Wesley Foundation at MSU

We all carry the baggage of being broken.  We’re broken people living in a broken world making broken decisions and responding to our brokenness with brokenness.  So there’s a lot of potential for life to bring along the way deep disappointment, hurt, and pain, which often becomes baggage that we carry.  So, what do we do with all of this brokenness?

One thing the Spirit is saying ”ugh” about is racial injustice and our world’s need for racial reconciliation. Could we join the Spirit of God with an “ugh” of our own? This week at Thrive! Join us!

Groaning...It's our gut-level response when our reality isn't what we're longing for.  Maybe you're groaning about Bulldog football or the presidential election. A big cultural problem like racisim deserves our groaning. Or maybe you're groaning about your own brokenness or because of some hurt you experienced along the way. The really good news we find in Romans 8 is that we never groan alone! The Holy Spirit turns our groaning into hoping!

Would power be a word you would use to describe your spiritual life...Powerful? Jesus says in Acts 1:8 that “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you...” The life and power of Christ are made accessible through the in dwelling person of the Holy Spirit. One of the reasons for not using the word “powerful” to describe our spiritual life may be because we don’t fully know the Holy Spirit and how the Spirit works within our lives. This week at Thrive, Katie Heckel gives us a crash course in “Holy Spirit-ology”:: 8 Facts about the Holy Spirit and how the Spirit’s power influences our life and the world! 

This week at Thrive, we’re talking community. What if community “as you know it to be” is not actually what God designed “community” to be? Today we’re connected digitally more than ever, yet disconnected physically more than ever. We’ve traded commitment-based communities for temporary human interactions that are based on personal preference. We’ve idolized individualism to the extreme. We’ve been trained to value our preferences, tastes, and freedoms above anything else. #youdoyou And we’ve even fallen into the trap of customizing our friends. We’re in need of rediscovering what a healthy God-designed community looks like and how we can pursue that together. 

This week at Thrive...let’s dive into Identity! A really tricky thing about identity is that we tend to embrace whatever gives us approval as the thing that defines our identity. Basically, identity is the definition of myself that I accept from the thing that gives me approval. When it comes to identity, there are a million ways we can get it wrong, but there’s a clear way we can get it right and live out an identity that’s worth your life. Instead of living your life for approval, you can live your life from approval as a new creation in Jesus. And there’s a big difference between for approval and from approval! 

This week at Thrive...Gospel. “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” -Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride. “Gospel” is one of those Christianese words that we toss around a lot, and we kind of know what it means…but do we really? Or if we know what it means, are we truly living it out?

This week at Thrive, Katie Heckel teaches on Colossians 1:15-22 — We Thrive when Christ is at the Center of our Lives.  What does having Christ at the center do for our lives? How do we reorient our lives around Jesus?

This week, Hugh continues our 2-part Thriveology series by examining John 7:37-39.  Here's the bottom line: We thrive…when Jesus quenches our thirst…and…when the Holy Spirit fills us up… and…when living water overflows from us into our thirsty world.

Acts 1 & 2 tells the story of how the Holy Spirit takes us from survive mode to thrive mode!

+ There’s no thriving unless God keeps his promise!

+ There’s no thriving without receiving what you need!

+ There’s no thriving without diving in!