Honoring your father and mother is an ancient command found in nearly every religion. Yet, families vary from person to person, and it can be difficult to honor some parents. In this sermon, Greg talks about how to honor your parents by forgiving them and assessing the reality of the relationship. By doing these two things, people can honor their parents in healthy ways. Read More
When Jesus prayed from the cross, “Father, forgive them …” he was expressing the radical love of the Father that extends forgiveness to all the world. While such an expression of forgiveness is far from typical, it contains the ability to heal, transform hearts and release people to forgive others. Read More
Jesus was innocent but he died the death of the guilty. He stood in our place, taking on our life so that we might have his. There is no greater act in all of history. Read More
Typically, we call the famous parable by Jesus “The Prodigal Son,” but that title is actually a bit misleading. The point of the parable is not the younger (Prodigal) son’s recklessly extravagant living. Instead, it’s about God’s recklessly extravagant love. Read More
In the story of the Prodigal Son, the son leaves home and experiences intensely that something is missing. Eventually he comes to his senses and goes home to his father. Greg connected this desire that the son felt to the German word sehnsucht which is a powerful form of longing that we all feel at times in our lives. Read More
Leave it to Jesus to challenge one of our most central cultural values – justifying violence by manipulating scripture. In this sermon, we discover what it means to practice non-violence both in our actions and our attitudes.
Rob spoke about forgiveness and one common challenge to it—revenge. When someone hurts us and we turn to revenge, we are essentially saying that we don’t like the way God is running the universe. Read More
In this section of Luke, Jesus gives four distinct teachings that on the surface seem unrelated. But when taken in context with each other, they highlight four different aspects of how we are to live in Christian community with one another.
Forgiveness is always easier to talk about than to actually do. But without it we are alone and isolated, and can be consumed by hurt. Jesus taught about how we should forgive each other through parables: because we experience God’s great forgiveness, we share the same with others who have wronged us. And as a result, we learn how to live our lives with each other and experience the freedom that God wants for us. Read More
In the next part of the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches that prayer is about daily dependence on God to meet our needs, even though most people in our self-sufficient world do not think this way. We also discover the crucial role that forgiveness plays in our lives and the surprising freedom it can bring. Read More