Happy New Year! 2025 brings us many opportunities to hope for the future.

In the US—particularly in conversations about politics—the word “Woke” has accrued an astonishing amount of baggage.

This week, I find myself thinking about expectations.

Maybe the basic teachings about Christian behavior that lead us to kindness toward one another is more radical than we would like to admit.

At the end of the day, without hardship and challenges we as human beings do not grow.

It can be so easy to forget to pause and breathe right now, especially if you are paying attention to what is going on.

How can Jesus be morally perfect, and yet interact with a woman seeking healing for her child unjustly?

And when our faith becomes more rote than real within our hearts, then I think other things start to fill that hole that is there. Lucky for us, God never abandons us—even when we can unintentionally abandon God!

Whenever I hear a Christian talk about “spiritual warfare,” I have a negative reaction.

As a person, and as a pastor, I use profanity. I don’t claim that I always am on the right side of morality every time I do it, but I also want to challenge the conventional ideas we have around profanity, too.

Many of us have grown up being taught that anger is a bad emotion.

Shadowed valleys, evil and enemies aren’t powerful enough to defeat the size of hope God gives us. That is what I take home with me about Psalm 23.

God is setting a plumb line in our midst so we can discern what is just and right! May we never stop searching for it, and should we find it, then may we base how we live our lives on it.

When you look around and see abundance and “enough” instead of scarcity, what crises-turned-opportunities can you find?

In 2 Corinthians, Paul writes that we are “God’s co-workers.”

The fact of the matter is this, I need help all of the time. And I have sabotaged myself tons of times by not asking for it.

We praise God in all the ways it can be done so we don’t lose our faith in that steadfast love that is with us, even when we have a hard time feeling it.

Before we belong any community, friendship, or family, we belong to God.

The struggle we have with unworthiness is universal. What matters is if we can recognize that for the lie that it is.