Restored Church Uptown

Grant Clark continues the How to Build a Life series through Proverbs with a message on wisdom in parenting. Working from the ninth fatherly discourse in Proverbs 6:20-23, he argues that the goal of parenting is not the cultural scorecard of success but children who know God, walk in his wisdom, and follow Jesus, and he lays out four practices from Proverbs for getting there: delight, demonstrate, disciple, and discipline. The message is for everyone in the room, parents or not, both as children of the Father in heaven and as the aunts and uncles of the church's kids.Grant opens with a story from his own week and names the humility this topic requires: none of the four points is a magic bullet or a quick fix, all of them are processes repeated over years. He recalls the ten fatherly discourses of Proverbs 1-9, where Solomon sits his son down and passes on a whole way of life, what some commentators call a curriculum in wisdom, and offers hope to parents who never received that kind of training themselves. He reads Proverbs 6:20-23: a father and a mother working together to teach, command, guide, and correct their child, where a command is a lamp, teaching is a light, and corrective discipline is the way of life.The four D's:1) Delight in your Children2) Demonstrate How to Walk3) Disciple them in Wisdom4) Discipline them in Love## What is the Goal of Parenting?Before the four practices, Grant asks what parents are actually aiming for. Every parent wants healthy, secure, happy children, but Proverbs gives a larger vision than the Western one of a good school, a good job, and a home. The goal of the Scriptures is that our children would know God, walk in his ways and his Word, and follow Jesus, or in New Testament language, that they would live out the great commandment and the Great Commission. Parenting is not controlling external behavior; it is forming hearts and showing children how to live wisely in God's world. Solomon told his son plainly what his goal for his life was. Grant asks the parents in the room: if your kids were handed the mic this morning and asked what your biggest desire for their life is, what would they say?## 1. Delight in Your ChildrenProverbs 4:3-4. Solomon remembers not only what his parents taught him but how they made him feel: tender, precious, cherished, tenderly loved. Grant reads Tim Keller on this verse:"The verse literally says, "I was the only one in the sight of my mother." A child should feel they are the object of powerful, unconditional love from the parent." – Tim KellerSolomon's parents did not just love him, they enjoyed him, and he wants to pass on both the teaching and the feeling. Grant connects this to the Father's words over Jesus at his baptism in Matthew 3:17, three formative pillars of identity: you are my son, I love you, I am proud of you. He describes speaking those same words over his daughter at bedtime for six and a half years, so that when correction comes, her identity and his love are never in question.Practical ways to show delight: give focused attention and be present, play with them in ways that fit their stage of life, listen to their stories and ask questions, speak affirmation over the good you see in them rather than only calling out the bad, build family memories, and tell and show them often how valuable they are to you.## 2. Demonstrate How to Walk in WisdomProverbs 23:26: "My son, give me your heart and let your eyes observe my ways." The heart in Hebrew thinking is the control center of the person, desires, thinking, and decision making, not just feelings. In context the father is warning his son against envy, drunkenness, sexual sin, and foolish companions, all of them competing for the son's heart. The father is saying: entrust your inner life to my wisdom, let me shape what you love and how you live, and watch my life. Grant links this to Jesus in John 13:15, whose disciples watched him in every conceivable situation, the highs and the lows, and to Paul in Philippians 4:9, whose discipleship strategy was the same: do what you have learned, received, heard, and seen in me.Children learn from instruction and correction, but they are also formed by example. Our lives interpret our words. If we say prayer matters but they never see us pray, if we say church matters but treat it as an obligation, if we say apologizing matters but they never hear us say sorry, they learn from the disconnect. Our faith does not need to be perfect, but it does need to be real, and the most powerful thing a parent can do is be a real example and repent when they mess up. More is caught than taught.## 3. Disciple Them in WisdomGrant summarizes a Gospel Coalition article, "Raising Kids in the Faith is Simpler than you May Think" by Joe Carter, built on research from the Institute for Family Studies. The single strongest predictor of a child's adult faith is not the church, the youth group, or their peers. It is the parents. The behaviors that most strongly predict lasting faith are active and verbal: praying together, saying grace before meals, reading and discussing the Bible, and talking about Jesus regularly in daily life. The report also notes that a generation of parents reacting against purity culture has overcorrected toward a light touch, and that children read parental silence about faith not as respect for their autonomy but as evidence that it is not important. Biblical parenting is intentional.Deuteronomy 6:4-9, the Shema: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength, and repeat these words to your children when you sit in your house, walk along the road, lie down, and get up. Grant quotes Mark and Jan Foreman:Parenting is "on-the-job training. We use the show-and-tell of everyday moments to transmit spiritual life." – Mark and Jan ForemanDeuteronomy 6 holds together the formal and the informal: a daily, age-appropriate rhythm of Scripture and prayer as a family, and the spontaneous moments through the week, discussing situations at school, processing friendship and disappointment, talking about the messages in what they watch, and sharing stories of answered prayer and God's faithfulness. The home is the primary place of discipleship, and parents are the most important disciple makers.One practical action step: Eat together. Sit at the table, talk about highs and lows, and hear their questions. Grant reads from Leonard Sax's book The Collapse of Parenting:"Every meal counts. In a survey of 26,078 adolescents from a wide range of backgrounds—urban and rural, affluent and low-income—researchers asked each kid, In the last seven days, how many days have you had a meal with a parent? Kids who had more meals with a parent were less likely to have "internalizing problems" such as feeling sad, anxious, or lonely. They were less likely to have "externalizing problems" such as fighting, skipping school, or stealing. They were more likely to help others and more likely to report being satisfied with their own life.""But just insisting that everybody eat together, while the TV is blaring and the kids are texting at the dinner table, probably won't accomplish much by itself. We actually have good evidence that when the TV is on during suppertime, many of the benefits of a family meal evaporate."Make intentional, undistracted time to sit and talk about the day together.## 4. Discipline Them in LoveGrant recalls a church visit where Hebrews 12:6, God disciplines those he loves, was the verse on the screen as everyone walked in. Because God loves us, he disciplines, forms, and shapes us. Proverbs has a realistic (not an idealistic) view of children: they are a gift from God, and they are not born wise. Proverbs 22:15 says foolishness is bound up in their hearts, and it is trained out through teaching, correcting, encouraging, and at times rebuking."The word discipline means to punish. While the primary goal of parents is to teach what is right in an environment of love and delight, one of the main ways to do that is to establish both boundaries and consistent consequences for trespassing those boundaries for your children. Why? There is a design in the world, and to go against it brings natural consequences. If parents do not bring carefully controlled, unpleasant consequences into the children's lives, they will go out into the world and bring far more painful and harmful results onto themselves later." - Tim KellerDiscipline prepares children for the real world. Grant points back to Jackie Rodgers' sermon on discipline from the Ephesians series and her ten-year rule: if this behavior is still there in ten years, will it still look cute?He then reads three verses he expects some will find hard, and asks the church not to bypass uncomfortable texts but to humbly study, reflect, and pray through them: Proverbs 13:24, Proverbs 22:15, and Proverbs 29:15. He acknowledges directly that some in the room were physically or verbally abused by enraged parents who twisted Scripture, that this was not love, and that faithful families land in different places on how they apply these verses. What matters is the heart of what the verses are saying."...the rod was literally used to punish criminals in ancient society, it came to be a symbol of authority and of discipline in general. So when Proverbs tells parents to use the rod, it does include the possibility of corporal punishment, but it means much more." - Tim KellerThree clarifications. First, the rod does not boil down to spanking; the biblical idea is parents lovingly exercising authority through clear boundaries and meaningful consequences, in a culture where the children often lead the home instead of the parents. Second, Proverbs does not treat the rod as a magic bullet; discipline is not the essence of child rearing and spanking is not the only tool, as "a rod and a reprimand" in Proverbs 29:15 shows. Third, the discipline must be unpleasant. Grant tells the story of taking away his daughter's TV for an afternoon, the tantrum that followed, and the different child at breakfast the next day."We have said that the rod of discipline is not necessarily corporal punishment, but it is punishment—real consequences with teeth in them. If sin and folly are deep in every child's heart, it will take more than words to root them out." - Tim KellerHebrews 12:11: no discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those trained by it, like exercise that feels awful in the moment and bears fruit later. Kids need corrective discipline to grow into healthy, godly adults, and parents are responsible to follow through.So, what does Healthy discipline look like?- Loving- Calm- Consistent- Corrective- Formative- Punishment and Reward- Age-appropriate- RestorativeLoving: it flows from commitment to the child's good, and Proverbs calls the easy path of not disciplining hate. Calm: never driven by uncontrolled anger or frustration, so watch what is going on inside you. Consistent: follow through on the boundaries and consequences you have named. Corrective: it teaches what went wrong and what wisdom looks like, never humiliation, intimidation, or aggression. Formative: it is for their future and who they are becoming, not for our convenience. Punishment and reward: it teaches responsibility for actions, words, and attitudes, with consequences good and bad. Age-appropriate: parenting must change as children mature. Restorative: it ends with reconciliation, prayer, and a hug, with no lingering cloud, followed by talking through what was happening in their heart, what wisdom would have looked like, and what to do next time.## There Are No Perfect ParentsThe goal is not perfection but being pointed to the perfect Father in heaven and learning from him. All four D's are true of God: he delights in his children and sings over them (Zephaniah 3:17), he demonstrates his character to us in Jesus, he disciples us through his Word and Spirit, and he disciplines those he loves for our good. A hard season does not mean you are under God's discipline. When parents fail, they can come to him for mercy and wisdom, and parents should be the lead repenters in the home, quick to apologize and to show their own need for grace so their kids know it is okay to need it too. We cannot control the choices our children will make. We delight in them, demonstrate God's ways, disciple them, and discipline them for their good, and then entrust them to the Father who loves them more than we do.Delight: How will I communicate enjoyment to my child this week?Demonstrate: What area of my life needs to align with what I teach?Disciple: What simple spiritual rhythm could we begin at home?Discipline: Where do I need to become calmer, clearer or more consistent?Through the cross we are adopted into God's family, and the words the Father speaks over Jesus he speaks over us: you are my son, you are my daughter, I love you, and I am proud of you.Verses referenced:Proverbs 6:20-23 (CSB)Proverbs 4:3-4 (CSB)Matthew 3:17 (CSB)Proverbs 23:26 (CSB)John 13:15 (CSB)Philippians 4:9 (CSB)Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (CSB)Hebrews 12:6 (CSB)Proverbs 22:15 (CSB)Proverbs 13:24 (CSB)Proverbs 29:15 (NIV)Hebrews 12:11 (CSB)Zephaniah 3:17 (CSB)

Continuing our series How to Build a Life, a walk through the book of Proverbs, Grant Clark applies the ancient wisdom of Proverbs to our relationships with modern technology. In a week dominated by news of Meta's $17.1 billion settlement over the addictive design of its platforms, Proverbs asks each of us a question: what kind of person are you becoming under the influence of these things? This message is not "screens and media are bad" - it asks what kind of people our technologies are forming us to become, and whether that is the kind of person Jesus is calling us to be.Grant opens with the prayer of James 1:5, asking God for wisdom - hikmah, skill in the art of godly living - and then turns to the cultural moment: Meta has agreed to pay $17.1 billion to nearly every state in the US over allegations that its platforms were designed to keep children and teenagers hooked while downplaying the risks. Ninety-five percent of teenagers use social media, a third say they are almost constantly online, and the average teen spends three and a half hours a day on these platforms - a threshold at which the US Surgeon General warns the risk of depression and anxiety roughly doubles. The reforms Meta has agreed to (daily time limits, overnight restrictions, fewer notifications, hidden likes) tell us something: technology is not neutral. It disciples us and forms us into a certain kind of person.The through line of the whole series returns: "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it" (Proverbs 4:23).Grant quotes James K.A. Smith: "What we do, does something to us."And again from Smith's book You Are What You Love: "…if the heart is like a compass… then we need to (regularly) calibrate our hearts, tuning them to be directed to the Creator, our magnetic north. It is crucial for us to recognize that our ultimate loves, longings, desires, and cravings are learned. And because love is a habit, our hearts are calibrated through imitating exemplars and being immersed in practices that, over time, index our hearts to a certain end. We learn to love, then, not primarily by acquiring information about what we should love but rather through practices that form the habits of how we love."Our devices and apps may be morally neutral, but their design is not. Johann Hari, in Stolen Focus: "It is not the smartphone in and of itself; it is the way the apps on the smartphone and the sites on our laptops are designed… the phones we have, and the programs that run on them, were deliberately designed by the smartest people in the world to maximally grab and maximally hold our attention."Grant then gives four lenses for examining our use of technology and media:1) Quality - Is my media diet making me spiritually healthy or sick?2) Quantity - Am I consuming too much media?3) Devotion - Is this helping me to love God more?4) Compassion - Is this helping me to love my neighbor?## Quality - Is my media diet making me spiritually healthy or sick?Paul gives us a grid to run our consumption through in Philippians 4:8: whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable - dwell on these things. What we dwell on, ruminate on, and give mental airtime to affects us, whether toward anxiety and envy or toward health.## Quantity - Am I consuming too much media?Expanding the series' earlier definition of gluttony to overconsumption of anything, Grant quotes Brett McCracken: "When every square inch of our lives is filled with content, we have no space for anything we consume to be processed into nutrition. If it's all just junk food we binge on—TikTok candies fed to us by AI developed in China; sugary Instagram candies dialed into our tastes by a behavioral psychologist on Mark Zuckerberg's payroll. We have no space in our lives to think, make connections, synthesize, discern, consider, weigh. We just consume." Jesus models the alternative in Mark 1:35, withdrawing early in the morning, away from people and inputs, to be still and undistracted with His Father.## Devotion - Is this helping me to love God more?Even things that are not sinful can hinder our devotion. Psalm 46:10 calls us to "be still and know that I am God" - and the Hebrew behind "be still" means relent, be lazy, leave it alone and wait. We cannot be still while multitasking. Intimacy requires exclusivity, with the people we love and with God.## Compassion - Is this helping me to love my neighbor?Grant quotes Andy Crouch's family commitment: "We use screens for a purpose, and we use them together, rather than using them aimlessly and alone." Left unexamined, our devices can cultivate envy, gossip, judgment, shame, and distraction from the people right in front of us.To cultivate deeper presence to Jesus and His people, Grant gives three practices:## 1. Give God your first attention each day.Bible before phone; wake up before your devices do. Tony Reinke writes: "I surveyed eight thousand Christians about social-media routines. More than half of the respondents (54 percent) admitted to checking a smartphone within minutes of waking. When asked whether they were more likely to check email and social media before or after spiritual disciplines on a typical morning, 73 percent said before."## 2. Use technology intentionally, not instinctively.Before you pick up your phone, ask what you are picking it up to do - then do it, and put it down. Andy Crouch, in The Tech-Wise Family: "The problem isn't with our devices themselves—it's with the way we use them. We simply have to turn off the easy fixes and make media something we use on purpose and rarely rather than aimlessly and frequently."## 3. People before pixels.When you are with someone, put the phone away. In 2026, our full attention and presence with the person in front of us is one of the most tangible forms of love we can show.## Wisdom for our households and familiesA recent Sam Altman tweet suggested using ChatGPT to generate a personalized podcast for your kids on the drive to school; the top reply asked, "What if you just talk to your children?" Two visions of family life: convenience and entertainment, or presence and engagement. Proverbs 22:6 calls parents to lead and protect their children - not just their short-term happiness but their long-term flourishing and formation. Jean Twenge's new book Ten Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World opens with RULE 1: YOU'RE IN CHARGE.Tony Fadell, known as the father of the iPod: "I wake up in cold sweats every so often thinking, what did we bring to the world?" And: "My first son was born three weeks before the iPhone was released, so my kids have never known a world without them." And: "Your worldview changes dramatically when you have your first kid. You change from 'me, me, me' to family and community." Fadell's own family rules with technology:(1) Time Limits(2) Screen-free Sundays(3) Parental ControlsDrawing on Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation, Grant suggests these rules for our homes:1. No smartphone before high school. No social media before 16.2. Make bedrooms and meals phone-free.3. Use screens together, not alone.4. Parents go first.Our children need to see us voluntarily limiting our own devices, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11:1 - follow me as I follow Christ.## Not a new scorecardThis message is not a new legalism, and getting it all right will not make God love you more. There is a danger of a digital Pharisaism where we look down on others with self-righteousness over screen habits. We are not saved by our righteousness with screens and devices; we are saved by Jesus, by His grace, by His death in our place. To paraphrase Philip Yancey, there is nothing you can do on a screen or an app to make God love you any more, and nothing you can do on a screen or app to make God love you any less. His goodness and faithful love pursue us all the days of our lives (Psalm 23:6). This is a message of repentance: changing the way we think and live so that we can become the kind of person Jesus is calling us to be.Verses referenced:James 1:5Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)Philippians 4:8 (CSB)Mark 1:35Psalm 46:10Proverbs 22:6 (CSB)1 Corinthians 11:1Psalm 23:6

In this message from our Proverbs series, How to Build a Life, Royce Nicholas looks at what Proverbs says about the practical use of money. Setting aside the dangers of greed and envy (covered earlier in the year), Royce argues that because everything belongs to God, including our money, God has a plan for how we use it, and that plan is meant to free us rather than burden us. He works through four lessons from Proverbs on spending, debt, saving, and generosity, and closes with Zacchaeus and the gospel, where our spiritual debt is cancelled and Jesus's righteousness is credited to our account.## Three Reasons a Money Sermon Belongs at ChurchRoyce opens with a story from a cruise he and his wife took shortly after they were married. They were given $500 in onboard credit, were told they could take home whatever they did not spend, and skipped every excursion to save it, only to learn at the end of the trip that the credit was not refundable. "We misunderstood whose money it was and what we could do with it. And I think in the same way with our literal actual money, we do the same thing." He reads Psalm 24:1-2: the earth and everything in it belong to the Lord. "So everything according to God who made everything is his. Even our money. It's not like an exception."The second reason is that the one who created money knows how to use it best. "He actually can free us from using our money badly, help us to use it better, to actually enjoy it better as well. So it's not meant to be like a burden when God helps us to know how to use this money."The third reason is that spending reveals our hearts. Royce quotes Jesus: where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. "If you care about your heart, if you care about really the most spiritual thing about you, you're going to care about your spending and your use of money as well."4 Lessons on Money from Proverbs1. Live Within Your Means2. Debt Is a Curse3. Save and Invest4. Sharing Is Caring## Live Within Your MeansProverbs 21:20: the wise store up choice food and olive oil, but fools gulp theirs down. "The idea is not just using up everything you have as quickly as you have it. Not living paycheck to paycheck."Royce then reads Ecclesiastes 4:4-6, where all toil and achievement spring from one person's envy of another, and better is one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil. Envy drives us to overwork. "When we overwork, this type of envy of other people's achievements or possessions, it can lead us to be this really busy, exhausted, to have a chaotic life where we just never feel like at rest." He recalls Jesus's question, what good is it to gain the whole world but lose your soul, and says Christians should be able to work hard out of God's image rather than for it, put in the day, and then rest.Envy also drives us to overspend. Nearly half of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and roughly 35 percent say they probably or definitely could not cover a $2,000 emergency expense. Royce shares a study Grant sent him: researchers looking at Canadian lottery data found that when someone wins a large prize, the neighbors nearby become more likely to file for bankruptcy. Visible consumption triggers comparison, and comparison leads households to overspend or borrow. Social media has made this worse. "You could live in the poorest neighborhood where you can barely afford just to live there, but then you're online looking at people living in the richest, most lavish neighborhoods and you're like, oh, I want that." The application is simple: have a budget and stick to it, and stop feeding the comparison.Proverbs 13:7: one person pretends to be rich, yet has nothing; another pretends to be poor, yet has great wealth. Royce illustrates this from The Millionaire Next Door, a twenty-year study of American millionaires. When the author hosted a group of them with expensive food and wine, nobody touched it; one said he only drank two kinds of beer, free and Budweiser. Royce reads from the introduction: "Most Americans have no idea about the true inner workings of a wealthy household. The advertising industry and Hollywood have done a great job conditioning us to believe that wealth and hyper consumption go hand in hand. Yet, as I have said many times, the large majority of the rich live well below their means." He continues with the account of a millionaire engineer who, after college, lived on one income and saved the other, stayed twenty years in the same modest house, and whose kids sometimes asked if they were poor because she made them order from the dollar menu. "Wealth is not the same as income. If you make a good income each year and spend it all, you're not getting wealthier. You're just living high. Wealth is what you accumulate, not what you spend." And: "Wealth is more often the result of a lifestyle of hard work, perseverance, planning, and most of all, self-discipline." Eighty percent of American millionaires are first-generation rich.## Debt Is a CurseRoyce clarifies what he means. "If wealth is a blessing because it makes your life better, then in the same way debt is a curse. It's going to make your life worse, or at least more risky, or at least cause you some anxiety." He reads Proverbs 22:7, the borrower is slave to the lender, and Proverbs 22:26-27, do not put up security for debts, or your very bed will be snatched from under you.He tells the story of Dave Ramsey, who leveraged real estate until prices fell and he went bankrupt, then turned to Proverbs and concluded that Christians should avoid debt altogether. "A lot of people were like, no, you're wrong. There's like good debt, there's your house debt and there's bad debt. And he's like, no, there's just bad debt. And I'm kind of beginning to actually, the more I study it, think like he's on to something here." Royce shares his own experience with a commercial loan whose terms allowed the bank to call the note when he closed his business, and how stressful even a well-serviced mortgage turned out to be. "Not having it is better than having it. Like if you had a paid off home right now, you probably wouldn't go take out a mortgage.""Having debt is not a sin. It's just unwise." America has a fascination with borrowing, from buy now, pay later to no money down to financing a burrito. The Bible does not ban debt; it treats it as a mostly unfortunate reality, and Nehemiah 5 shows God's people trying to get out of it as quickly as they can. Royce reads Deuteronomy 15:6, where the blessing is that you will lend to many nations but borrow from none. Debt can leave us feeling helpless, drowning. "While it may feel hopeless to us, our debt is not hopeless to God." Galatians 5:1: it is for freedom that Christ has set us free; do not be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. "I think that God wants to help us to get out of debt, to live freely. He can absolutely do that. It is such an easy thing for him." Spending less and saving more, paying off debt little by little, is how it starts.## Save and InvestProverbs 13:11: dishonest money dwindles away, but whoever gathers money little by little makes it grow. "It's like the tortoise and the hare situation. We don't need more cryptocurrency, dogecoins, or get rich quick schemes or whatever. It's just saving little by little over the long term." Royce works the math for his twelve-year-old son: $100 in a boring index fund today, never added to, becomes roughly $15,000 by age 65; $1,000 becomes roughly $150,000. Money has historically doubled about every seven years. "Most financial advisors would be like, hey, investing should be pretty boring. You just save a little bit every month, buy an index fund. Forget about it. If your investments are so exciting, you're like, I'm going to check on this every week, it's like, either you're excited about something that's pretty boring or you're investing in stuff that's too exciting."The other error is doing nothing. Inflation costs roughly three percent a year in purchasing power. Royce points to the parable of the talents, where the servant who buried the money out of fear is called wicked and told he should have at least deposited it in the bank to earn interest. "We don't want to be too fear averse. We don't want to be going crazy, dogecoin. Also not just doing nothing with your money as well." The point is habits over one-time decisions. "Our financial habits are more important than any one time decision. Just like we have good spiritual disciplines, we need to have good financial disciplines as well." And the goal of saving is not only a better vacation. "We should have extras so that we can share."## Sharing Is CaringProverbs 28:22: the stingy are eager to get rich and are unaware that poverty awaits them. Proverbs 11:24: one person gives freely, yet gains even more; another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. "Paradoxically, a lot of times holding wealth, saving just for ourselves without giving or investing in others will leave us far less rich than we would have been if we were generous." This is a general pattern Solomon observed, not a formula or a promise; Jesus himself was the wisest person who ever lived and did not end up rich.Royce mostly commends the church on this point: cars given away, hundreds of thousands of dollars given to fund other churches and missionaries, and all of it as a group effort of sacrificial giving. He recalls investing in the LA church plant when it looked uncertain. "That was definitely, probably the best investment I've ever made in my life." He also remembers his parents quietly paying for his non-Christian friends to go to Hume Lake camp each year. "I just remember picking up generosity habits from watching them. If you have kids, they're going to naturally pick up your generosity, your use of money. So let's do a good job." Galatians 6:9-10: let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. "Let's keep it up. Let's not get tired of being generous, of being frugal with our money in ways that maybe you don't have to."## Zacchaeus and the Gospel"Our spiritual debt to God is even worse than any financial debt that we have going on. It's even worse than any bad spending that we've been doing. But the good news is God always has hope for us, for finances, for our spiritual debt." Royce retells Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector, a traitor and a thief, who climbed a tree to see Jesus and was met with an invitation to dinner while the crowd grumbled. He reads Luke 19:8-10, where Zacchaeus gives half his possessions to the poor and repays fourfold, and Jesus says salvation has come to this house. "That's the only way that we can really make any powerful changes to our finances. It's not just like learning something new, but we need to experience Jesus forgiving our debts, our whole spiritual debt Jesus has paid for on the cross. And that can actually begin to change our hearts."Colossians 2:13-14: he forgave all our sins, having cancelled the charge of our legal indebtedness, nailing it to the cross. Royce notes that the Romans would write out the charges against the condemned and nail them to the cross. "You can just imagine, it's like the sins of you and me being nailed to the cross of Jesus that he paid for when he was crucified." And in financial terms we did not only get our debts paid; Romans 4:22-24 says righteousness is credited to those who believe in the one who raised Jesus from the dead. "If he can do that, he can easily get you out of debt, help you to save, help you to become generous."Verses referenced:Psalm 24:1-2Proverbs 10:22Matthew 6:21Proverbs 21:20Ecclesiastes 4:4-6Mark 8:36Proverbs 13:7Proverbs 22:7Proverbs 22:26-27Nehemiah 5Deuteronomy 15:6Galatians 5:1Proverbs 13:11Matthew 25:14-30Proverbs 28:22Proverbs 11:24Galatians 6:9-10Luke 19:1-10Colossians 2:13-14Romans 4:22-24

In this message from our series How to Build a Life, a walk through the book of Proverbs, Grant Clark extends our look at wise counselors by turning the question around: what about the voices we must never listen to? Reading Proverbs 5 alongside Genesis 3, this sermon traces how seduction works, why the way that "seems right" ends in ruin, and how the same chapter that records the fall also announces the grace that rebuilds a life.The sermon opens with Proverbs 14:12: "There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death." A path can look desirable at the entrance while its finish line leads to ruin. Grant illustrates this with Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, where Ebenezer Scrooge is shown the end of his road, his own neglected grave, and wakes up a changed man who chooses a different way. That is how the warnings of Proverbs work: the father shows his son the end from the entrance.Proverbs 5 gives a visceral picture of this. The forbidden woman's lips "drip honey and her words are smoother than oil," but in the end she is "as bitter as wormwood and as sharp as a double-edged sword." Her feet go down to death. The father pleads with his son to keep far from her door, because at the end of that road a person laments: "I'm on the verge of complete ruin before the entire community."Warnings of Proverbs 5:1) Don't listen to everything you think.2) Don't go after everything you desire.3) Don't trust everything you feel.From there the sermon moves to Genesis 3:1-13, the Bible's paradigmatic picture of temptation and seduction, read as both a warning and a playbook that unmasks the serpent's schemes. The serpent, identified in Revelation 12 as "the ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the one who deceives the whole world," opens with the first question in the Bible: "Did God really say?" He does not start with a bold statement; he plants a subtle seed of doubt about God's word and God's character.Eve's reply distorts what God actually said. In Genesis 2:15-17 God's command is an abundance of yes with one small no: free access to every tree, with a single warning attached to one. Grant shares Joshua Ryan Butler's illustration of an all-expenses-paid vacation to anywhere on earth with only one dangerous destination excluded. The serpent's tactic is to zoom in: he narrows Eve's focus from a garden full of yes down to the one no, and the offer of abundance starts to sound like restriction.Two details in the text expose the play. First, until this moment God alone has defined what is good; now Adam and Eve take it on themselves to call good the one thing God said would kill them. Second, the narrator consistently names God "Yahweh Elohim," the Lord God, the covenantal and personal name, but the serpent drops "Yahweh" and speaks only of "Elohim," and Eve takes the bait and does the same. The serpent casts doubt on God's word, then denies it, then dethrones God in his language while elevating Eve. He is a dangerous counselor, and his voice is reshaping how Eve sees God, herself, and the world."Eve is talking to Satan about her problems with God instead of talking to God about her problems with Satan." - Philip BethancourtLocked in on the one forbidden tree, Eve sees that it is "good for food and delightful to look at, and desirable for obtaining wisdom." A good desire has become an over-desire, an idol, and she has become discontent in the middle of abundance."What the heart most wants, the mind finds reasonable, the will finds doable, and the emotions find desirable." - Tim Keller## Practicing the Absence of GodDrawing on Alan Fadling's book A Non-Anxious Life, Grant contrasts practicing the presence of God, living aware that God is with us and for us, with practicing the absence of God: losing sight of God in our circumstances and making decisions with no reference to him. In Genesis 3 Eve is practicing the absence of God. She is no longer listening to his voice or thinking about him at all; she has bought the lie that God is holding out on her. Adam, meanwhile, is silent and passive through the whole exchange. He never challenges the serpent and never speaks God's word. Ruin comes not only through active rebellion but through passive abdication.They eat, their eyes are opened, and for the first time they hide from the Lord God in shame."What is shame? Disgust over having disobeyed. Shame tells us we are nothing better than our worst moments… Satan shifts from using his powers of deception to instead accuse… The serpent easily moves from seducing to shaming, from deceiving to devouring, from alluring to accusing." - Philip BethancourtThis, Genesis 3 shows us, is how to ruin your life: don't listen to God's word or wisdom, walk your own way, be seduced by things that look great from the outside, practice the absence of God, and you will find yourself isolated, exposed, and ashamed.## How to Rebuild a LifeBut Genesis 3 also shows us how to rebuild a life. First, God pursues them. Adam and Eve hide, and God does not reject or stonewall them; he comes looking, calling "Where are you?" The question is not for God's information but for their diagnosis, an Ebenezer Scrooge moment: which path have you gone down, and what will you do about it? Second, God covers their nakedness and shame. In Genesis 3:21 the Lord God makes clothing from skins for them, which means an animal died so their shame could be covered, an echo picked up when John the Baptist announces in John 1:29, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world." Ultimately Jesus dies to cover our shame and clothe us in his righteousness. Third, Genesis 3:15 gives the first preaching of the gospel, the protoevangelium: the offspring of the woman will strike the serpent's head while the serpent strikes his heel, fulfilled at the cross where Jesus crushes the serpent, is wounded in the process, and rises in victory over Satan, sin, and death. The serpent says God cannot be trusted; the cross says look how far God will go to save you.Reflection Questions:1) Name the Lie: In which ways are you currently tempted to DOUBT God's goodness to you? Are there any areas where you believe the lie that God is holding out on you? Or, that God is not for you?2) See the Entrance: Are there any specific areas where you are tempted to be seduced? To choose the way of Ruin, rather than the way of wisdom?3) From Ruin to Redemption: Are there any areas of your life where you need God's forgiveness? God to cover your shame? Or, to redeem a decision you have made?A closing word before communion adds one more observation: the devil tempts people with what they already have. He told Adam and Eve they would be like God when they were already made in God's image, and he offered Jesus the kingdoms of the world when every knee will already bow to him. Both Eve and Jesus responded to temptation with God's words; Eve changed them, Jesus did not. Know your Bible, not just for knowledge's sake, but to combat the lies of the enemy.Verses referenced:Proverbs 14:12Proverbs 5:1-14Genesis 3:1-13Genesis 2:15-17Revelation 12:9Genesis 3:14-15Genesis 3:21John 1:29Genesis 3:15Genesis 1:26-27Philippians 2:10-11John 3:16Romans 5:8

Part of "Proverbs: How to Build a Life," Andy Rodgers picks up the second half of a two-part look at wise counsellors. Last week Grant Clark asked why we need trusted voices and who has permission to tell us something we do not want to hear. This week turns to the follow-on question: once we have discerned that someone is qualified to speak into our life, how do we get the most out of what they say. The message covers therapists, pastors, spiritual fathers and mothers, GC members, and friends.Andy opens by distinguishing two things that are often confused. Therapy is a practice: a trained professional with a set of skills, a licensed person helping a specific person with a specific problem, with ethics, accountability, and evidence based practices behind it. Therapy culture is something else. It is when the language of therapy and a therapeutic orientation become the way you engage every relationship in your life, and when organizations, schools, churches, and the political sphere all route their questions back to what feels good therapeutically rather than what is good. "How does that make you feel?" is an excellent question in a counselling room and a poor one for setting the economic direction of a nation or for asking what a passage of Scripture means.He is explicit that this is not an anti therapy message. Restored started a therapy centre, has subsidised thousands of dollars of therapy for people in the church who could not afford it, and runs the Restored Counselling Network. Good therapists using good practices are very helpful. A number of the people writing against therapy culture are themselves therapists.On reading for authorial intent rather than feeling, he points to Mark Twain, who prefaced a later edition of "Huckleberry Finn" by telling readers the book is not an allegory and asking them not to treat it as one. His English class spent fourteen weeks treating it as an allegory anyway. That is survivable with a novel. It is a real problem with Scripture, and a bigger one when the same instinct is used to determine what marriage is, what your identity is, and what is good and true and beautiful.## Four markers of therapy culture1) Concept creep. Precise language meant to help us see something clearly starts to mean more than it meant, and once it means everything it means nothing. Gaslighting comes from a 1938 play and describes a genuinely abusive man deliberately making his wife doubt her sanity. It is real and it is rare. It now gets used for ordinary cognitive dissonance. Andy walks through a recent scheduling mix up with a fellow pastor where he genuinely felt confused, and notes that memory is fallible and two people can remember the same event differently. Choosing the gaslighting reading would have turned a good friend into someone dangerous who had to be removed from his life. Choosing "maybe I forgot that" carried far less pressure and required villainising no one. The same creep has happened to abuse, to trauma, and to narcissism. Genuine narcissistic personality disorder runs around one percent, so it cannot be everyone's dad, just as borderline personality disorder cannot be everyone's mom. Naming everything as abuse diminishes our ability to help the people actually experiencing it.2) Boundaries become walls. Boundaries are a biblical idea: knowing where you stop and another person begins, holding your values, refusing to be manipulated. To be a Christian you have to have firm boundaries. But for many people boundaries have come to mean cutting out anyone who makes them uncomfortable, which is avoidance, and which most good therapists will tell you leaves you less mature because you never learn to handle difficult people or hard conversations. Seventy three percent of millennials have gone no contact with a close friend or family member in the last two years, half of those tied to their parents' politics. Disagreeing with your parents is normal. Cutting them off is new. Where there is genuine danger or a history of abuse the calculation is different, but the usual work is helping people figure out what they can realistically expect from a relationship and how to show up in it.3) Validation becomes authority. Being heard matters, but being heard is a means, not the end. It creates a space safe enough to look at what is hard to look at. If someone has to tell you that what you want is good, that will keep you from wisdom, because sometimes what you want is dumb. Andy is candid that he has plenty of dumb ideas himself and needs godly, loving, wise people alongside him for exactly that reason.4) Diagnosis becomes identity. Restored is not anti diagnosis. The DSM categories are genuinely useful for describing patterns of behaviour, understanding how someone relates to others, and explaining a tendency. They are never an excuse to hurt people or to continue in sin. Andy speaks openly about his own ADHD, the forgotten texts and missed medications, and the systems he has had to build to take responsibility for it. Most diagnoses people receive are not their fault, but to thrive and love people well they still have to do the work. God's standards do not decrease; some people simply need more help in a given area than the average person.The irony he draws out: something you went to in order to see clearly now makes the world look more threatening than before. Something you went to in order to protect your relationships has produced more isolation. Somewhere you went to be heard has made you unreachable.He notes the same dynamic can quietly reshape a GC, where groups drift into venting and status updates rather than asking what Scripture says and what Jesus is calling us to. It is fine to say a thing is hard. The question is whether the group helps you then go and do it.Two tests run underneath the whole message. If we are engaging counsel in a way that makes us more fragile rather than more resilient over the long term, something is wrong. And if we have adopted a worldview that makes us less open to insight we do not want to hear, it is keeping us from becoming wise.## We get the most out of the counsel we receive when we do five things1) Choose the right story2) Are discerning about who we let counsel us3) Engage honestly4) Work towards a goal5) Seek sanctification over validation## Choose the right storyThere are no neutral worldview people. Everyone speaking into your life is answering a set of questions whether or not they say so out loud: What is a person? What is a man, a woman, a mother, a father? What is parenting? What is marriage? What is sexuality and what is it for? What is actually wrong with us? How do people change, by insight, by empathy, by repentance, or by better tools? And what is the goal of a life, which decides the goal of counselling.The Bible says we are image bearers of God, made with inherent dignity, value, and worth, created to be known and loved. That is a different story from being a bag of chemicals and neurons colliding. Andy is careful that these are not simple either / ors. We are image bearers and we do have physical bodies that God chose for us. Scripture names three broad things that can be wrong: a fallen body in a fallen world, with real physiological realities; sin committed against us by others, which covers much of what people bring to therapy as wounding, shame, and pain, and which is not their fault; and our own sin, the lies we tell ourselves and the ways we try to live independently of God.He pushes back on starting the story at Genesis 3. God made us wonderful, beautiful, and glorious, and sin damaged it. One of the worst things about sin is that it diminishes the good person God created you to be. He is now restoring that, like a fine painting, over years and with patience.Repentance and clinical tools are not rivals. A tool can make repentance easier. Andy uses his own example: externalising what he cannot hold in his head helps him forget less and love his wife better. But the decision to get help in the first place is an issue of the will. Someone whose trauma triggers leave them in fight or flight is not at fault for being triggered, and may still need to deal with the thing they have been avoiding, because the people around them are still getting hurt even when the motive is not bad.The question that matters is what wins when two stories are mutually exclusive. When a view of the world conflicts with the Scriptures, the Scriptures need to win. He works this through cognitive behavioural therapy, the most used approach in talk therapy, whose core claim is that emotions and behaviours run downstream of thoughts. He agrees that is broadly true, finds CBT tools genuinely helpful, and notes that CBT ironically has the most in common with biblical counselling. But Scripture carries a category the therapeutic world often does not: we do not only have bad thoughts, we have bad desires upstream of our thoughts. James says our conflicts come from wanting something and not getting it."The tools are great. They're just not everything. There's not one tool that solves life. The only person who solves all of life is Jesus."## Be discerning about who you let counsel youCounsel in a person's heart is deep water, and a person of understanding draws it out. Good counsellors ask good questions and get beneath the surface.Does a therapist need to be a Christian? Andy says it depends on the issue, and that for some things it is close to vital. Marriage is his clearest example, because a counsellor is helping you understand the story you came from and the story you are building, and it helps enormously if they share a Christian understanding of marriage, sexuality, communication, and desire, even if they use plenty of clinical tools alongside it.Better is open reprimand than concealed love, and the wounds of a friend are trustworthy while the kisses of an enemy are excessive. Friends who only ever validate you are not evil, but they will not help you grow. If you talk about your marriage, do it in an honouring way, and be wary if your friends always take your side. You want someone willing to play devil's advocate and ask what you can do, since you are the only person who can do what you can do.Practical advice for choosing, drawing on Eliza Huie's "How to Get the Most Out of Your Counseling," a sixty page book he recommends. Most people do not know they are allowed to interview a counsellor about their modality, their approach, and their worldview. Questions worth asking:How do you integrate your faith and your work?What do you think is wrong with people?Do you ever talk about sin in the work that you do?Will you ever challenge me, even if I do not love it in the moment?What do you specialise in?Licensure tells you what someone is trained in. It tells you nothing about their worldview and nothing about their character. It is a good place to start, not a place to stop. Be wary of anyone who treats everything, the way some restaurants serve cheeseburgers, spaghetti, and sushi off one menu. Andy helped a friend look for OCD treatment and found that of the hundreds of providers listed who said they treated OCD, none listed ERP, the approach both the International OCD Foundation and the American Psychological Association name as the first line treatment. Claiming to treat OCD without it is like claiming to treat bacterial infections without antibiotics.## Engage honestlyThe one who conceals his sins will not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them will find mercy. Andy points out what the verse does not say. It does not say concealing is wicked. It says concealing does not work. If you want to lose weight without discussing what you eat, or want your knee treated without describing the pain, you will not get far.Two reasons we are not honest. The first is the fear of man, which Proverbs calls a snare, over against the fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom. The question is whether you are more aware of what a person thinks of you or what God thinks of you. He notes a related risk: keeping the same therapist for years with no goal, until they function as a friend your insurance covers, at which point you want them to like you and become less honest. The second reason is pride, wanting to be seen a particular way.He also distinguishes being authentic or transparent from being vulnerable. Plenty of people will tell you a great deal, sometimes more than they should about others, without ever being open to having any of it challenged. Vulnerability is being open to someone speaking into it. This cuts the other way too. Not everyone is owed your depths, and dumping ninety minutes of heavy material on a friend who did not ask for it is its own marker of therapy culture.## Work towards a goalThere is profit in all hard work, but endless talk leads only to poverty. A goal means direction rather than a deadline, and it lets a counsellor, pastor, or friend stay within their expertise. Andy cites a clinical psychiatrist who said that having a long term psychologist with no goal is having a bad friend you pay to be your friend.The arithmetic matters. You are awake roughly one hundred and twelve hours a week. A forty five minute session is well under one percent of your life and will not change it on its own. Implementing what you learn during the other ninety nine percent will. It is the personal trainer problem: the workouts do not do themselves.## Seek sanctification over validationA fool does not delight in understanding but only wants to show off his opinions. Wanting to be understood is human and God given. Wanting to change and become like Jesus is a supernatural work of the Spirit. The danger is letting "finding someone who gets me" become the destination of the journey rather than a stage in it, and then asking the church to function as a therapeutic community on those same terms.Andy makes the case that the church has an enormous amount to offer if we engage it rightly. There are people in the room who handle money well and would change your life if you had the humility to open your budget to them. There are people who have worked through hard things in their marriage who could mentor you without being your therapist. He cites Rebecca McLaughlin quoting a Harvard researcher that attending church weekly is "like a miracle drug," with measurable effects on depression, anxiety, self control, addiction, and burnout. Churches are also good places to work through attachment wounds, because good attachment work aims at being able to trust other people rather than depending on one safe person indefinitely, and because Scripture defines how we are allowed to treat one another, which is part of what makes a church safe.He closes on what he calls the most underrated thing, even among Christians: spending time with Jesus. He describes a retreat at a monastery with a group of people mostly in their sixties and seventies, including a retired psychiatric researcher, a doctor and psychiatrist, recently widowed and in real pain, and firmly pro therapy. After several hours of solitude she came back and said she thought she had saved five to ten thousand dollars of therapy in three hours, because it had all been resistance. She knew what she needed to do and did not want to do it."Jesus knows how to lovingly say, I love you, but we got to do this. And he took me by the hand and walked me to where I needed to go. He shepherded me."The flip side he wants to press: when someone says they need help with their marriage, ask whether they have prayed about it, whether they have spent any time asking the Lord how to treat their spouse differently, whether they have looked at what God's word says about parenting or marriage. You may well need tools to obey those commands in a healthy way. The question is whether you started with what God wants.The Spirit is the parakletos, the counsellor, the one who comes alongside, and he loves to give wisdom. James says God gives wisdom generously to those who ask without being double minded, and double minded means you have already made up your mind, so you are not actually open. You want someone to co-sign. You want validation, not revelation."Don't build a life where you protect yourself from hard things that can help you grow."Andy's closing prayer asks that Restored would become a humble people who can receive, and a contemplative people able to sit with an idea or a thought or a passage of Scripture and weigh it in God's presence, rather than running to social media or ChatGPT or a podcast or a friend. Clinical tools can help us do that, but those tools are a sail on a sailboat. We still need God's wind. And it asks that we would believe God's word is better for us than the word of any expert or of ourselves, that his word is not handcuffs but guardrails on a path, keeping us from going off the side of a mountain.Verses referenced:Genesis 3Proverbs 9:8Proverbs 9:10Proverbs 14:23Proverbs 18:2Proverbs 20:5Proverbs 27:5-6Proverbs 28:13Proverbs 29:25Romans 12:2Philippians 4:8James 1:5-8James 4:1-21 Peter 5:7

Part of "Proverbs: How to Build a Life," Grant Clark opens the first of a two-part look at wise counsellors, asking why we need trusted voices speaking into our lives at all. The argument is simple: to build the kind of life Jesus has for us, we need other people. Next week's message turns to how to choose those voices.Grant opens with a scene from the BBC comedy "Amanda Land," in which a mother turns to ChatGPT for help talking to her teenage son, and ends the night asking the chatbot whether she is a good mother. He notes that in April 2025 OpenAI described one of its own updates as "overly supportive but disingenuous," excessively flattering and sycophantic, and rolled it back.The cultural data he cites: a 2026 Pew finding that 10 percent of American adults had used an AI chatbot for emotional support or advice; KFF finding 16 percent had sought mental health advice from AI in the previous year, rising to 28 percent among 18 to 29 year olds; and an ABC report that roughly one in five young people aged 12 to 21 in the United States have used AI chatbots for mental health support. Research from OpenAI and MIT associates heavier use with greater loneliness, emotional dependence, and reduced real world social interaction.The whole book of Proverbs is itself a conversation between a wise counsellor and someone who needs wisdom, a father speaking to his son. Not all voices carry equal weight. Proverbs presents a cast of characters, some to seek out and some to avoid:The Wise (Proverbs 1:5; 3:13-18; 9:8-9)The Simple / Naive (Proverbs 1:22; 7:7; 9:4; 14:15)The Fool (Proverbs 1:7; 12:15; 15:5; 26:1-12)The Scoffer / Mocker (Proverbs 3:34; 9:7-8; 13:1; 15:12; 22:10)The Wicked (Proverbs 4:14-19; 10:6-7, 24-32; 12:5-7)The Righteous (Proverbs 10:3, 6-7, 24-32; 11:5-8; 24:15-16)Lady Wisdom (Proverbs 1:20-33; 8:1-36; 9:1-6)The Forbidden Woman (Proverbs 2:16-19; 5:1-23; 7:1-27; 9:13-18)The Friend (Proverbs 17:17; 18:24; 27:5-6, 17)The Parent / Instructor (Proverbs 1:8-9; 2:1-22; 4:1-27; 6:20-23; 23:22-25)A wise counsellor is someone whose life we know and want to imitate, not simply someone with a confident voice who always knows the right thing to say. They fear God, they are humble and teachable, they listen carefully and speak honestly, and they want our good more than our approval.## We all have blind spots.Proverbs 12:15 and Proverbs 21:2 set the problem: the fool's way is right in his own eyes, and all a person's ways seem right to him. A wise person accounts for their own biases and preferences and goes to others for clarity. Grant tells of a friend who returned from a conference having learned that the average person has 2.8 blind spots and asked his wife to name them, and of his own weekend at the beach where everyone but him could see he was covered in a rash. The point of both stories is the same: other people saw what he could not see himself.Christians have more reason than anyone to expect to find sin and blind spots, and more reason than anyone to be secure when they hear it."The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope". - Tim KellerMany people will tell you what you want to hear. Wisdom is choosing on purpose to be told what we need to hear.Independence makes us Foolish. Community makes us Wise.## Three cultural forces that keep us from asking."I Know Best""I Know Myself""God Told Me"The first is the pull of individualism, which hears asking for help as weakness. Proverbs 18:1 answers it: one who isolates himself pursues selfish desires and rebels against all sound wisdom. The second leans on self-knowledge, the Enneagram, Myers-Briggs, DISC, StrengthsFinder, family of origin work, attachment styles, Keller's "Counterfeit Gods," all good gifts that can still tip into "I am the expert on me." The third is a privatized faith that cannot be questioned. Ephesians 3:12 is true, in him and through faith in him we can approach God with freedom and confidence, and we do hear from God ourselves. But underneath all three sits the same assumption, that I can discern God's wisdom without needing God's people.## Many and sound.Proverbs 15:22 says plans fail when there is no counsel, but with many advisers they succeed. Proverbs 20:18 says finalize plans with counsel and wage war with sound guidance. The words to notice are "many" and "sound." Many, because going to a single voice makes us codependent on it. Sound, because the voice should be helpful, godly, thoughtful, unbiased, honest, and pointed toward Jesus and his Word. Proverbs 13:20 adds that the one who walks with the wise becomes wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm.Reflection Questions:1) What are the loudest and most influential voices in your life, at the moment?2) What content are you consuming, that could be shaping how you think about, see, and respond to the world?We do not go to many counsellors for permission or for consensus. We go for clarity. Grant recounts the decision to move his family from South Africa to San Diego, and a Zoom call in which Chris Winant heard his worry that the move might be a pandemic era overreaction and answered that the decision was not Covid caused but Covid inspired.## Give wise people permission to speak.Identify them: people who know you, who fear God, whose lives you would want to emulate, and who will tell you the truth. Invite them, because no one knows you are wrestling with something unless you say so. Give them permission to ask any question. If what they say is hard to hear, you do not have to accept it in the moment, but go away and pray and process it. Test the counsel against Scripture, in prayer, and against the character of Jesus. Then take your next step.## Start with Jesus.Through the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 to 7, Jesus repeats "you have heard it said, but I say to you," which means following him involves unlearning as much as learning. In John 14:6 he says he is the way and the truth and the life. Matthew 7:24-27 closes it out: both builders hear the words of Jesus, both build a house, both face the same storm, and the difference is that one acts on what he heard. Jesus is not only our wise counsellor. He is the way, the truth, and the life, and he asks us to hear his words and do them.Two closing questions. Who has permission in your life to tell you something you do not want to hear? And is there a decision you are currently making alone that you should bring other people into, not for consensus or permission, but for clarity?Verses referenced:Proverbs 12:15Proverbs 21:2Proverbs 18:1Proverbs 15:22Proverbs 20:18Proverbs 13:20Ephesians 3:12Matthew 5-7John 14:6Matthew 7:24-27

Grant Clark continues the Proverbs series "How to Build a Life" by turning to what the book teaches about marriage. Rather than the usual texts in Genesis 2 or Ephesians 5, he draws five recurring themes out of Proverbs itself and presents them as five gauges on a dashboard, inviting listeners to check which one needs attention, whether they are married now or may be one day.He opens with recent headlines from an advice column, each one a person in a hard situation asking an expert what wisdom looks like for them:"My Wife Won't Forgive me for Cheating""I Can't Talk to My Wife About Money""My Husband Hates our Life""Do I Like Being Single Too Much to Fall In Love""Do I Work on my Marriage, or Cut my Losses?"The central text is Proverbs 31:10-31, the passage on the wife of noble character. Grant notes it is an alphabetical acrostic running the twenty two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, a literary device signaling completeness, and warns against the two common misreadings: turning it into a wife hunting checklist for men, or an impossible standard for women. It is an idealized portrait, not a job description."This passage is a rich way to end the book on a high note. While it depicts wisdom exemplified in the life of a woman, it is not a lesson only for women, but for men as well. Both men and women need to be like the 'Proverbs 31 woman'!" - Lindsay WilsonThe portrait functions as the embodiment of Lady Wisdom from Proverbs 1 to 9, set in contrast to the adulterous woman whose way leads to ruin."The 'good wife' points us to what Proverbs regards as 'the good life'." - Lindsay Wilson## 1) Become a Person of CharacterProverbs 31:10 and Proverbs 31:30 put character ahead of charm and beauty. Grant tells of asking his brother in law for advice before pursuing his wife, and being pointed to the question that mattered most: does she fear the Lord?"The Fear of the Lord is a reverential awe, that produces humble submission, to a loving God." - Skip HeitzigHe contrasts this with current cultural priorities, citing a 2025 University of Amsterdam study of dating app behavior which found physical attractiveness overwhelmingly determined who got matched, weighted roughly ten times more heavily than intelligence, personality, priorities, job, or height.## 2) Trust Your SpouseProverbs 31:10-11 can be read as the husband entrusting his heart to his wife, a vulnerability with real risk, since a spouse knows us best and has seen us at our worst. Grant passes on a practice from pastor John Tyson: take a fifteen minute window a day to share with your spouse what is happening in your inner world and to listen to what is happening in theirs.He then walks through research from the Gottman Institute on the roughly six hours a week that sustain a healthy marriage:A 2-minute meaningful goodbye in the morning.A 20-minute reunion at night processing the day and being present to one another.A hug and a six-second kiss every day.5 minutes of appreciation and affirmation every day.A 2-hour date a week.A 1-hour state of the union a week, zooming out and looking at the big picture of your life and relationships.## 3) Be LoversProverbs 5:15-20 speaks openly about sex within marriage, with no shame or awkwardness, using the imagery of the cistern, the well, and the fountain. Grant observes that in many ancient cultures marriage was primarily a familial and economic arrangement, which is part of why male unfaithfulness was often socially tolerated. Proverbs instead presents both the ecstasy and the exclusivity of sex in marriage, husband and wife belonging to one another. He is candid that for many this is a vision being built toward rather than a starting point, and offers the church's help for those for whom this gauge is a point of pain.## 4) Spouses are Close FriendsProverbs 2:16-17 uses a Hebrew word for companion that describes the closest of friends, a marked contrast to a setting where wives were often viewed as property and child bearers rather than companions. Grant then turns to how couples erode that friendship through their words, in Proverbs 25:24 and Proverbs 27:15."To nag is not to do thoughtful criticism, but to do 'drive-bys,' making brief caustic or cynical remarks that complain and question motives and character. Two telltale signs of a nagging statement is that it begins, 'You always . . .' or 'You never . . .'" - Timothy KellerThe alternative is not silence about real problems but pouring out the concern at the right time and place, working it through to completion rather than dropping barbs along the way.## 5) Marriage is Kept together by a CovenantGrant draws the contrast between a covenant and a contract, and between vows and speeches. A speech describes how the other person makes you feel. A vow is a promise: for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, forsaking all others. He calls forsaking all others the most radical part, a commitment made in faith without knowing what the future holds. He illustrates the alternative by reading a contractual, watered down version of the vows and letting it land."It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, written from prison in 1943He notes that Scripture nowhere makes happiness the purpose of marriage, referencing Gary Thomas in Sacred Marriage on marriage being ordered toward holiness more than happiness, with hard seasons serving to form us into the likeness of Christ.Ephesians 5:25: "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her..."Marriage is a billboard displaying the love of God, to a spouse and to the watching world. Grant closes by pointing underneath all five gauges to the covenant of grace Jesus has already made, loving us at our worst, forgiving us at enormous cost, and promising never to leave. It is hard to give what you have not received, so as the love, forgiveness, sacrifice, and unconditional commitment of Jesus go deeper, we are empowered to extend the same to a spouse. A marriage is not built in a moment but through thousands of ordinary daily decisions.Verses referenced:Proverbs 31:10-31Proverbs 31:10Proverbs 31:30Proverbs 31:10-11Proverbs 5:15-20Proverbs 2:16-17Proverbs 25:24Proverbs 27:15Ephesians 5:25

We continue our series through the book of Proverbs, How to Build a Life, with a message from Proverbs 18:21. Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and Grant Clark walks through what Proverbs teaches about the hidden power of everyday words, spoken or typed, to destroy or to give life, and why the deeper call is not simply to speak better but to let Jesus change the heart our words flow from.A little fun with words to start:pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (45 letters)Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia (36 letters)The shortest complete sentence: "Go." or "I am."Shortest English word containing all five vowels: Sequoia (7 letters)"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo."In 2013 a PR worker named Justine Sacco posted a twelve word tweet before an eleven hour flight, switched off her phone, and landed to find the sentence had gone viral, cost her job, and redefined her life. Twelve words, less than a minute of typing, changed everything. Proverbs 18:21 says death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit. Our words carry power for good and for evil, power to destroy reputations, end marriages, start feuds, and crush people, and creative power to place dreams in hearts, comfort the brokenhearted, and shape how someone sees their own worth, whether those words are spoken or typed.Grant shares from a heavy season this year, and how a folder of letters of affirmation, read in the early hours of a significant birthday, lifted a real weight and put life back into him. We should not live for these kinds of words, but they are incredible fuel for the journey God has for us. Proverbs 10:11 says the mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, and Ephesians 4:29 says no corrupt talk should come from our mouths, only what builds someone up and gives grace to those who hear.## Words of Death"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is not true. A broken bone heals, but words can hang around for years."There exists, for everyone, a sentence, a series of words, that has the power to destroy you. Another sentence exists, another series of words, that could heal you. If you're lucky you will get the second, but you can be certain of getting the first." - Philip K. DickProverbs 16:27 says a scoundrel's speech is like a scorching fire. A wildfire brings immediate devastation, but its most lethal effects are often invisible, the toxic smoke that damages from the inside long after. Some words work the same way, a gut punch at first, then a slow internal toxicity that scars confidence, self-image, and identity. Proverbs 26:20-21 says that without wood a fire goes out, and without a gossip conflict dies down. A throwaway comment can be the small bit of fuel that grows into a fire that damages families, communities, and churches. Be a church that extinguishes fires rather than one that feeds them.This connects to expressive individualism. Our culture treats our inner feelings as the truest thing about us, meant to be voiced and affirmed publicly. Proverbs pushes back. Our mouths, our tongues, and our speech belong to God, and some things should not be spoken even when they feel natural or normal. Proverbs 10:20 says the tongue of the righteous is pure silver, and Proverbs 12:18 says rash words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing. Silver is purified over time in the fire, and in the same way we train and discipline our speech. Psalm 19:14, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. This is not a call to avoid hard conversations, which we often need to give and to receive, but a call against careless, hurtful words that do great damage.Justine Sacco later said she had to reclaim her identity, because she feared that one sentence had replaced everything else that was true about her. Many of us carry a word like that, spoken over us and repeated until it found a home in our hearts, defining us more than anything else. Grant pictures a word written on our forehead that we walk through life believing is the truest thing about us. Jesus wants to redefine us. If you are in Christ, the truest thing about you is that you are a child of God, forgiven, made new, chosen, and called his beloved.## Blessing and CursingJames 3:5-10 says the tongue is a small part of the body that boasts great things, a fire that no one can tame, and that blessing and cursing come out of the same mouth. This is not magic or manifestation. A curse is a word that wounds, redefines, and strips the nutrients from the soil of a soul."Blessing is the projection of good into the life of another." - Dallas WillardIf blessing is the projection of good into the life of another, then cursing is the projection of bad. Not flattery or well meaning lies, but the truths of God spoken into people so they can live in the reality of who Jesus says they are.## Words of Life"Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless." - Mother TeresaProverbs 12:25 says anxiety in the heart weighs it down, but a good word cheers it up. Proverbs 16:24 says pleasant words are like honeycomb, sweet to the taste and healing to the body. Proverbs 25:11 says a timely word is like gold set in silver. The right word at the right time has power to change a life. Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, once read his own obituary when a newspaper confused him with his brother and named him the merchant of death. Disgusted by how he would be remembered, he reassessed his life and left most of his fortune to establish the Nobel Prizes. Words changed his life.## Words Reveal the HeartMatthew 12:34, out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. Proverbs 4:23, above all else guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. Luke 6:45, a good person produces good out of the good stored up in the heart, and an evil person produces evil, for the mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart. Speech full of gossip, slander, judgment, lying, and complaining reveals what already lives inside, and so does speech full of encouragement, honesty, blessing, thanksgiving, confession, and grace.## Jesus's Ministry of WordsJohn 1:1-5, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and in him was life. John 1:14, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. John points back to Genesis 1:1, where God creates and orders the world through his word. His claim is that the Word is not just something God speaks but a person, the logos, Jesus Christ, the wisdom of God and the perfect expression of who God is. In Jesus, God has spoken himself to us.In John 6:66-68, after a hard teaching, many of Jesus's disciples turn back. He asks the twelve if they will leave too, and Peter answers, Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.The big idea is not that we should simply speak better or stop sinning with our mouths. James already told us no one can tame the tongue. We do need to train and purify our words, but first we need Jesus to transform our hearts, which is what Proverbs points to again and again. On the cross Jesus bore the condemnation our words deserve, and from the cross he spoke words of forgiveness and life. He does not merely give us better rules. He gives us new hearts and, through his Spirit, teaches us to speak grace, life, and truth.So the invitation is to come to Jesus for a clean heart and a redefined life. For everyone in Christ, God loves you, your sins are forgiven, you are made new, and you are no longer defined by your worst words or your worst moments. You are God's beloved child. Where other words have been burned deep into how we see ourselves, he wants to write a new word over our lives.Verses referenced:Proverbs 18:21Proverbs 10:11Ephesians 4:29Proverbs 16:27Proverbs 26:20-21Proverbs 10:20Proverbs 12:18Psalm 19:14James 3:5-10Proverbs 12:25Proverbs 16:24Proverbs 25:11Matthew 12:34Proverbs 4:23Luke 6:45John 1:1-5John 1:14Genesis 1:1John 6:66-68

We continue our series through the book of Proverbs, How to Build a Life, with a message from Proverbs 3:1-12. A house is built by wisdom, and it is established by understanding (Proverbs 24:3), and that word for house does not mean a building but a household, a family. Many of us carry gaps in our formation, conversations we wish our parents had had with us about money, marriage, relationships, parenting, decision making, and conflict, and we are left figuring out the big things of life on the go. The book of Proverbs is what we wish we had received. Solomon sits down with his son and shows him the way to live, and each of these fatherly discourses follows a pattern.The Pattern of the Fatherly Discourses:1) Address2) Call to listen3) A Command4) Reasoning5) Warning6) ConclusionGrant Clark walks through the third of the ten discourses and shows us five practical things we can do to train in wisdom.From Proverbs 3:1-12:1) Trust in the Lord2) Submit to His Word3) Be humble4) Be generous5) Learn from suffering and hardshipSubmit to His Word. Proverbs is bookended by wisdom from a father in chapter 1 and a mother in chapter 31, which suggests God's primary way of forming us is meant to be through relationships in the family. Proverbs 3:3 hyperlinks back to the Shema in Deuteronomy 6, where parents internalize God's Word by praying it into the center of their being, writing it on the tablets of their hearts. This is not behavior modification but inside out transformation, and it points ahead to Jesus, who gives us a new heart and makes us new. In a home like this, Scripture sits at the center of both the formal moments and the informal ones, sitting on the couch, driving somewhere, eating breakfast. It is slow, daily, repetitive work that takes a long time before it bears fruit.Trust in the Lord. Proverbs 3:5-7 may be the best known passage in the book, and you could almost boil the whole of Proverbs down to a single phrase: trust God, not yourself. That sounds like heresy in a culture built on following your heart and being true to yourself. It is possible to know God, to be here, to sing the songs, and still be trusting something else with significant parts of who we are. Our ways take us somewhere and our ways turn us into someone, which means our ways determine our destiny. Trust is also relational. You would not follow a stranger who called you over from the bushes, but you would open the door at three in the morning for someone you know and love. Until we know God personally and experientially, it is very hard to put the weight of our lives on him.Be humble. Verse 7 contrasts this with the person who is wise in their own eyes, the one who always thinks they know best, who never asks for help, never prays about a decision, never asks for perspective. Proverbs calls them foolish not because they make bad decisions but because they are out of touch with reality. They lack the fear of the Lord."The Fear of the Lord is a reverential awe, that produces humble submission, to a loving God." - Skip HeitzigBe generous. Proverbs 3:9-10 turns suddenly to money, which feels out of place until we remember that Jesus taught this way too. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Matthew 6:24). Our wallets and possessions are deeply tied to our hearts, which means our budgets and our spending are clear indicators of what we believe and worship and live for. Our budgets are theological statements. Solomon is not letting his son's practice get disconnected from his faith.Learn from suffering and hardship. Proverbs 3:11-12 prepares us for the reality that we can trust the Lord, walk in wisdom, and do everything right, and suffering and surprises can still find us. Wisdom is not a formula that guarantees we will be exempt from pain. It is what shapes how we walk through it. Suffering is a teacher, and it will either drive us to God in greater surrender and dependence and love, or it will lead us to become bitter and hard hearted and choose a different path. Grant speaks openly here about walking through the hardest year of his life, and about the costly praise of blessing God in the darkest valley. In the midst of it, we do not serve a God who is removed from suffering or who has not suffered himself."I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the cross. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?" - John StottWe never have to doubt God's love and commitment to us, because he has already shown it to us at the cross. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, just as a father disciplines the son in whom he delights (Proverbs 3:12). You are not doomed to repeat what you did not receive. Even if we did not have a perfect father, we have a perfect Father in heaven who wants to teach us, guide us, make us wise, and lead us along the way.Verses referenced:Proverbs 24:3 (CSB)Proverbs 3:1-12 (CSB)Proverbs 3:1-3 (CSB)Proverbs 1:8 (CSB)Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (CSB)Proverbs 3:5-7 (CSB)Proverbs 3:9-10 (CSB)Matthew 6:24 (CSB)Proverbs 3:11-12 (CSB)Proverbs 3:12 (CSB)James 1:5Job 13:15

We begin a new series through the Old Testament book of Proverbs called How to Build a Life, the art of living according to the book of Proverbs. In this opening message from Proverbs 1:1-7, Grant Clark makes the case that in an age drowning in information yet starved for wisdom, the good life is not something we invent from scratch by looking inward, but a skill we receive from God by starting with him.The series began with a diagnosis of why the modern world leaves us disoriented:"For most of us, somewhere along the path to adulthood comes the unsettling realization that most people are winging it. They don't know what they are doing. They don't know where they are going. And they aren't sure what the point is. To some extent this is just the challenge of growing up and figuring out life, but there is something special about the modern world which has disoriented us and our moral imaginations... We lack guiding principles and authority figures to orient us toward the Good Life." - Alan Noble (To Live Well)The first challenge is the information age. We have more content than we could ever consume, but access to information is not the same as wisdom. Data is very different to discernment."From the dawn of civilization to 2003, five exabytes of data were created. The same amount was created in the last two days." - Eric Schmidt (Former Google CEO)The second challenge is the age of authenticity, in which the old authorities, institutions, and inherited ways of living have all come under suspicion, so we are left trying to build a life from scratch."Expressive individualism is also iconoclastic because it involves an inherently critical position toward culture. It inclines us to suspect that society is always trying to squeeze us into its mold and make us inauthentic... It sees traditional forms of external authority and social existence as intrinsically oppressive. Therefore, traditional religious institutions and teachings could be seen as less plausible, as hindering innovation, and as a negative, oppressive moral force." - Carl Trueman (The Desecration of Man)So what is a proverb? A proverb is a simple, but insightful saying, meant to train us in moral skillfulness. Proverbs are not life hacks, inspirational quotes, or success formulas. As wisdom literature, a proverb is a principle, not a promise, prophecy, or precept."A proverb is a short sentence based on long experience." - Miguel de CervantesAnd what is wisdom? Wisdom (Hokmah) is "skill in the art of godly living." This wisdom is the skill of living in God's world, according to God's design."Its function in scripture is to put godliness into work clothes." - Derek KidnerWhere is this wisdom found? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge (Proverbs 1:7; 2:6; 9:10). We start by coming to God as the foundation we build our lives upon, and when we see him rightly, everything else comes into focus."I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." - C. S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)But what is the fear of the Lord? Thomas Aquinas described two types of fear: servile fear (the fear of punishment) and filial fear (the fear of offense). Proverbs calls us not to a cowering dread of God but to a reverent, relational fear of him."The fear of the Lord is a life-rearranging, joyful, awe and wonder before the greatness of who God is and what he has done that deeply humbles us, and makes us come alive." - Tim KellerProverbs sets before us two ways to live, the way of the wise (humble and teachable) and the way of the fool (proud and resistant to correction), and it invites us to ask God for wisdom (James 1:5; Proverbs 4:5) and to pursue it actively: call out for it, seek it, treasure it, love it, prize it, and hold on to it.Ultimately Proverbs points beyond wisdom to Jesus, the true and wiser King. He does not only teach the way of wisdom, he is wisdom itself (1 Corinthians 1:24; Colossians 2:3), and he saves us from our own foolishness, which is a matter of the heart. Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it (Proverbs 4:23).Verses referenced:Proverbs 1:1-7 (CSB)Proverbs 1:7 (CSB)Proverbs 2:6 (CSB)Proverbs 9:10 (CSB)Proverbs 2:5 (CSB)James 1:5Proverbs 4:5Proverbs 3:13-15 (CSB)1 Corinthians 1:24 (CSB)Colossians 2:3 (CSB)Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)

In this final message of our Above All Else series on the heart and the seven deadly sins, Pastor Grant Clark brings everything we have excavated over the last two months to a single point of focus. After eight weeks of looking inward at pride, envy, lust, greed, sloth, wrath, and gluttony, Hebrews 12 turns our attention away from ourselves and fixes it on Jesus, the one who has already run and finished the race ahead of us. The argument is simple but freeing: we do not defeat sin by staring at sin, we are transformed by beholding Christ."Every Christian has something they need to lay aside."Working from Hebrews 12:1-3, Grant unpacks the old term besetting sin and calls us to name what trips us up, then to lay it aside and run with endurance.What a besetting sin is:- "A besetting sin is a persistent, deeply ingrained habit or weakness that continues to plague a person, and is hard for them to overcome. It is the specific temptation that you fall into repeatedly."Characteristics of besetting sins:- Recurring- Entangling- Highly PersonalizedIn The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis pictures a senior demon training a younger one to tempt people not with wild, outlandish sins we would easily reject, but with subtle temptations tailored to our own story, patterns, and habits.The one application Hebrews gives us:- Fix your eyes on Jesus, and consider him. There is no second point. We do not look in, we look up. We do not stare at our sin, we behold Christ. Transformation comes from beholding him, not from endless introspection."For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ." - Robert Murray M'CheyneThe seven deadly sins are all different ways of looking away from Jesus:- Pride looks to self.- Envy looks to others.- Lust looks to pleasure.- Greed looks to possessions and money.- Sloth looks to comfort and satisfaction.- Wrath looks to revenge.- Gluttony looks to consumption.Scripture referenced:- Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)- Hebrews 12:1-3 (CSB)- Hebrews 11- 2 Samuel 11; Psalm 51- Hebrews 3:12-13- Hebrews 12:3- 2 Corinthians 3:18 (ESV)- Colossians 1:15-22 (CSB)- Hebrews 12:1-3 (MSG)- Hebrews 4:15

In week eight of Above All Else, a series on the heart and the seven deadly sins, Grant Clark explores gluttony. Drawing on Proverbs, John 6, and the unforgettable image of Augustus Gloop tumbling into Willy Wonka's chocolate river, Grant argues that gluttony is not fundamentally about food but about a disordered appetite in the heart that cannot say "enough." He then points us to Jesus, the Bread of Life, as the only one who truly and lastingly satisfies."Gluttony is a third car when one will do, a third drink when one is best, a third hobby when the other two you started aren't satisfying enough. Alcoholics and drug users are gluttons, but so are some web surfers, card players, and businesspeople. In other words, '-aholic' is the suffix attached to the glutton's meal of choice, for gluttony is immoderation, and immoderation is not about having body fat; it's about having a gaunt soul." - Jeff Cook, SevenWhat gluttony is (and isn't):- Gluttony is not simply eating too much; it is any appetite that refuses to say no, not yet, or enough- Thomas Aquinas: gluttons eat "too soon, too expensively, too much, too eagerly, or with too much finicky fussing about... food"- The Desert Fathers: gluttony is not fundamentally about food; it is about the heart. Food simply reveals the deeper issue- Gluttony is about MORE: the pattern that shows up in our spending, our shopping, our screens, our stuffGluttony in our culture:- 26% of Americans spend more than they earn (highest level ever recorded)- 90 million Americans use buy-now-pay-later services; 40% of purchases are regretted within days- People buy 60% more clothing than 15 years ago and wear each item only 7-10 times before discarding it- Global viewers consumed over 2.43 billion hours of YouTube every single day in 2025- Humanity now consumes the equivalent of 1.7 Earths' worth of resources every yearGluttony and the heart - John 6:- The crowd who followed Jesus across the sea came to him not because of who he is, but because of what he gave them: "you are looking for me... because you ate the loaves and were filled"- "They were moved not by full hearts, but by full bellies." - Leon Morris- "The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God." - Bruce Marshall- "The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night." - John Piper- Jesus's response: "I am the bread of life. No one who comes to me will ever be hungry, and no one who believes in me will ever be thirsty again." (John 6:35)From gluttony to self-control - fasting:- Fasting is abstaining from food so that we might pray; when hunger pangs come, we turn to God rather than the fridge- "Fasting reveals the things that control us." - Richard Foster- Dallas Willard: "Very little of our being lies under the direction of our conscious minds and very little of our action runs from our thoughts and consciously chosen intentions. Our mind on its own is an extremely feeble instrument... If we are to be transformed, the body must be transformed."- Fasting disrupts our automatic habits and retrains us to hunger for God, not the table of the world- Challenge: practice 24 hours of fasting this week (sundown to supper), using meal times to pray and read ScriptureVerses referenced:Proverbs 4:23Proverbs 21:17, 20 (CSB)John 6:24-26John 6:27John 6:33-35Philippians 3:18-19Mark 8:34Matthew 6:161 Corinthians 10:31

In this week's message from the "Above All Else" series, Julia Price explores the deadly sin of wrath and how the gospel transforms us from anger to graciousness. Drawing on Romans 12:19–21, she unpacks how anger, when disordered, becomes wrath, and how only the forgiveness of the cross gives us a path out.“Of the Seven Deadly Sins, wrath is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel of the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back — in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.” — Frederick BuechnerWhat Anger Is:- Anger = active displeasure toward something that's important enough to care about (David Powlison)- Wrath = unrighteous anger aimed at the wrong things, sparked too easily, felt too strongly, or held too longWrath's Disordered Expressions:1. We get angry about the wrong things2. We get angry too easily3. We get angrier than we should4. We stay angry too longMoving from Wrath to Graciousness:1. Understand Our Anger Before It Becomes Wrath2. Release Our Wrath Through Forgiveness“Forgiveness = acknowledging that someone hurt you, absorbing the pain or cost of their offense, and choosing not to seek revenge”“Our English word wrath comes from the same Anglo-Saxon root as our word wreath. Wrath means to be twisted out of your normal shape by your anger . . . And the same Anglo-Saxon word also gives us the now somewhat archaic word ‘wraith' . . . If you don't deal with your wrath through forgiveness, wrath can make you a wraith, turning you slowly but surely into a restless spirit, into someone who's controlled by the past, someone who's haunted.” — Tim Keller“Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive.” — C.S. Lewis“Those who won't forgive show they have not accepted the fact of their own sinfulness.” — Tim Keller“Yielding to God's will can be hard. And sometimes, it really hurts. But it always brings peace . . . I'm an old man, and this is one of my dreams: that my descendants will one day live in a land where people are quick to confess their wrongdoing and forgive the wrongdoing of others and are eager to build something beautiful together.” — John PerkinsVerses Referenced:- Proverbs 4:23- James 1:20- Mark 3:1–6- Romans 12:2- Romans 12:19–21- Ephesians 4:32

In our ongoing series Above All Else, Grant Clark turns to the seventh and most misunderstood of the deadly sins: sloth. Far from simple laziness, sloth -- or acedia -- is a spiritual apathy and quiet resistance to Jesus that can live just as easily in the heart of the overachiever as in the one on the couch."Acedia is ultimately a failure of love. It's a place of apathy toward life and a kind of spiritual boredom... Whether midday, midlife, halftime or halfway through a big project, we're tempted to give in, give up or distract ourselves. Acedia tempts us to abandon the life we have for some imagined better option somewhere else -- as in 'anywhere but here'! Acedia can also be the temptation to live our lives in imagined fantasies of what might be rather than living in the gift of what is." - Alan Fadling (An Unhurried Life)What is acedia?- The Cambridge Dictionary defines sloth as "an unwillingness to work or to make any effort" -- but the biblical concept runs far deeper- Derived from the Greek a ("not") + keedos ("to care") -- acedia is a failure of love, a resistance to the transformation God is calling us into- Pope John Paul II defined acedia as "a sadness arising from the fact that the good is difficult"- It is not just laziness -- it is a selective laziness that can look like overwork, busyness, and productivity while neglecting the most important thingWhat does acedia look like?- The story of Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42): Martha was productive and active, but distracted from the one thing necessary -- attentiveness to Jesus- "Acedia is 'a restlessness that entices us to pursue everything but our most important duties. Acedia distracts. It makes us lazy and sluggish toward our spiritual and practical responsibilities. It is a selective laziness that makes everything else appealing.'" - John Cassian- "Slothful people are not only found lying around on couches or beds. They are often found in the gym every morning at 5:00 A.M., leading large organizations and companies, writing books, achieving goals, and even working hundred-hour weeks. Yes, the same sin can be at work in the heart of the person glued to the TV and the person who does not have time for TV. Christian thinkers have always seen links between laziness and overwork, though the definition of sloth has morphed through the years." - Trent Casto (The Death of the Deadly Sins)- Sloth wears many masks: variety-seeking, escapism, distraction, commitment-phobia, procrastination, and never finishing what we start- The "noonday demon" of the Desert Fathers -- the midday restlessness that whispers anywhere but here- Delayed obedience: like Augustine's prayer, "Lord, give me chastity and self-control -- but not yet"- Acedia is avoiding the responsibilities that loving God and loving neighbor require - Trent CastoFrom sloth to zeal (Romans 12:11)- "Do not be slothful in zeal. Be fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord." (ESV) / "Do not lack diligence in zeal. Be fervent in spirit. Serve the Lord." (CSB)- Zeal = earnest commitment with haste and diligence; fervent = to boil, to burn -- a passion for Jesus- The word diligent in Latin (diligere) means "to love" -- to be diligent in zeal is to love- "Look at the intensity in this verse. The Christian life is neither cold nor indifferent... We face many temptations to be passive or lazy today. So let's heed this word: live on fire for Christ! And let's see that God is gracious in giving us such a command. He knows our frames. He knows our passions can cool. So he exhorts us in love. I believe every Christian in a privileged part of the world must always ask, 'Do I love comfort too much? Has it become an idol? Has it caused me to shrink back from passionate service to the Lord Jesus?'" - Tony Merida- "Since acedia is a failure to appreciate the gifts of the present moment or the present season, the classic remedy for acedia has always been to abide in the good relationships and to engage in the good work before us." - Alan Fadling- Practical response: (1) Obey straight away -- identify and repent of any area of delayed obedience; (2) Abide -- stay where God has placed you, persevere in the ordinary, and trust that God is at workVerses- Proverbs 4:23- Luke 10:38-42 (CSB)- Luke 10:40- Romans 12:11 (ESV + CSB)- Ephesians 2:8-10- Hebrews (for the joy set before him, he endured the cross)- Psalm 72

As part of our Above All Else series on the Seven Deadly Sins, Joseph Yasso teaches on greed — or avarice — not merely as a love of money, but as a disordered heart posture that replaces trust in God with trust in wealth. Through personal storytelling, Jesus's Parable of the Rich Fool, and the writings of Paul, this message traces where greed comes from, what it's really serving, and how simplicity, generosity, and gratitude can loosen its grip."Greed is the disordered hope that money can give us the security, significance and satisfaction only God can give. And it leads to a lack of faith, generosity, and gratitude, while also adding anxiety to our lives."What Greed Is NOT:- Greed is not wealth — it's not the same as having money- Greed is not enjoying good gifts — God made a world full of beauty meant to lead us back to him- Greed is not materialism only — it includes craving experiences, status, or comfort at any cost- Greed is not saving — stewarding money wisely is commended in ScriptureWhat Greed IS:- A condition of the heart, not the bank account- Functional worship of money as a surface idol serving deeper idols: Approval, Power, Comfort, or Control/SecurityThree Roots of Greed:- Injury from our past — money stories pressed into us by how we grew up- Idolatry in the present — money as a functional savior- Anxiety over our future — stockpiling against uncertainty rather than trusting God's provisionThree Antidotes:- Simplicity — hold things loosely; give, lend, and acquire less freely- Generosity — surrender ownership; let generosity reorder the heart- Gratitude — receive life as gift rather than grasping for more"We can recognize our excessive attachments in both our dreams and our broken dreams.""The line gets crossed when money stops being a tool in your hand and becomes the place your heart runs to feel safe." — Joseph Yasso"Money is a useful servant, but a terrible God." — Joseph Yasso"Many have called this the experience economy. We've gone from buying things to doing things. A sign of status used to be the logo on your jacket or handbag. Today it's the location of your latest Instagram post." — Josh Butler"Buy things for their usefulness rather than their status. Reject anything that is producing an addiction in you. Learn to enjoy things without owning them. Shun anything that distracts you from seeking first the kingdom of God." — Richard Foster"We can identify virtues like generosity and spiritual disciplines like simplicity not by percentages given, but by their yields in freedom, lightness and joy." — Rebecca DeYoung, Glittering VicesVerses:- Proverbs 4:23- Proverbs 21:20- 1 Timothy 6:7–10- 1 Timothy 4:4–5- Luke 12:13–34- Philippians 2:3–8- 2 Corinthians 8:9- Hebrews 13:5

As part of our Above All Else series on the Seven Deadly Sins, Andy Rodgers teaches on lust, not just as sexual temptation, but as a deeper distortion of love, desire, and the way we see other people. This message explores sexuality, purity, shame, healing, and the hope of transformation through the grace of Jesus in a culture shaped by both sexual shame and sexual excess.—-"Lust is disordered, sexual desire that reduces another person into an object for selfish pleasure instead of honoring them as a whole person made in God's image. It consumes rather than loves, and takes rather than honors."Isn't refraining from sexual desires sexual repression? And isn't that really bad for your mental health?Isn't this just about controlling women's bodies?Isn't lust a private matter that doesn't affect anyone if it stays fantasy or is expressed through consenting adults?Isn't teaching on sexual purity the same thing as purity culture? Isn't that false teaching/toxic theology that hurts people?Lust ...- Dehumanizes Others- Harms Others- Isolates Us- Enslaves Us- Deforms Us"The problem with pornography is not that it shows too much of the person, but that it shows far too little." — Pope John Paul II"The nature of the union of the soul with the body … is so intimate that one nature, one person, one self is the subject of both and of all their activities. It is always the same soul that peers through the eyes, thinks through the brain, grasps with the hands, and walks with the feet…." — Herman Bavinck“Chastity (sexual holiness) is first and foremost a ‘yes,' from which a ‘no' then proceeds. The underdevelopment of the virtue of chastity occurs when someone ‘does not keep up' with the affirmation of the value of the person…. The essence of chastity lies precisely in ‘keeping up' with the value of the person in every situation and in ‘pulling up' to this value every reaction to the value of the ‘body and sex.'” — Pope John Paul II"Purity doesn't ignore the body or pretend it's unimportant. Rather, it remains committed to God-honoring thoughts and actions toward the person the body manifests. Mature sexual purity can look at an attractive man or woman and say, ‘Wow, an utterly unique person mediated through a body.' Lust says, ‘Wow, a useful body.' To be sure, sometimes we simply need to look away to avoid mentally reducing a person to a serviceable object (i.e., lusting). And yet, while this response represents a meaningful step toward purity, it's not the finish line. Yes, it's better than moving deeper into lust, but it's purity lite." — Chase KrugVerses:- 1 Thessalonians 4:1–8- Romans 6:12–13- Matthew 5:27–30- Romans 13:14- James 5:16–19

In week three of the “Above All Else” series, Grant Clark explores the deadly sin of envy and how comparison quietly corrodes the heart. Through Scripture, practical examples, and the gospel, this message invites us to move from discontentment and comparison into deeper satisfaction and contentment in Jesus.Quotes:“Envy is the feeling of wanting to have what someone else has.” — Britannica“Envy rejects the good life God has given me and obsesses over what God gives someone else.” — Jeff Cook, Seven“Envy has the deadly ability to distract my heart and mind from the daily bread God puts in my hands each morning, focusing me instead on the gifts, status, talents, and joys he gives to others… Envy is a deadly sin because it inspires us to say to God, ‘The life you've given me just isn't good enough.'” — Jeff Cook, Seven“We live in the most materially prosperous era in human history... Yet we are anxious, restless and often enraged. Why? It's not only about our circumstances. It is about how we perceive our lives.” — Jonathan Haidt“Social media didn't invent envy, but it industrialized it. It turned comparison into a business model.” — Jonathan Haidt“Envy works its cruel deception on our heart in such a way that our neighbor becomes a measuring stick of God's goodness (or lack of goodness) in our own lives.” — Melissa Kruger, The Death of the Deadly Sins“To pray for those we envy is to pour down rain on our envy parade.” — Kevin Vost, The Seven Deadly SinsScripture References:Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)Proverbs 14:30 (CSB)Psalms 23:1 (CSB)Matthew 13:44–46 (CSB)Philippians 4:11–13 (CSB)Hebrews 13:5 (CSB)Psalms 73:25–26 (CSB)

In Week 2 of our Above All Else series, we explore the hidden roots of pride and the freedom found in humility. Looking at Proverbs 4:23, we examine how pride quietly shapes our hearts through self-sufficiency, entitlement, comparison, vainglory, and self-focus, often without us realizing it.Through the teachings of Jesus and the example of His humility, we're invited to surrender the “kingdom of self” and trust God's way instead of our own. This message challenges us to ask: where is pride resisting God's work in our lives, and what would it look like to truly humble ourselves before Him?Quotes:• “Pride, as any medieval priest-therapist would tell you, is both the first and the worst of the Seven Deadly Sins.” — Peter Jones• “Is it an exaggeration to say that pride is the underlying cause of all sin? I don't think so. If you would take the time to excavate your sin, beneath it all you would discover the rotting bones of pride and arrogance.” — Sam Storms• “Vainglory is the excessive and disordered desire for recognition and approval from others.” — Rebecca DeYoung• “Being willing to be led where you would rather not go.” — Henri Nouwen• “Pride not only looks down on others; it also fails to look upward. It refuses to let God take his proper role in our lives.” — Tim Keller• “The cure for pride is to believe that the Lord deserves our love, thanks, obedience, and imitation.” — Daniel Doriani• “True humility always produces joy… self-forgetfulness leading to joy.” — Gavin OrtlundScriptures:• Proverbs 4:23• Mark 8:34• John 21:18-19• 1 Peter 5:5-7• 1 Corinthians 4:7• Proverbs 12:15• Proverbs 13:1• Philippians 2:3-11• Matthew 6:5-13

As we begin our new series Above All Else, Grant Clark explores the call to guard our hearts because everything in life flows from it. Drawing from Proverbs 4:23 and the story of David, this message invites us to examine our attention, affection, and direction. What are we letting in, what do we love most, and where is it leading us?Through honest reflection and the hope of Psalm 51, we are reminded that while an unguarded heart can lead us off course, God's grace can cleanse, restore, and create something new within us."Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it."-Proverbs 4:231. Attention — What am I letting in?2. Affection — What am I loving most?3. Direction — What is this shaping me toward?“It [Psalm 51] comes from David's blackest moment of self-knowledge, yet it explores not only the depths of his guilt but some of the farthest reaches of salvation.” - Derek Kidner“What can wash away my sin? What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”

Grant Clark opens in Book of Exodus 31:1–11, using Bezalel and the tabernacle to show what God is building among His people. The message centers on building the base and becoming who we already are, a call to be a Spirit-filled community where God's presence is real, people are shaped by grace, and the church is strengthened for mission.Key Themes 1. Building the Base 2. Becoming Who We Already AreThe Tabernacle “The tabernacle was God's earthly dwelling during the period from Moses to David. As his dwelling, the tabernacle emphasizes God's presence with his people, continuing a theme that has run throughout the book of Exodus.” - Longman and Dillard Bezalel's Calling Bezalel built a place where: - God would dwell by His Spirit - People would worship - People would experience the reality of the forgiveness of sins - People would be defined by their God - People would live as God's peopleVision To start a movement of reproducing churches empowered by the radical grace of Jesus Christ to love San Diego and glorify God Mission To make disciple-making disciples who are being transformed by the radical grace of Jesus ChristCore Values - Gospel - Family - Dependence - Mission - Multiplication - RenewalVerses:- Exodus 31:1–11- Exodus 35:4–10- Proverbs 4:23- 1 Thessalonians 1:5–7

Chris Wienand, April 19, 2026

Hesed means: Loyal Love, Unfailing Kindness, Faithfulness, and Steadfastness.“...he genuinely cares about humans and holds toward them a tender attitude of concern and mercy.”- Douglas Stuart “...he does things for people they do not deserve and goes beyond what might be expected to grant truly kind favor toward people, favor of which they are not necessarily worthy.”- Douglas Stuart “Hesed cannot be translated with one English word. It is a covenant term, wrapping up in itself all the positive attributes of God: love, covenant faithfulness, mercy, grace, kindness, loyalty. In short, it refers to acts of devotion and loving kindness that go beyond the requirements of duty.”– Daniel BlockGod reveals Himself as compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, and rich in faithful love. This hesed is not casual kindness but covenant loyalty. It is love that remains steady even when undeserved. This is who God is at His core. That same description echoes throughout Scripture:- Numbers 14:18- Nehemiah 9:17- Psalm 86:15- Psalm 103:8- Psalm 145:8- Joel 2:13- Jonah 4:2- Nahum 1:3These are not isolated statements but a consistent reminder of His character across generations. God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.This is not only something to understand, it is something that transforms us. As we behold God, we are changed. What we fix our attention on shapes who we become. Being with Him and keeping Him before our minds forms us over time into that same kind of life.“Who we are on the inside, we will eventually become on the outside.”- Pete ScazzeroSaint Irenaeus wrote, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive; and to be alive consists in beholding God.”“The first and most basic thing we can and must do is to keep God before our minds... This is the fundamental secret of caring for our souls. Our part in this practicing the presence of God is to direct and redirect our minds constantly to Him. In the early time of our 'practicing' we may well be challenged by our burdensome habits of dwelling on things less than God. But these are habits - not the law of gravity - and can be broken...A new, grace-filled habit will replace the former ones as we take intentional steps toward keeping God before us. Soon our minds will return to God as the needle of a compass constantly returns to the north. If God is the great longing of our souls, He will become the pole star of our inward beings.”- Dallas Willard

This Easter Sunday, Grant Clark explores the cross through the stories of those present at the crucifixion, including the two thieves and Simon of Cyrene. Some reject Him. Some believe. Some are completely changed. From the thief who comes with nothing but a humble request to be remembered, to Simon whose life is reshaped by carrying the cross, this message invites us to consider our own response to Jesus. Wherever you are in your faith, Easter is an invitation to come as you are and encounter Him.Verses:Luke 23:32-43 (CSB)Luke 23:42Luke 23:26-27 (CSB)Romans 16v13 (ESV)Mark 8:34Galatians 2:20-21 (CSB)

This week's message explores the tabernacle in Exodus and what it reveals about God's desire to dwell with His people. From Eden to the cross and into the future, we see a story of access, redemption, and restoration. Through Jesus, the barriers are removed and we are invited to approach God with confidence and experience His presence in a real and personal way.“The tabernacle was God's earthly dwelling during the period from Moses to David. As his dwelling, the tabernacle emphasizes God's presence with his people, continuing a theme that has run throughout the book of Exodus.”- Longman and Dillard“Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.”- St Augustine“Jesus became flesh and TABERNACLED among us.”“Those in whom the Spirit comes to live are God's new Temple. They are, individually and corporately, places where heaven and earth meet.”- NT Wright (Simply Christian)Verses:Exodus 25:1–9Genesis 3:24Genesis 4:16Mark 15:37–39Ephesians 3:12Hebrews 10:19–22John 1:14Ephesians 2:221 Corinthians 3:16Revelation 21:3

Dependence:We are a church who strives to live dependently on the power of the Holy Spirit in every area of our lives. We aren't trying to fix ourselves or anyone else with our own power, but trusting His power to work in us and through us.“Three months after leaving Egypt, Israel arrives at Mount Sinai, a location where they spend almost two years. Even more striking, the rest of the book of Exodus, all of Leviticus, and the first part of Numbers (through 10:11) take place at Sinai.”- Tremper Logman 3rd and Raymond Dillard“The people heard the voice of God for themselves and thus could not doubt his presence among them, a presence more directly manifest at Sinai than in any other mode previously since they had first learned of his interest in them. All the people were hearing the voice of God just as Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, and the patriarchs had heard it and as Moses had heard it earlier at Mount Sinai when God first called him. And this time the voice of God was accompanied by such audio and visual displays as to leave no doubt in their minds as to both his presence and his uniqueness…”- Douglas Stuart“This commandment highlights the twisted desires of mankind and the sin of discontentment. Instead of having a thankful heart, the coveter desires what others have. Notice also that this commandment is about the inward nature of the law. Covetousness is about the heart. It is about desire. It may or may not lead to an act, but even if there is no act, it is still wrong because our desire should be on the God who made us and redeemed us. Covetousness, then, involves breaking the first commandment.”- Tony MeridaVerses:Exodus 19:1-2Exodus 12:37Exodus 19:4-61 Peter 2:9Exodus 19:16-20Exodus 20:1Exodus 24:9-11Exodus 20:1-2Exodus 20:3-4Exodus 20:7Exodus 20:8Exodus 20:12-17Leviticus 18:1-4Exodus 20:18-21Exodus 20:21

What is trust, and what happens when yours has been shaken? In this message from Exodus 13-17, Grant Clark follows the Israelites through their journey after leaving Egypt. They see the Red Sea parted, follow pillars of cloud and fire, and experience God's provision in incredible ways. But when new challenges come, their confidence fades quickly. It's a pattern most of us know well. This sermon is an invitation to see that God is both greater than we can imagine and closer than we could hope, and that real faith is built not only in the big moments, but in the ordinary, daily act of trusting Him with what's right in front of you.BIG MIRACLES and ORDINARY OBEDIENCETrust “is confidence born from experience.”God is both greater than we can imagine, and closer than we could hope.Pictures of the Pillar of Cloud and Fire“Even though they left “in battle formation”, this does not mean they were ready to fight.” - Tony Merida“The most accurate test of your faith is not how you respond when miracles happen, but how you respond when they don't.” - JD Greear"Follow me" - Jesus“In the old covenant God faithfully remained with His people, accompanying them in the tabernacle and the temple. Under the new covenant, the only temple is the believing community itself, and God dwells not only among the community corporately, but also in each member individually.” - James Hamilton“[A] case can be made that the Holy Spirit may be the same as the pillar of fire and the cloud.” - James HamiltonVersesJohn 1:14 (MSG)Exodus 13:21-22 (CSB)Exodus 13:17-18 (CSB)Exodus 14:10-14 (CSB)Exodus 14:21-22 (CSB)Exodus 14:30-31 (CSB)Romans 8:32 (NIV)Exodus 15:11-13 (CSB)Exodus 15:22-25 (CSB)Exodus 17:7 (CSB)Exodus 16:2-4 (CSB)Exodus 16:35 (CSB)John 10:27 (CSB)

“Who is the Lord that I should obey Him?”Post-truth: “Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”- Oxford DictionaryThe 10 Plagues:1. Water turned to blood -- Exodus 7:14–242. Frogs -- Exodus 8:1–153. Gnats (or lice) -- Exodus 8:16–194. Swarms of flies -- Exodus 8:20–325. Death of livestock -- Exodus 9:1–76. Boils on people and animals -- Exodus 9:8–127. Hail and fire -- Exodus 9:13–358. Locusts -- Exodus 10:1–209. Darkness over the land -- Exodus 10:21–2910. Death of the firstborn -- Exodus 11:1–10What are these Plagues about?1. The Plagues Reveal the Glory of God2. The Plagues Are Judgments on Egypt's Gods3. The Plagues Are a picture of De-Creation4. The Plagues Expose False Security5. The Plagues Prepare the way for Passover “These nine plagues against Egypt are not just a display of God flexing his muscles. They are, as we have seen, the unleashing of God's creative forces against the enemies of God's people (and therefore the enemies of God himself).”- Peter Enns“The plagues are creation reversals: Animals harm rather than serve humanity; light ceases and darkness takes over; waters become a source of death rather than life; the climax of Genesis 1 is the creation of humans on the last day, whereas the climax of the plagues is the destruction of human beings in the last plague.”- Peter Enns “Just as the plagues were a sign to Egypt of God's justice and judgment, now the Passover was a sign of God's mercy to Israel!”- Tony MeridaVerses:Exodus 5:1-2Exodus 6:6-8Exodus 9:14-16Exodus 11:1Exodus 12:1-14John 1:29Ephesians 1:7-8

"What makes life worthwhile is having a big enough objective—something which catches our imagination and lays hold of our allegiance; and this the Christian has in a way that no other person has. For what higher, more exalted, and more compelling goal can there be than to know God?"- J.I. Packer (Knowing God)“I have witnessed, time and time again, two people in the same gathering come away with completely different experiences. One had a burning bush moment, leaving with a heart warmed and transformed, while the other left cold and unchanged, with no worthy takeaway save for an opinion of the worship and a score for the preacher. “- Alan Frow“The only person who dares wake up a king at 3:00 AM for a glass of water is a child. We have that kind of access.”- Tim Keller“Spiritual formation is a process of being formed in the image of Christ for the sake of others.”- Robert Mulholland (Invitation to a Journey)Chekov's Gun:“One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep.”Excuse 1: “Who am I?” (3:11)Excuse 2: “What do I say?” (3:13)Excuse 3: “What if they don't believe me?” (4:1)Excuse 4: “I'm not gifted enough.” (4:10)Excuse 5: “Please send someone else.” (4:13)“This final excuse was not so much an excuse as it was Moses' desperate plea to pass the responsibility to someone else. He was out of excuses. Every one of his questions had been answered in stunning ways. Now he basically said, “Here I am, send someone else.”- Tony Merida“Then the Lord's anger burned against Moses…” (4:14)# Reflection Questions:- Where are you resisting God in your life?- Where are you letting insecurities, fears, doubts and a lack of trust in God hold you back from what He is leading you too? - Where is your past determining what God can do with your future?- Like Moses, if the layers are pealed back, where do you see that actually you are just saying “No” to God?The answer to Moses' insecurity isn't more self-confidence.It's more confidence that God's presence is with him.

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Grant Clark, December 14, 2025

Jackie Rodgers, December 7, 2025

Andy Rodgers, November 30, 2025

Andy Rodgers, November 23, 2025

Andy Rodgers, November 16, 2025

Grant Clark, November 9, 2025

Joseph Yasso, November 2, 2025

Julia Price, October 26, 2025

Grant Clark, October 19, 2025

Andy Rodgers, October 12, 2025

Jamie Ternent, October 5, 2025

Grant Clark, September 28, 2025

Grant Clark, September 21, 2025

Andy Rodgers, September 14, 2025