If You Can’t Say Nothin’ Good by Andy Stoddard

Sometimes when we read scripture we wonder, “what can this passage be saying to me in this moment?  How can I understand it?  What may God want me to do with this truth at this time in my life?”  Sometimes it can be hard to understand, hard to deal with.  And then there are other passages that are so simple they leap off the

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Find Your Wings by Carrie Carter

I didn’t cry when our boys went to kindergarten.  I didn’t cry when our boys went to high school.  I didn’t even cry when our oldest graduated from high school.  Maybe that’s why the flood of emotion that washed over me a couple days before we took our oldest to college completely caught me off guard. Even now, as we’re

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The Nature Of God When The Sun Goes Out And The Rain Comes Down by Elizabeth Glass Turner

Eerie.   Unnatural.  Awe-inspiring.  Within a short span, we went from sharing photos of uncanny eclipse shadows to videos of hungry floodwaters rising.  America stood still while time turned in on itself and twilight became midday, calling out confused crickets while the sun went out and summer heat cooled. We haven’t found a way to control the moon. It’s not customizable. There’s

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Hate: Confusing Holiness With Hierarchy by Carolyn Moore

Let’s talk about hate.  In the first few verses of the Bible, we meet our God in his Trinitarian wholeness. The Father creates, the Son speaks, the Spirit hovers. This Trinitarian God partners within himself in the work of creation. You can sense the single-mindedness — the energy flowing within himself creating goodness. There is no sense of hierarchy here. In fact, a hierarchy

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Why We Still Need Movements by Shaun Marshall

Sometimes, we disengage from challenging injustice because we have been conditioned to believe that our efforts will not matter; we don’t believe that we can make any real difference. God requires us, his people, to be the movement, humbly and faithfully carrying his mercy, his justice, and his transforming presence in our world.

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Missional Evangelism by Otis McMillan

what it means to live missionally is to have authentic friendship with people in these networks. If Jesus is truly important to you, and if you have real friendships with people, then Jesus is going to come up sooner or later in the natural course of sharing life.

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Why We Rejoice by Andy Stoddard

One of the great blessings in life is to celebrate the ways that God works and moves.  Sometimes, in our bid to stay humble, we can forget to give testimony to what God has done.  Now, we do want to be careful, making sure that God gets the glory for whatever good happens in life, but we need to stop

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Tend Your Fire: Fanning The Flame Of Zeal by Tammie Grimm

“I want to look confident but not come off as aggressive or too assertive – that just won’t do!” How many of us have thought that when preparing for a public presentation, whether it be a workshop we lead for our peers, a meeting with other leaders or even a job interview? We want to look professional, neat and tidy,

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I Must Go by Michelle Bauer

To be a follower is not a valued characteristic in our culture, is it? If someone asked us if we wanted our children to grow up to be followers or leaders, I’m guessing most of us would say leaders. When we hire or promote someone at work are we looking for leaders or followers? But have you ever heard of

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Top 5 Reasons Guests Become Part Of Your Church Family by Kevin Watson

At one level, Melissa and I are the ideal first-time guests. And yet, we have been surprised at how difficult it has been to find deep and nurturing community in the local church. We have often been discouraged, because our initial strategy for finding new community when we have moved has been to try to quickly plug in to a

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I’m Not A Worthless Sinner by Tom Fuerst

Worm Theology is probably a good moniker for such belief. It imprisons humanity in this notion that our sin has made us worthless. It fetters us to the falsity that the evil within us has so completely broken us that we literally have no value.

It sounds pious. It sounds like a good understanding of the holy character of God

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Solutionists: Problemists by Talbot Davis

Anyway, several months ago I was in one of these meetings – probably 40 people there – admiring the raw spirituality of the environment, when during the sharing time a man says, “We don’t have a drinking PROBLEM. We have a drinking SOLUTION. We’ve got all kinds of problems – marriage, parents, self-esteem, and money – and what we

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Know Thyself by Andy Stoddard

One of the best things in the world that we can do is know ourselves.  Know our strengths.  Know our weaknesses.  There’s an old saying – know thyself. That’s a good thing. Because when we know ourselves, we know what to be on the lookout for.  What are things that could cause us trouble. What are the things in our

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A Foretaste Of The Heavenly Banquet by Ken Loyer

The idea of the future has a mysterious quality to it because it is always beyond us, in one sense not yet fulfilled. As you look ahead, what do you anticipate about the future? What concerns or fears do you have? Do you think that in the midst of the inevitable uncertainty regarding various aspects of our future, there is

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