After scaling the fifty-foot rock face in Joshua Tree, I had to get back down. My guide up top instructed me to step back and lean perpendicular to the rock face, trusting my future to the climbing rope and my 15-year-old belayer. The coaching, the safety of the belay, and the inspiring shouts of encouragement from the crowd below made the journey up and down a thrill and super satisfying.

This is the life of the disciple, learning confidence and trust by putting our weight down on Jesus. Faith is as much a verb as it is a noun—we might call it faithing in Jesus. Like the rock-climbing adventurer, we don’t scale alone. We need others along the way. We need our faith-community—or should we say, our faithing-community. Healthy faith-communities support our intention to trust Jesus with our life. The conversation between Jesus and a man born blind will show us how this works, and how central to loving God is trusting Jesus. Read John 9 and ask yourself which part of his faith-community would you want on the end of your belay.

Bill

What could Jesus do that is so scandalous, so wrought with the possibility of being misinterpreted that the gospel writers would be hesitant to include it in the gospel narratives? Oh, I don't know. How about John 7:53-8:11? It's the passage where Jesus tells the Pharisees who have brought a woman caught in adultery, "He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." That'll close out a perfectly good cocktail party. Who wants the finger pointed at them? "Ease up Jesus, all we were trying to do is condemn this blatant sinful woman and we mean blatant. Leave us out of it!" It's far easier to point your finger at someone else rather than yourself. Yet Jesus is making a point to all, and I mean all, as He looks at this publicly shamed woman and says, "Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more." Ah, the words of scandalous love. What a shame we often fall short of that kind of love. I have been challenged this week to stop acting like a Pharisee and more like Jesus, but only when I truly understand how to receive this kind of scandalous Love from Jesus himself. "We love because he first loved us" rings in my ear.

Todd

Distracted? Disconnected? Discouraged? Experiencing any of these? The three D’s of a broken relationship. It happens to the best of us, to even the best marriages, the best of friends, the best of partnerships. Life happens. Things go awry. How do we go back to the way it was at the beginning? Remember when...? Remember that commitment, that vitality, that love, that respect, that honor you once had? Jesus once said, “you lost your first love.” How do we get it back? How do we keep it alive? Learn…. to…. abide.... In John 15, Jesus has a conversation with his disciples and reveals to them how to keep their newly established relationship with Him alive. Be careful of the three D’s. They will turn a fruitful relationship into a branch full of dried up lifeless raisins. You must learn the secret of abiding.

Todd

The greatest command is to love God, with all our heart, and our soul, and our mind. I'll be honest ... sometimes I bottle up this impulse inside my head, turning love of God into an idea easily evaporating into private feelings. I need a guide, someone tangible who can show me, even apprentice me into what love looks like with skin on. This weekend, we continue our Conversations with Jesus series, exploring what it means to really love God. Loving God is central to all we are about at The River. We are taking the Sundays from now to Thanksgiving to dive deep into this core value: Love God. This Sunday, we'll look at a conversation Jesus had with his disciples, where he pressed them to articulate their understanding of his identity and mission. The teaching is helping me see the connection between loving God and following Jesus. Here is the sermon in a sentence: The path to loving God travels through the door of allegiance to Jesus; allegiance to Jesus travels the way of the cross.

Bill

The highly anticipated fall series has arrived: Conversations with Jesus. This is no insta pot recipe. We've been stewing this one for a long time. Remember Walter Cronkite - CBS anchor man who was legendary for his human interest pieces and signing off with "And that's the way it is"? Google him. He was known as the most trusted man in America. What he said stuck. That's Jesus. What he said stuck with people and was passed down from generation to generation. Jesus was provocative. He engaged people conversationally and provoked change. So what did Jesus converse about that was so "And that's the way it is"? Love God, Enjoy People, Play Your Part, and Share His Story. That about sums it up. We're going to start by looking at what Jesus said about Loving God. Let's start with the Greatest Commandment from Matthew 22:34-40 and the three ways we can love God.

Todd

Ever preached a sermon and as soon as you finished realized, Oh my, there's more to that than I thought? Of course not. You're not a preacher. What am I thinking? I have. Just the other week. I'm seriously thinking of re-preaching my last message- Thoughts on a Garden, a well, and a Table, from Genesis 1-2, John 4, and Matthew 9. It's a new way of looking at the church. I think God was speaking to us through this message. The message was about forming a fresh new vision for The River. What we learned is we are culture creators. We can't change the culture that is, but we can create a uniquely different culture. That's our garden mandate. We grow, then we water, and finally we sit and eat together the fruit of our labor. Food soothes the soul. It brings people together. As I said a few weeks ago, this is farm to table church theology. It is my prediction that the church in the future will be more culturally relevant and integrated when it learns to do church around a table instead of a row of chairs. I am serious about that. Would you go online and listen to that message? It will help you understand the message this weekend, Part II. It all starts with a calling. We all get one. Not just Moses (Exodus 3-4). We all get called. It's our voice - Vocatio. It's a summons, a calling, a vocation. It's what God calls YOU to do. How Moses is called is extraordinary. I'll show you.

Todd

When doing for Jesus eclipses being with Jesus, we have a problem called religion; Jesus wants to reveal it and call us back to relationship with him.

This is a game changer.

Karl Martin

I love trees. On one of our first dates, Cynthia and I spent it talking and enjoying an evening up in a tall tree on the campus of U. C. Davis. I knew that if a girl could climb a tree better than me, and wanted to share laughter from the top branches, it might be smart on my part to pursue her more. We still like climbing trees. God loves trees too, and uses them to teach me all kinds of life-shaping practices. This Sunday, I plan to talk about three important lessons I have learned from listening to the trees. My message title is, "The Trees Are Speaking." I am trying to follow what Jesus urged, "the one who has ears, let them really hear. But don't just hear, put your hearing to work and practice what I say." The trees are speaking; are we listening?

Bill

It's something Tom Nelson said that has stuck with me, pulled at me, challenged me, and changed the way I think. "In the church, we often spend the majority of our time teaching people how to live the minority of their lives." What does he mean and why is that even significant? I think it gets at what we do most of our days. What do we do? We work, we spend time with family and friends, we fix things, we shop, we exercise, we have meals, prepare meals, clean up after meals (most of the time).....And the minority of our time? We go to a church service, we study our bibles, pray, serve those in need. See what he's getting at? What does God say about the majority of our lives? Obviously all of it is important. And why do we even separate out these two as if they are not related to each other? So here's what I want to do. Let's get a more comprehensive understanding of life from God's perspective. I want to suggest that you are a not just a consumer, not just a good church attender, a Christian, a husband, wife, parent, worker or friend. You are a shaper of culture. And it all comes from the garden, way back when. As we begin our fall season, here's the first of a series of messages to get us thinking about what God has for us as a church and a follower of Christ as we think about our next season of life at the River.

Todd

Our 21st century U.S. historical moment serenades us with two unmistakable songs. One is named "Division," and the other, "Superficial Spectacle." These songs have been playing on repeat in human communities for millennia, but in the last decade a confluence of complicated and not-so-complicated realities have colluded to crank up the volume. Today we hear their chorus echoing in everything from our entertainment, politics, and journalism to our education, communication, and consumption. On the one hand, their malignant melodies enlist us to "Fight for your team!", "Vindicate your position!", and always and everywhere "Protect you and yours!" On the other hand, they insist that we keep up appearances, scratch for the spotlight, and whenever possible, "catch ourselves doing something good (preferably in a selfie)." As we sway and stagger to the beat of these life-wrecking refrains, Paul's ancient letter to the Corinthians surprises us with something fresh. Join us this Sunday as we close our study of 1 Corinthians by soaking in a pair of vintage Pauline priorities. Vintage priorities that, I believe, sing a new, refreshing, and transformative song.

James