CrossPoint in Boise, Idaho Podcast

This Summer we are in a conversation called “Red Letters.” In many Bibles, publishers put the words of Jesus in red for emphasis. It is a way of recognizing that Jesus is the lens through which we see the world and the lens through which we understand the scriptures. Tony Campolo and Shane Claiborne started a group a few years ago called “Red Letter Christians.” They describe their group on their website like this:The goal of Red Letter Christians is simple: To take Jesus seriously by endeavoring to live out His radical, counter-cultural teachings as set forth in Scripture, and especially embracing the lifestyle prescribed in the Sermon on the Mount. By calling ourselves Red Letter Christians, we refer to the fact that in many Bibles the words of Jesus are printed in red. What we are asserting, therefore, is that we have committed ourselves first and foremost to doing what Jesus said. Jesus calls us away from the consumerist values that dominate contemporary America.This Sunday we are going to look at some red letters telling the controversial story about Jesus, Simon the religious leader, and a prostitute. It was a very scandalous story in Jesus' day.

This Sunday, we are going to be exploring the film "Lady Bird". If you haven't seen the movie, I would encourage you to Redbox it or stream it before Sunday. (Two disclaimers: Even if you have never seen the movie, come to church anyway – you will still get a lot out of the message. Second – while Sunday’s service will be rated “G,” this movie is rated “R." Please don’t watch this movie with your young kids! :) )Christine "Lady Bird" MacPherson is a high school senior from the "wrong side of the tracks." She longs for adventure, sophistication, and opportunity, but finds none of that in her Sacramento Catholic high school.The movie follows the title character's senior year in high school, including her first romance, her participation in the school play, and most importantly, her applying for college. It is a coming of age comedy. We will be exploring themes like acceptance, vulnerability, and the role of ritual in our faith and our relationships.

I like movies. Because of my job, sometimes I will watch a movie and think “that will preach!” So, once a year or so, I like to do a short series of messages I call “God in The Movies.” The idea is this: I take a recent movie and unpack some of the spiritual themes that are in the film. Sometimes there are themes of redemption or forgiveness or faith or doubt or what it means to be a spiritual community. For the next two weeks I am going to be looking at two films that came out last year that I think are really interesting: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and Lady Bird. This Sunday, we will be looking at Three Billboards. If you haven’t seen the movie, I would encourage you to Redbox it or stream it before Sunday. (Two disclaimers: Even if you have never seen the movie, come to church anyway – you will still get a lot out of the message. Second – while Sunday’s service will be rated “G,” this movie is rated “R." Please don’t watch this movie with your young kids! There is a lot of strong language in this film, so if you are sensitive to that, it might not be a good movie for you. :) )On Sunday, I will be having a conversation with Taylor Bickel about the movie. Taylor has a film degree from Northwest Nazarene University and has some really great insights about the movie. We will be exploring themes like the anger in our country these days, what it means to forgive someone, and the journey of letting go of hurt and bitterness.

The past few weeks we’ve been in a series we’re calling Church Without Walls. We’ve explored pushing the fence out further, looked at moving away from an ‘us/them’ mindset to realize that we’re all us, and last week Dana pushed us to go to the other side- to get outside our comfort zones. I have absolutely loved this series! I feel like it’s the true heartbeat of our identity as a community of Jesus, and I am excited to get tag on to the end of it and close down this group of messages.This week, we’ll wrap up the Church Without Walls series by exploring what it might really mean to find Jesus. We’ll look at the book of Acts to explore how ‘outsiders’ made their way into the church, and how this shaped the DNA of the church. (If you want the inside scoop, read Acts 10 & 11 before Sunday).We’ll also look at what a little neurobiology might have to teach us about our difficulties seeing what God is up to when we’re in uncomfortable or unfamiliar settings. We will take a brief tour of world religions with some surprising encounters with Jesus along the way.All of this wandering in search of an answer to the question, “what does it mean to find Jesus?” I’m excited to have this opportunity to share with you all, and expectant for God to show up in big and surprising ways in our conversations together.

Growing up, my parents moved a lot and I remember living in several houses in Lodi, California; Sacramento, California, and Winnipeg, Canada. When we lived in Canada, there was a house on McGill Ave that I remember most vividly. There was a kid named Greg across the street whose parents had a pool table. We had a lot of fun with that pool table until one summer day we scratched the felt on it. His parents didn’t think too highly of that and our dreams of being pool sharks ended. Since I graduated from college in 1988, I’ve lived in seven cities and seventeen different houses or apartments. I’ve had good neighbors and some really bad neighbors. Some made lots of noise, smoked various substances, or their houses and yards were messy. Living next door to the house full of partying college students was probably the worst neighbors I had. I am still Facebook friends or stay in contact with many of my former neighbors. They are great people who I care about deeply and miss. “Neighbor” is a powerful word. There is no word quite like it. There is beauty and kindness in that simple word. When you hear the word neighbor, who do you think of? Jesus had a lot to say about neighbors and how to relate to them. As we continue our conversation, “A Church Without Walls,” we are going to reflect on our neighborhoods and what Jesus has to say about them

Soren Kierkegaard, the famous Danish Christian philosopher, grew up in the countryside surrounded by farms that raised geese (among other animals). Each spring he would watch as a new gaggle of goslings was hatched and began to be fattened for the table. Over the course of their short lives these geese would gorge themselves at constantly refilled troughs of grain until they were so fat they could hardly walk. Kierkegaard imagined that they believed their lives to be perfect, as every need they had was in abundance. When autumn came, the truth became apparent. The wild geese that had spent the warm summer months in Denmark would gather in preparation for their southerly migration. As they assembled to fly south they would circle in the skies above the farms, calling out to any stragglers to join in their flight. At this point the farmed geese would lift their heads from the feeding troughs and look into the skies, heeding the call of their wild cousins. For the first time in their lives they would become animated, running as best they could around their enclosures and attempting to fly. Of course, their gluttonous diet and life of luxury meant that they were far too fat to get airborne – but that did not stop them from trying. And then, as quickly as the commotion had started, the wild geese would fly off and the fattened farm geese would watch them briefly before returning to their grain to continue eating their way to their deaths. This Sunday, I am going to take a few weeks to think together with you about what it means to be the church together. Are we farmed geese or wild geese? Are we meant to feed or do we feed in order to fly? What does it mean to “leave the walls of the building” in order to serve the world? We will be looking at the New Testament to give us insight to these questions. It should be a fun journey!

There is an online article called “The Most Dangerous Word in the World.” It’s about the power that the word no can have over our minds. It’s written by a researcher, Andrew Newberg, who is a specialist in spirituality and neurology. This is part of what he and his coauthor write:"If I were to put you into an MRI scanner…and flash the word ‘NO’ for less than one second, you’d see a sudden release of dozens of stress-producing hormones and neurotransmitters. These chemicals immediately interrupt the normal functioning of your brain, impairing logic, reason, language processing, and communication.In fact, just seeing a list of negative words for a few seconds will make a highly anxious or depressed person feel worse, and the more you ruminate on them, the more you can actually damage key structures that regulate your memory, feelings, and emotions. You’ll disrupt your sleep, your appetite, and your ability to experience long-term happiness and satisfaction."*All this from exposure to negativity and, in particular, the word no. Of course sometimes we have to say no to make space in our lives for more important things. However, we cannot live on a diet of no. It kills the spirit. We were made for yes.We are going talk about what it means to say “yes” – to God and to the people around us.

A couple weeks ago, the 2018 Major League Baseball season kicked off. If you follow MLB, my guess is that you have high hopes and expectations for your team this year. But the reality is that in spite of all the blood, sweat, and tears in the next few months, 29 of the 30 teams playing in April will not win the World Series in October. One of the aspects of baseball that makes it unique (and beautiful) is its focus on failure management. Failure is an inevitable part of baseball – not just for teams, but for individuals. In what other place in life can you fail 7 out of 10 times and still be considered a smashing success? In baseball, if you can manage your failure that much as a batter, you will be a raging success. Twenty three times in the past 140 years, an MLB has a pitcher thrown what is called a “perfect game”—a game with no hits or walks. That may seem fairly common, but that breaks down to about 1 in every 20,000 games. Therefore, to be successful as a pitcher also means to learn to manage the inevitableness of failure. When it comes to our lives, nobody likes failure, but there is another side to failure that we experience in life we will be talking about this weekend. It is more powerful than that feeling of failure or temporary setback, nd when you experience this in your life, it can set you back weeks, months, or even years.Researchers have found the single most often expressed emotion in daily conversation is love: A child to a parent, a friend to a friend - expressions of caring and affection are more common than anything else that we say.But the second most commonly expressed emotion on a daily basis is regret: “I wish I had shown up on time. I wish I’d spoken up. I wish I hadn’t eaten that. I wish I’d been saving my money. I wish I’d asked her out. I wish I hadn’t asked her out.” We are continuing our conversation on Sunday called “Five Words that Will Change Your Life.” This Sunday, James Stewart and I will be having a conversation around the word “sorry.” How do you deal with regret in life? How do we reconcile with people that we have hurt? Are there areas of our lives that we need to say “sorry” for that we aren’t even aware of?

This Sunday we are continuing the series that we started on Sunday called “Five Words to Change Your Life.” The idea is this : Every week, we will look at just one word and how God can use that one word to change your life. This Sunday’s word is really a prayer. It is a confession of need. It is the word help. Sometimes we pray it for ourselves. Sometimes we pray it for other people. Years ago, when I attending seminary in Kansas City, I was a member of an inner-city church called Seven Oaks Church. I really loved the people of that little church. Once they even asked me to preach when the pastor was on vacation. It was the first time I ever preached at a church where people talked back to you while you are preaching, I learned that when the sermon is going well, people will say a lot of different things. If it is going well, they’ll say stuff like, “Yes, yes, yes!” or, “Well, well, well!” or “Preach it!” But if the sermon is not going well, you can tell because people will say, “Help him, Jesus!” As a preacher, you do not want to hear, “Help him, Jesus!” I do not want to hear that prayer, because sometimes I am in a position where I need help, but I do not want to admit that I need help.There is a bunch of reasons why we often do not ask for help: we do not want to look weak or we do not want to be in debt to somebody for helping us out. Sometimes I don’t even realize I need help, or I’m afraid if I ask somebody for help, they’ll take over, and I’ll lose control. Sunday we will be looking at the story of Jesus first miracle: turning water into wine at a wedding. This story will help us think through the “help” that we need in our lives and how to ask for it.

In the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, researchers who study hundreds of drivers found we actually take longer to leave a parking space if we know someone is waiting for it than we do if nobody is waiting at all. There is something inside of us that says, “This is my space.” If drivers are in a desperate hurry picking up kids or late for an appointment and they give a little honk, researchers discovered that we make them wait four times longer. This is such a common human instinct that it has its own name: territorialism.This happens in other arenas too. If you are at a restaurant, the longer the line of people waiting for a table or the more crowded the restaurant, the longer people linger at their table. This is a big problem when it comes to making space for God in our lives: We have so much going on and jealously guard the boundaries of our lives that we do not have time to examine the condition of our character. We don't have time to put the kind of time that is needed into a soul friendship, to serve, to give, or to volunteer. This Sunday, we are starting a new conversation called “Five Words to Change Your Life.” Everybody is busy, so every week, we will look at just one word God can use to change your life. It will be a season in which we make space for God. This Easter Sunday, the word is “wow.” We are going to talk about what it is like to live in the age of cynicism, what children can teach us about wonder, and how the first Easter was all about “wow!”

This Sunday we are wrapping up our series on “How God Changes People.” For this series I have borrowed a phrase from Henry Cloud that reminds us that transformation of the human heart requires grace plus truth plus time. Something profoundly indelible happens when we are known to the core of our being with all our faults and all our blemishes and all our scars and all our brokenness. We are known, yet we are completely loved and fully accepted. When we experience that kind of acceptance, we call it grace. And when we experience that type of grace, it changes us. If you want to change, you need the power of truth in your life, because truth defines reality. Truth shapes us, guides us, protects us, reveals to us, and it frees us. Truth is a powerful agent of change. This Sunday we are going to wrap up this series of messages by reminding ourselves that even with grace and truth in our lives, transformation does not come quickly. When the Bible describes spiritual transformation, it uses organic terms: the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5. Or when Peter writes, “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.” (1 Peter 1:23) Or when the Psalmist reflects about the godly – “They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do.” (Psalm 1:3; NLT)This stinks, because we live in a world that worships speed. We are a multi-tasking, instantaneous-downloading, real-time updating, “I get angry when my computer takes longer than 3 seconds to do anything,” microwave culture. We want instant results and instant change. But despite all our technology and all the innovations and all the breakthroughs, there are some things you just can’t shortcut. The transformation of the human heart is one of those things.

Imagine picking your car up from where you took it for a tune-up. The technician says to you, “This car is in great shape. Clearly you are an automotive genius to take great care of your car.” Later that day, your brakes don’t work. You find out you were out of brake fluid. You could have died. You go back to the shop, and you say, “Why didn’t you tell me?” The technician said, “Well, I didn’t want you to feel bad. Plus, to be honest, I was afraid you might get upset with me. I want this to be a safe place where you feel loved and accepted.” You would be furious. You would probably say something like, “I didn’t come here for a little fantasy based ego boost. When it comes to my car, I want the truth.” Or, imagine this scenario: You’re at a party. Afterwards, your spouse or your good friends says to you, “Once more, I was struck by your natural charisma and superior intellect. They are continually amazing. You correctly intuited that everybody at that party would rather listen to you pontificate out of your brilliance than to have to come up with something to say themselves.” How mad do you get at that comment? When something matters to us, we do not want illusory comfort based on pain avoidance. We want truth. Except when it comes to ourselves. When it comes to me, I’m not sure I want the truth. Winston Churchill wrote, “Men occasionally stumble on the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”We are in a series of messages about how God changes people. The series is based on a phrase by a guy named Henry Cloud who said, “Transformation requires grace plus truth plus time.” Last week we looked at the fun part of transformation – grace. This week we will be looking at the more difficult part of transformation – truth.

A few years ago, I used to frequent one of those factory outlet stores. The prices were cheap and for good reason – most of the clothes were deemed “slightly irregular.” I was never quite sure what “slightly irregular” meant and quite often could not figure out how the clothes were different than “regular” clothes. Besides, I figured, it kind of described me – I’M often “slightly irregular.”When it comes to the human race, we are all “slightly irregular"-- in need of being changed in to something better. There is a mind that will not open. There is a mouth that will not shut. There is a backbone that won’t hold firm. There is a stiff neck that won’t yield. It is true of every one of us. We are our own worst enemy. Many of the problems in our lives have been brought about by our own poor decisions and selfishness – greed, anger, lust, lack of self-control. We are in desperate need of a better version of ourselves. But how does that happen? This Sunday we are starting a series of messages about how God changes people. Henry Cloud said,“Transformation requires grace plus truth plus time.” This Sunday we are going to look at the first book of the Bible and how God’s grace is concretely expressed from the very beginning of time.

This Sunday we are wrapping up our series of messages called “Epic." We are having conversations with folks in our church about an Old Testament story that has been meaningful to them. This Sunday, James Stewart and Serena Hicks will be talking about a wild and crazy character from the Old Testament: Elijah. Elijah was a hot-headed fiery prophet but also probably was a bit bi-polar. He would go from great highs to suicidal depression. He performed some amazing miracles: called fire from Heaven, raised someone from the dead, and saved a widow’s life with perpetual oil and flour. But he also struggled with insecurity and depression. Elijah is a complicated person, but his story tells us a lot about the things like: what we give priority to in our lives, how we treat the vulnerable people around us, what it means to trust God, how to deal with depression, and how to be a spiritual person in a noisy and busy world.

This Sunday, Amanda Cox and I will be talking about the story of Joseph from the book of Genesis. If you are unfamiliar with this story in the Bible, it is a story about sibling rivalry, about how we dehumanize each other, about revenge, about being unjustly accused, and about forgiveness and reconciliation. But more than anything else, it is a mirror of God’s story – a story of a stubborn dreamer in shalom and a foreshadowing of a God who will suffer on behalf of someone else in order to save them. There is a reason that this story has survived for thousands of years. I hope you can join us on Sunday as Amanda and I try to scratch the surface of the depth of this story.

We are starting a new series of messages this Sunday called “Epic." I am having some conversations with folks in our church about an Old Testament story that has been meaningful to them. This Sunday, Matti Stewart and I will talk about the book of Ruth. If you are unfamiliar with this short story in the Bible, it is about a woman whose husband dies and her attempt to rebuild her life with her late husband’s mother. It is a thought-provoking story about loss, about God showing up in the darkest points in our lives, and about what it is like to be an immigrant in a strange country. If nothing else, I am sure Matti will keep us all entertained with her unique perspective on life!

This Sunday, we are going to look at what it might mean to capture the ethos of the Jesus movement. How do we avoid becoming just another religious institution that is a tribute to the past with no vision for the future? We call this value being “organic.”

Totem poles are an important part of the cultural heritage of the Native people of the Pacific Northwest. They are more than just beautiful art, they represent characters or stories or symbols about a village’s cultural beliefs. A totem pole may have an animal that embodies the ethos of that community – an eagle, a salmon, or a bear, for example. Elders in the village would communicate the values to the younger generation using the totem pole. “We must be wise as an owl, cunning as a fox, strong as a bear, and as resourceful as a badger,” they would say. As new people would come in to their community, the elders would tell them the story of the totem pole -- “The salmon on the pole – he doesn’t give up; he swims upstream even though it is difficult, until he reaches his goal. That is who we are: people who persevere and grow stronger through our struggle.” The totem pole is an outward expression of what is “under the hood” – what drives a community. We are in a conversation about what drives us. Last Sunday we talked about how love is the foundation of everything we do. This Sunday we are going to look at valuing simplicity. It turns out, it is simple to make things complex, but a complex task to make things simple. Keeping things simple is an important way of understanding our faith, of how we do life together, and even how we make financial decisions.

This Sunday at CrossPoint we are kicking off a new conversation to think about our new year and the kind of people we want to be. The kind of people that we become is result of what we value. Another way to put it is: the things we care about make us into a certain kind of person – for good or bad. As we begin this New Year, I want to challenge all of us – what do we value most? What is “under the hood” that is driving our thoughts, emotions, and actions? And what is it that drives us collectively as CrossPoint Church? Our collective heart – the things we collectively value, the things we collectively care about -- is called our “ethos." What kind of ethos are we creating at CrossPoint? How will that ethos impact our children? How will it impact the people who visit CrossPoint?This Sunday, we are going to talk about the kind of people and the kind of church we want to become in 2018.

We are wrapping up our first calendar year together at CrossPoint. As I have been reflecting back over 2017, I thought a lot about how our church has grown in our unity, intimacy, and faithfulness—and I expect many more exciting things to come in the new year! I came across a passage in the Bible that perfectly represents how I am feeling at the moment:“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.” (Colossians 2:6-7)As we celebrate our last Sunday of 2017 together, and move forward with a new year, I am eager to discuss with you this spiritual journey we have taken together, “rooted and built up in [Christ Jesus]!"

It seems that this time of year our lives get filled with lots and lots of noise: TV specials, parties, and busyness. But the very first Christmas present was a kind of gift of silence. This Sunday, James and I want to tell you part of the Christmas story that centers around a man named Zechariah the priest and his experience with silence. One day, he was in the temple serving, and an angel named Gabriel showed up and said that Zechariah and his old wife Elizabeth would have a son, and they were supposed to name him John. He would become John the Baptist, and he would help prepare Israel for what God was about to do through Jesus, through the coming of a Messiah. Zechariah said to the angel, “No, it’s not possible. It couldn’t happen. God could not do this. I’m too old. Elizabeth my wife is too old. Angel, you have the wrong guy.” But the angel says to Zechariah, “Actually, it is possible. I’m an angel. I stand in the presence of God. My name is Gabriel. I was sent to tell you this good news myself. Zechariah, why should you be so quick to say what God cannot do and what God can do? Zechariah, why would you be so quick to say what you do believe and what you don’t believe? Zechariah, you need a button for your mouth. Now you will be silent and not be able to speak until the day this happens because you did not believe my words, which will come true at the appointed time.” God is going to be present to Zechariah in silence in a way God could not break through to Zechariah in words. This is the strange gift of silence. There is something about silence that is really important to your spiritual development. Silence involves two aspects: having nothing to hear, no noise around you, and nothing to say, not speaking. This Sunday we are going to look at how you can practice silence, this advent by entering into Zechariah’s experience.

For the next couple of Sundays, we are having what we are calling “Christmas Conversations”. Instead of me preaching at you, I’m going to interview and discuss aspects of the Christmas story with a couple of other CrossPointers. This Sunday, Bob Condon and I are going to reflect together on the story of the Magi or the Wise Men from the Christmas story. We really don’t know that much about them. Most people think there were three of them because they brought three gifts to the baby Jesus: Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh. The truth is, the Bible never tells us how many of them there are; there could have been two or ten or maybe three. They were from the “East,” which means they were probably from what is now modern day Iran or Iraq. They were open to learning from other people and other cultures. In fact, they had read the ancient books of Israel.

While our souls were designed to crave things that bring health and life and wholeness, sometimes our souls can be trained to crave things that are destructive to ourselves. The story of humanity is the story of cravings. We are designed to crave. From the very first story in the Bible, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, humanity has been trying to align what we need with what we crave.  This Sunday we are wrapping up our series, “Crave” by looking at how Jesus dealt with very real cravings for food when he was tempted in the wilderness.

This Sunday we will be looking at the soul craving of meaning. The one place your soul cannot stand to live is in a land of meaninglessness – a place that believes that life is arbitrary, random, or senseless. If we live our lives without meaning, we find ourselves consumed by phobias and controlled by superstitions. Even if we don’t understand life, our minds will try and make something up to give it meaning. We will find meaning in our reality no matter how twisted or nonsensical it is. We will even choose to believe something that is false so that we don’t have to have the destabilizing effect of thinking that our lives are unmanageable and that we have no control over our circumstances.We will be reflecting this Sunday on this soul craving of meaning: how it gets twisted in our lives and how it points us to God.

We will be looking at some of the lesser known stories from the books of Acts to highlight the intimate and relational moments in which the early church experienced amazing growth.

When you were a young child, what did you want to be when you grew up? A doctor? A fireman? A veterinarian? A professional athlete? What is remarkable is that as young children, we aspire to be anything. When we are children, we have food, shelter, clothes, toys, chauffeurs, a personal bodyguard, and a private chef. We really don’t need a job. We don’t have any bills to pay. What would possibly motivate us to work?But we all aspire to something -- and usually it is something great. The younger we are, the less we are grounded in reality. We dream bigger and more ridiculous dreams. This universal soul craving is called “Destiny” – our longing to pursue something more and better for ourselves or the world. Without this sense of destiny or hope, our souls begin to die. This Sunday we are continuing our series called, “Crave” by looking at the soul craving of “Destiny.”  

If you are a follower of Jesus, I think this series will be a way to understand how these cravings are working in your life and the temptations we face to distort these cravings. It will also help all of us with the conversations we have with people who are far from God. If you are not a follower of Jesus, this series will be a way to think about your life and what drives you to do what you.

How does a person reconcile divine power with the evil and suffering of the world? In his popular book "The Uncontrolling Love of God", Dr. Thomas Jay Oord outlines some new ways to think about divine power that help us to understand how God works in the world.

I’m sure that none of us feel like we have “extra time” or “extra money” but this week Paul challenges us to rethink how we handle our time and money.

Spiritually, the danger of being rich is that once a person gets more than they financially need, it is natural to lean in to one’s money for security rather than God.

Have you noticed that we live in a world that is constantly telling us how to GET rich – how to acquire more money or things. But very, very few people are telling us how to BE rich – once you get rich, how to be good at being rich.

Our brains are meaning machines. We are wired in such a way that we have a desperate need to find meaning and make sense of life. Our minds will constantly try to bring meaning to things even when there is no meaning -- especially when we are hurt.

Everybody has a story of how they have been hurt by someone else. And if you don't - just wait! It's coming! The question is not "will I be hurt?" but rather "how will I deal with hurt when it happens?"

The first serious girlfriend I ever had was named Susan. We dated off and on throughout our adolescence. She was a kind person but through a series of events that I will tell you about on Sunday, she broke my heart. But it was in the wake of that season of my life that I began to see my faith more clearly. I began to understand that God was much bigger than the small church I grew up in. I learned that God can be found in many different ways – spiritual pathways.

This Sunday began a conversation called “Jenga: Finding God When the Pieces of Life Come Crashing Down.”  It is a very personal conversation about some of the difficult times in my spiritual journey, what I learned from those situations, and how they may also help you.   This first Sunday, I told the story of my friend Tim, how he died, and what I learned about life because of that traumatic event.  

Last time, the reluctant prophet made his way across Nineveh with a sermon that was half-baked at best. But in spite of Jonah’s lack of enthusiasm, Nineveh changes its ways and God relents his judgment on them. One would think that Jonah would be thrilled. This is the greatest spiritual achievement of his ministry. But in yet another odd twist, Jonah is furious with God. And the reason he is angry might surprise you. The book ends with a genius twist that the first readers would not have seen coming.

No doubt Jonah is wondering why he is wasting his breath with these people. But, as we are discovering in this series, when Jonah is going down, God is up to something great. And the response of the people of Nineveh will be anything but expected.

This prayer offers some fascinating insights into what Jesus considered a healthy dialogue with our heavenly Father. I look forward to our conversation as we unveil the depths and beauty of these seemingly simple and short lines found in Matthew 6:7-13.

We begin the story of Jonah looking at how Jonah ran from God and the storm that followed him.

What if there was an MRI for the soul? What if I were able to sit in a doctor’s office and there was the truth -- not about my body -- but about my inward parts: my will, my mind, and the habits and appetites of my body? We are in a series of conversations about the soul. This lesson we will be looking at improving the health of our souls.

In this message we began a conversation about a tiny, fragile, vulnerable, and precious part of you called your soul. It is the most important part of you, and we are going to spend a few weeks talking about it. 

Most people believe there is an afterlife -- that life goes on beyond death. I think most people assume they know what heaven means but have never given serious adult thought to it. Some folks get their ideas about heaven more from Gary Larson’s Far Side Cartoons than from the scriptures.  (For some reason The Far Side has a lot of cartoons about Heaven!)  Heaven has a reputation of being a really good thing and we want to go there when we die, but we’re in no particular hurry to arrive. It reminds me of the joke about the two guys who had a life-long argument about whether or not there will be baseball in heaven. A lot of people think heaven is just filled with whatever would make you happy, so “will there be baseball in heaven?” seems like a good question. The two guys make a deal -- whoever dies first will come back and let the other one know if there is baseball in heaven. When the first guys dies, he comes back in a vision, and says to his friend, “I have good news, and I have bad news. The good news is there is baseball in heaven. The bad news is you’re pitching Friday.”    Why would that be bad news? Because if we are honest, we are somewhat ambivalent about the idea of heaven.    We are in a conversation called,“Tough Questions.”  Sunday we will look at what the scriptures really say about the afterlife.  It should be both fun and interesting.  I hope you can join us! -Dana

There is an old story about a mystic named the Great Akeva who lived a couple thousand years ago. One night Akeva is traveling home but it is dark and foggy and his misses the turn off to his village. So instead of going to the right, he goes to the left and he finds himself a massive Roman military outpost. As he approaches the garrison, a soldier yells down to Akeva – “Who are you? And what are you doing here?” Akeva pauses for a minute and then says, “How much are they paying you?” The soldier says, “what?” Akevea shouts up again to the wall, “How much are they paying you?” The solider pauses for a minute and then says, “20 denarius a week.” Akeva says, “I’ll pay you twice that to come to my house and ask me those two questions every morning.” Who are you? What are you doing here? These are the ultimate questions of life and really the question that we try to answer when we gather to worship together. In this message, Pastor Dana wrapped up the conversation about “Foundations” by thinking about Worship. Why is worship so important? What is going on in us as we gather together?

A few months ago, an obituary ran in the Richmond Times Dispatch in Richmond, Virginia that said in part:  “Faced with the prospect of voting for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, Mary Anne Noland of Richmond chose instead to pass into the eternal love of God on Sunday, May 15.”  Some of you read that and may have thought, “I didn't even know that was on the ballot.” To say that it was a particularly brutal election season would be an understatement.  Maybe like me you thought that after November 9, everything would calm down and things would get back to normal; that seems like such a quaint thought now! We took a break from our conversation about “Foundations on this Sunday because it seemed like we needed time to reflect and look to the scriptures during this post-election hangover and think about what we have learned.  How we should respond as followers of Jesus Christ going forward in a country that is deeply divided? 

What is the latest research on LGBTQ issues? What are the different ways that the Christian Faith has attempted to talk about LGBTQ issues? How does one reconcile one's own experience or the experience of someone they love with traditional Christian beliefs? Pastor Dana Hicks and Heather Witt from Boise State University had a conversation about LGBTQ Questions from a Christian Framework in the Evergreen Ballroom at the Grove Hotel in Downtown Boise. It was a great night of good questions and good conversation.

In the final part of this conversation, Pastor Dana looks at some passages in Philippians 2 and Philippians 4 to reflect on gratitude. There is an enormous difference between feeling gratitude and expressing gratitude and the best way to experience more gratitude is to express more gratitude.

The way that status was reinforced in the ancient Roman world gives us an insight in to Philippians 2:5-11 or the "Kenosis" passage. It turns out the joy comes not from indulging our sinful selves but by dying to it.

Pastor Dana continues the conversation about Joy and Happiness by looking at Philippians 1:12-26. There are at least four ways to make your life miserable.

In Part 2 of this conversation, Pastor Dana looks at a short book in the New Testament that has a surprising amount to say about joy. In an ironic twist, we discover from the writings of Paul that we will never be happy in life if our goal is to be happy.

The U.S. Constitution has these words in the pre-amble: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” We are endowed by our creator with the right to pursue happiness but it is still elusive. In this message, Pastor Dana looks at the elusive nature of Joy and how to infuse our lives with more of it. This message was delivered on Easter Sunday of 2015 at Real Life Church.