RG AUDIO 061120   Ezra 7:1-10 One of my favorite pastimes living in the Puget Sound is catching seafood. In the summer I take my girls at low tide to dig up manila clams and oysters at the beach. At high tide, we take our crab rings and catch crabs off the dock. I didn’t […]

RG AUDIO 061020   Ezra 6:1-12 One of my favorite stories of my dad was when he was the pastor of a small church and taught at a public school to support our family. There were months when the church could not come up with a full salary. Providing a proper meal for the family […]

RG AUDIO 060920   Ezra 4:1-5 I love basketball. I play with a co-ed group on Monday nights at our church gym. During a game I deflected the ball from the opposing team and the player swore at me. She didn’t mean to do it. In fact, she apologized right away. In basketball, opposition is […]

RG AUDIO 060820   Ezra 2:1-13 Imagine yourself in their shoes: over 70 years exiled in a foreign land. This wasn’t your choice; you were forced to go. That’s what happened to the Israelites when they were exiled to Babylon. Despite their displacement, they had word that one day God would bring them back home. […]

RG AUDIO 060720   John 1:1-14 What does it mean to you to “receive Christ”? In Christian circles we often toss this phrase around as though it means something limited to a cognitive agreement that Jesus, alone, is Lord. Yes, that is both significant and critical. However, this is not enough. “Receiving Christ” has more […]

RG AUDIO 060620   Ezra 6:13-22 The story of Passover is an epic story of adventure, protection, and a momentous deliverance. Passover refers to the deliverance of the Israelite families from the infamous tenth plague, when God’s spirit would kill the firstborn of every household, but spare (or pass over) any house which had the […]

RG AUDIO 060520   Ezra 2:1-2, 61-70 Our God is faithful and wants to weave the brokenness of life into something beautiful. In Ezra 2, the people of Israel had been in a season of exile. Here, however, we see families reunited and brought back from the Babylonian captivity which had scattered them. It is […]

RG AUDIO 060420   Jeremiah 25:1-11 Some parts of scripture are humbling. Our response should be to pause, reflect, and seek God’s forgiveness. Jeremiah 25 is one of those scriptures. The context is ancient Israel during the evil reign of Manasseh, but the truth is relevant to our daily lives. If, of course, we are […]

RG AUDIO 060320   Genesis 12:1-9 The story of Abram is critical to understanding God’s eternal story of hope and redemption. Think about this: Abram didn’t have any scriptures to rely on. He didn’t have church history to inform him. He didn’t have, that we know of, any context for understanding the miraculous word which […]

RG AUDIO 060220   Genesis 3:17-24 The fall of humanity is infamous. God created a perfect world, but humanity wanted more. Unlike Jesus who did not consider equality with God something to be grasped (Philippians 2:6), Adam and Eve reached out to grasp more than was their portion. If we’re honest, we find ourselves doing […]