Ridgedale Students

We are called to reach...but we also live in a world that conditions us to reach for nothing and no one. We lack trust, but trust is the thing we need most when trouble comes. Trust and trouble walk hand in hand but we have to be clear on who we trust and why before we enter into our times of trouble. Tonight we look into why Jesus is worthy of our trust so that we can prepare our hearts before we enter into our times of trouble.

Jesus promises us that in this world we will encounter trouble, but do we really believe Him? Most often when trouble comes our way we respond by questioning God or thinking that maybe His promises were too good to be true. In this series, we'll try to uncover the hidden assumptions of our hearts and work through how we as followers of Jesus walk through seasons of trouble.

God has made us for more. In Session 1 we looked at the call to Kingdom living. In Session 2 we heard from Josh Powell that the pace of the Kingdom is a pace of peace and rest. In Session 3 we close out the weekend looking at what the work of the Kingdom is. From Genesis 1 to Revelation 21 we see a consistent theme pointing us toward the Kingdom being a Kingdom of justice and mercy.

What is the pace of Kingdom living? In session 2 of DNow 2023 we got a word from Josh Powell, director of Ridgedale's Young Professionals ministry on the pace of Kingdom living. From Matthew 11 we see that Jesus is gentle and lowly and His pace is a pace of peace and rest.

What does it mean to live, "On earth AS IT IS in heaven?" This is the focus of DNow 2023. In our first message we hear the truth that there is more to life in Jesus than what we may experience currently. That we have been made to be worshippers and our worship is meant to be directed toward heaven.

We live in a culture of relativism that equates certainty or absolutes with bigotry and closed-mindedness. It can lead us to questions, one of which naturally, is, “Is Jesus the only way?” In this throwback episode in the RSM archives we look back to our Tough Topics series in 2019 to answer the question; is Jesus the only way to heaven?

Confession is treated as a dirty word in many Christian circles today. When we confess, we are reminded of the sin that God has separated us from, but we are also ushered into the joyous remembrance of Jesus' sacrifice! Sin is crafty. It hides in the depths of our hearts, disguises itself within our greatest desires, and masks itself behind just causes. It takes the searching work of God to reveal sin to us sometimes. As we close out our series on prayer, we will look at one of the hardest and most necessary asks we can make of God; to search me and know me as I bare my sin before Him.

Request, petition, supplication, asking. These are all words we often associate with the work of prayer. But are all of our times of prayer meant to be times of us leading the conversation? Was David somehow incorrect when he told us to, "be still and know," or was Elijah off base when He silently waited on the Lord's whisper? Was it purely punishment that Zechariah was silenced after his doubt in Luke 1, or was God giving space and direction for a different way of prayer? A way that forms something in us that speaking simply cannot. We often fear the silence, but in the silence God often speaks the loudest.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:17, Paul tells the church at Thessalonica to, "pray without ceasing." This can be a confusing proposition for people in any era. As Christians are we to forgo jobs for a life of constant prayer? Are we to give up friendly acquaintances to be on our knees every waking hour of the day? Or is there something else, something larger at work? Could it be that we aren't supposed to carve out TIMES of prayer as much as we are to live LIVES of prayer?

In the Lord's prayer we're instructed to pray, "Our Father in Heaven, HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME." Do we hallow the name of God by praying to Him? Do we give Him something He doesn't already possess? In week 2 of Teach Us to Pray we'll look at what it means to pray to a God who loves us. Is it our "doing our religious duty," or is prayer meant to work something into our hearts that is constantly seeking to be pushed out? Is prayer more about getting us into heaven or is it about getting heaven into us?