Seeing is not Believing

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Seeing is Not Believing:  A Deep Dive into the Passion of the Gospel of Mark

[Sunday] Mark 9 | Greatness - Revealing True Power

Questions for the week

1. What qualities and actions make someone great?

2. Read Mark 9:33-37, 42.   How does Jesus define greatness? 

3. In our pursuit of greatness, what does that do to our relationships with God and with one another?     

4. In Jesus’ actions, how does he free us from the pursuit of greatness?

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What Had happened at Grace this week. 

[Bible Study] Chapter 28-27 | Book of Job

The Moms Are (Still) Not Alright

Read the Whole article at The Moms Are (Still) Not Alright - Mockingbird (mbird.com)

The dread can hit anywhere, anytime. Last week, I was in the fancy grocery store, where I met my friend for prepackaged sushi from a refrigerator case in the back. We sat in the little dining space at the front of the store where just moments earlier, my friend had stopped a fire from breaking out in the communal microwave. An older woman had microwaved foil. My phone rang and the dread took over — the fire was the least of my worries. Every phone call from the school or even an unknown caller with a similar area code can make my head pound. Before I accepted the call, I ran through the list of things I would need to cancel for the afternoon. 

Just a few days before, my kindergartener arrived at the nurse’s office with a headache and was sent home from school. She could not return until she had a n………………..

Photos of Sound Panel Install

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No Other Name!

Read whole Sermon at No Other Name! | 1517

On the next day their rulers and elders and scribes gathered together in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. And when they had set them in the midst, they inquired, “By what power or by what name did you do this?” Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:5–12)……………………………….

[Sunday] Mark 8-9 | Knowing Christ - Revealing True Power

Questions for the week

1. Describe a time when you’ve said all the right things, but been completely wrong?

2. Read Mark 9:14-29.   What are the disciples unable to do?

3. What does Jesus do?  What does He say about why the disciples couldn’t do it?

4. How have you been mistaken about Jesus in your life?  How can Jesus reorient your thinking about him through humbleness and prayer?

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What Had happened at Grace this week. 

[Bible Study] Chapter 20-27 | Book of Job

God's Hideous Self-Portrait

Read the whole article at
https://mbird.com/theology/gods-hideous-self-portrait/

One of the theological distinctions from the works of Martin Luther that, I’d say, is deserving of more attention is his juxtaposition between a theology of glory and a theology of the cross. These categories might seem like esoteric abstractions. Distinguishing between the two can feel as though you’re splitting hairs, a meticulous theological and philosophical tincture that doesn’t offer much in the way of “rubber-meets-the-road” applicability. But Luther’s discrimination between a theology of glory and a theology of the cross represents a fundamental hermeneutic not only for the crucifixion narratives of the Gospels but also for the entire text of Scripture. 

This theological apparatus finds its roots in Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation of 1518, in which the German reformer was afforded the opportunity to abdicate or affirm some of his statements in the previous year’s infamous Ninety-Five Theses. In so doing, Luther was granted the bandwidth to more accurately articulate his quarrels with the church and the papacy. Gerhard Forde writes in On Being a Theologian of the Cross, pseudo-commentary on Luther’s 1518 disputations, that “the Heidelberg Disputation is the most influential of all Luther’s disputations. It is theologically much more important and influential, for instance, than the Ninety-five Theses, even though the Ninety-Five Theses caused more of an ecclesiastical and political stir.” (19) This due in large part because of Luther’s insistence on the basic tenets of theology itself, particularly in Thesis 20, in which he avers, “He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross.” For Luther, the cross wasn’t merely the coronation of God’s saving action through his only begotten Son, it was the culmination of God’s self-disclosure. 

What Does it Look Like to Practice Rest?

Read the whole article at
https://relevantmagazine.com/faith/what-does-it-look-practice-rest/

Rest is an important spiritual practice that has big implications for our day-to-day lives. Countless Scriptures, from Genesis to Psalms to the Gospels, remind us that rest is necessary. But rest can quickly become a buzzword that no one really understands. We say we need rest, but what does that actually look like? Is it a nap, a walk, a few minutes along? And so often, as we work to find rest, we end up feeling even more restless.

Because while rest and finding rest are important, there’s more to the answer than just removing something from your life in order to create margin (though that’s important). What we;re really seeking is something more fulfilling, more beautiful, more essential: the Sabbath…………………………….

[Sunday] Mark 7-8 | 4,000 Crumbs - Revealing True Power

Questions for the week

1. What is a ridiculous rule someone has tried to make you follow?

2. Read Mark 7:1-23.   What is the issue that Jesus is concerned about?

3. What are some rules we put on our faith that actually point people further away from Jesus and each other?

4. How does Jesus bring us closer to Him and each other?

5. Read Mark 7:24-30.   How is it encouraging to know that even if we get the crumbs of God’s grace, it is enough?

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What Had happened at Grace this week. 

Anxious About Grace

Read the whole article Here
https://mbird.com/theology/reformation/anxious-about-grace-some-thoughts-on-max-weber/

Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905) has been immensely influential, with the “Weber thesis” being one of the most well-known Interesting Ideas around.  The idea, basically, is that Protestantism, especially in Calvinist and Wesleyan and Baptist and ‘Pietistic’ forms, has been a major contributor to the ‘Spirit’ behind capitalism.

But there’s so much more. In looking at religious ideas not strictly in terms of their truth or doxological value, but also in terms of emphases and influence, Weber helped map out a distinctly modern way of doing and evaluating theology.

When I read his book, I hear a trenchant appreciation of how human hearts take the gifts of divine grace and turn them into methods for propelling ourselves toward God. From the perspective of Christian anthropology, the psychic respon…………………………………………….

[Bible Study] Chapter 11-19 | Book of Job

[Sunday] Mark 6 | Hearts & Loaves - Revealing True Power

Questions for the week

1. What is the craziest abuse of power you’ve heard about in the news recently?

2. Read Mark 6:14-29.  What words would you use to describe Herod as a leader? What does his reaction to the girl’s dance show us about him?

3. Read Mark 6:30-43. Specifically looking at verse 34, how is Jesus a different type of leader than King Herod?

4. When our hearts are hard, how does Jesus show us compassion? How does having a serving and compassionate king in Jesus change how we view power in the world?

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What Had happened at Grace this week. 

[Bible Study] Chapter 4-10 | Book of Job

We Have to Learn How to Hold Tension With Kindness

Read the whole article at https://relevantmagazine.com/faith/hold-tension-kindness/

Ithink it’s the combination, really. Take a generation of deconstructionists with a touch of entitlement (and a few cynical axes to grind) and drop them in an online environment where every opinion has equal billing, and you get a culture of chronic criticism. No longer hindered by geographical separation that ensured previous generations mostly minded their own business, we now have access to everyone. And we have opinions about their lives. Airing them costs us nothing.

I feel the tremors in………………………………………..

You Can't Take It With You

Read all the article at https://mbird.com/religion/testimony/you-cant-take-it-with-you/

It’s everyone’s travel nightmare: being tossed around from flight to flight, a quick 45 minute layover turning into six hours, and when you finally stand at the baggage carousel as everyone else grabs their luggage and heads home, you stay there, stomach sinking, the great metal contraption going around and around as you realize your bags didn’t make it. 

I’ve somehow successfully dodged the missing luggage catastrophe over my years of flying, and this is with living across the country from…………………………………

[Sunday] Mark 4-5 | Bad Soil Good - Revealing True Power

Questions for the week

1. Describe someone who was in a hopeless situation that was so bad, you would say that they were “beyond saving.”  What made it seem like they were “beyond saving?”

2. Read Mark 4:35- 5:43.  In each of these 3 sections, identify how Jesus takes hopeless situations and brings good news to them. In other words, how do we see Jesus turn bad soil to good soil?

3. Where in your life have you seen Jesus turn bad soil into good soil?

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What Had happened at Grace this week. 

Happy Endings for the Underserving

Read the whole article at https://mbird.com/literature/parables-of-grace-happy-endings-for-the-undeserving/

In the Season 2 Christmas episode of Ted Lasso, the players are merrily handing out gifts to one another in the locker room when one of them — the show’s erstwhile villain and perpetual dolt, Jamie Tartt — ducks into the coach’s office. Jamie has forgotten to buy a Secret Santa gift. But before he even finishes explaining his predicament, a gift almost magically appears — wrapped, and with a bow on it. A…………………………….

[Bible Study] Chapter 1-3 | Book of Job