As we return to Proverbs this summer, we look to Proverbs 2. The challenge in seeking wisdom is that the results often take time — are they worth the wait?
We’ve all felt the crash that follows a sugar high—the emotional win, the reassuring word, the earthly success that lifts us for a moment before the bottom drops out again. Paul knew that feeling too, which is why he doesn’t merely greet the Ephesians with good wishes but with something that doesn’t fade: “grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
The truth of Pentecost is that we live between the Ascension and Jesus’s return, but we do not live between God’s love.
We all know what it’s like to chase after things that look like they’ll satisfy—achievements, credentials, the sense that we’ve finally earned our place. Ephesians 1:1 stops that chase cold, pressing the question of where our calling and our life as God’s people actually come from.
The early church needed preparation before their mission. What did they do to prepare to share the Gospel with the world?
Paul left a wide path of destruction as he went city to city persecuting God’s people, and yet in 1 Timothy 1:15, even as he names himself the foremost of sinners Jesus came to save, he can say that last part: Jesus came to save him. And He came to save us, too.
This week Pastor Tim turns to the book of Acts to think of how God’s Spirit helps us to be the people He made us to be.
As Jesus ascended into Heaven, the disciples needed to be challenged on what they were going to do next.
Most of us know what it’s like to mean every word of a commitment to God and then watch ourselves fail it just the same. Peter, the disciple who promised to die for Jesus and then denied him three times, knew that feeling better than anyone. John 21 is for all of us who find ourselves in that failed committer camp.