Money. Money. Money…and more money. Everyone wants to get rich. Everyone wants to be rich. While money may be on our minds majority of the time, getting rich and being rich are bigger than making money and having resources, getting rich and being rich are about making the money make a future that leads to true life. In week 1 of this series we explore how truly living means learning to be giving.

Broken hearts are a big part of life, especially when we feel forced to surrender something that we’re not ready to give up. Through it all, even when our hearts are broken, God gives us the strength to have unbreakable faith in him. In this fourth and final week of the series we will discover that nothing outweighs or out lasts the unbreakable bond that we have with God.

Learning to surrender sometimes means surrendering to the moment and surrendering to the season. While surrendering to the weight of a season of loss, there will come a time when a new season arrives. In week three of this series we will examine how God grants the gift of hope to those who are hurting and waiting for their season of pain to expire.

Grief is a journey and not a destination. Sometimes dealing with a loss can be overwhelming, and yet God has a way of taking something bitter and making it sweet. In week two of this series we will discover that God is present with us in our most painful moments.

There’s nothing more frustrating than losing something important. When you lose your keys, your wallet, or your cell phone it often feels like life is at a stand still. Nothing moves, nothing works, and nothing is worth it until you find what you’ve lost, but what happens when the only way to find what you’ve been missing is to lose what you already have. In week one of this series we will explore how the only way to really find true worth in life is to be willing to lose our life to Jesus.

Why do bad things happen to good people? If God is so good, why do awful things happen? In the fifth and final week of this series, we will listen to a story by Jesus that just may explain something about God that we never knew, and while it may not make us comfortable, it does make God credible.

The only people, who fail, are the people who never even try. In week four of this series, we will listen to a short story about the nature of faith. What if in life we dedicated ourselves to doing as much as we can with what we have instead of doing as much as we can to keep what we have? Jesus shares a story that just may challenge how we look at living a life full of faith, instead of a life full of fear.

It is often said that desperate people do desperate things. That’s why Jesus shares a short story about the urgency and importance of prayer and persistence. In week three of this series, we will listen and learn about a woman who was so desperate that she learned how to influence the person who could influence her life.

Stories often share values, and in this story Jesus shares an odd story of a worker who went from working to find pleasure in life to working on connecting with people, all because he learned what was really valuable.

Every good story involves both a hero and a villain. In our world, the hero is always brave, always sacrifices, and always does the right thing. The villain on the other hand, is not quite capable of living up to the hero’s standards. In week one of this series we will examine how Jesus uses this story to challenge us to never define either by looking to the other guy, but by looking to God.