What are you afraid of? And more importantly, is fear shaping how you live, how you treat others, and how you follow Jesus? Jesus said the greatest commandments were to love God - love people. But "neighbor" is bigger than we think. It is not just the person next door.

Life offers many reasons to fear, but Jesus invites us to live with love instead of fear. By focusing on God's love rather than fear, followers of Jesus can be empowered to engage their communities.

In the limited time as parents, we can only teach so much before our kids head out into the world. Our faith's core ideas—love God and love people—should be central. What does it really mean to love our neighbor?

Eighteen summers sounds like a long time until you realize how quickly it passes. The question is not whether you will leave an impression on your children. You will. The question is what kind of impression it will be. Make it one that points them toward something worth being devoted to for a lifetime.

18 summers. That's all we get. How can we make the most of the opportunity and help our kids experience the better way of Jesus? Reading the Bible to our kids isn't enough—we must live it out.

Throughout the Psalms, we find prayers that encourage us to turn to God in moments of fear, difficulty, and shame. At the core of each of these issues and their solutions is our need to trust in God.

We've all felt it—that weight of being "found out." The moment our mistakes are exposed and shame tells us we're fundamentally flawed, unworthy, and beyond repair. In Psalm 51, David runs to God, not away from Him. He understood a powerful truth: God's mercy is far greater than our shame.

Life means we will experience times of difficulty and suffering. Suffering can cause us to feel alone, distant, and spiritually and emotionally empty. But there can be blessing as well. Rather than drive us away, it can cause us to turn to God in a way that is richer and more urgent than many of us do when things are going well. 

Every believer, regardless of their strength of faith, experience, or character, has experienced moments of fear. Feelings of fear are part of the human experience. That’s the bad news. The good news is that we don’t have to process our fears alone. 

God comforts us in our troubles so we can comfort others in theirs. No one seeks out pain but maybe, in God's hands, we can find purpose. A church who embraced this truth might find itself with amazing opportunities for impact.