Tag: Hope

Keep Calm and…Fulfill Your Ministry

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For the past two weeks, we have been talking about how to find peace in a world that is insane with sin. We’ve talked about the importance of reorienting our thinking on God through prayer and of engaging more intentionally and consistently with the Scriptures to give us the path we need to be following. In this last part, we are going to talk about one more essential thing that is all about putting these first two into practice. When we want to find a path through the messiness of the world around us, here’s what we should be doing.

Keep Calm and…Fulfill Your Ministry

As smart as the good folks in Hollywood are when it comes to producing entertainment, they really never know when a particular film is going to be a smashing success and when it will totally flop. For instance, there was a movie last year called Babylon that featured the A-list talent of Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie along with a budget of north of $100 million. It was perhaps the single biggest box office bomb of the last several years. A few years ago, though, Disney struck absolute gold with its smash hit, Frozen. A fun story combined with tremendous music made it the single most successful Disney animated film ever…right up until Frozen 2 came out, which beat it by almost $200 million. By most accounts and in spite of the box office numbers, Frozen 2 wasn’t ever quite as good as the original (sequels almost never are), but there was one song that really caught my attention. 

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Digging in Deeper: Revelation 21:4

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“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

What would you do if you could suddenly go back in time at a point some of your biggest tragedies in life unfolded? The answer to that seems fairly obvious: you’d do whatever you could do to change them so they didn’t ever happen. We all have things from the past we would change if we got the chance. This is an awareness that can become a desire which, if we’re not careful, can become a fixation that keeps us from moving forward in the present. Dwelling in the past turns out to be far more dangerous than it seems. A recent series from the Hallmark Channel explores all of this and more. Let’s talk today about The Way Home.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 1:6-10

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“Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation eventually died. But the Israelites were fruitful, increased rapidly, multiplied, and became extremely numerous so that the land was filled with them. A new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt. He said to his people, ‘Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and powerful than we are. Come, let’s deal shrewdly with them; otherwise they will multiply further, and when war breaks out, they will join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Today will be the first step in a new journey I have been looking forward to starting for quite some time now. For the next few months, we are going to be working through the narrative of Exodus. Exodus plays a powerful role in terms of creating a context in which Jesus eventually makes sense. It is a reminder that although history doesn’t repeat itself, as God writes His great symphony across the ages, He does sometimes develop in more detail themes He first introduced earlier on in His masterwork. Through the Exodus, God took the next major step forward in terms of revealing Himself to us so that we could be in a relationship with Him. As we journey through this together, we may not cover every single detail, but we are going to be as thorough as we can. Let’s start here near the beginning as Israel finds itself becoming an actual nation (thus fulfilling God’s promise to Abraham) through a process of suffering.

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A Thorough Reorientation

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Our world is a mess. What’s more, it seems to be getting messier by the day. And these aren’t merely just a bunch of small messes. They are bigger and more complicated messes than what it feels like we’ve faced in a very long time. In the midst of all of this, it is easy to give in to the constant pull we feel to anxiety and despair. Peace is absent from the scene. How can we fix this? How can we find peace in a world that seems to have gone crazy? For the next three weeks, that is a question we are tackling together in a new teaching series called, Peace in a World Gone Mad. With some help from the apostle Paul, we are going to be talking about how we can enjoy the peace of God in the midst of circumstances that seem anything but peaceful. If you have been struggling of late with the state of the world, this is a series you won’t want to miss. Thanks for reading and sharing.

A Thorough Reorientation

Have you ever looked up into the night sky and just thought, “Wow!” One thing about living where we do is that there isn’t nearly the amount of light pollution at night that you have when you get closer to the city. I can’t tell you how many times we have been sitting out after the sun goes down around our fire pit and just marveled together at the wonder of the night sky. The other night we looked out after dark and you could clearly see three planets shining in the sky in addition to all the stars. It was pretty spectacular. 

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Morning Musing: Amos 9:13-15

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“Look, the days are coming – this is the Lord’s declaration – when the plowman will overtake the reaper and the one who treads grapes, the sower of seed. The mountains will drip with sweet wine, and all the hills will flow with it. I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel. They will rebuild and occupy ruined cities, plant vineyards and drink their wine, make gardens and eat their produce. I will plant them on their land, and they will never again be uprooted from the land I have given them. The Lord your God has spoken.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Did you ever have someone break something of yours and then try to make up for it with something else that wasn’t as good as the original? When someone has broken something of ours, we don’t just want it replaced, we want it replaced with something of the exact quality or better. There are many descriptions of how God plans to restore His creation. Some of them are more helpful than others. None of them really gives us anything like the details we’d really like to have. Where Amos ends his prophecy, though, gives us a couple of big picture clues that are worth noting. This morning, we are going to finish up this particular journey and talk about God’s big plans for making things better.

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