April 15, 2019

How Do You Grow?

April 15, 2019/ Dustin Turner

Recently I was reading through the F260 Bible Reading Plan, and I came across a passage I had read before but that struck me in a unique way. I was reading 1 Corinthians 8 where Paul discusses the very foreign idea of eating food sacrificed to idols. But what struck me was what Paul said first:

“Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that ‘all of us possess knowledge.’ This ‘knowledge’ puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God” (1 Corinthians 8:1–3).

December 20, 2018

God Is Love, But How?

December 20, 2018/ Jeff Audirsch

Love is a beautiful and, yet, confusing word. The word “love,” like many other words in English, has a range of meaning. The two most prominent meanings for love are:

(1) An expression of intense and deep affection for another person (e.g., spouse, child, family, friends, etc.)

(2) an expression of interest and/or pleasure in something (e.g., the Saints, fishing, hunting, gumbo, brownies, etc.).

Sadly, in today’s society these above definitions have been conflated. Case in point is the common phrase: “God is love.” When I hear someone say, “God is love,” I immediately think, “what does s/he mean by ‘God is love?’” In my opinion, the phrase “God is love” is oftentimes a conflation of the above two types of love and has nothing to do with “love” being an attribute of God. In fact, oftentimes the phrase, “God is love,” says more about the person speaking than the creator of the universe.

April 11, 2017

Love

April 11, 2017/ Dustin Turner

Even in his last few days, Jesus reminded his disciples how much he loved them. Jesus’s love for his disciples was different than any love they had ever experienced before. The disciples might not have caught that prior to Jesus’s death; however, they quickly realized it upon Jesus’s resurrection. For many of us, we know God loves us, yet sometimes we have doubts. It seems as though God’s love isn’t tangible. We can’t demonstrate our love for God like we do with those we love most. Think about how you show love and affection to those closest to you. You hug and kiss them. You look them in the face and talk. While we know God loves us and he demonstrates his love to us, we’ve never been face-to-face with God. We’ve never hugged or kissed God. The disciples, however, tangibly experienced the love of God through Jesus. Jesus was God-in-flesh. He walked with them, talked with them, and demonstrated his love for them. Ultimately Jesus demonstrated his love for his disciples in the most profound way—by dying on the cross.

April 04, 2017

Because of His Love

April 04, 2017/ Dustin Turner

Why did God deliver the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt? Because he loved his people. Simple enough, right? God’s love is immeasurable and unfathomable. He chose the Israelites hundreds of years prior, heard the cry of his people, and remembered his covenant. A love like this is rarely experienced by humans. We let one another down. We hurt each other. We fail. Our love becomes broken. That’s why God’s love is so unbelievable. His love never fails. Just when we think he’s forgotten us or we’ve done something to lose his love, God reminds us once again of his love.

March 28, 2017

Giving Love

March 28, 2017/ Dustin Turner

Over the past several weeks we have regularly been reminded of the ugliness and depth of our sin. However, we have also been reminded of God’s unsurpassable and unending love. Today we remind ourselves of an oft quoted verse: John 3:16. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son.” Think about those words. Read it again. “For God so loved the world . . . ” God is not a distant God who created everything and then left. He is a God who is so near that he loves his creation like a father. God’s love is also not all talk. He did something to demonstrate his love: “he gave his only Son.” The love that God has for the world is an agape love. The Greek word agape has the meaning of sacrificial love. God loved the world so much that he gave up something. He didn’t just give up anything; he gave up his Son. The Father knew how deep and dark our sin was and refused to leave us in that place. He sent his Son, Jesus, because he loved us.

March 07, 2017

Too Good for Us

March 07, 2017/ Dustin Turner

Lent is a perfect time to be reminded of God’s love. During Lent we anticipate God’s greatest demonstration of his love—the death and resurrection of Jesus. No other two events have more clearly shown the love of God. We cannot forget that God himself is the source of love. Love is not just an action or feeling of God. Love is actually his nature (1 John 4:8). In Psalm 86 we read of God’s love for us. The psalmist describes God in so many ways: good, gracious, abounding in steadfast love, one who answers, great, doer of wondrous deeds, merciful, faithful, helper, and comforter. No doubt, God is good to us.

June 07, 2016

The Jerry Maguire Lie

June 07, 2016/ Kerrah Fabacher

I will admit that I am a sucker for a good piece of dystopian literature with a good love story interwoven inside. Yes, I do realize most are teen fiction and I should be reading things more sophisticated, I guess. They are my guilty pleasure, though. There is something so hopeful about “true love” in the midst of everything awful in the world. It seems to ground the characters, keeps them centered. They really do complete one another.

As a wife, I have to be very careful to watch how I get sucked into these books and love stories. They are not realistic, first of all, even though I try to tell myself that they are because the characters experience painful things together. They are still fiction in the end. I always wonder why these types of books draw me in and keep me. After years of reflecting on this, I genuinely think it is because I have always wanted a romance like that. I have always wanted someone to “complete me.” Thanks, Jerry Maguire, for putting that hogwash into my head.

November 19, 2015

Loving to Maturity

November 19, 2015/ Matthew Weaver

Last week we established that spiritual maturity is much more than just head knowledge. Pastor Dustin wrote that in order for one to be spiritually mature, they must first and foremost love God. Loving God gives us the perfect foundation for growing in our spiritual journey. After we claim that spiritual maturity is impossible without loving God, we must then begin to take next steps, so that our belief can be followed by actions.

November 18, 2015

Paris & the Radicalization of Our World

November 18, 2015/ Josh Cook

I know what caused the attacks in Paris this past week. I know it because I have felt the cause in my own heart and in my own life. I am not talking about the inclination towards sin that we as humans all share, I am talking about something more specific to our day and age. I am talking about something that has the potential to destroy our society and quite possibly humanity from the inside out.

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