At some point in our lives, either with a single friend or friend group, or with a community of people, we’ve all had those thoughts and feelings— I don’t need nobody, because it’s never what I hoped it would be.

If we can be a little honest today, at different times in our live for varying reasons and to varying degrees, we haven't seen friendship or community as essential or distinct. However, as we will discover today, history, human nature, and the scriptures prove that both are essential.

Relationships: Messy And Marvelous | Friendships & Community | Proverbs 17:17; Hebrews 10:24-25

We all want our marriages to thrive. No one gets into a marriage just to survive it, though it feels that we are just barely surviving sometimes, that it’s not what we’d choose if we could help it. We want to thrive. We all want to be the 70 or 80 year old couple that still gets giddy when they see each other, still holds hands, maybe even smooch a little in public. Maybe even get a little pinch on the hindquarters every now and then. That’s the dream! But how do we get there?

What we will find today as we search the scriptures together is that Marriages thrive when Wives and Husbands diligently pursue one another's joy, desire and honour. That is what will help to create a thriving, healthy marriage.

Relationships: Messy & Marvelous | Wives & Husbands | Proverbs 5:18-19, Song of Songs 7:1-13, 1 Peter 3:1-7

We all want healthy kids, and kids want clear boundaries. We want our kids to flourish. We want them to thrive in this world. And our kids want to know they are safe, loved, and led—even when they aren’t acting as if they do. How we relate to them and how they relate to us is integral to that flourishing.

Thankfully, parents, we are not the first people trying to figure out how best to have a healthy relational dynamic with our children. And thankfully, kids, you are not the first kids who had to think about how to respond to their parents’ love and leadership.

Here in Paul’s letter to the first church in the ancient city of Ephesus, we see the most important aspect of this relationship outlined for us: Obedient Children flourish under the discipleship of Godly parents. This idea is central to having healthy kids, who respond well to our (parents’) love and leadership.

Relationship: Messy and Marvelous | Kids & Parents | Ephesians 6:1-4

For most us, the idea of receiving something for nothing sounds too good to be true. In fact, it may actually cause us skeptical. Which is why for most of us, we try and determine who deserves how much of God’s kindness. Even if that judgement is directed just to ourselves. Even if we aren’t sure that we actually believe in God.

How good is good enough? What number of good deeds square the bad? When is enough, enough to “deserve” grace?

Jesus answers these questions and more in the story He tells. But what He desires to communicate in telling His story, we will discover, is clear—God’s grace is far more scandalous than we are willing to accept or believe. And when we see this, all of our judgements suddenly become meaningless.

Parables | The Workers In The Vineyard | Matthew 20:1-16

There are many lenses through which we view God. For some of us that lens is theology alone. God becomes a subject of our study. A Figure to be read about, and learned. For others God is seen as a distant deity, winding the world up as a clock, but largely leaving us to our own devices.Many of us see God as an angry judge, adjudicating the failures and events of our lives, but having little to do with our day-to-day reality.

And still others see God as a transactional being; a genie granting wishes and if you do right by him, He’ll do right by you. In fact, with enough faith and good behaviour, you can ask for anything, and He will have to respond.

But the most common lens is one that sees God as limited in His benevolence, and limited in His love. It is a lens that constrains us to seeing God as too good and too distant and too demanding to tolerate our sins and shortcomings. It is a lens that limits the love of God, to the degree that We think God’s compassion has limitations. It is limited to the loveable and good people.

Limited to the list of sins we’ve deemed forgivable, but never enough to cover me. Because of any one of these lenses, we struggle to think God can actually love us.

And yet even as we struggle to believe it, Jesus adjures us to hear that The Father’s compassion is limitless. God is a Father. A Father who seeks, and never turns away. His compassion is inexhaustible, and His love especially poured out for those who feel unloveable. And when we see Him this way, everything changes.

Parables | The Compassionate Father | Luke 15:11-32

If we are honest, we don’t like to pray. While there may be many reasons for this, at the base of it is we sometimes feel as though God doesn’t really care. He isn’t actually listening.

We very easily lose heart. We grow discouraged. We cease to believe that which we long for, or long to see will ever come to fruition. Our thoughts become consumed with the idea that things will always be this way. They will never actually change. We think to ourselves, God doesn’t hear me. God doesn’t care. The injustices of this world are overtaking my sight, and sucking life from my soul— We. Feel. Abandoned.

And though all of these feelings are real, and not to simply be ignored, they are met with this resounding, wondrous truism, a promise from He who cannot lie. Words we must speak over ourselves in moments of deep doubt, and mounting discouragement—God hears our cries, and acts on our behalf, so we should not lose heart.

Yes, it often seems vindication comes slowly. It often seems prayers go unanswered. It often feels as though things will never change, and we will remain stuck, or heartbroken, or unaware of which way to go. But Jesus assures us in this beautiful, short little parable, that we are not forgotten.

Parables | The Persistent Widow | Luke 18:1-8

At times, we've all felt like we're not good enough for the people who love us. We judge how good we are by how we measure up to others.

And as easy as it is to believe that we are not good enough for a our relationships, it is equally easy to believe that we aren't good enough for God—particularly if we’ve yet to follow Jesus. In fact, there is a common belief in our culture that we’ve done too much, or have gone too far, or simply aren’t good enough for God to see us and love us.

On the other hand, we can fall into the trap of believing that by being “better” than others, or doing more “good things” than others, that God will look more favorably upon us.

But, God’s gauge is not ours. He doesn’t look at how we compare to other people to determine our value. He doesn’t use external measures to decide how good we are. He doesn’t measure us by each other. He doesn’t categorize people, He looks at the state of our heart with respect to Him.

God looks primarily at our posture toward Him. He evaluates from where we derive our value, and how it makes us treat Him and other people. And He acts toward us based on this, and not the many external measures to which we would normally look. For this reason Jesus shows us that God makes righteous the humble and humbles the self-righteous.

Parables | The Pharisee & The Tax Collector | Luke 18:9-14

When is the last time you had a good… robust… intense… argument? Can you remember? We live in a society where people insist on standing on their rights in the face of any conflict, disagreement, differing opinion, or matter of offense—great or small.

And when we stand on our rights, we are equally likely to be slow to forgive—if we actually ever forgive at all.

Now, what's so incredibly inconsistent about this is that even as we stand on our rights, and find ourselves slow to forgive or failing to forgive or limiting what we’ll forgive, We all want unlimited forgiveness.

Standing in quite stark a contrast to our societal view of forgiveness as weakness are Jesus’ words here in Matthew 18, the core of which are very clear—If we are forgiven, we must forgive—and it is not optional, limited, or lip service, it is extravagant.

Parables | The Unforgiving Servant | Matthew 18:23-35

How do you know your life matters? How do you know you matter? These are two very important questions. By default most of us will drift toward the standard external measures of worth: accumulation, accomplishment, acceptance, or authority.

For most of us this is how we measure ourselves; each other; and our ability to matter. But if time has taught us little else, it has taught us that what you make, and what you drive, and where you live, and where you work, and who you’re with, and what you look like, how many electoral college votes you received will never actually make you matter.

Every one of our typical measures — Accumulation, accomplishment, acceptance, or authority — and their ability to even make us feel a sense of our ability to matter in a moment, is fleeting, gone before we know it.

Now if we can agree on this, then the question resurfaces—how do we know that we matter… that our lives matter? According to the words of Jesus, apart from throwing ourselves into something eternal, our lives won’t matter. Join us as we dive into one of His most difficult teachings.

Parables | The Sower | Mark 4:3-20