Posts

Questions God Asks Us, Part 4: What Is Your Name?

  Friends, we’re now in part 4 of this sermon series I put together based on the book Questions God Asks Us by pastor and author Trevor Hudson. In each chapter Hudson looks at a question posed in the Bible either by God our Creator in the OT or Jesus in the NT, and then he looks at how we can faithfully respond to that question. This morning’s question is one that God poses for the first time incognito, in the book of Genesis, deep in the Jacob saga. I preached about Jacob earlier in the summer, so you guys are versed on this story now. But God, appearing casually as just some guy, wrestles with Jacob, and Jacob demands a blessing from God-disguised-as-a-random-dude. God asks “What is your name?”, and the blessing comes from what follows–a total transformation for Jacob, starting with his name. He becomes Israel, the revered father of a nation. There are several stories in the Bible of folks changing their names because they went through such a holy transformation that the old nam...
Post a Comment
Read more

Questions God Asks Us, Part 3: What Is That in Your Hand?

  Friends, we’re now in week 3 of this sermon series that I put together based on the book Questions God Asks Us by a pastor and author named Trevor Hudson. In every chapter of this book, Hudson has us look at a question that our Creator God or Jesus asks in the Bible, and how we might faithfully respond. This week’s question takes us out of Genesis and into Exodus, and the beginning of Moses’ long and harrowing journey freeing his ancestral people from slavery in Egypt. Hudson takes us to chapter 4 of Exodus. By this point in the story, Moses was born to a Hebrew woman, hid from the Pharaoh–who wanted to kill all Hebrew boys–until he was three months old, put in a basket in the river, found and adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter, and raised as a royal who always kinda knew he wasn’t Egyptian. He doesn’t want to mess up his life, but he also feels compassionate and righteously angry for the Hebrew people, who he realizes are his biological relatives. He sees an Egyptian enslaver beatin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Questions God Asks Us, Part 2: Where Is Your Brother?

  Friends, we’re now in week 2 of a 10 week sermon series I’m leading you in this fall based on a book titled Questions God Asks Us by pastor and author Trevor Hudson. In every chapter of this short book, Hudson looks at a question that either our Creator God or Jesus pose in the Bible, what we learn from that question, and how faithful people might respond. This morning’s question is an infamous one, and it comes from the Cain and Abel story in Genesis 4. The first two of the three sons that Adam and Eve ultimately have, Abel is a shepherd who tends livestock, and Cain is a farmer who grows fruits and vegetables. They both bring an offering to God–Cain brings crops from his field, and Abel brings a lamb. God approves of Abel’s offering, but not Cain’s, for reasons we can speculate on but will ultimately never understand. God tells Cain to hang in there, if he makes good decisions it will all turn out just fine. Immediately after receiving that advice, Cain goes on a “little walk”...
Post a Comment
Read more

Questions God Asks Us, Part 1: Where Are You?

  Friends, I’m starting a new sermon series that’s going to go for ten weeks, until the middle of November, based on the book Questions God Asks Us by a pastor and author named Trevor Hudson. The premise of the book is very simple, but Hudson invites us to go to some deep places with it. Each week in this sermon series we’ll engage a different question that either God our Creator, or Jesus, pose in the Bible. I led a short sermon series on this book for the first time eight years ago, back when I was serving down the road at the Avon church. What I find so compelling about this short book, both then and now, is that Hudson flips something major on its head. Many Christians have a deep-seated belief that the purpose of the Bible, and of faith itself, is to ANSWER questions. Our questions. We ask, God responds. That’s how it works. Why? Because we’d love that. It would be so much more comfortable if God would just do what we want.  Now, to be fair, the idea Christians have that...
Post a Comment
Read more

Together

  Friends, there’s an old, famous, joke you may have heard before about a small town with several churches all on the same block who were all struggling with a squirrel infestation. Each neighborhood church, from their own cultural and theological lens, came up with a different solution. The Presbyterian church called a meeting to decide what to do about their squirrel infestation. After much prayer and consideration, they concluded that the squirrels were predestined to be there, and they should not interfere with God’s divine will. At the Baptist church, the squirrels had taken an interest in the baptistry. The deacons met and decided to put a water-slide on the baptistry and let the squirrels drown themselves. The squirrels liked the slide and, unfortunately, knew instinctively how to swim, so twice as many squirrels showed up the following week. The Lutheran church decided that they were not in a position to harm any of God’s creatures. So, they humanely trapped their squirrels...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lunch Box

  Friends, today’s Good News is about what we can do in the name of Jesus with what we have in our hands right now…not with what we wish we had, or with what we think we need before we can even get started. One of the biggest issues holding churches just like this one back from being able to engage in good ministry work is something we call “scarcity mindset.” I’m gonna take a shot in the dark and guess that a lot of y’all have heard that phrase before, and maybe even used it yourselves in another context. Scarcity mindset happens when anxiety starts to take over the control room. Any of y’all see the Disney movie Inside Out ? It’s about a girl named Riley, and her feelings. Disney relatably and humorously had the movie take place inside her head, and showed us her anthropomorphic feelings, voiced by comedians. Anger, fear, disgust, sadness, and joy. In the sequel, Riley gets some new feelings up in “headquarters”—ennui, nostalgia, embarrassment, and anxiety. If you’ve seen either ...
Post a Comment
Read more