George and I are coaching August's soccer team this season. We've been playing for all of one week and it is absolute chaos. But there is hope for a great season, we have a plan!

What makes a great, effective team? What does it take to (dare I say) win? Let’s look at what Paul (an absolutely legendary coach) has to say to his partners, his friends, his team.

Each of us is searching for joy and peace. Or put another way, none of us woke up this morning and thought to ourselves, "Do you know what I don't want to experience today? Joy and peace." Yet even though we all experience profoundly happy moments, lasting, joyful, peaceful contentment can often feel out of reach. Join us for the next two months as we learn together from the book of Philippians, seeing in it Paul's Holy Spirit inspired portrait of joy in all circumstances.

I want to believe that God's faithfulness means He will keep me from pain and loss and trials of any kind. But I have experienced pain and loss and trials. So what is true? This weekend I want to look at God's promise to be faithful and what that means/looks like/feels like in the middle of a storm.

Life gets hard. We know that - we have lived it! We are familiar with the afflictions of life, and are intimately aware of the pain and sorrow that come with it. But, what do you do in those times? Do you complain to the nearest person to you? Do you buckle in and bear it, making sure no one else knows about it? Or, do you take your situation to God in prayer? This week we explored how the art of lament leads us closer to God, and closer to his heart. Lament does not always make the situation "disappear," but it shows us God's appearance through it all.

This last six months I have spent most of my work life hanging out with dead people. That is, my research thrusts me into the strange and fascinating ocean of ancient Roman, Jewish, and early Christian literature. I’ve been reading heaps of their poems, novels, essays, philosophic treatises, scandalous narratives, visionary descriptions, moral rants, speeches, and surviving letters. My favorite part of my time with the ancients is when they say something that is—to us inhabitants of the 21st century—completely weird. I just LOVE getting my hair blown back their bizarre hot takes on the human experience. Ancients say the darndest things.

As we continue to consider the reality and shape of human suffering in our modern lives, I want to showcase a constellation of weird, wild, and completely scriptural strange takes on suffering. These might shock you, but I believe they might actually help us in the throes of pain. Join us to hear some unfiltered ancient wisdom.

In a fallen world, the question isn't whether or not we will experience heartache and pain. The question is what we will do with it. We all know the common ways we might respond to heartache in a place like the South Bay--distract ourselves with fun experiences or new purchases, busy ourselves in our responsibilities at work or with our families, deny the pain with religious platitudes and fake church smiles, the list could go on. But at the heart of following Jesus is the radical and freeing invitation to come to Him with our heartache. Join us as we learn from John 11 and see in it the heart of God for us in the midst of our heartache.

God, where are you? Why is this happening to me? Do you even care?

You know these questions. You’ve asked them. Many of you are living in the midst of these questions right now. This is what our students explored at Hume Lake Christian Camps. We are looking at the story of Joseph to discover how God works all things according to his plan and purpose. What people have intended for evil, God works for the good of his purposes.

Join us to hear our campers stories from Hume and the start of our series - God with us.

How important is seeing through the right lens? Ask anyone who's had to make do without their glasses or been living with the wrong prescription and they'll tell you--it makes a whole world of difference. And seeing through the right lens isn't just a matter of reading a traffic sign or further into the distance or making out details that would otherwise be fuzzy; it's a matter of navigating the world around us according to what we see. All of which brings us to the Biblical phrase we'll be demystifying in our final week of our Words to Live By series: Heaven and Earth. Join us as we clarify the often misunderstood vision of eternal life and hope presented to us in the pages of Scripture and learn together how to live in light of that which will matter forever.

As we continue our sermon series, Words to Live By, I want to draw our attention to two surprisingly powerful prepositions: “with” and “in.” Though small in size, these words carry enormous theological weight. They’re easy to overlook, yet they reveal a profound mystery—through faith, we are united with Christ and now live our lives in God. Simple words. Eternal truth. Mysterious, beautiful, and absolutely life-changing.

Let's do some word association. When I say "holy," you say... what? For many of us the knee jerk reaction that we have to a word like "holy" conjures images of a kind of cold, dull moralism that (if we're honest with ourselves) seems irrelevant at best and deeply unattractive at worst. Phrases like "holy huddle" or "holier than thou" come to mind. But the writers of Scripture speak of God's holiness and our call to be holy with Him as anything but cold and dull--biblical pictures of God's holiness are majestic and captivating. Join us as we learn from Isaiah 6:1-8 what it means to see the captivating majesty of God's holiness and the invigorating goodness of embracing our calling to be holy as He is holy.