Embracing What God Has Done For You

Last week, Sam shared the seven ways we can mess up grace.  It was such a helpful and redemptive talk.  The reason I liked it so much, Sam gave us handles on how to keep grace simple.  People and religion tend to make grace a lot more complicated than it really is.  Do you remember how Sam did it?  He asked us to describe our Christian faith in a sentence or a word.  And he said, if our . . . Read More »

Unapologetic and Ferocious Courage

Why can’t we fully experience God’s grace?  Because we make our sin and failure a bigger deal than God’s grace.  And until we make God’s grace a bigger deal than our sin and failure, we will struggle to fully experience God’s grace.   This is important because experiencing God’s grace is the foundation to being redeemed and forgiven.  That was Sam’s point last week and it was so well done. Let’s get practical.  There are basically two parts to . . . Read More »

Redeemed & Forgiven Series Kick Off – Understanding Grace

Today we start our big fall series Redeemed and Forgiven.  As Ken and I built this series I just kept getting more excited, because we are going to be exploring what it truly means to live out a life in Christ.  We want to talk about what it could look like to live a life that is truly redeemed and forgiven and most importantly how we can actually live like we are redeemed and forgiven…do you see why . . . Read More »

Only God can Reproduce God

It’s Christmas. It really is the most special time of year. The reason it’s so special is because God entered earth as a baby. And when that happened, it sent shock waves through history. Today, the birth of Jesus is still radically impacting our culture today. How? Think about most of the Christmas movies produced. The themes around Christmas are, ‘believe’, ‘hope’, and ‘love’. Even if you don’t believe in God, in general, people are impacted by some . . . Read More »

In The Opposite Direction

Today’s video with Dave Robbins hits home, doesn’t it? Maybe not to that extent, but we’ve all felt temptation before, and we’ve all given into it at some point too. It doesn’t matter if you’re here today and you don’t believe in Jesus yet, you know what temptation feels like. And you also know that you’ve had consequences for giving in. Right? Whatever you believe, temptation and its consequences is something we can all relate to. Several years . . . Read More »

Feeling Alone, Separated from God and Others, Defeated

Watch James Caldemeyer I am second Video.  Did you hear him say, “How did I get here?”  Have you ever asked yourself that?  You feel like life has been so out of control, there is no coming back.  It’s like you crossed a line that eliminates you from ever going back to a normal life. Maybe you didn’t cross that line, but maybe you have done something, and you think, ‘I blew it, God will never accept me.’  . . . Read More »

We All Have Something In Common

So last week, Ken opened up our big fall series, called I am Second, and I think just one week in you can probably see why this series has us so excited.  It’s because it is all about life change, which when it comes to this whole “Christian-faith-thing,” this is really what it is all about.  Now as you listen to these people tell their stories of life change you will recognize a lot of them.  They are famous rock stars, . . . Read More »

Courage From Understanding

I have to tell you that coming in here last week was a little more challenging for me than normal.  Late last week my Grandma Hepner had passed away.  I have had a really close relationship with both my Pap and my Gram Hepner all of my life, and have found so much personal health and healing in their home.  I was blessed with a lot of time with them, and while her death wasn’t unexpected, it was still sad, and . . . Read More »