Listen Now! October 23, 2018 Mark 12:13-17 13 Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. 14 They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know that you...

Life can be profoundly simple and unimaginably good if we are willing to trust God, die to self, and be raised to the life of Jesus Christ in us.

The emphasis on the heart and the inner life is a persistent and vibrant theme throughout the Old Testament. The difference between the two Testaments is found in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus was not bringing a reform of the present system, nor was he bringing a revolutionary overthrow of the religious establishment and the Roman interlopers. Jesus told an alternative story.

Prayer is that constant abiding conversation Jesus wants to have with us all the time. It is simpler than we could ever have imagined yet more consuming than we can conceive.

Leaves without fruit is the form of religion without the power; going through the motions of "church" without living in the way of Jesus.

The miracle of the life hid with God in Christ is that in the midst of the greatest hardships and pain, that the divine promise empowers in us the ability to live in freedom, joy and peace, despite it all.

Faith brings people to a place beyond the symptoms to the source of a problem. It requires of them the act of moving toward a possibility that was hitherto un-seeable.

There are hard promises we must keep, difficult roads we must traverse, and painful decisions we must make against our self interest, all in the interest of loving God and loving others.

As we kneel, praying prayers of imprecation, we find that through God’s grace, a new prayer stumbling forth from our lips, asking God to awaken the wicked to the depth of God’s love for them.

The Kingdom of God belongs exclusively to those who will unconditionally and absolutely belong to the God of the Kingdom.

The character of the Law Giver is holy love; the kind of love that gives Life. Now, because the Law Giver is about love, the law actually becomes the training ground for this kind of life.

Jesus lifts the state of being of children as the requirement for entering the Kingdom of God.

The covenant of marriage, which is a fiery hot crucible, is designed to withstand all the chaos human brokenness can bring.

Whether it be the sins of pride or gluttony or lust or envy or fill in the blank, sin continues to win in our lives because we have adopted a strategy of management instead of eradication.

While serving means activity, in the greater sense it means identity.

Life is not a random sequence of days determined simply by chance or even by the feeble choices we make. Ultimately, our lives are in God's hands.

Jesus waits for a generation who will not be content to live out their lives in the lazy place between belief and unbelief.