Posts by Alex and Steve

The good news in Jesus Christ is that God’s acceptance of us doesn’t depend on our performance for him....

Stories like these have the ability slip past our defenses. They challenge us without being obnoxious. They give us space to consider a different point of view....

We’re at our worst when we put our church or our family or our politics above our connection with Jesus. ...

Jesus desires to offer relationship and not just answers. ...

When we come to Jesus with our questions, we shouldn’t be surprised when he challenges us in return....

If Jesus answered the question but not the expectations underlying it, John’s emotional turmoil might continue....

Don't keep your questions to yourself, allowing it to smolder and burn up your insides. ...

Take some time today to listen to the questions people ask about God, faith, religion, and spirituality...

The God we see revealed in Jesus is a God who can handle our questions, a God who loves being asked questions....

Throughout your life you will encounter people who in moments of foolishness mean to do you harm. Don’t wrap your life around them....

We all have times in our lives when we slip through the garden and grab for forbidden fruit and play God. ...

Many of us couldn’t forgive others from our hearts except that God is at work in and around us....

In our relationships with God we’re the recipients of his radical and surprising mercy. ...

When in your life have you been the recipient of words of blessing, of someone with authority in your life commenting on your past, your character, or your potential?...

Everyone is surprised by mercy. ...

We need someone to rescue us from our slavery to anger, bitterness, unforgiveness, and pride....

God can work in a thousand ways to transform the way we see the people who’ve hurt us....

Our past experiences of trauma can trigger strong reactions in us....

Justice doesn’t have to come at the expense of your soul....

This is a God who is worthy to be praised. ...

Don’t let anyone convince you that you have nothing to offer. And don’t let the spirit of comparison creep into your heart. Bring to the table exactly what God has given you and do so joyously....

We’ve seen time and time again how our community generously responds to neighbors in crisis and global needs. We’ve made sacrifices to help others. And it’s so worth it....

The myth of the self-made, bootstrap-pulling, hard-working, independent hero stumbles in seasons like these....

Tremendous pressures pile up to move the wheels of the world and of our lives....

Pause for a moment and thank God for putting the right people in your life in decisive moments. ...

The ongoing rumblings in Joseph’s heart foreshadow an upcoming work of God in Joseph’s life....

Joseph leaned in and was faithful to do the work God had given him to do....

Joseph wants to rely on God. And that’s what makes him extraordinary....

Don’t lose hope if you can’t chart a clear course from where you are today to where you hope to be....

Awareness of God’s activity can boost your God-confidence....

As you navigate difficult situations and relationships, God's presence can fill you with tremendous confidence....

Joseph’s past and his present collided. He had a decision to make....

All too often we get so busy doing our good work that we forget to connect with the people who God has placed in our path....

As God poured his blessings out on Joseph, the cupbearer and the baker benefitted as well. This can also happen to us in hard times....

What happens inside of us when we see people punished for showing integrity? ...

God gave blessings and God gave boundaries. Joseph knew that he couldn’t accept one without the other....

With success comes challenge....

The Lord’s blessing on the household didn’t remove Joseph’s challenges, but they did change his experience....

Your prospering doesn’t ultimately depend on your circumstances....

Though God is not mentioned once in Genesis 37, we later discover that he was at work all throughout this painful and difficult episode....

Let’s refuse to participate in the destructive practice of dehumanization....

Our dreams can reveal our areas of immaturity, as can our way of communicating them. ...

Favoritism is one of many broken relational patterns that separate us from each other....

We can’t rid ourselves of our automatic habit of capturing first impressions as we meet new people, but we can cultivate habits of attention that allow us to look beyond those initial judgements....

The Lord constantly works through communities. For every great figure in the story of our faith, we also find the Lord sending them friends....

As God’s blessings pile up in and around us, we need to share them with others. Only then will God’s blessings to us be complete....

God holds up his side of the covenant. Though his covenant purposes advance over rocky terrain, they advance nonetheless....

God's invitation stands. It’s our turn to respond. What will we do?...

The adventure of life with God gives us healing and joy and blessing, but it also stretches us. We leave familiar territory, relationships, programs, and narratives behind when we launch out into this adventure....

What if the craziness we feel when we’re crazy busy is due to having two different songs playing inside of us: the drumbeat of eternity and the roar of busyness?...

God has made everything beautiful in its time. Even us. ...

Without meaning, work becomes miserable and we lose our drive....

This burst of poetry reaches out and connects with our hearts. We’re given space to connect viscerally and emotionally with God’s truth about the seasonal nature of life....

God does huge things in our lives when we shift from Now-Or-Never Thinking to Season Thinking....

The Lord is the one who makes known to us the paths of life....

Contentment is the fruit of a soul who’s put down roots in the generosity of God....

We love hard work. We work hard. But the Lord is the one who holds our ultimate security....

Other gods make big promises if only we’ll worship them. They give us benefits in the short-term (sometimes). But over time these gods fail us. And we suffer more and more as a result of our bondage to them....

Lean more heavily on God when times get hard....

Calling out to God changes us for the better. ...

In order to pursue your God-given great work, you need to make more than just one good decision; you need to string together a series of good decisions....

Don’t give in to the temptation to compare your great work to others....

When you embark on great work in your own life, you probably won’t have people trying to get you killed. But it may feel like it....

When we live crazy busy lives, we miss out on the great work God’s given us to do....

Enter into this passage imaginatively. ...

You cannot go off by yourself and grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ....

Only love can hold us together. ...

Paul’s prayer for power which leads to strength isn’t focused on doing and achieving. Instead, Paul wants his friends to have the rich and beautiful experience of intimacy with Jesus Christ....

The special relationship you have with God gives you strong permission to open your heart to him in prayer....

The reflected glory shines brightly in the dark....

God’s choice to identify with us was, according to Paul, his way of making his wisdom known to the entire cosmos....

We don’t have to jettison our ethnic identities in order to fully participate in the body of Christ....

Paul didn’t want the Christian mysteries to be held in secret as copyrighted proprietary instruction. He wanted everyone to talk about these great mysteries....

Paul had a beautiful call from the Lord. What’s yours? ...

God has chosen to make himself know to the world through us, to meet with people through us, to identify with us....

If Jesus can stand alive on the mountain top, he can bring us there with him....

When Jesus brings us near to God and to other people, he does it in a way that challenges and changes us....

In God’s good goodness, he goes out of his way to connect with those of us who live as outsiders....

Our world is full of divides....

God pulls us into his activity....

Salvation is a gift, not a payment for services rendered....

God’s great love for us has the final say in our lives....

God changes the story of our past, but he doesn’t rewrite history. He adds new chapters. And each new chapter reshapes how we see the entire story....

A humble memory of where you came from ...

Christ will always be the highest authority. No one will topple him, surpass him, or overthrow him....

God is at the center of Paul’s vision and at the center of our lives....

Above all, Paul prioritized knowing God, so that’s what he asked God to do for his friends....

What are we missing when the focus of our prayer lives is only asking for things?...

You can’t have meaningful faith in the Lord Jesus without also having love for all God’s people; you can’t have love for all God’s people without also placing your faith in the Lord Jesus....

The Spirit is God’s very presence with us. He doesn’t just welcome us to ping him when we have a minute; he wants to spend time with us....

God’s good work in us invites us every day to both hear and believe....

Wouldn’t you love for everything that’s glorious about God to be on display in you? ...

Paul talks about something he calls “predestination” and treats it like good news....

Adoption is special. The child or person being adopted is chosen, wanted, added to a new family....

Jesus gives us access to every spiritual blessing....

God the father who welcomes you and Jesus the prince who loves you send grace and peace to you every minute of every day...

We become God’s holy people only in and with and through Christ Jesus....

God works actively, daily to shape us into the people he wants us to become....

This week we’re kicking off a new series out of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. And as we get started, it might be helpful for you to learn about Ephesus and the folks who received this letter....

God is doing amazing things in the world, unlooked for amazing things. We feel so grateful that God has taken the initiative to bless, heal, and bring about reconciliation....

The scope of the challenges that face us when we roll up our sleeve to engage the world for good can paralyze us....

For those of us who labor ...

Our tiny acts of service, performed with great love, link together into a great chain of progress. Pulled by the Lord, this chain of progress lifts our community a little bit every day, a little bit every year....

God will make all things new. He’s promised to time and time again. He didn’t promise this on a whim. He hasn’t forgotten his promise. He can do it. And he surely will....

Do you believe this is true?...

God’s cosmic new-making mission will radically change the way the world works....

Some days it feels like our sadness will last forever. But it won’t. It won’t. Our Father will stop the madness. He will make it stop. We will wipe our tears from our eyes....

Jesus has removed every reason for us to be terrified of God. So we can go searching for him without fear. And we can find him and discover that he’s been with us ...

God’s new-making mission takes place on a cosmic scale. It’s bigger than any of us. We’re so small, but so dearly loved. And this is good news....

The Christian life spills beyond Sunday morning worship, small group life, and quiet devotional emails. ...

These virtues function like clothing. They make it possible for us to be present and un-self-conscious, to feel safe and secure, to feel wanted for who we are and not just for our bodies … for what we can do....

You can’t put on your new self without also taking off your old self and being made new....

We have no life apart from Christ. We go where he goes and join him in what he’s doing. He’s not our safety net; he’s on the tightrope with us....

Right now we are called to set our hearts on things above, to shift our focus onto Jesus....

Jesus makes us new....

What have you written off as gone forever?...

Over and over again, in every situation, when Jesus reached out to touch someone who was unclean something remarkable happened. ...

Who wins? Spoiler alert: Jesus wins. Always. In the end, Jesus makes all things new....

We need to know that Jesus is no stranger to our ordinary places....

Let’s not slip into that place where we feel like our good behavior earns us a place in Jesus’ party. ...

So many people will say that they like or even admire Jesus, they just can’t stand his followers. ...

We throw our lives open in healthy and joy-filled ways and invite the people that God’s placed in our lives to join us as we connect with our Savior....

We must choose every day to follow Jesus....

Jesus changed everything for Levi, as we’ll see this week. ...

Being reconciled to God is both a once-for-all-time kind of thing and an every-day-I-live-and-breathe kind of thing....

The barriers between you and a healthy relationship with God have come down. You have no more reason to hide....

We have a role to play. God has commissioned us. What a blessing!...

Underpinning today’s passage is the story that tells us that something had gone horribly wrong between us and God....

Because the new is here, the old has gone. The old may remain for a beat or two, but it’s gone just as surely and securely as if it had already been eradicated....

Celebrate this. Sing it. Shout it. Write it on your walls. Christ has made us new....

The trickle-down effects of our relationship with Christ continue to unfold in today’s passage. ...

Death in all it’s forms ...

Love is not a finite resource, but our priorities do shape the way we express our love. ...

The love of Christ gives us the emotional and spiritual energy we need to carry on the life of faith....

They knew their message would seem like nonsense. But they shared it anyways....

If Jesus can come back from the dead, what is impossible for him?...

Why doesn’t God make this extraordinary circumstance more ordinary?...

Taking time to wonder doesn’t come naturally to everyone. And it’s tough to do in our frenetic, fast-paced, get-things-done culture. But it has an impact....

What they found at the tomb didn’t align with their expectations. The tomb was opened and the body was gone....

You are dearly loved by God. And he proved it on the cross....

The place where prayer and action meet is a place where we can connect with God....

Jesus did a great deal of teaching … but his teaching wasn’t what he was known for in his lifetime, what he was remembered for by his disciples, or what from his life has had the most significant impact on the world....

Jesus’ revolution is marked by Jesus’ character. His love, patience, compassion, and mercy will come stamped on his every action. He’s delightfully and maddeningly consistent....

Reflecting on your own decision-making process might help you to connect more deeply with Jesus in this pivotal moment in his story....

The church is more than a Sunday morning gathering for music, sermonizing, and donuts. It’s bigger than us. ...

Who are the great partners that God has brought into your life ...

Barnabas’ posture had a tremendous impact on his experience and on the way others experienced him. We’re at our most healthy when we cultivate a similar posture....

It took outsiders to reach outsiders....

Ethnic segregation, socioeconomic segregation, political segregation … left to our own devices we’ll surround ourselves exclusively with people who look, spend, and think just like us....

What might God do with your faithfulness?...

The Lord of all the cosmos has chosen to treat you as a friend ...

This gap between who Jesus really is and who people perceive him to be shows up for all of us....

Jesus isn’t just alive on the other side of the cross and the empty tomb, he’s present in the lives of his people. ...

Opponents to God’s work in the world today can appear in various forms. Some come equipped with little more than snide comments and teasing. Others carry knives, bombs, and the hammer of unjust laws....

Turn away and pray and it will be okay. ...

The Lord isn’t done with our transformation at the moment of our initial conversion. Every day we follow him he works in our hearts and souls to change the way we think, love and live....

No one is too lost to be found. No one is too stuck to be freed. No one is too evil to be loved....

Every inch of ground gained by the kingdom of God has to be taken from other little imposter kingdoms....

The miracles earned him a hearing....

How do we go from being unprepared to being prepared? ...

God’s power is put on full display when his followers cross racial, ethnic and cultural lines with the news and love of Jesus....

Philip will get more instructions later in the passage. All he’s given to start with is a direction. But that was enough....

In a world that’s clearly not the way it’s supposed to be, God has intervened....

God is wildly available to us in these seasons of disruption....

The arc of the universe bends toward celebration....

Take some time today to meditate on the strength-giving joy of the Lord....

The Lord’s work in our hearts is to turn us back toward community in healthy and generous ways....

The goodness of the Lord gives us a reason to celebrate....

What do you do at the end of a great, good project? We’ve talked about building and rebuilding families, careers, homes, churches, and communities. But what happens next?...

If we were going to draw it into something like a formula, it might look like this: Committed Community + Generous God = Remarkable Results....

The whole community is blessed when someone is willing to step in and do the work no one else wants to do....

Those daughters of Shallum, those strong women, worked as hard as all of the rest of the men. And their work was noted both by Nehemiah and by God....

There is an intimate connection between your willingness to get your hands dirty and your ability to bless people....

Your particular part in God’s good work has not gone unnoticed by him....

Nehemiah’s testimony about God’s gracious hand at work for him gave the people the faith they needed to actively move into the future....

“We” creates space for “us.”...

Sometimes you need someone to tell you when you’re in trouble....

A patient due diligence process prepares us to step into the work we’ve been given to do in a knowledgeable, prepared way....

We live in an age that struggles with secrecy....

As people of faith, we don’t have to be afraid of planning. The same God who speeds and catches us when we take our leaps of faith can inspire and guide us when we plan....

The active, rough-and-tumble, dangerous phase of the Jerusalem rebuilding project was peppered with prayer. Connecting with God in prayer filled the beats between moments of action. ...

We often are only in touch with the surface of our desires. We rarely dive into their depths....

Fear is not the absence of faith. Even the faithful feel fear. Fear can serve us well, pushing us onto the path toward wisdom. But fear makes a terrible master....

We believe that the Lord still does this: he positions people perfectly to pursue their destiny. ...

You also can store up for yourself a supply of conviction about the Lord’s willingness to keep his promises....

Nehemiah’s willingness to identify himself with his broader family and community in confession positions him powerfully to lead his entire community in mission....

The Lord is present in our lives and history, whether the news is good or bad. When his people practice prayerful engagement, they discover that their activist God is already deeply engaged: bringing restoration, resisting evil, and generating hope....

One of the things we love about Nehemiah’s story is that he manages to care both for people and structures. He doesn’t just have warm and fuzzy sympathetic feelings for his fellow Jews, he also cares about the state of Jerusalem’s walls....

Choosing to care does something in our souls. The Lord works with that choice, enriches it and expands it and nourishes it. Choosing to care slips you into the center of God’s great work....

Life in the church brings our vulnerabilities to the surface. This is perhaps never more true than when a church is growing....

The Lord delights to do the seemingly impossible....

Don’t encourage people to imitate your behavior. When they’re inspired by the Lord’s work in your life, encourage them to connect with God....

When the Lord grows a community, when the Lord grows a church, when the Lord grows a person … the blessings spill beyond that the life of that community, church, or person....

The political and military machinations of the world powers look like ultimate powers, but God is also at work. God’s work continues even in seasons of difficulty and uncertainty. And God’s work is the work that matters most....

There is good soil out there, soil that’s been prepared, hearts that are ready to hear and accept that word of the Lord. ...

Jesus insightfully lists 3 things that can keep the word of God from bearing fruit in your life: worries, wealth, and distraction....

Troubles and persecutions can come as a result of our faith. If we haven’t put down deep roots, our faith won’t survive....

The soil on the path has not been prepared to receive the seed....

God’s kingdom is marked by the reckless generosity of the king. ...

How will we respond to Jesus’ great act of service? Gratitude. Shame. Joy. Confusion. Worship. So many responses are available to us....

Will you choose to serve? This is a daily choice, a choice that goes against the grain of the world, a choice that God uses to transform us....

When do you find yourself feeling grumpy about the way other people talk to or about God?...

Our prayer requests fly to God, but we can’t pretend to fully comprehend the full impact of each flap of their wings....

James and John are comically transparent in their attempt to manipulate Jesus. Aren’t we all?...

The kingdom of heaven is available to both seekers and stumblers. Some of us searched high and low looking for a place and a community where what God wants done is done. Others of us went looking for friends, free food, and a little spiritual icing on the cake we call life and stumbled into this great and wonderful kingdom that God is bringing to fruition in our midst. God...

What do you consider to be so worthwhile that you’ll rearrange your life? This question can give you insight into your priorities, your dreams, and the challenges of your current life situation....

Great engagement with the scriptures begins with good observation of the text. As you read these parables, what stands out to you?...

The Kingdom of Heaven is worth it!...

How would you fill in this blank: “The kingdom of heaven is like _________.”?...

What would happen if we all committed to seek God’s kingdom first in 2017?...

Every resolution you make in this new year can contain a kingdom component if you are willing to seek it out. Losing weight, reading more, decluttering, taking a vacation, calling your kids … each and every one of these can be used by our heavenly Father to advance his kingdom in our lives and in this world....

This time of year many of us will ponder making resolutions to live life differently in 2017. The changes that take place in our lives might have a tremendous impact on our relationships and our participation in God’s kingdom. ...

Mary’s practice of treasuring what has happened and pondering them in her heart is a practice that can serve us well in our own lives....

Rest. Rest. The weary world rejoices. ...