Lording Over the Soda Room
If we have a chance to be superior, we want to take it. Yet, Paul points us to another way even when he had the authority and had been wronged by the people he was interacting with. It’s telling as we think about how we live and interact with others.
Don't Let Jesus Become Normal
Decades later, an aged Apostle John still cannot finish a sentence about Jesus without being overwhelmed with excitement. The Gospel has not become ordinary for him, but has it for us?
A New Heart
You can ignore the symptoms, try one more remedy, even rub essential oil on a broken bone—until the pain makes denial impossible. At Israel’s rock bottom, Ezekiel 36 lays God’s people on the physician’s table and names what stricter rules and harder effort cannot heal: a heart hardened against its Maker.
The Field Is Still Out There
At day’s end, the headlines follow you to bed: corruption deepens, truth blurs, and fear makes retreat feel safer than faithfulness. Second Timothy 3 names such seasons “perilous times,” yet it addresses believers called to live and speak the Gospel within them. How can Christians face a worsening world without being consumed by it—or becoming indistinguishable from it?
Full Faith and Credit
The baby of the next century, a famous inventor promised, would be rocked in a steel cradle, the family dining at a steel table in a house of steel. Even the most famous visionaries come up short. So where do we find security when our ideas seem misguided or downright bankrupt?
Zealousness Is Not Faithfulness
What if zeal aimed at God can still be working against Him? The future Apostle Paul had plenty of zeal as he persecuted the church, but he would soon learn that isn’t enough.
From Eden to Eternity: Far From Home
There are mornings when the life beyond your window looks nothing like the one you expected—and no quick return is on the horizon. Jeremiah 2 and 29 press into exile’s hardest questions: what carried a people’s hearts away from home, what faithfulness looks like in an unwanted place, and whether those who have wandered too far can still call on God.
Shine Among the Crooked
When every headline seems to confirm that the world is bending farther from truth, outrage and hopelessness can feel more natural than faithful witness. Philippians 2:12–16 places Christians in the midst of a crooked generation and calls them to shine without murmuring or retreating. How can a believer hold forth the word of life when darkness seems to dominate?
A Change of Plans
You said you would do it forever—and you meant it. Then the job vanished, and suddenly an honest promise looked like a lie. In 2 Corinthians 1, Paul’s critics pressed the same charge over travel plans that fell through: if his word couldn’t be trusted, why trust anything he said about the Gospel? When circumstances overturn the best intentions, where does trust rest?
From Fumbler to Shepherd
If you have ever put your foot in your mouth, chased recognition, or failed when courage mattered, you may wonder whether God can still entrust you with meaningful work. In 1 Peter 5:1–5, the apostle once notorious for fumbling addresses the care of God’s people—and the ambition, reluctance, and pride that can distort it.
This Week at Little Hills - Numbers
This Week at Little Hills returns as Merlene takes us to the book of Numbers and helps us to think about how we relate to the people in the story.
From Eden to Eternity: A Kingdom in Ruins
You test every foothold climbing a high cliff, then treat the wet stones in the river as if they could never give way. First and Second Kings answers why a people God rescued ended in exile—the land lost, the temple burned—not through one spectacular leap, but along a path of small, everyday compromises measured “in the eyes of the Lord.”
Jesus Has a Prayer Request
A prayer request can sound like one more sentence in a hurried conversation, but it is often a burden someone can no longer carry alone. In Matthew 9:38, Jesus places His own burden before His disciples: a plentiful harvest, too few laborers, and a call to pray that may move those who have only watched into the work.
Don't Get a Truth Complex
We tend to equate complex with superior. But that can deceive us into missing the truth.
Do We Live in an Unfinished Game?
You can spend hours in an old adventure game, testing gems in random combinations, unsure whether the puzzle has any answer at all. That sounds familiar because we wonder the same thing about life. Isaiah 40 speaks to people wondering if God has left us with a random jumble of puzzle pieces and assures us there’s something more.
Give Us A King
Few prayers are more dangerous than “God, give me what I want”—especially when what you want looks strong, secure, and respectable. In 1 Samuel 8, Israel asks for a crown “like all the nations,” rejecting the King already among them, and God grants the request—setting in motion a search that turns from outward stature to the hidden allegiance of the heart.
I Cannot Come Down
The wall is nearly finished when a reasonable-sounding invitation arrives—come down to the plain of Ono and talk. In Nehemiah 5–6, exhaustion, financial injustice, and relentless opposition pile up just before completion, confronting anyone tempted to step away with a searching question: when pressure rises and alternatives beckon, what keeps a worthy calling from being abandoned?
I'm in the Dark and So Are You
As daylight fades earlier each evening, familiar rooms become harder to navigate—and life can darken just as predictably. In 2 Corinthians 1:7–11, Paul refuses to minimize an affliction so crushing that he despaired of life itself. His words confront the question that surfaces when relief does not come: where can hope rest when personal strength is gone?
Are We Too Burnt to Serve?
It is easy to look at a life that way and decide you are not ready to speak for God—too inexperienced, too uncertain, too likely to say it wrong. Jeremiah 1 opens with a prophet making exactly that case — and God’s answer to him.
The Rebel King Inside You
A family road trip starts with dreams of Disneyland but quickly devolves into complaints, blame, and chaos. Moses faced something far harder: leading a people from slavery to freedom, only to watch them reject the promised land itself and wander forty years in the desert. The heart, Deuteronomy 30 suggests, is the real problem—and no change of scenery will fix it.