Text: Luke 14:25-35 | Listen to Message The Startling Demands of Jesus Imagine what would happen today if a political candidate abruptly announced to a packed arena, “Many of you are only following me because of what you think I will do for you, but here’s the thing: unless you’re willing to hate your families, renounce everything you have, and go to the firing squad for me, I will not represent you.” Pandemonium would immediately break out: booing, and hissing, and jeering – and lots of 4-letter words describing what he can do to himself! Some people would storm the stage...

Text: Luke 14:1-24 | Listen to Message A Life Of Disinterested Goodness It took Jesus all of one dinner to completely dismantle the self-absorption of the Pharisees. Everything they did, he pointed out, was calculated to massage their enormous egos and to enhance their status. They were obsessed with rules – and suspect interpretations along with selective applications enabled them to feel superior to “sinners” who weren’t quite as good at their hoop-jumping and hair-splitting technicalities. They were obsessed with reputation – and nothing was more important to them than being held in high regard by others. They were obsessed with...

Text: Luke 13:22-35 | Listen to Message The One Door That’s Different Our culture tends to make two assumptions about the inclusiveness or exclusiveness of God’s salvation: Assumption #1: If God is inclusive, that means everyone’s going to be saved regardless of what door or path they used to get to him. There are more than 4,000 religions in the world, and many of them look and sound pretty much the same. So who’s to say which one of them is right – or if there even is such a thing? All religions contain some truth, and no religion contains all...

Text: Luke 13:10-21 | Listen to Message Find Rest Today Derek Rishmawy writes this concerning chronic pain: Seasons of prolonged physical pain are profoundly disorientating. At the outset, there may be confusion as well as the obvious discomfort of the condition itself. Still, there’s a sense that this too will pass, as so many other pains have. But when the days extend to weeks, and the weeks to months, panic and dread slowly set in when you realize the cramps, the shooting pain, the soreness, the headaches—whatever the pain may be—aren’t passing, and may never pass. They’re the new normal, and the new normal...