Text: 1 Peter 4:1-6 | Listen to Message When Jesus was faced with a choice between his own will (to save his life) vs. the Father’s will (to suffer and die for the sins of the world), he articulated his desire but then concluded, “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” Jesus armed himself with this truth: It is better to suffer in God’s will than to sin. Though this doesn’t sound like a very 21st Century thing to say, it’s a foundational principle for Christian living: “No matter what specific situation I find myself in, I’m deciding right now...

For the second time in just 35 days, our hearts are filled with a mix of grief, anger, and fear, because of an unprecedented mass shooting in our nation. On October 1st, a gunman smashed out the windows of his 32nd floor hotel room at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas and opened fire on a country music festival below. 58 people were killed and an additional 546 were injured, making this the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. On November 5th, another gunman walked into the First Baptist Church of rural Sutherland Springs, Texas and shot up the...

Father, with shattered hearts and tear-stained faces We again grieve over the deadly violence of our land. Our brokenness cannot bring back the dead, And yet…we are broken. We have turned away from you to do things our way, And we have not honored you as God. We have built our identities on shifting sand, We have chased momentary, selfish pleasures, And we have worshiped anything but our Creator. You are the Redeemer, But we have told you we will save ourselves. You are the fountain of Living Water, But we have sought freedom from you in the desert. You...

August 21, 2017 was the day a nation paused, looked up, and collectively beheld just a smidgen of a shadow of a speck of God’s glory. It took 2 hours and 38 minutes for a total solar eclipse to pass through 14 states stretching from the Pacific Coast of Oregon to the Atlantic Coast of South Carolina. In addition to the 12+ million people who live inside the path of totality, millions more traveled to witness this rare phenomenon. People in all 50 states observed at least a partial eclipse. If you didn’t realize there was going to be a...