1. I’ve experienced firsthand the promise that God never leaves a congregation empty-handed.
  2. God’s published will offers us anchorage, the anchorage of Jesus Christ, in the midst of chaos, reminding us that there is a greater purpose to our lives than the pursuit of worldly success or fleeting pleasures.
  3. The Holy Spirit unleashes his power through us, his vines, and we then get to watch as his fruits blossom and ripen.
  4. Everything in Scripture is God revealing himself to his people, you and me.
  5. It’s not our eloquence or persuasive rhetoric that changes hearts, but the Word of God that pierces through the hardened shells of unbelief and breathes life into the dead bones of sinners.
  6. God's faithfulness is constant and consistent. It knows no season. His love for us doesn't fade with the summer sun.
  7. Jesus is the only answer to the nagging question. He is the only way to make sense of this unsettling story in Exodus 4.
  8. If it’s all a fiction spun by disappointed disciples, if it’s a mere symbol for the idea of an inner awakening, if it’s not a fact that Christ has been raised, then our grief and loss have no end, and we have no hope.
  9. This is the message of Lent. We are not called to sacrifice for Jesus in order to earn our salvation. Rather, we are called to remember the sacrifice that Jesus made for us.
  10. In Memory of My Friend, James Arne Nestingen
  11. God is not calling us to “grow up.” He is calling us to dependence.
  12. The mind-blowing part of this entire story, though, isn’t that only one leper came back to “give thanks,” but that the Lord Jesus healed all ten knowing full well that only one would come back.