Tag: God

Faith

Planet Earth from a Tourist’s Perspective

Chris

My office door is on a side street next to the church. Everyday I get a glimpse of how a local bed and breakfast is doing. They’ve had the busiest summer I’ve seen during my five years in the community.

Today I was heading out for a meeting and I saw a couple of ladies heading out for the day. In typical tourist fashion, they were taking pictures of the B&B house, one another, and the surrounding area. Our little community had piqued their interest.

Sometimes we forget to enjoy the place we are at. It happens in the cities we grow up in, the workplaces we’ve given our lives to, and even the planet we live on. From a spiritual perspective, how would the world look different if we stopped and saw it as tourists?

Continue reading “Planet Earth from a Tourist’s Perspective” →

Podcast

Hope When the World is Falling Apart (Podcast)

Chris

When you woke this morning, was hope on your mind? Maybe your mental checklist of everything you expected was already written when you slid out of bed. But was it hopeful? We expect a bunch of predictable things for our day. Hope is believing in the possibility to actually receive something good.

We need hope. Without it, life is feels less worth living. There is power in hope, yet we have come to believe it is dangerous to hope. Our lives are under attack, and if our hope is short-circuited we will stop dreaming.

Continue reading “Hope When the World is Falling Apart (Podcast)” →

Podcast

From Welcomed to Spurned

Chris

As we stack these truths about living as the People of God, one more should become obvious. There’s a canyon growing between us and this world as we choose to follow Christ and live according to Heaven’s values. A chasm forms, and the world takes it personal when we depart from its ways. How will we respond when the we feel the effects of the separation?

Continue reading “From Welcomed to Spurned” →

Christian Living

Everyone God Brings into His Church Belongs

Chris

Have you ever found a piece of something and not known what it was? It looked important. It obviously came from something else. Now it’s your personal space, lost and alone.

I recently tossed out a small screw I was holding on to. Too many people sat in my office and asked about it. It wasn’t on display or in a “lost and found” box. Day after day it sat in the top of a small wooden chalice from Israel that I keep next to a menorah my in-laws gave me after their trip to the Holy Land.

Too many people must have commented on it that week. I picked it up, looked at, and threw it away. As much as I hoped to find its home, for years it sat without one.

Thankfully, God doesn’t forget where something, or someone goes. He knows exactly where they belong. The trick for us is trusting in God’s wisdom and craftsmanship.

Continue reading “Everyone God Brings into His Church Belongs” →

Podcast

God Takes Many Individuals and Builds One Whole

Chris

Part 2. God desires to take us from nothing to something and give us everything. But His plan is not only to accomplish it on an individual level. He is bringing together a nation, a people. This is what makes the transformation from nothing to something possible. There is only one builder of God’s Church, and we must learning to trust in the builder. Only then we will recognize and live in the powerful truths of unity as The People of God.

Continue reading “God Takes Many Individuals and Builds One Whole” →

Podcast

God Takes Us from Nothing to Everything

Chris

2015-08 The People of God (s)Part 1. The hymn “Amazing Grace” has a wonderful phrase we sometimes forget the power of: “I once lost, but now am found.” What does it mean to be lost? If we are found, what should change? Is God the center of who we are, or just an add-on? These question set us looking at what it means to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We are “The People of God.”

Continue reading “God Takes Us from Nothing to Everything” →