February is Good News.
Join us for Sunday Service @ 9 or 10.45,
i have a word for you
a really powerful question…
what else could be true?
i was teaching the other night on being a neighbor in the 2020’s, we discussed the barriers to being a neighbor with the people around us,
race is a barrier.
politics is a barrier.
economic class is a barrier.
gender/sexuality is a barrier.
slide 24 from thursday class
spend a second looking at that and think about the all crazy implications for mating + pro-creation here.
some things are objective truth:
I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life, no one comes to the Father except through Me.
the super bowl is next sunday
february is the shortest month of the year
but most things are subjective opinions and have gray nuance. there’s my perspective, but
what else could be true?
this question is helpful because it doesn’t require changing my opinion to learn from yours. this question is helpful because it allows space for multiple perspectives. this question is helpful because it stirs conversation and thinking.
just take 1 issue. what’s happening with the border + migrants in our country in 2023. while writing this, i spent 20 minutes looking at a few scriptures and reading a few articles to generate this list.
it’s true our borders aren’t working well currently. it’s also true many administrations haven’t fixed this problem. it’s also true the rhetoric over the last 10 years from both major political parties has made the problem worse not better. it’s also true every person deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. it’s also true that borders often create thorny federal vs. state power issues. it’s also true verses about the sojourner in the Old Testament don’t neatly apples to apples apply to 21st century politics. it’s also true that they must at least partly guide our views now. it’s also true i can’t personally do anything about this problem. it’s also true instability in central america has variety of causes: American intervention, COVID, poor leadership, and many people coming to our country lack good options.
i could go on and on … who cares what i think. my point is simply that this question opens my mind + helps me my neighbor better.
might be worth a try in your relationships + work
What did you learn during the 21 day fast? If I got to sit across from you during the Neighbor Brunch, I would have loved to have asked you this question because it’s awesome what God can do in our hearts when we strip away things we enjoy to intentionally focus on Him.
At the end of the year, I read Psalm 86:11c and it says,
‘Give me an undivided mind to fear your name.’
I wrote it in my journal. And this is my simple (albeit difficult) prayer for my life this year.
One of the things that I I learned during the fast is how easily my mind and heart can be divided. I want to follow God and tell others about him but I can very easily get distracted and discouraged by the things of this world. I want to love my husband well and respect and honor him and sometimes he just gets the leftovers after a long day or week. I want to parent each of my children intentionally and without regard to what is going on with the others but…. I want to work hard at my job but it seems like my kids went to school for about three days in all of January (that was just for the parents of kids in school :). It’s crazy how often our desires and our actions are at odds.
Many would say and I would wholeheartedly agree that our mind, heart and soul are all connected so if my mind is divided it leads to feeling ‘off’ and not being able to pursue God and His purposes with my whole heart. Not to mention, we have an enemy who is alive and well and trying to thwart the purposes we have set out to pursue.
I found this paragraph helpful from a book I am reading by Lysa Terkeurst in this regard: “Know this : Satan will do everything he can to convince you to say no to God. Satan’s very name means “one who separates.” He wants to separate you from God’s best by offering what seems ‘very good’ from a worldly perspective. He wants you to deny Christ’s power in you. He wants to distract you from God’s radical purpose for you.”
If we are going to pursue Christ with an undivided mind, we have to know that the schemes of the enemy want the opposite. 1 Peter 5:8 says it this way, “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” That tension that you feel between your desires and how you take action is real.
But if we are purposeful in these ways and we want to fear His name, we’ve gotta make time to be reminded of who He is and what He has done. Oftentimes that happens at church through worship, that can certainly happen from reading God’s Word and the miracles he performed. Don’t let ‘life’ get in the way so that your problems look bigger than the one who controls it all.
May this be your prayer too, ‘Give me an undivided mind to fear your name.’
Last Sunday Sermon
we started a study of the life of David, called the grace space. this message was about our instinct to judge appearances
Soak Worship March - the songs we will be singing this month in a format designed to be calming
Cup of Leadership
sin is an individual choice. sin is also a state we perpetually live in.
it isn’t just a glass of water we choose to drink, but an ocean of water we spends our every waking moment immersed in. it’s not just things we do at particular moments, choices between good + evil, everything we see + touch + ponder is wet from the sinful water we swim in.
this distinction helps me in one very particular way. we don’t need to aggressively assign the label ‘sin’ to people or situations where it doesn’t neatly fit.
when a 3 year old throws a fit because they are up 2 hours past their bedtime, are they sinning?
when a soldier back from war yells profanity at the sudden noise of a passing garbage truck are they sinning?
when a woman withdraws from her new husband because he wore unknowingly wore cologne her abusive husband used to wear is she sinning?
people who have been through difficulty react to the world in various problematic ways. rather than needing to label individual incidents as ‘sin’ or ‘righteousness,’ because of that knowledge, we can choose to see things as being from a state of sin or because of the difficulty of sin without a hyper need to label.
we are much more loving + understanding when we don’t parse wrong + right so aggressively in individual relationships and simply do our best to love + help people heal.
this is good news,
luke+kristen
p.s. if you haven’t checked out soak worship for january, you are missing out.