Assembly Required: Connecting the Empty Tomb to a Living Church - Part 10

Nobody wants a GPS that mocks you every time you miss a turn. But when you are lost, you absolutely want one that knows where you are, where you need to go, and how to get you home. What if God designed the church to work a little like that?

In this message, we turn to Colossians 3:16 and the command to “teach and admonish one another.” Teaching points out the road. Admonishing points out the ditch. Neither belongs only to the preacher. God calls ordinary Christians to help one another stay on course and grow toward maturity in Christ.  

Fill your own tank with Scripture before trying to guide somebody else. Learn to receive correction as readily as you give it. And when someone you love starts heading toward the ditch, do not become their policeman. Be their brother. Speak truth with enough love to risk an awkward conversation, because admonishing is a rescue operation, not a demolition job.

Assembly Required: Connecting the Empty Tomb to a Living Church - Part 9

A strip of masking tape covered the sensors of a jet, feeding the pilots false readings. The tower echoed those same numbers back, and in the darkness, a wingtip struck the ocean. Small, hidden things rarely stay small or hidden.

In the ninth message of this series, we turn to Ephesians 4:25, where the command to speak truth comes with a reason: “for we are members one of another.”

Truth without love becomes brutality; love without truth becomes counterfeit. What are you minimizing, concealing, or carefully dressing up, especially online? Try one week without small lies or convenient omissions. Be the same person at home that you are in the foyer.

You are already fully known and fully loved.

Assembly Required: Connecting the Empty Tomb to a Living Church - Part 8

Home teams score more, make fewer mistakes, and win more often. Football teams often call their home crowd the “twelfth man” because its energy can change a game. One franchise even retired the number twelve to honor its fans. If a stadium full of voices can lift a team, imagine what a church full of encouragement could do for someone struggling to keep going.

In this eighth message, we turn to Hebrews 10:24-25, which tells us to gather "to stir up one another to love and good works." The command was written to people who were beginning to drift. Encouragement reaches them before the marriage fails, before the faith collapses, and before the person disappears.

Look around the room. Notice who is alone and who is missing. Say the word you keep meaning to say, and be honest when you need someone to say one to you.

Assembly Required: Connecting the Empty Tomb to a Living Church - Part 7

A bow in Japan, foreheads pressed together in New Zealand, a handshake or a fist bump here. Every culture has a way of saying hello. The harder question is whether anyone in the room actually feels seen.

In this seventh message, we turn to a command that closes five different letters written to five very different churches: “Greet one another with a holy kiss,” in Romans 16:16 and its parallels. In a world divided by masters and slaves, insiders and outsiders, and rival factions, that greeting made something radical visible: nobody here outranks anybody else.

Be the church waiting at the top of the airport escalator, scanning every face for someone you love. Drop the bags and the headphones and the pretending. Get past your personality, because the command was given to everyone. Come early. Learn the names of the people you have sung beside for years. Notice the person standing alone. And welcome one another the way Christ welcomed you.

Assembly Required: Connecting the Empty Tomb to a Living Church - Part 6

Every yearbook has a superlative page: most likely to succeed, best hair, most athletic. We graduate, but we never really leave that page. We are still curating lives designed to look best, first, and most to everyone watching.

In this sixth message, we turn to Romans 12:10, where Scripture keeps the competition but changes the prize, “Outdo one another in showing honor.” The goal is not to get your name on the page. It is to put someone else there.

See the image of God in a person before you catalog the damage the enemy has done to them. Honor is more than flattery, agreement, or simply putting up with somebody. It costs something to hand the spotlight away. So go first. Learn a name. Notice the people nobody else sees. And say the good thing about someone when they are not in the room.

Having a Dorcas Mentality

Drop a pebble into a still pond and the ripples travel farther than you will ever watch them go. So what becomes of the good you do that nobody notices and nobody thanks you for?

In this message, we turn to Acts 9:36–43 and a disciple in Joppa who was full of good works. Only after she dies does the size of her life become visible, as the widows stand around weeping and holding up the coats she made for them.

Good works point past you to God. That is what separates them from simply being good. Small kindnesses carry farther than they look, and the ones no one applauds are still recorded in heaven. Do not grow weary in doing good. The season for reaping comes, sometimes long after you have stopped counting.

Assembly Required: Connecting the Empty Tomb to a Living Church - Part 5

The rules of King of the Hill are simple. Find a hill, stand on it, and introduce everybody else to gravity. The recess bell rang years ago, so why are grown people still playing it in marriages, workplaces, and comment threads?

In this fifth message, we turn to Ephesians 5:21–6:9, where one command runs through every relationship that follows: husbands and wives, parents and children, bosses and workers. “Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.”

Hear what that word does not mean. It is never inferiority, blind obedience, or cover for abuse. It is a choice made out of worship, not weakness: to yield at the one-lane bridge and let the other person go first. Burn the scorecard you have been keeping. Pray for the people hardest to serve. And stop fighting to stay on top of a hill Christ never asked you to defend.

Assembly Required: Connecting the Empty Tomb to a Living Church - Part 4

The loudest man on record shouted one word at 122 decibels and lost his voice for days afterward. We live at about that volume now, mistaking noise for impact and visibility for validity, and it costs us more than a few days.

In this fourth message, we turn to Philippians 2:1–11, where Paul tells us to look beyond ourselves and adopt the mindset of Christ. Then he shows us what that mindset looks like: Jesus makes himself nothing, takes the form of a servant, and humbles himself all the way to a cross. Scripture does not just define humility. It gives us Christ to imitate.

Humility is the displacement of self by the enthronement of God, not a quiet personality, and it has to be chosen daily because pride grows like a weed with no help at all. Put the apron on before you leave the house. Schedule otherness into the day. And let heaven keep the applause.

Assembly Required: Connecting the Empty Tomb to a Living Church - Part 3

Hand a child a Mr. Potato Head and let him put a foot on top of the head and an arm where the hat goes, and everyone in the room laughs, because even a child knows what a body is supposed to look like. So what does it say when a church is assembled that way?

In this third message, we turn to 1 Corinthians 12, where no part gets to say it does not belong and no part gets to tell another part it is not needed. A church is not just an organization that shares doctrines. It is an organism that shares DNA.

Nobody here is giftless, and nobody here is a spare part. God gave you something for the good of everyone else, which means withholding it costs the whole body something. Take inventory. Try something. Find where you fit. And let the body hurt and heal and celebrate together as one.

Assembly Required: Connecting the Empty Tomb to a Living Church - Part 2

Twelve men get a seat at the most significant meal in history, and the host gets up, strips down to a slave’s clothes, and crawls around the floor washing their feet. With only hours left, what does he choose to say to them?

In this second message, we turn to John 13, where Jesus gives a new command to men who are hours from denying and abandoning him. The command itself is old. What is new is the standard: “Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” And he has just shown them what that love looks like.

Love here is a command, not a feeling, and it is possible to attend every service without ever loving the people in the room. Love costs time and comfort and rights, and hurting people are not exempt from giving it. Forgive someone this week. Learn a name. Sit with somebody in their grief.

Assembly Required: Connecting the Empty Tomb to a Living Church - Part 1

You know the box. There is a beautiful picture of the finished thing on the side, and inside there are six bags of screws, three wooden panels, twelve dowels, and instructions you immediately regret opening. None of the pieces looks much like the picture. Assembly is required.

In this first message of a new series, we turn to Acts 2:42–47 and Romans 6:1–11. Jesus rose from the grave to create a new kind of people. In baptism, we are joined to his death and resurrection and raised to a new life, but that life was never meant to be lived alone. God is assembling those resurrected people into a church.

There are fifty-nine “one another” commands in the New Testament, and every one of them requires another person. You cannot obey them by yourself. Bring your part. Connect to the people around you. Learn to love the flawed church God loves. And let the picture God intended start taking shape among us.

Prodigal Moment: Choosing God's Way Over Our Own

A prodigal moment is any moment you put your own way ahead of God’s way. It happens to a kid sneaking a phone after lights out, and it happened to a king standing on a rooftop. So where is it happening in you?

In this message, we turn to Luke 15:11–32, where a son asks for his share, spends it in a far country, and ends up envying what the pigs are fed. He rehearses an apology on the road home but never gets to finish it, because his father sees him coming and runs to meet him.

Sin takes you farther than you meant to go and keeps you longer than you meant to stay. But you can stay home and still have a heart in a far country, like the older brother standing outside the party. Turn around. Come home. The Father is already running toward you.

Mary's Crib and Jesus' Cross

The standard-issue uniform for mothering is steel-toed boots, a referee jersey, a chef’s hat, a therapist’s notepad, and FBI credentials, and somehow you never get to take it off. But beneath all the jobs a mother does is one that is easier to miss: showing her children what a life surrendered to God looks like.

In this message, we turn to Luke 1 and 2, to a young woman who says yes to God before she knows the cost and then sings a song stitched together from fragments of Scripture. Jesus was not raised in a vacuum. He was raised in a home where surrender, Scripture, and worship were part of the language of everyday life.

Make your home templed space, not simply a place you leave in order to worship. Let Scripture become the language your children hear on ordinary days. Show them that winning means choosing God’s way over your own. And give yourself grace for the days you get it wrong. Mary needed grace too, and she had it.

Cross Words: If You Have a Problem, Jesus Has a Word for That - Part 7

If the cross were a crime scene, human fingerprints would be everywhere: the bag of silver, the whip, the thorns, the hammer. But Jesus never once thought of himself as being in their hands. So whose hands was he in?

In this final message of the series, we turn to Luke 23:44–46, where Jesus gives up his life with words from Psalm 31:5, a prayer Jewish mothers taught their children at bedtime. The kind of faith nurtured at the crib was still carrying him at the cross.

Begin with the end in mind, because no one drifts into eternal life. Store up Scripture now, because human hands can take almost everything but cannot touch what is already in your heart. Make worship normal in the worst rooms of your life. And rest in a Father whose grip does not depend on yours.

Cross Words: If You Have a Problem, Jesus Has a Word for That - Part 5

The one who flooded a planet, split a sea, drew water from a rock, and turned water into wine ends up unable to get a sponge full of it. How does the I Am become the I Thirst?

In this fifth message, we turn to John 19:28–29, where Jesus says he is thirsty and a Roman soldier lifts sour wine to his lips without knowing he is fulfilling a thousand-year-old psalm. His thirst is real, but it is not defeat. Jesus enters human suffering completely and remains obedient to the Father in the middle of it.

Life will empty you eventually, so decide what will fill you before it does. Jesus was so full of Scripture that when suffering pressed in, Scripture came out. Fill yourself with the Word before the hard day comes. Say no to small compromises before the stakes get high. And when you find yourself empty, remember that you worship a God who knows exactly what thirst feels like.

Cross Words: If You Have a Problem, Jesus Has a Word for That - Good Friday

A rigged trial, friends who ran, three hours of darkness, and an innocent man bleeding out. We still call that Friday good, which should stop us long enough to ask how any of it could be.

In this message, we step back and take all seven sayings from the cross together. Jesus brought good to the worst day in history, and what he said while fixed in place gives us a pattern for our own bad days.

Front-load forgiveness instead of rehearsing the harm. Help the person beside you take a step even when you cannot move. Take your hurt to God. Ask for help when you need it. Know when the day is finished, and surrender what you cannot fix to God.

But none of that is just good advice. The empty tomb is what gives every one of those words its power. Jesus could bring good to Friday because Sunday was coming. Your hurt is real, but it does not get the last word.

Cross Words: If You Have a Problem, Jesus Has a Word for That - Part 4 (Continued)

Start the first line of Amazing Grace in a room full of people and they will finish it without being asked. The crowd at the cross knew Psalm 22 the same way, so what did they miss when Jesus gave them its opening line?

In this second look at the fourth saying, we return to Psalm 22, a lament that opens in abandonment and ends in praise. Jesus cried out in the darkness, but heaven did not answer with a voice. So he reached for words God had already spoken, and found in Scripture a story that did not end where his suffering began.

Let hard times become Bible times. When the power goes out, you light a candle. Scripture is the light you reach for when everything else goes dark. Take your raw questions to heaven the way David and Jesus did, but remember the rest of the song. A cry of distress is not a cry of distrust, and God’s silence is not his absence.

Cross Words: If You Have a Problem, Jesus Has a Word for That - Part 4

Hospital rooms, hospices, cemeteries, and quiet bedrooms are all why places, and no amount of health or wealth or faith keeps you out of them. Sooner or later, everyone asks God the same one-word question.

In this fourth message, we turn to Psalm 22 and Mark 15, where Jesus breaks three hours of darkness with a scream: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He is quoting a psalm that keeps going, and a few lines later comes the answer beneath the question: “Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.”

Do not filter God through your problems. Filter your problems through who God is and where he sits. Jesus reached the far side of his why, and it was an empty tomb. And at the cross, we see why that hope is possible: God does not overlook sin. Jesus takes its guilt, shame, and penalty on himself. The holy God remains holy, the loving God remains loving, and you do not have to make the payment yourself.

Cross Words: If You Have a Problem, Jesus Has a Word for That - Part 3

A stepmother raised Lincoln, an adoptive family gave Steve Jobs his last name, and grandparents took in Simone Biles. Family is rarely as tidy as we picture it, so who gets to say who your people are?

In this third message, we turn to John 19:25–27, where Jesus spends one of his few remaining breaths placing his mother and the disciple he loved into each other’s care. He calls her woman, not mother, and a household is formed at the foot of the cross that biology did not build.

Let Calvary redraw your family tree. Learn the names of the people you have sat near for years. Show up at gravesites, not only potlucks. Look after aging parents. Set the extra place. At the cross, Jesus made a family out of people who did not share blood, and no one in that family has to be alone.

Cross Words: If You Have a Problem, Jesus Has a Word for That - Part 2

A woman comes home from a sixteen-hour shift to changed locks and everything she owns stacked on the curb for the trash truck. Her question is the question every person east of Eden carries: will I ever have a permanent home?

In this second message, we turn to Luke 23:39–43, where a condemned robber with only a few breaths left hangs beside Jesus and hears, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Humanity was driven out of paradise in Genesis 3. Now, from the cross, Jesus is opening the way back in.

Jesus is eager to save, and he saves without our help. The thief had nothing to offer and no time to fix what he had broken. If you are ever asked why you should be let in, the answer never starts with you. The man on the middle cross said you could come.