pressure. Not with having every answer. But with an invitation to encounter the Jesus who has changed us.

So today, as we continue our series on evangelism, may we learn how to speak into a skeptical world with humility, honesty, and hope.

Because in a world filled to the brim with bad news, let us tell a story worth hearing.

Passage: John 1:43-49 CEB

Welcome to a brand-new series here at Shepherds: Evangelism. I think evangelism is having a bit of an identity crisis.

On one side, we see people shouting on street corners or commandeering the attention of an entire airplane to spout Christian talking points—and calling it evangelism. On the other, we see Christians becoming so quiet about their faith that following Jesus starts to feel like some top-secret part of their personality. Surely there has to be another way.

In Matthew 28, Jesus sends his followers into the world—not to be obnoxious, and not to disappear, but to go. To make disciples. To share what they have seen and experienced.

My prayer for this series is that we might discover a new and middle way of evangelism: one marked by courage, humility, relationship, and grace, so that everyone—and I do mean everyone—might come to know the whole and complete love of Jesus Christ.

Passage: Matthew 28: 16-20 CEB