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Topic: Identity in Christ
My Life as a Vampire
What is the difference between a vampire and Jesus? This may sound like a rather odd question to ask, but you may be surprised at the profound difference between the two. A vampire is known for two things: it loves to dwell in darkness and feeds off of people. Jesus is known for two things: he lives in light and sacrificially gives of himself in love for all. Read More
Yes, I Reign!
In living a life of faith, it’s very important to allow Jesus to define how we see our life experiences. There are often moments in life when things do not turn out the way that we plan them to, or the way that we think things “should be.” And it’s in these moments, that we have to look at the work of Jesus in our everyday lives, and trust that God is indeed present and bringing forth his Kingdom in and through us. Read More
Heart Reflections
Just like a tree reveals either good or bad fruit, our lives reveal to others who we truly are. As followers of Christ, we are called to live a life that reveals the beauty of God. We learn from Jesus that true beauty and change only comes from the inside-out. As our hearts are turned and transformed in Christ, our words and actions bring forth beauty. Read More
Leadership with a Limp
A “bottom feeder” is a type of fish that eats just about anything it finds at the bottom of a body of water. Greg uses this term to represent a way of living where a person attempts to get life from things outside of themselves. Even church leaders can fall into a religious type of “bottom feeding” where they get life from the people they serve. In Luke 6:39-42, Jesus talks about just this type of thing when he speaks about the blindness and hypocrisy of some of the religious leaders. Greg describes an alternative to “bottom feeding”–“leading with a limp”, where we humbly take our own weaknesses into account as we lead others. Read More
A Different Kind of New
To say that Jesus was a radical, “thinking-outside-of-the-box” person may well be the understatement of understatements! In living out his call as God’s Messiah, he went against a lot of the expectations and categories of his Jewish contemporaries, especially the religious leaders. It appeared that everywhere he went he was turning social convention on its head with his Holy Spirit-empowered deep wisdom and amazing love. Jesus’ incredibly loving, accepting behavior towards social outcasts and “sinners” made him the constant target of attention, scorn, and many questions from people. Read More
The Kingdom is a Really Messy Party
Messiness often bothers people. Life is messy, and many things are ambiguous or undefined. There are no clear categories into which certain events can be placed. It can be too chaotic, and unsettling for some to endure. Because of this dislike of messiness, it is pretty understandable how we would like to make things clean and unambiguous as we can…including our relationship with God and His Kingdom. We learn from Jesus’ ministry, however, that God’s Kingdom is not as clean-and-nice as we might like for it to be. Read More
I Dream of Genie-Jesus
As Christians we can sometimes lose sight of our true identity in Christ and become distracted by our lives, our interests, and our worries. We can begin to feel that God is a convenient “genie” who can fix what goes wrong in our lives or to bless our plans and ambitions. However, the truth of living in the Kingdom of … Read More
Putting Away Childish Things
We are constantly tempted to focus our time and energy meeting the expectations of other people instead of meeting God’s expectations for our lives. This is an extremely strong temptation! Even Jesus, as Messiah, was expected by others to act and be a certain way. But God has given every one of us a unique identity to receive. The goal of our Christian life is to grow into and manifest this God-given identity, so that we can reflect His love to others. Read More
Remembering the Forgotten Beauty
When we look are our hectic lives, we can sense the pain and despair that we often feel…but we never stop to think about what has really caused the problem of our shattered beauty. One important problem is that we have forgotten beauty related to the Center of the Kingdom, the Lord Jesus Christ. God wants us to create “spaces for God” so that we can experience the matchless beauty of Jesus in our daily lives, and then, see our own beauty! Read More
The Crown of Beauty
This weekend, we started our “Beautiful Life” series! Sometimes, the state of the world can make life look so ugly, but God is a beautiful God that wants us to understand that life was meant to be enjoyed as beautiful. God wants to give us “beauty” in exchange for the “ashes” of our everyday existence and give us crowns that let us know who we were created to be in God. Read More
