Our love for God is in direct proportion to the depth of forgiveness you realize Jesus has given you. Our response of love, praise and thanks toward God becomes personal and extravagant when we understand that Jesus got what we deserved so we could receive what we didn't deserve from Him; complete and total forgiveness.

Jesus is orchestrating an encounter with us. Long before we started seeking Him, He was pursuing us. If we changed the way we see the events in our life from incidental details to divinely orchestrated events that leads us to an encounter we will likely see Jesus and have a greater understanding of what we are going through. Jesus wants to encounter even the least likely and wants to use us to introduce the least likely to Him.

Doubt is almost a forbidden topic in the church. Many aren't honest about their real doubts so we just pretend they aren't there until many just lose their faith entirely. The presence of sincere doubt doesn't mean that faith is absent and we might be surprised how Jesus responds to our sincere doubts.

Following Jesus means we told Jesus we will follow you wherever you go. Jesus takes us at our word and challenges us to follow Him beyond our comfort zone where real life is found and where people Jesus loves lives. Jesus will confront our obsession with comfort for our benefit if we let him.

The classic story of the "prodigal son" uncovers a truth that might be either beautiful or painful depending on who we identify with in the story. The hope offered though is that of a father's love and embrace to those who have misunderstood him. As a church we must be aware of those who have "walked away" from the father and of those who have "drifted away" and help them come home.

We define maturity by how graciously we live and by how generously we give. If we don't know what maturity is we will not know when we arrived and worse we might be headed the wrong way. We believe maturity is marked by growing in the grace of God resulting in generosity.

We are more loyal to the future than the past. The Bible says we should look at the past, we should learn from the past but we should never live in our past. We are called to move into the future with fresh faith and embody a spirit of anticipation of the future.