2024 Messages

Little Baby Jesus: Menace to Society

December 22, 2024 • Graeme Sellers

Had Jesus merely been a teacher, then there's nothing for the world to worry about. If he commissioned us to be the guardians of one interesting philosophical perspective among many, then Christianity is just another option at the buffet of ideas. The worst-case scenario is that there may be a little intellectual difference of opinion. But if he’s more, if he is who he says he is, from the very being of God with all attendant authority, that’s a different matter altogether. That’s when he becomes a threat to every established human institution: political, economic, educational, religious.

The Wrong People are Alright with God

December 15, 2024 • Graeme Sellers

All the wrong people are alright with God. This is a crucial truth, though few in our religious God-Clubs will receive it—it is a holy surprise we do not wholly approve of. God’s inviting people to the party that religious folk don’t include on their guest lists, and this makes us nervous. Why? Because, as George MacDonald says in his sermon on justice, we “yield the idea of the Ancient of Days, ‘the glad creator,’ and put in its stead a miserable, puritanical martinet of a God.”

Hear. Believe. Become.

December 8, 2024 • Graeme Sellers

Swiss theologian Karl Barth said that every one of us has a hidden side of our being that is in touch with God. Which is to say, we are made for relationship with God and are engineered to hear God’s voice. The truest thing about us is that light of the sacred is deep within us, and the most natural thing in the world is for children to recognize voice of their parents. Barth expands on this, observing that "this inward word of God contains that which moves us and that which unsettles us, that which delights us and that which distresses us." That's because the voice of God makes a claim on us; it tells us we are not our own. It speaks to our deepest longings while calling us out of ourselves into depths of life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Prepare the Way. (Yes, You.)

Graeme Sellers • Isaiah 40:3–9

This is what God’s like—he’s constantly throwing in with all the wrong people: hookers, bums, thieves, pagans, idolaters, idiots, atheists, agnostics, and narcissists. Even respectable people. “A voice of one calling: ‘in the desert prepare the way for the Lord!’” That’s his invitation to you. Wherever you are, that’s the right place for it; whoever you’re with, they’re the right people for it.

The Groundwork for Gratitude

November 24, 2024 • Graeme Sellers

We know biblically we’re supposed to be thankful – but then, biblically, we know we’re supposed to be lots of things. Is this just one more thing on the list? Gratitude is a choice. It doesn’t come upon us when the Holy Spirit is ready to bring it. No. We choose it. There is no spiritual gift of thankfulness. There is only the practice of it, and we cannot wait for optimal conditions to practice it. If we do, we may never start. Encouragement: try thankfulness. Just do it. Why? Simply because it works.

Living More Fully in the World

November 17, 2024 • Graeme Sellers • 1 Thessalonians 5:18

Gratitude is a strong foundation for creating a good life. We are not victims of circumstance, twisting in the wind of events we have no say in. We participate in creating a good life, with thankfulness playing a key role, and as we do, we learn to thrive.

Life on the Battlefield

November 10, 2024 • Graeme Sellers

The most powerful undoing of the Devil’s work is knowing and agreeing with who God says you are. This is the most potent spiritual warfare we can wage. God’s highest and best purposes for us take shape when we stand in our true identity. As Satan attempts to deceive us with his lie, “You are not who God says you are,” the Blessed Trinity is our focus. The Lord who knows the powers allied against us will be the One to triumph over them.

The First Tuesday in November and Our Anxious Hearts

November 3, 2024 • Graeme Sellers

As the 2024 presidential election nears, many followers of Jesus have anxious hearts. One antidote for our anxiety, especially as we approach the first Tuesday in November, is identity—specifically, knowing who we are and to whom we belong. The talons of anxiety loosen when we know who we are and whose we are—that no matter what happens on Tuesday, we and all of creation consist and are held together in Christ. When we fear an uncertain future, the Blessed Trinity reminds us who we are and what that means.

What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do

October 27, 2024 • Graeme Sellers • 2 Thessalonians 1:1–4

In times like these, don’t fixate on what you do not know. Instead, give thanks to God for all God’s gifts; weigh in on the side of the Father’s heart! Gratitude goes to war against everything that opposes Father’s heart and sets us on solid ground, allowing peace and love to flourish.

Listening at Three Miles An Hour

October 20, 2024 • Graeme Sellers • John 14:20

Because our worldviews have trapped us in blindness, and venerable doctrines and dogmas have told us, "You are not," we need to hear from God. His voice alone has weight and authority to free us from our "I am nots." This listening happens best as we slow down to catch up with God. It’s walking three miles an hour with a three mile an hour God. We’ve lived our lives based on a deeply embedded assumption about the world, how reality is, and the path to fulfillment. We must hear from God, or we’ll never know who we are.

Paths of Unseen Existence: the Weight of Worship

October 13, 2024 • Tom Kelly • John 4:19–24

Scripture, prayer, celebration, and fellowship are all different expressions of what can be called the Christian (or even just spiritual) “disciplines.” These are different avenues in which we encounter the revelation of who God is and who we are in God. Today's message brings another element to that bigger discussion and introduces a conversation about worship. What is it? What is its purpose? Why do we even do it in the first place?

Living at the Speed of Love

October 6, 2024 • Graeme Sellers • Deuteronomy 8:1–4, 2 Peter 3:9

“Let me make one observation," Kosuke Koyama says, "I find that God goes ‘slowly’ in his educational process of man. ‘Forty years in the wilderness’ points to his basic educational philosophy.” Love has its speed. This journey--the Way--Jesus is inviting us on, the remarkable offer that we might share in his relationship with his Father in the fellowship of Holy Spirit, is a slow thing from our perspective. It’s walking three miles an hour with a three mile an hour God. And that’s living at the speed of love. Question: where do you need to slow down to catch up with God?

Why Church?

In this Fifth Sunday conversation, Caleb Hill, Krista Keane, and Jason Obermeier share their journeys, journeys that have been both interesting and challenging. Theirs are not stories of having “arrived,” but more a conversation about being on a long and hard road, in which questions about who God is and what God is like became very real. Engaging with the question, "Why Church?" Caleb, Krista, and Jason share their struggles with the local church, and how being part of a local church has impacted their spiritual journey. They reflect, too, on those times when they weren’t a part of a church (for whatever reason) and how that impacted their spiritual journey.

Learning to Pray

September 22, 2024 • Graeme Sellers • Isaiah 53:12, Hebrews 7:25, 1 John 2:1–2, Psalm 139:17–18

Do we feel when we pray like we’re conjuring up something, trying to make something happen? But when we see God rightly, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in an intimate, flowing love relationship, we begin to see that prayer does not have its origins in us. It’s something we’re being drawn into, something that has been going on since before the foundation of the world. We don’t add to it, as if there was a lack in God. We participate with them in it, this beautiful gift of love, and what we add is ourselves, our participation.

Schopenhauer’s Shout in the Dark

September 15, 2024 • Graeme Sellers • James 1:17–25

Salvation is about how to live well; it about how to be who you truly are; it is about how to live in love with God and with life in this world. When we don’t know the light of the sacred is deep in us, when we do not see that we are created to participate in the life of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in us, when we think that by rationality alone we can apprehend ultimate truth, then life looks a lot like Schopenhauer describes. For him, life is a game of three-card monte in which we are tricked into hoping for something we’ll never realize, a place we’ll never get to, a way of being we’ll never experience.