Who is Jesus to You?
Is Jesus big or small to you? Do you believe that Jesus is working in your life even when you are in the wilderness? (Matthew 16:25)
He Makes Our Paths Straight
There are times in life when the Lord convicts us or speaks very clearly to go in one direction or another. Even so, God doesn’t expect our lives to become a script, where we only carry out specific orders from him. Instead, God invites us into a relationship where we walk with him and make decisions with him, and he breathes life into us wherever we go.
Climbing Mountains with God
As we follow Jesus, we will all encounter areas of life where we struggle to live in freedom and walk in alignment with what God says is good. We were designed to overcome these struggles with the help of the Holy Spirit who works in us. When we fail or have trouble overcoming, God is not disappointed in us, and he doesn’t want us to give up. Every setback is an opportunity to learn how to keep trusting God and keep persevering, until one day the Lord leads us up the mountain and into a new level of freedom and intimacy with him.
Discovering the Joy of Jesus
What does life look like with the perspective of joy that Jesus has?
Testimony: Salvation for the Whole Family
Serena shares a testimony of how her parents recently encountered Jesus. After decades of prayer, God was faithful to bring her family together and to bless them with new life.
The Good Shepherd
In John 10, Jesus says that as the good shepherd, he comes to the defense of his sheep when they are in trouble. In all the highs and lows of life, our heart posture as his sheep should be to lean on God and trust him. His power and his blood are enough to lead us through anything that may come our way.
Retreat With The Lord
In our busy lives the Lord asks that we spend time with him alone. Are you retreating with the Lord?
A Life Free of Fear
When we decide to follow Jesus, he brings us through a process of being made perfect in love, so that fear can have no part in us (1 John 4:18). This isn’t an instantaneous process. However, as we walk with God through different stages of life, he invites us to learn how to lay aside our fears and fix our eyes on him.
Eating at the Lord’s Table
Like the apostle John, we are called to a life of intimacy with Jesus, not because of our qualifications, but because he loves to be near to us and to share what he’s doing with us. To access that place of intimacy with God, it’s essential that we lay down our priorities and visions of what our lives could look like and come into agreement with his ideas for our lives. God’s plans for us are always bigger and better than anything we could come up with on our own, and we can trust him to lead us every step of the way.
New Endurance for a New Year
In his epistles, Paul often compares the Christian life to a long race that we run with endurance. At the beginning of the new year, we remind ourselves of the places God has promised to bring us as we keep on running this race. We choose to celebrate those destinations with joy now, before we get there, because we are intended to run forward with hopeful expectation that God will do all that he has promised.
Emptying Ourselves Before God
In Luke 21:1-4, we get a glimpse of what it looks like for one widow to give all she has to God. God’s priority, in her life and in ours, is not about finances; rather, he is looking for people that are willing to empty themselves in worship, holding nothing back from him. God will always provide all that we need; our part is to agree with him and surrender our lives to him in faith.
The Grace To Be Holy
God gives us his grace so that we can live a holy life. This isn’t just a life where we follow all the rules, the “dos” and “do nots.” Rather, holy living is a life fully surrendered to God, where we allow him to speak into any area of our lives so that he can call us into greater freedom and life in Christ.
Choose Hope, Not Disappointment
In Luke 24, we read about two disciples who were disappointed after Jesus’ death, because they thought God’s plans had fallen short. In our lives, we often face challenges to the hope we have in Christ, and hard circumstances can lead to despair. In order to live an abundant life in God, we must learn to come to God in humility, yield our disappointment to him, and receive hope instead.
Praying for Leadership
Romans 13 says that all authority on earth is authorized by God. This doesn’t mean that all political leaders are God’s first choice, but it does mean that we should submit to them and pray for God to work in their lives. Our call, in politics and in the world, is to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus and to participate in the amazing things he is doing here and now.
Being Fully Surrendered
What does it mean to be fully surrendered and obedient to to the Lord? (James 5:13-18)
Giving Your All In Worship
In Revelation 5, we get a glimpse of the worship of heaven: both angels and saints worship with their whole being, and they celebrate the victorious Christ, who is seated at the right hand of God. In this season, we are learning how to “give our all” in worship, pouring out our whole being to honor God. Heavenly worship comes not from a place of need but from a place of being captivated by his glory.