Presby-Musings

Did you know that the Bible is One Big Story of God’s love for people who don’t always feel like they deserve God’s love?  It's true--it's the best kind of story, to be honest. And God has a way of always picking the wrong kinds of people to do what God needs doing.  People who think they aren't good enough, people who the rest of the world thinks aren't good enough--heck, people who really aren't good enough... that's who God seems to love to pick to write God's One Big Story. The Bible is One Big Story filled with heroes and villains, great adventures, epic battles, love stories and astonishing tales.  It’s also the story of a “once and future” King who picked the most unlikely people to help him share the story of God’s amazing love, and how far God was willing to go to save the world.  Today we are continuing our summer sermon series, One Big Story.  And what we're going to be learning over the course of this summer is one very simple fact: ...

I'm having one of those days when it feels like I have a lot more questions than answers when it comes to God.   My training and education tell me that I am processing loss--struggling through it, searching for answers.  I've read the books and taken the classes on all of this--six years worth of higher level learning.   But then again, nothing teaches like experience.   I've had my fair share of shouting matches with God over the years.  In a strange way, I feel like God likes it when we get angry and mix it up with God.  Maybe it's just me, but I've always felt  heard after one of my angry tirades with the Almighty.   Over the past few months, however, I have found that I can't seem to summon the energy to be truly angry or to lament to God about my struggles.  I started to feel like the answers weren't going to come--at least not in the way I wanted them.   I felt like God had gone silent on t...

There is this song by the band Mumford & Sons that I could listen to over and over again.   The song is entitled “Believe” off of Mumford & Sons Wilder Mind album that came out a few years ago.  When I first heard the song, I found myself choked up and fighting back the tears as I listened to it on my car radio.  I remember shaking my head and asking myself, “What is wrong with you?”  But that song—it just spoke to me.  The singer in the song could be singing to a girl.  Or he could be singing to someone else.  Because I know that the songwriter (Marcus Mumford) came from a religious family (his parents are both pastors), I get the feeling there’s a lot more going on in the song—like maybe the someone else might actually be God.   Maybe I’m reading way too much into it, but in the first verse the singer is asking why there is so much wrong in the world, and why there seems to be so much silence on the matter.  The bridge and ...

This week we'll be concluding the sermon series "The Elijah Chronicles," a series where we re-imagined the story of the prophet Elijah as though it were set in a post-apocalyptic future.  The world is desolate in our story.  There is an evil king, a military dictator if you will, who is persecuting those who worship God and advocating the worship of idols instead.  There is a remnant, a small group that refuses to give in---the Resistance. When we last saw Elijah, he had just experienced the most incredible victory of his life---the defeat of the prophets of Baal, the false god that the wicked king Ahab and his detestable wife Jezebel were forcing the people of Israel to worship.  God had sent fire from heaven to demonstrate his power, and his continued relationship with the Hebrew people , and the story ended with the people crying out "The Lord is God!" before executing all the evil prophets of Baal.  It was a huge win for the Resistance, and for Eli...

This week we are continuing our sermon series entitled, The Elijah Chronicles, a re-imagining of the story of Elijah, set in a post-apocalyptic future.  If you missed out on the first chapter, you can go back and read it HERE.  Or you can watch the whole service on our Livestream recording HERE. The Resistance continues, brothers and sisters...  But this week we aren't going to just sit idly by and wait---this week we are going to strike a blow against tyranny and idolatry!  The story that we are going to be exploring in this second installment of our series centers on an epic battle between Elijah and the false prophets of the ancient god Baal , a battle that would ultimately begin to turn the tide against the evil king Ahab and his wicked queen Jezebel... The people of God had forgotten who they were.  Elijah helped them to remember.  And he kicked some serious... you know... in the process. More on that in a moment. Have you ever had one of...

This week I'll be starting a new sermon series at my church---a three part series from the stories of Elijah from 1Kings entitled, "The Elijah Chronicles."  We will be re-imagining this story as if it was set in an apocalyptic future, inspired by films like "Book of Eli," "I Am Legend," and comics like "Judge Dredd" or "The Walking Dead."   The story of Elijah is very cinematic, actually.  "In a time of desolation... when the people of God had forgotten who they were... a prophet walked in from the wilderness and helped them to remember."  You can almost picture that, right? Take a look at the graphic above, and you can actually... picture it.   The setting of Elijah's story is in the northern part of the divided kingdom of Israel.  In the end, God's prophecy to King Solomon came true---because he turned away from worshipping God alone, his kingdom was torn from his family and divided.  In the time of...