The Prodigal Son: Lost

The Parable of the Prodigal Son is one of the best known and most beloved of Jesus’ parables. It’s a beautiful picture of God’s love for us. But if we only read it as a story of God’s love for us as individuals, we miss one of his biggest points. Jesus told this parable as a response to hostility and division in community: religious leaders were furious at him for welcoming “sinners.” One of the main points of this story was to help them, and us, understand the nature of depth of our own “lostness.” What does that mean? And how does it affect our communities and relationships? Join us for the first in a 5-week series.

New Heart, New Spirit, New Birth

The end of one year and moving into a new year is a natural time to think about newness and life change. Personal transformation is a big topic, and a huge challenge. How does real, deep, and abiding life change really happen? Is it through a greater commitment to a more disciplined life? Is it through personal self-effort and self-control? These things certainly play a role in the Christian life. But at its heart, the gospel offers us a radically counter-intuitive and counter-cultural vision of what a transformed life looks like, what its goal is, and how it actually happens. This passage is one of the classic pictures of it, and when we understand what its saying, we’ll be better able to apply the gospel message to our lives.

The Word Became Flesh

The “true meaning of Christmas” is a much-debated idea. In Western, secular culture, the “true meaning” is no longer connected to the physical incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. In fact, many insist that making that connection necessary leads us further away from the true meaning, since to do so is seen as being too divisive. But what if it’s true? Even if you don’t believe it, do you understand what’s at stake in the question? This passage helps us, because it shows us what the Incarnation actually does for us (and what we would lose if we reject it).

Luke 1: Joy And The Gospel

God chose Mary to become the mother of Jesus, but that didn’t make her life easier. In fact, it made it much harder in many ways. However, when she comes to see her relative Elizabeth, something happens that causes Mary to break out in a song of exultant joy. Where does a joy like this come from, especially when she was staring into the abyss of a ruined life? And how could we possibly experience the same kind of joy in the midst of our challenges and difficulties? This wonderful (literally: full of wonders) passage shows us.

Luke 1: Surrender And The Gospel

The experience of longing might perhaps be the thing that defines human experience more than anything else. In fact, every person has, not just longings, but unfulfilled longings. Therefore, one of our biggest questions is: What do we do with these longings? Is it even possible for them to be fulfilled? Mary’s encounter with the angel in Luke 1 helps us. As she wrestles with the message of the angel, it leads her to see that the gospel is not just information, but a radical call on each person’s life. What does that call mean for our deepest longings? This passage helps us to see the answer.

Luke 1: Doubt And The Gospel

Advent is the season of the year when Christians remember and celebrate the “arrival” of Jesus. But in order to respond rightly to Jesus, you have to understand who he is and why he came. That is a deeply contested question in our culture, but Mary’s story in Luke 1 helps us makes sense of it. Over the next three weeks, we’ll look at her response to the angel’s message. And when we understand the message Mary heard, we’ll be able to respond in the way Mary did.

Jonah 4: God's Grace Feels Like Death

At the end of Jonah's story, he finds himself sitting alone, in the scorching desert, asking God to take his life. But God is not done with Jonah just yet. Jonah has to confront one last difficult truth: the grace of God is both radically inclusive and radically exclusive. God shows mercy to every kind person, without distinction, even moral distinction. But we can only experience God's grace when we give up living life our way.

Jonah 1: God's Grace Smells Like Fish

Jonah is a rebellious, runaway prophet. In chapter one of Jonah finds himself on a boat, halfway to the end of the earth, accompanied by some unusual companions, and in the middle of a horrific storm, that God Himself has sent. Sometimes we find ourselves in the midst of storms too. And just like Jonah we start to wonder... is God trying to kill me? But don't worry, just like Jonah, we will find out that there is something fishy about the grace of God.

Genesis: Reconciliation

One of the oldest and most difficult challenges to faith in God is the question of evil and suffering. This is also one of the greatest challenges to finding reconciliation with people who have done us great wrong. Fascinatingly, this final episode in Joseph's story shows us how he was able to do both. Joseph was able to reconcile with his brothers, precisely because he found a way to reconcile everything that happened to him with God.

Genesis: Discipline And Grace

Everyone experiences hurt over things that have happened to them in the past. And everyone experiences guilt over things that have done in the past. In spite of our secular assertion that guilt and sin are outmoded and harmful expressions of a primitive religion, our experience tells us that these things still need to be dealt with. This passage is an extraordinary and poignant exploration of just how exactly God goes about dealing with those things in our lives.

Genesis: Temptation And Faithfulness

This episode in the life of Joseph shows us someone who is growing strong in his ability to live a life of integrity, even though he is sorely tempted to compromise in many areas of his life. How was he able to do this? What was the source of his strength? We need the same strength if we're going to live with integrity ourselves. This passage helps us understand the temptations we face, and the way we can withstand them.

Genesis: When God Hides

Genesis concludes with the story of Joseph. This is fitting, because Joseph's narrative shows us how God is fulfilling his promise to restore the world to a place of blessing. In particular, Joseph's story shows us God's answer to the world's biggest problems. In this story, we see a heartbreaking "God-has-left-the-building" moment. But beneath the evil, we see the amazing, and counter-intuitive, way that God works to overcome evil and restore the world.

Genesis: The Strange Logic Of Grace

On its surface, the last episode in Jacob's life is not very exciting. He blesses his grandchildren. Yet when the New Testament letter to the Hebrews mentions Jacob in its famous "Hall of Faith," this is the episode it holds up as the great example from his life. Why? Because it shows us the culmination of everything Jacob learned about God over the course of his life. It all comes down to the strange logic of grace, and its power to transform our lives in every way imaginable.

Genesis: Wrestling With God

Jacob is one of the most important figures in the Bible, because it's through Jacob that Israel goes from being a family to becoming a nation. This passage is the place where Israel gets its name. That's significant for us all, because it shows us how God transforms people. This story is all about life-transformation, but not in the way we think. It shows us that real life change always involves facing things that are deeper than we can see, and dealing with things that are darker than we want to admit. The results, however, are beyond anything we can imagine or produce for ourselves.

Genesis: The Ache Of Love

For modern people, Jacob is one of the most easily relatable characters in the Bible. This passage shows us one of the ways he is most relatable for us. Jacob is someone who was marked by a deep inner emptiness. In this passage, he's seeking to find healing for that emptiness through finding the love of his life. That is one of the most powerful impulses for all of us. And this passage has a lot to show us, both about the impulse itself, and the way we can truly find its fulfillment.

Genesis: The Gate of Heaven

Of all the people in the Bible, Jacob is one of the most relatable for modern people. His doubts, his struggles, and his failures make him easy to identify with. But one of the most interesting features of his life is the fact that, like many modern people, he wasn't necessarily looking for God. But in this passage, God moves powerfully into Jacob's life, even though Jacob was not seeking him. What's more, God worked in Jacob's life at a time when everything was falling apart for him. Therefore, this passage gives us a great picture of how God transforms our lives in the midst of our fears and failures.

Genesis: The Quest For Blessing

The life of Jacob is the longest story of any single person in the book of Genesis. As the last of the patriarchs, his story marks an important transition point in the narrative arc of the whole Bible. This passage is all about the blessing imparted by Isaac, and Jacob's duplicitous attempt to secure it. As modern people, our notion of "blessing" is pretty weak. But when we begin to understand what blessing really means in the Bible, and how Jacob goes about trying to get it, we begin to get an understanding of just how crucial this is for our own lives as well.

Genesis: People of the Way

This story is the longest single narrative in the whole book of Genesis. One of the main things it shows us is the providential but hidden guidance of God to bring about the fulfillment of his purposes. That's important for us as late-modern, Western individuals. Because two things we crave are control and personal fulfillment. Therefore we put a lot of emphasis on receiving guidance, and have a lot of anxiety over the possibility of "messing up" our lives. This passage has a lot to show us about how God guides us, but in ways that are quite unexpected.

Soul Food

Facing the challenges and hardships of life is extremely difficult. Facing the challenges and hardships of loving people who are different from us can seem impossible. Is there a way to do either. Even more hard to imagine, is there a way to do both? In this passage, we explore the true nourishment Jesus gives us to move out into the world in strength, hope, and love. We can only do so because he is our "soul food."

Galatians: A New Creation

At the end of this letter, the apostle Paul reminds the Galatians once again the reason he wrote in the first place: "Don't forget the gospel!" In other words, there is only one gospel, not many. It's common to hear people today say, "What really matters is not what you believe, but how you live." In this passage, Paul both deconstructs that mistake and also shows us how the gospel gives us the answer to our souls deepest (and most vulnerable) questions about worth, value, and significance.