On Christmas Eve, 1968, astronaut Bill Anders was orbiting the moon aboard Apollo 8 when he looked out the window and saw something he wasn’t expecting — Earth. Hanging in the blackness of space, fragile and luminous, rising over the lunar horizon. He grabbed his camera and took what would become one of the most famous photographs in history.

Later, reflecting on the mission, Anders said something remarkable: “We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.”

Astronauts call it the overview effect. It’s the cognitive shift that happens when you see the world from a completely different vantage point. Your perspective doesn’t just expand. It’s transformed. The way you think, see, and live is never quite the same.

That’s what the book of Ephesians is trying to do.

The Letter

Ephesians is one of the most quoted, most memorized, and most frequently referenced books in the New Testament. And yet most of us have barely scratched the surface of it. Not because it’s long, but because of what it contains: a cosmic story stretching back before creation, prayers that attempt to describe the nature of our relationship with a transcendent God, and intensely practical instructions for how to live in a world shaped by spiritual forces we’ve mostly stopped paying attention to.

Before diving in, it helps to understand what kind of document Ephesians actually is. In the first century, a public letter from a philosopher or religious teacher wasn’t like an email. It was a carefully crafted, collaboratively written, publicly performed intellectual and spiritual essay, the product of months of work, costing thousands of dollars in modern terms, designed to compel people to rethink something fundamental about how they were living. When Paul wrote Ephesians, that’s the tradition he was working in.

The letter breaks into two halves. Chapters 1 through 3 are cosmic, a sweeping account of God’s plan for all of human existence, showing how a fragmented humanity is being recreated into something new through Jesus. Chapters 4 through 6 are domestic, intensely practical instructions for how that cosmic reality should reshape everything from our marriages to our work ethic to how we treat each other on an ordinary Tuesday.

The City

To understand the letter, you have to understand Ephesus. By Paul’s time it was the capital of Asia Minor, a thriving port city built on commerce, upward mobility, and status. It was also home to the Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, where people worshipped a goddess of fertility through sexual acts in hopes of gaining favor, wealth, and success.

Ephesus was a city of power, pleasure, and what could only be described as magic: an obsession with manipulating spiritual forces for personal gain.

Sound familiar?

The gods have changed names, but the temples are still standing. We sacrifice our time, money, and energy to the pursuit of comfort, success, and an image carefully curated for others to admire. We’re not burning incense at a pagan altar. But we know how to perform for approval. We know how to exhaust ourselves climbing toward something that keeps moving further away.

The Riot

When Paul arrived in Ephesus, something extraordinary happened. The power of the gospel was so real, so disruptive, so genuinely different from what the city had to offer, that people burned their spell books in a public bonfire and walked away from their old lives entirely. A silversmith named Demetrius, who made his living selling figurines of Artemis, started a riot because the gospel was putting him out of business.

Don’t miss that. The economy of the city was directly affected by the Kingdom of God.

That’s what the gospel actually does. It doesn’t just change what you believe about the afterlife. It interrupts the economy of your everyday life.

The invitation of Ephesians isn’t escapism. It’s awakening. An awakening to the reality that heaven hasn’t stayed “up there.” It has invaded earth. The Kingdom is already breaking in all around us.

You don’t have to keep performing, climbing, controlling, and sculpting. In Jesus, you are already loved.

That’s the overview effect. And Ephesians wants to give it to you.

TIMESTAMPS

0:00 - Relaunching at Queen Creek Jr High

05:08 - Culture Outlives Us

09:57 - Priorities Shape Us

22:29 - Serving Where Needed

28:17 - Harder and Heavier Work

32:42 - Hotel v Home

36:42 - The Sheep Gate

0:00 - Shutdown at the Movies

3:19 - The Age of Panic

7:55 - Ezra 4 & the 16-Year Hiatus

20:33 - Stirred & Strengthened

25:45 - Do Not Die in Haran

31:47 - Practices Push Through the Panic

Ten years is a long time to wonder about something.

For most of our church's life, the question of a permanent home has hovered in the background. And honestly, looking back, I think the timing matters. We needed all of this time, all of these years of being formed by Jesus together, before we were ready to take meaningful steps toward building something permanent. God has been building us peace by piece. Now we get to build with him.

But before we talk about what we're building, we need to talk about why.

We're Living the Same Story

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah sit near the end of the Old Testament, and they tell a story that feels surprisingly familiar. Israel has spent years in exile, displaced from their homeland by the Babylonian empire. The temple, the place where God's presence dwelled among his people, has been destroyed. The city walls are rubble.

But God makes a promise: they'll return. They'll rebuild. And God will come to dwell with his people again.

That's not just their story. It's ours.

Even here in our city, the simple and sacrificial way of Jesus runs directly against the grain of the self-centered, power-driven culture around us. We are, in a very real sense, a people planted in hostile soil. And like Israel, we have a choice: assimilate to the culture, retreat from it, or build.

We're choosing to build.

The New Testament makes clear that God's people are now his temple. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians that the Spirit of God lives in us. Peter describes the church as "living stones" being built into a spiritual house. The presence of God that Moses encountered on the mountain, that the temple was meant to contain, that Ezra and Nehemiah longed to restore, is here when we gather together for worship, fellowship, and service.

What we're building isn't just a building. It's a place of encounter.

Two Prophets, Two Challenges

While Israel was rebuilding, God sent two prophets to keep them on track: Haggai and Zechariah. They had different styles, but the same mission.

Haggai was blunt. He looked at God's people focused on their own comfortable houses while the temple sat unfinished, and he called it what it was: misplaced priorities. The question he puts to them is the same one worth sitting with today. What am I actually using my life to build? Is it purely for my own comfort and security, or am I leveraging it for something larger?

Zechariah was a visionary. Where Haggai shook people up, Zechariah lifted their eyes. His message was simple: this is not a small thing. "Not by strength or by might, but by my Spirit," says the Lord. Don't despise the day of small things. Keep pressing on.

We need both voices. The challenge to get our priorities right, and the vision to remember why it matters.

What a Building Makes Possible

A permanent home isn't the goal. But it opens doors that a portable church setup can't.

It means space for teaching, not just on Sundays but through workshops on theology, marriage, and parenting, and potentially a K-6 Christian academy where kids are shaped by scripture every day. It means real hospitality, a space where the loneliness and disconnection so many people in our city carry can be met with genuine community. It means margin, the ability to actually practice Sabbath and linger in worship instead of watching the clock because we have to tear everything down. It means moments: salvations, weddings, breakthroughs. And it means marathons: the sacred weekly rhythms that form people over decades and get passed down to their grandchildren.

The Next Steps

Over the next several weeks, we're inviting our church into this initiative together. Our goal is 100% participation, because the whole body moving together matters more than the size of any individual contribution. We have a two-year financial goal of $2.5 million, which covers both our ongoing ministry operations and meaningful steps toward building at our future site. And we're doing it through a single unified fund, so no one has to choose between supporting what exists today and building what comes tomorrow.

Commitment Day is May 17th.

Between now and then, the invitation isn't to give. It's to pray and ask God what participation looks like for you.

We aren't building a name for ourselves. We're trying to make space for God to dwell here, peace by piece.

There’s a story near the end of Luke’s gospel that doesn’t get enough attention.

Two disciples are walking away from Jerusalem, heading toward a village called Emmaus. They’ve just watched Jesus be crucified. Their hope is gone. And as they walk, talking through everything that happened, a stranger falls into step beside them.

The stranger asks what they’re discussing. They stop, looking at him with disbelief. He’s the only person in Jerusalem who doesn’t seem to know what happened. So they explain everything: the miracles, the arrest, the cross. And then the stranger opens his mouth and takes them through the entire Hebrew scriptures, showing them how it all pointed to this moment.

It’s what I can only imagine was the greatest Bible study ever given. And it has everything to do with how we read scripture today.

God Has Always Been Trying to Be Known

The story of the Bible is the story of God pursuing his creation.

It starts in Genesis, where God doesn’t snap creation into existence or simply will it to be. He speaks. “Let there be light.” That’s not a small detail. Actions can reveal that something exists, but words reveal what someone wants. God speaks because he wants to be known.

When Adam and Eve hide after the fall, what does God do? He calls out to them. “Where are you?” Even after the first rupture in the relationship, God is looking for his people with his words.

That impulse doesn’t stop. The first time the Bible mentions itself is in Exodus 17, when God tells Moses to write down what’s happened so that future generations won’t forget. God’s spoken word becomes a written word, preserved across time so that people who weren’t there could still know the story they were living inside.

Moses receives all of this, leads his people through the wilderness, and then asks for something more. “Show me your glory.” He’s heard God’s voice. He has the written law. But there’s something he’s still after: encounter with God himself.

God tells him no one can see his face and live. But Moses’ longing points to something real. Knowing what God says is not the same as knowing God.

The Word Became a Person

The Gospel of John opens with language that would have stopped both Greek and Jewish readers in their tracks.

For Greeks, the word logos meant reason itself, the organizing principle of the universe, the logic behind all of reality. For Jews, John’s opening lines echoed Genesis: “In the beginning, God created…” and now “In the beginning was the Word.”

John is doing something remarkable here. He’s saying: that thing the Greeks called logos, the ultimate logic behind the cosmos? It’s not an idea. It’s a person. And the Word that spoke creation into existence, that called out to Adam in the garden, that thundered on Sinai, that has been pursuing humanity since the beginning? That Word became flesh.

Jesus is God’s fullest self-revelation. Not a book. Not a set of rules. A person.

The author of Hebrews says it plainly: in the past, God spoke through the prophets in many ways, but in these last days he has spoken through his Son. The same Word that was present at creation is now walking around in sandals, eating fish, asking questions, touching lepers.

So what does that mean for how we read the Bible?

The Bible Points Beyond Itself

Jesus, still walking with the two disciples on the Emmaus road, shows them how every thread of scripture points to him. But then, when they reach the village, he keeps walking. He doesn’t force himself through their door.

That’s not an accident. God wants to be sought. He’s always wanted that. He doesn’t force himself on us, even in scripture. The Bible is an invitation, not a guarantee.

Jesus confronted the Pharisees about exactly this. They had the scriptures memorized. They had built their entire lives around the written word. And they completely missed Jesus standing in front of them. You can know the Bible inside and out and still miss the whole point.

The point is encounter. The point is meeting the Author behind the words.

Whatever you come to the Bible looking for, you’ll probably find it. Rules. Validation. Ammunition. The Bible has been twisted and weaponized throughout history by people who came to it looking for something other than Jesus.

But if you come to it wanting to meet Jesus, that’s what it’s built for. That’s what it’s always been built for.

Back in Emmaus, the two disciples invite the stranger in. He breaks bread with them. And suddenly they recognize who he is. They turn to each other and say, “Weren’t our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road?”

That’s the invitation. Not just to read the Bible, but to let it lead you somewhere. To let it lead you to someone. Burning hearts. That’s what’s waiting on the other side of the words, if you’re willing to look for more than information.

Have you encountered Jesus? Or have you just been reading about him?

In 1964, Norman Rockwell painted "The Problem We All Live With" for Look magazine. It depicted 6-year-old Ruby Bridges walking to her first day of school during desegregation, escorted by headless US marshals, with a tomato splattered on the wall behind her meant to resemble blood.

Rockwell received more hate mail from this image than any other in his career—not from Black Americans, but from average citizens angry that he showed something true, real, and ugly about America. It wasn't the content that made people uncomfortable. It was the confrontation.

Here's what's profound about the painting: Where are you positioned as the viewer? Rockwell made you both an observer of the image and a participant in the story. It forced viewers to confront who they really were in light of the Black American story.

Scripture works the same way. It's a mirror that confronts us, challenges us, and calls out our assumptions about God, the world, and ourselves. The question is: will we look intently at what we see, or will we walk away?

The False Self and Fig Leaves

Genesis tells us Adam and Eve were created naked and felt no shame. They lived in wholeness and vulnerability without fear of confrontation. But after eating the forbidden fruit, their eyes were opened. Genesis 3:7 says "they realized they were naked, so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves."

The fig leaves are a physical symbol of a spiritual reality. When confronted, our inclination is to hide—from others, from ourselves, and from God.

Our version of fig leaves today is what psychologists and theologians call the false self—the version of ourselves we project to others to hide our weakness, woundedness, and wickedness.

Weakness: The parts we're insecure about—our fears, personality quirks, things we feel unconfident in

Woundedness: Our embarrassing history, family of origin, trauma

Wickedness: Our sins, failures, willful disobedience—the anger we can't shake, the addiction we can't break free from, the pride in how we treat others

The false self is a coping mechanism based on self-reliance rather than God's love and providence. What are you hiding behind? Your busyness? Your personality ("I'm just not wired that way")? Maybe even something good you're subtly putting before God—your family, career, health?

The Four Levels of Sin

Early church fathers and mothers understood how deep the false self goes. They identified four levels of sin:

1. Gross Sins - Obvious wrongs most people would agree are bad: sexual immorality, deception, greed. These are easy to identify but also easy to use to make ourselves feel better. "I might have an anger problem, but at least I'm not an alcoholic."

2. Conscious Sins - Things that are socially accepted but at odds with Jesus' way: How do you spend your money? What media do you consume? How do you talk about others? These confront not just our behaviors but our will and freedom.

3. Unconscious Sins - Sins of motivation: doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. Dysfunctional relational patterns others experience in us. You might not yell at your spouse, but do you harbor years of bitterness?

4. Attachments - Good things that become bad things because of our reliance on them. Success in ministry. Career. Family relationships. If we lose these, we question who we are. A false self built on career success crumbles after retirement.

Looking Intently Into the Mirror

James 1:23-25 says: "Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at himself goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues in it... will be blessed."

Scripture has power to show us who we really are if we're willing to look intently. Most of us approach the Bible cognitively—asking about context, author, genre. These are good questions, but if that's where we stop, it's just a higher form of control.

Try going deeper:

How do I actually feel in response to what I'm reading?

Where do I come alive? Where do I feel resistance?

What aspects of my life are being touched?

What do my reactions tell me about myself?

If you don't feel resistance to anything when reading the Bible, you're probably not reading enough of it.

When you feel challenged, discomforted, or exposed—that's an invitation to submit something in your soul to God. God forms us most deeply in the places where we are least like Jesus.

The Gift of Confrontation

James says whoever looks intently finds "the perfect law that gives freedom."

Freedom from the false self you're killing yourself to construct. Freedom from wounds you'd rather hide than heal. Freedom from the weight of sin you'd rather manage than confess. Freedom from the fear of being found out.

Remember how God responded to Adam and Eve's fig leaves? He went looking for them. He didn't wait for them to get their act together. He found them, confronted them, and even though He kicked them out of the garden, God went with them.

What if that's how God is trying to call out to you today? What if the sign you're waiting for isn't behind a dream, vision, or miracle? What if it's behind confrontation?

What are you hiding behind? What part of Scripture are you ignoring out of fear? What if that's exactly how God is trying to get your attention today?

You don't have to cover yourself up to be seen by God. If you've given your life to Him, He's already forgiven you. The sins you're hiding, He's already paid for.

Let the mirror do its work.

Becoming Peace by Piece names the slow, patient work of God in forming a people who are not tossed to and fro, but who grow into maturity measured by Christ’s fullness. Peace is not something we manufacture by willpower, nor something we passively receive—it is something done for us in Christ and formed in us over time as we guard our hearts and walk together under His easy yoke.

Jesus invites us to forgive not merely for our hearts, but from our hearts and ultimately to our hearts—receiving His forgiveness so deeply that it transforms the way we see and treat others.

The second story shifts from a wedding banquet to a final judgment, where Jesus separates sheep from goats. The separation isn’t based on religious activity or spiritual knowledge but on on who was willing to serve “the least of these.” Both of these stories teach us what it means to wait expectantly for Jesus to return: meeting needs, serving others, and working to prepare the world for the Kingdom to come in full.

servants with his finances. On the surface, it’s a simple story about stewarding our

resources while we wait for our Master, Jesus, to return. But like all of the parables,

there are layers to this simple story. It’s actually a revelation about who God really is —

a generous Master who wants to help us live our lives to the full in the Kingdom. Jesus

teaches us that our resources (financial, physical, relational, spiritual) are stewardship

capital meant to be leveraged toward higher Kingdom value, not hidden in fear.

But like the servant in the story, most of us hang on to our resources because we

falsely believe our wealth and stability are more valuable that the life Jesus offers. By

letting go of our attachment to our stuff, and by investing what we have in the

Kingdom, we can experience both the generosity of our Master and the abundant life

he wants to give us.

But there are a few who hear God’s word, receive it by applying it to their lives, and bear good fruit. These are the people who allow God’s word to confront and convict them, and who reorient their lives in response. In order to be these types of people, we must receive the seeds God generously wants to share with us, and learn to apply them to our daily lives.

Most of us assume Jesus used parables as simple illustrations to make spiritual truths clearer, or as moral lessons to show us how to live. But Jesus himself explained that parables serve a deeper purpose: they draw some people into the Kingdom, and they push others away from the Kingdom. Parables aren’t just moral tales, theology lessons, or simple illustrations. They are surprising, subversive stories that confront us with the reality of the Kingdom.

And just like our response to the parables, our response to the Kingdom is never neutral: we can resist and turn away, or be drawn in and transformed.

And while courage comes with time, clarity takes effort. Most of us have an incomplete gospel story. We tend to emphasize one part over another, and often miss out on the depth and complexity of what salvation really is. To become effective witnesses who clearly and courageously preach the gospel, we must learn the full gospel story: Jesus has come to rule and reign over the world through His death and resurrection, and anyone can live in the Kingdom here on earth and into eternity if they repent from their sins and align themselves with Him.

Like the church in Corinth, our Witness practice must start with our with-ness. We must remain so close to God that others find our lives appealing. We must remain so close to each other that we’re able to rely on each other for support. And we must remain so close to the lost that we actually have opportunities to draw them into communion with the God who created them.

Daily bread reflects ordinary needs we often overlook—food for the day, a safe commute, help with our to-do list. “Forgive our sins” gets messy, confronting our failures and the challenge of forgiving others. “Deliver us” points to overwhelming needs—healing from deep wounds, restored relationships, freedom from bondage. Yet Jesus makes no distinction. Bread, forgiveness, deliverance—all are gifts from a generous Father.

If God truly is our Father, He wants us to ask—for small things and big things. Because asking reveals humility. It takes honesty and vulnerability to admit we need help, that we rely on His power. Prayer expresses this dependence. When we bring God the mundane, the messy, and the monumental, He responds. Not always how or when we expect. But Jesus reminds us: “Who among you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him” (Matthew 7:9–11).

When we pray to discern God’s heart, we’re asking to know God’s will. But we’re also asking that God would form and shape us into the kinds of people who are actually capable of accomplishing it. This means discerning God’s heart is less about finding the right path when faced with a decision and more about tuning our hearts and desires to God’s heart and desires. This is partly what Jesus means when He tells His disciples to pray, “Your Kingdom come Your will be done…” (Matt. 6:10). Discerning God’s heart is about surrendering our will to God’s. We want His will, not ours, to be done in our lives, in the lives of those around us, and in our world. Praying this way is about alignment. We want to bend our desires to God’s desires. And not just for ourselves.

We want to develop the heart God has for those around us as well. We want to hear from God, we want to respond to His voice, and we want to become people who carry out His will.

When Jesus answered his disciples’ request, the first thing He told them to do was address God as a Father. “Our Father in heaven…” as the prayer goes. Many of us know it by heart, but this was a radical move on Jesus’ part. In a culture full of both reverence and uncertainty about the divine, Jesus was demonstrating to His disciples a very simple, yet radical truth: God is knowable. He’s not simply “up there” in the clouds, nor is He passively waiting for us to approach Him with the right words, mantra, or sacrifice. God is near, and we can talk to Him the same way a child would talk to their father.

The starting point of prayer is delight. We can’t develop the kind of prayer life Jesus had until we get our heads and hearts around the truth that God wants to be near us in prayer more than we want to be near Him. To truly delight in God requires a proper theology, a patient consistency, and a practicing community.

But this problem isn’t new. Jesus calls it out when the crowds followed him after they ate the five thousand loaves and fish that he gave them. “Truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled.” Instead Jesus reminds the crowds, and us, that He is the Bread of Life that satisfies our deepest desires. This is the fruit of joy.

By practicing both fasting and feasting, we can slowly train ourselves to resist gluttony and instead embrace the true joy that Jesus offers us.

In Isaiah 58, God’s people wonder why their prayers and fasts haven’t been acknowledged by God. God’s response is that they fast in vain; their focus is only on themselves while they neglect those in need around them. Instead, God describes a holy and honoring fast as one that leads to care for their neighbors.

When we fast, we have an opportunity to direct our attention and our prayers away from ourselves and toward others. We use our bodies to cry out to God on behalf of those who have needs in our cities, communities, and neighborhoods. In our hunger, we identify with those who don’t have food in abundance like we do. We align ourselves with the poor and needy among us. From those with deep physical, relational, and emotional needs to those who have the ultimate spiritual need: reconciliation with God through the power of the gospel.

Modern culture has shifted from a “should” society to a “could” society, glorifying self-indulgence while leaving us more broken and dissatisfied. Through the lens of scripture, we see the destructive power of unchecked desires—whether in Esau trading his birthright for stew, or Paul’s warning in 2 Timothy 3 about people becoming lovers of self and pleasure over God. Desire, though not inherently evil, becomes destructive when disordered or directed away from God.

Paul’s exhortation to exercise self-control teaches us that spiritual maturity requires both mastery and mystery. While we actively train ourselves to resist sin (mastery), we rely on the Spirit’s power to transform our hearts (mystery). Fasting emerges as a key practice to cultivate this balance, helping us reorient our desires toward God and find true fulfillment in Him.

But love—especially God’s love—can be the hardest to understand and accept. This teaching explores God’s profound love through the four Gospels, using a poem, a prophecy, a purpose statement, and a parable.

Journey with us as we uncover how Advent invites us to embrace both celebration and waiting. We’ll reflect on the tension between our present struggles and the ultimate restoration promised by God. Whether you're wrestling with doubt, longing for control, or striving to live faithfully in the waiting, this episode encourages us to reorient our hearts and lives around the unshakable hope found in Christ.

Key Takeaways:

- How the stories of Zechariah, Herod, and Mary offer different responses to hope. 

- The meaning of Advent as a season of both waiting and celebration. 

- Practical ways to live with hope, drawing strength from God's promises for the future. 

Join us as we step into the Advent season, grounding ourselves in the transformative power of hope.

20435 South Old Ellsworth Road, Queen Creek, AZ

https://passioncreek.church/sundays/

Today, our temptation is much the same.

To avoid being formed and shaped by the idols of our city and culture, we must intentionally allow ourselves to be formed into the image of Jesus by examining the stories we hear, the habits we practice, and the relationships we surround ourselves with.

Luke 19:1-10; 20:20-25; 21:1-4

2 Corinthians 8:1-4; 9:6-11

In Acts 10, Peter is confronted with his next marathon: overcoming his prejudice. As a Jew, Peter believed that the gospel was only good news for his own people. But when God reveals the global scale of the gospel by showing him that Gentiles are just as loved by God as Jews are, Peter must confront his prejudice.

Like Peter, all of us have biases. We classify, exclude, and judge people based on ethnicity, social status, or political tribe. But to follow Jesus means we must love everyone the way Jesus did, even when we disagree with them. Just like Peter, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, we too can participate in the marathon of overcoming our biases and extending the gospel to all people.

But God won’t force His work in us.

Like Paul, we must learn to trust in the slow work of God, yielding more and more of our idols, passions, and desires to him in surrender. Only by letting go of our expectations and accepting God’s grace can we slowly grow into mature disciples of Jesus who greatly impact those around us.

Acts 9:1-19 CSB

Acts 8:1-24

But the gospel story gives us a better hope.

Jesus came into a world just as paranoid as ours, and he confronted the root of our paranoia; we’re all stuck in spiritual slavery, sin, and sickness. And by living the perfect life, dying the death we deserved, and rising again, Jesus offers us hope. But to choose this hope takes an act of “metanoia,” or repentance. When we repent, we actively choose to reorient our lives around the reality of Jesus and his resurrection.

In Acts 2 we see how the Holy Spirit first came to all believers during Pentecost, and learn how the Spirit empowers us today. In the Holy Spirit, God reveals himself to others through his people, God removes the obstacles to knowing him, and God receives all those who respond to him with faith and repentance.

Bottom line: Jesus’ proximity to those living counter to the way of God was scandalous to the self-righteous and life-giving to the self-rejecting.

Again, if seeking and saving the lost was his mission, then sharing a meal with them was his method. As Jesus’ disciples, we’re instructed to do the same. By practicing hospitality, we create a safe space for those opposed to the way of Jesus to encounter and experience the love of God. We don’t affirm people’s sin, but we do affirm that they’re loved and valued image-bearers of God.

Jesus and his disciples faced similar issues in their day. Loving their neighbors was difficult because of boundary lines and discrimination that occurred between Jews and Gentiles. Later in the biblical story, the early church faced violent opposition and persecution due to their commitment to King Jesus. And yet, the more meals they shared with their “enemies,” the more their enemies became friends. Over time, those friends became part of the family of God.

Henri Nouwen defines hospitality this way: “the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy.” People will always expect our hostility until they experience our hospitality. By getting to know the neighbors in our lives, even our actual neighborhood neighbors, we create spaces and opportunities to serve those around us and demonstrate the love of God.

The art of eating together with those we’re close to is a lost one. Meals have been commodified and looked over as nothing more than a relieving break from the mundanity of work at best, or an inconvenient break in our daily rhythms at worst. We might enjoy an occasional date night, birthday celebration, or holiday feast, but the regular practice of sharing life at a table is one that fewer and fewer people in the West are participating in.

For Christians to recapture this lost tradition, we must intentionally make space in our schedules to be hospitable toward those in our community. Feasting regularly with other followers of the way encourages us, strengthens our bonds, and nourishes our souls.

But there’s also a shadow side to community. Without love, grace, and intentionality, we can fall into the trap of familiarity, codependency, resentment, and idealism.

But for Jesus and his followers, a meal was about more than just food; it was a means of grace. Meals were a way for the Son of God to come near people and offer conversation, friendship, and healing. Every dinner shared with a sinner was a way for God himself to extend a merciful hand of salvation to those who least deserved it. This is why the communion was often shared as part of a full meal.

When we partake in communion, we’re eating a meal together. We’re reminding ourselves that through his sacrifice, fellowship, and hospitality, God has cleared a space at his table for us. Taking communion is our way of feasting with our Savior.

But rather than assimilate into the culture or separate themselves from it, God instructs his people to pursue the well-being of their city. We find ourselves in a similar situation today.

As we form tight-knit communities of proximity, vulnerability, and practice, we will become increasingly at odds with the world around us. And yet, it’s through these very communities and friendships that God intends to renew the world. By committing to accomplishing the mission of God, our friendships can do what God instructed the exiled Israelites to do: renew our city.

In Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, God institutes a set of practices and behaviors (the 10 Commandments) meant to shape and form his people into his image. And when Jesus starts his earthly ministry, he chooses 12 unlikely men who wouldn’t normally get along to reorient their lives on him.

For us today, becoming a community of practice means putting aside our preferences, committing to each other no matter how different we are, and reorienting our lives on Jesus.

Instead, we live in private shame over our weaknesses, wickedness, and woundedness. But the gospel frees us from fear and shame.

By learning to practice vulnerability with those around us, we become capable of deep and valuable relationships. To get the most out of our friendships, we move from proximity to vulnerability.

But this is far from the life that God designed for us. From the opening pages of Genesis to the end of the human story in Revelation, we see that God has always intended us to live in close proximity to one another — Adam walked with God and was still lonely before Eve; Abraham is called out to create a new close knit family; Jesus does ministry while in deep relationship with his disciples; Paul takes close friends like Barnabas and Timothy with him on his ministry journeys; and the early church grows because of their radical inclusion of their neighbors.

To recapture these lost relationships and live the way God intended, we start with a simple step: moving towards people in proximity the way God moves towards us.

Everything we deeply desire, from formative friendships to a tangible hope in God, requires us to pass through suffering with endurance, not sidestep suffering with escape. When we commit to loving each other well and maintaining hope in God, we become people able to reject the lies of the world and live out the truth of the gospel.

The more we indulge, the less like Jesus we become. But the gospel frees us from this trap of greed.

In Christ we have no reason to hoard, live extravagantly, or perpetuate injustice because we have true and lasting contentment that comes from living a life focused on the Kingdom in communion with God.

But the good news of the gospel permeates these areas of our lives.

By surrendering our deepest sins of the flesh to God, we slowly free ourselves from the need to put others down to make ourselves feel better. And by surrendering our future to God, we slowly free ourselves from the need to have more and do more in order to experience joy.

From the beginning of time, Satan has used lies to distort God’s truth, turn people away from the way of Jesus, and live according to the world and flesh. And if we’re not aware of his tactics today, we can unknowingly give in to these lies as well. But James 4 promises us that the more we learn to resist the devil, the more we can find freedom through Christ from Satan’s deception.

James 4

In James 4, we learn that not all desires are good, fulfilling, or even authentic to who we’re made to be. When the church buys into the lie that giving in to all our pleasures will bring us joy, James reminds us that this actually results in more conflict and sin. Instead, James invites us to deny our desires, stop the waging war of passions within us, and humble ourselves in confession before God. Doing this feels like self-denial, but it’s the God-designed way for us to experience true grace, healing, and satisfaction.

But James 3 shows us what it looks like to endure conflict well. Rather than give in to the bitterness and envy that comes naturally to us in conflict, James instructs us to practice godly wisdom. We reject selfish ambition and instead choose to be people of peace, mercy, and good fruit.

According to James, just believing the right doctrines about God isn’t faith at all. Instead, faith is described throughout the Bible as whole-hearted loyalty and trust. Faith starts with our minds and beliefs but moves to our lifestyles and habits. And for James, the most important element of faith is our lives. We demonstrate the trust we have in the good news of Jesus and his Kingdom when our faith moves us to good works of love for God and for our neighbors.

According to Jesus, the Kingdom belongs to the least of us. As a leader of the early church, James applies the way of the Kingdom to how we treat others. By accepting the free mercy of God as a gift rather than as something we have to achieve, we can then extend that same mercy to everyone regardless of their wealth or status. But to try and earn mercy or to withhold it from others is to neglect the heart of the gospel itself.

To become this type of church, James invites us to examine how we react when people offend us, and when the Bible confronts us. When in conflict with others we often react with anger, and when exposed by the Bible we often react with apathy. But to learn to submit ourselves to God in both of these situations will allow us to mature into the kind of church God has called us to be.

The book of James is a book about transformation. It’s about how to put our faith into practice, starting with how we respond to trials. For James, the first thing we must understand as faithful followers of Jesus is how to face our trials, find wisdom, and fight temptation.

James 1:1-18 CSB

Many of us struggle with the same issue today.

We want to experience life and life in abundance, yet we’re unwilling to let go of what that life might cost us. And while the gospel isn’t about earning anything from God, it does require us giving up our idols and attachments that we’re seeking eternal life from instead. But like the rich young ruler, Jesus lovingly invites us to simplify our lives so we can trust our past, present, and future completely to him.

Jesus himself says that our speech is an automatic result of what’s already in our hearts, and the apostle James warns us that our speech has the ability to stain our whole bodies. Left to our own, we can find ourselves trying to manipulate others, gain status and approval, or win arguments.

To fight against these impulses we practice simplicity of speech; we speak honor in place of flattery and contempt, secrecy in place of gossip and exaggeration, and silence in the place of rage and manipulation.

But Jesus offers us a better way.

He does this by confronting our attachment to our stuff and our lack of trust in him, and also by modelling a life of simplicity. When we study the Scriptures, we find a deeper truth than the lie we’re trained to believe — real contentment is actually found by limiting what we own and increasing what we give.

And for most of us, this discontentment comes directly from our digital consumption.

But the way of Jesus is an invitation to simplicity — learning to be content with less, not more. To start this practice, we must first train ourselves to curate our digital consumption. By limiting our digital intake, we can rewire our brains towards contentment and train ourselves to be more present and attentive to God and to those around us.

For resources on simplicity, go to: https://formedbyjesus.com/simplicity/

TIMESTAMPS

0:00 - Formation is happening whether you like it or not.

2:20 - Mark 4v1-20

7:48 - Nothing crowds our time and attention like the digital world.

19:05 - The Practice of Simplicity

20:53 - Our definition of simplicity

22:35 - Jesus practicing solitude

28:18 - The way OUT of the digital chokehold

36:32 - Don’t fear the desert.