Heaven knows, our church has a 156-year history and many reasons to celebrate. And heaven knows, there is one single unchanging thing to celebrate most: when the lost gets found.
All of your questions won't be answered up front. Your life will still be messy, especially at first. Changes happen along the way. Following Jesus doesn't start with your perfection. It starts with his promise and a simple invitation. Follow him.
Say you came to faith as a child and your faith never grows. What happens when you take your itty-bitty God out into the great big world? Sooner or later your childish concept of God is going to get flattened. It's a necessary thing when your God is too small.
Some of us help the faith of others. Some of us hurt the faith of others. Some people who give up on Jesus never tried him in the first place. On their way to meeting him, they met us instead, and they turned away.
Sarah laughs at God. Moses says, " You've got the wrong guy." Gideon needs a sign. David cries and complains. Thomas doubts. And that's how you know that you 've found your people. Gods people. People of faith.
At church the unspoken rule is that you must keep doubts to yourself. Bury your questions. But when you bury questions and doubts alive, they haunt your faith forever.
How do you keep the faith when faith has a way of getting mucked up with doubt and disappointment? And why does nobody talk about this?
Death ain't no joke. It's the one undisputed fact of life. Death wins every time. You die then you're dead. There's no coming back. Or so we thought. Easter changes everything!
When Jesus was on trial, Pilate offered the crowd a prisoner exchange. Jesus or Barabbas? One man lives, the other man dies. The choice was already made by Jesus himself, to die in the place of the guilty one.
A tourist went missing in Iceland. After hours of looking, the search party found her...IN THE SEARCH PARTY. She didn't realize she was the one they were looking for. Can a person be lost without even knowing it?