What Does It Mean To Be Truly Blessed?

I’m going to ask you a question right off the bat, today. I want you to think about this.  If I asked you what it looks like to be blessed, how would you answer that question?  When you think of someone who is blessed, what comes to mind?  Health?  Wealth?  Success?  Happiness?  I ask you that because today we study The Beatitudes, which are nine statements Jesus makes about when we are truly blessed.  This is how Jesus starts his famous Sermon on the Mount, and I’m just g

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Has Your Faith Changed Your Heart and Behaviors?

Welcome to our series called Rethinking Our Faith.  Why should we rethink our faith?  When Jesus shows up and teaches the Sermon on the Mount, it radically changes everything we may have understood about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.  

If you have never read it, it’s wild.   It’s confusing.  And it challenges every area of our lives.  Jesus says things like If you sin with your eye, cut it out.  If you sin with your hand, cut it off.  That’s confusing because if

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How to Maximize Your Impact in 2026 and Beyond

With Christmas now behind us, it’s time to look ahead to the New Year.  There is something hopeful and exciting about the start of the New Year, isn’t there?  It’s a time to look back and reflect on the year that was, for sure, but it is also a time to look ahead, to set new goals, hopeful and good goals for the New Year.  I am already mentally preparing for what the gym will look like here in January.  This is a fun and hopeful time of year, with lots of traditions and fe

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To Walk With God, You Will Need To Embrace This One Thing

In a few days, we will be celebrating Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  It’s a spectacular moment when you allow what God has done to impact you.   Let’s read about it.   

Philippians 2:5-8 Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status

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Love Slows Down. Stress, Fear and Anger Speed Up

Welcome back to our series on relationships called The Unavoidable Adventure: Life with People, where we are learning to live and love well.  This is so important because we were created for love and connection, but it’s also challenging because people and relationships are messy and challenging.  They are that way all year long, but during the holidays, it all just ramps up on us, and the closer we get to Christmas, the more tension we may be feeling, then add how much ex

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Why Has God Placed Me In An Impossible Situation?

Relationships are messy.   You know that already.  But why?  Because people make everything better, and people make everything harder.  And that includes us.  We can make relationships better and harder for those around us.  And the clear command of Jesus is that we love others well.  That’s why we are talking about the unavoidable adventure of people.  

We talked about the ‘us’ part and the ‘them’ part in relationships.  Let’s quickly recap the ‘us’ part.  

First.  We all h

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Wondering Why You Aren't Experiencing New Life? Let's Talk.

We are in a conversation on relationships called The Unavoidable Adventure: Life with People, where we are learning to live and love well.  And as we close out the month of November, I keep wondering how many of us thought this series would go in the direction it did.  When we hear that we are in a conversation about relationships and how to love others well, the assumption is that we will talk about other people, or at the very least, we will get some new tips and techniq

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What Do I Do When I Am Triggered?

Have you discovered that people in your life can make everything better?  And have you discovered that people in your life can make everything harder?  That’s why we are in a series called 'The Unavoidable Adventure: Life with People.'   Life with people can make your life better and harder.  And in this series, we are trying to avoid the superficial talk that deals with tips and techniques on how to deal with people.  We are trying to figure out the real source of why rel

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New Life Means A New Way To Live, See Ourselves, and Others...RIght?

Welcome back to our conversation on relationships, called 'The Unavoidable Adventure: Life with People.'  We call it that because life with people isn’t avoidable; we need people in our lives, and it isn’t easy - it’s often the most challenging area of our lives, making it quite an adventure.  This year, as we approach the holidays, we wanted to have a conversation on this challenging area of our lives that goes beyond tips and techniques, but could have some real depth, e

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The Stunning Reason We Struggle To Love Well

The Unavoidable Adventure: Life with People.  We call it an adventure because relationships are messy.  And in that mess, we discover it can be truly difficult to love others well.  So we have to ask ourselves, Why is it a challenge to love others well?

There are two parts to this series.  Part one is what we talk about on Sunday morning.  Part two is our midweek class that takes us deeper and gives us time to talk it out.  In this series, we want to avoid the more superfic

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Living and Loving Well Starts With Inner Healing

Today, we start our second conversation of the fall, this time discussing people and relationships.  We are calling this “The Unavoidable Adventure: Life with People,” and the goal is to grow to a place where we live and love well.  We all want that, but it’s challenging.  Life with people isn’t easy; it is an adventure, and while we would love to avoid all that comes with people, we need them in our lives. It’s challenging, it’s messy, it takes energy, and it's often the

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The Most Radical Way To Deal WIth Stress

Today, we end our talk on the number one growing disease in the Western World, stress.  We are excited to start our new series on Relationships, especially with the Holidays coming.

In this Stress series, we laid out a practical pathway on how to deal with stress God’s way.  We also shared daily podcasts that answered specific questions about stress.  This coming week, the Ready Heart podcast talks about what is rest vs. real rest.  What is good tired vs. dangerously tired?

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Our Choices Impact Our Lives

Last week, we took Step Four on our pathway to manage stress God’s Way, which was all about where we take our stress.  That was an important conversation because stress is a unique challenge in our lives.  It’s unique because we carry it, and it piles up without going away on its own, meaning it will continue to pile up until we take it somewhere.  I also wanted you to understand that stress isn’t just piling up in your life; it is also talking to you, and it has a goal.  

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Where Do We Take Our Stress?

In our first conversation of the fall, we jumped into an important topic: stress.  Why is this so important?  It’s because we all deal with stress.  The reality is we all face it and have to deal with it, and I would add that we are all dealing with it in some way.  Hopefully, we are dealing with it in healthy ways, but if we are honest, we don’t always get this right; we don’t always handle it well.  One of the things I’m learning in my own life is to give myself a little

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The One Thing That Will Change Your Day And Ultimately Your Life

We are talking about the fastest-growing disease in the Western World.  What is it?  Stress.   No matter who you are, you will experience stress.  And remember, we said, even if you are a Christian, you will experience stress.  So, the real question is, how do we deal with stress God’s way?  And that’s the series we are in.  This series was intentionally built to lay out a practical pathway to deal with stress God’s way.

Step 1: Let go and allow God to lead our lives.  The

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