THE STORY OF JESUS: Mark 4:9-12 “Otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!” (Mark 4:12; quoting Isaiah 6:9-10) Why does Jesus want to hide His message in simple stories? He is quoting from Isaiah 6, when God calls Isaiah to be His messenger. But Isaiah’s message was a warning to a stubborn and rebellious people. They pretended to be…
Author: Norm
A ‘come as you are’ church?
What if we adopted these words as our welcome statement for our church? “Come as you are. . . . You don’t have to dress up. You don’t have to be any particular age. We couldn’t care less who you voted for in the last election. And please, don’t feel the need to pretend about…
What kind of soil am I?
THE STORY OF JESUS: Mark 4:1-20 “Others like seed sown on good soil hear the word and produce a crop.” (Mark 4:20) In this story Jesus shows how God’s message can fail to produce a good crop. Some people reject it right away, but many people receive it. But of those who receive it, not all of…
Holding on!
THE STORY OF JESUS: Psalm 124 “If the Lord had not been on our side, they would have swallowed us alive.” (Psalm 124:1,3) As a Jesus follower, I look for ways that He is at work in my life. The fingerprints of God, signs that God and Jesus are nearby. The psalmist thinks about all the times…
Wisdom is calling!
THE STORY OF JESUS: Proverbs 8 “To you, O people, I call out; I raise my voice to all mankind.” (Proverbs 8:4) Wisdom is accessible and available to all people. It is written into the very fabric of nature… God built it that way. If we take time to reflect on things, wisdom will reveal itself. But…
Cling to what is good!
THE STORY OF JESUS: Proverbs 7 “Bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart.” (Proverbs 7:3) This passage is a warning about the seductive power of temptation. Although the temptation here is sexual, any form of temptation fits in. What is your weakness, what is the ‘bait’ that Satan uses in my…
The silence of the bystander
“Let us remember: What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor but the silence of the bystander… Let us not forget, after all, there is always a moment when a moral choice is made….” (Elie Wiesel, survivor of Auschwitz, author, and Nobel peace laureate)
Jesus’s missionary family!
THE STORY OF JESUS: Mark 3:31-35 “Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” (Mark 3:35) Jesus loves all people, but he loves in a special way those who obey God’s will. But who actually does this… we all fail to fulfill God’s will for our lives. But Jesus is announcing good news, that…
Open or closed to the Spirit?
THE STORY OF JESUS: Mark 3:20-30 “He is out of His mind!”… “He is controlled by Beelzebub!” (Mark 3:21-22) Jesus is warning those who reject what the Spirit is saying through Him. Their critical, closed-minded response to Jesus is closing them to God’s Spirit. What they see as crazy and wrong, what they reject as demonic… is…
Jesus picks me too!
THE STORY OF JESUS: Mark 3:13-19 “Jesus called to him those He wanted.” (Mark 3:13) Do you remember picking teams as a kid? I never got to be the one picking, and was usually one of the last picked. As captain, Jesus makes some odd picks, at least from a human viewpoint. Peter the big mouth, James…