Cultivate is a good word. It is a very earthy word and speaks to me of a daily effort put forth. You can hear the dirt in the word - this is a word that has the clean smell of sun and rain. Cultivate means to improve something by labor, care, or study. When I [...]
Ed talked about contentment this week in his sermon about David. What does that mean? Paul says in Philippians 4:11-12 that he knows how to be content in every situation. This is coming from a man who’s been thrown in jail more than once for talking about Jesus, beaten and left for dead, and slandered [...]
Hey let’s get the sauce on and then talk some God stuff, and how it may or may not relate to Star Trek.
2 cups of plain Kraft bbq sauce
2 cups of Texas Pete
3 heaping tablespoons of frozen orange juice concentrate
3 heaping tablespoons of minced garlic
1 stick of butter
Place ingredients in a pot and simmer until [...]
There’s a shift among Jesus-followers today. We’re beginning to focus more on the “journey” of faith. There is less talk about a moment of being “saved” and more discussion of development and transitions. This is especially true at Evergreen. But is this a new idea? Are we losing an important part of Christianity by thinking [...]
Love is a decision. I write this with a new perspective. Someone brought up the fact that making love a decision may not be romantic or sound like it is from the heart, but to me it is in the choosing where most of our meaningful experiences begin.
Furthermore, I don’t see love as a feeling [...]
I grew up in church, and by the time I was in high school I knew the “Gospel” message well. We’re sinful people, and Jesus died for our sins, so if you ask Jesus to live in your heart, you’ll get to be in Heaven with God when you die. Or some of us church-kids [...]
For this week I have asked my small group to give me some questions. Feel free to email me with your questions (mattb@evergreench.org). Here are the questions that I have received so far.
Why DID God make us?
I’ve given this a lot of thought, and when I ran out of ideas I asked the Thursday night [...]
