Lots of things claim to be of value — but which ones really are? Which ones are just so much “Monopoly money”? Pastor Tim explores the question as we continue in John 5 tonight.
We all want justice against the wrongs we see and experience, but Jesus calls us to better understand just what we really need.
We need something that won’t break right away, but everything in life seems to. Jesus addresses what we need and then gets to the deeper thing we need below that.
Pastor Tim talks the struggles we have with life and how God offers us joy by resting in Him.
Pastor Tim talks about baptism and what it is really about.
God wants us to jump in the pool of grace to swim, not to struggle. How we interact with His grace makes all the difference in our experience of the Christian life.
We fall into measuring our place with God by how much Scripture we know or how “spiritual” we sound. Paul tells us the real measure is somewhere else: “the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation.” What changes when we remember that the Christian journey began by hearing what God has done not what we do?
We turn onto the lane that looks like home, only to find barriers on both sides and nowhere left to go. Foot still on the accelerator, locked on the road to death, the only hope we have is mercy—and Ephesians 1:7 speaks right into that place: in him we have redemption through his blood.
We live in a world of constant flux, where nothing is truly stable and even the things that feel permanent haven’t been around that long. Yet Ephesians 1 takes us further back than any of it: God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.
We’ve all felt the crash that follows a sugar high—the emotional win, the reassuring word, the earthly success that lifts us for a moment before the bottom drops out again. Paul knew that feeling too, which is why he doesn’t merely greet the Ephesians with good wishes but with something that doesn’t fade: “grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”