Death is an intruder, an enemy, a force that has no place in the world God intended. But the gift of free will, the very capacity that makes love and goodness possible, also means that the collective weight of human choice sometimes comes with a dark shadowside, and so sin and death entered into God’s creation.

Bad things happen to beautiful people. Even death. Even to people God loves. Even to a man named Lazarus in a small town called Bethany. But Christ meets us at every threshold where death is waiting, and in his hands, even the darkest doorway opens into life.

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The post On The Threshold of Life appeared first on Emmaus Road Church.

This Lent, we have been learning to set aside our disordered desires: our self-sufficiency in the wilderness, our need to control new birth, our thirst for satisfaction in all the wrong wells. And now Jesus invites us to set down perhaps the heaviest thing we carry: the belief that if we can correctly assign blame to injustice and suffering, we just might be able to endure a little longer.

What if the question was never “whose fault is this?” What if the question was always “what is God doing here and how can I join him in that work?”

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The post Seeing Through the Blame Game appeared first on Emmaus Road Church.

Every spring when the ground begins to thaw and the first green shoots appear in garden beds that have appeared lifeless for months we are reminded of the cycles of life — and this is how most of us experience the life of faith.

Our moments of breakthrough feel sudden, but if we are honest, we know that God has been cultivating something in us long before it ever broke the surface. 

Today we are going to hear the story of a man named Nicodemus who came to Jesus carrying a lifetime of religious formation, a mind saturated with scripture and tradition, a reputation built on knowing the right answers; and yet, the Holy Spirit had been nurturing new life deep within and Jesus breathes it into bloom.

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The post Root & Stem appeared first on Emmaus Road Church.

Today we step into the wilderness and the temptation of Jesus.

The place where our appetites are met with the often untended parts of our lives and of the many voices attempting to define us, the only voice that matters is the one we are often too busy to hear.

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The post I Shall Not Want appeared first on Emmaus Road Church.

Together in these moments together we will worship and reflect and be blessed by our loving God.

DOWNLOAD: Prayer Stones Guide

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The post Ash Wednesday appeared first on Emmaus Road Church.

We love mountaintop experiences, but you have to come off the mountain at some point and the process of descent is hard, both physically and emotionally. You have to learn how to let that mountaintop experience integrate into your daily life, where it will be truly put to use for the good of others. 

The most important moment in the story for us this week is not the blinding light, the voice from the cloud, or the vision of the witnesses, it is the touch of Jesus and the comforting words, “Get up. Do not be afraid.”

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The post The Mountain and the Valley appeared first on Emmaus Road Church.

We live in an over saturated age that somehow provides little actual clarity; screens, notifications, feeds, tags, breaking news. We are surrounded by many artificial lights and yet so many of us feel like we are stumbling in the dark. And we just might be tempted to think that the darkness feels deeper than any flicker we might be able to muster, but Jesus believes otherwise. 

This week, Jesus looks at ordinary people and tells them they carry the light the world actually needs.

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The post You Are Light appeared first on Emmaus Road Church.

Often, we have a hard time knowing what to do, how to act, how to pray, or remain faithful when our world seems to be falling apart. We throw up our hands as if to say this is too big, too hard, too scary.

Those things may all be true, but these feelings are not unique to us, and Jesus famously spoke directly to those of us who wish we need not endure such hard times in our lives. May his words along with the prophetic imagination of the prophet Micah give us wise counsel this morning.

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The post The Blessed Ones appeared first on Emmaus Road Church.

Last week we heard the story of the encounter between Andrew, Simon Peter, and John with Jesus (John 1:29-42). Their whole lives, these men have dreamed of following God and serving a Rabbi in the middle of the action of the Kingdom of Heaven, yet now, their prospects seem to have fizzled. But that was not how their story was fated to end, nor is it how any of our stories need to end, because inevitably, along comes Jesus.

Last week he invited us to “come and see” and to “go and tell.” This week, our invitation goes a step further: Jesus invites us to allow our minds, our assumptions, even our expectations to be opened wide as the fullness of God’s loving Kingdom is about to redefine everything we once knew.

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The post Follow Me appeared first on Emmaus Road Church.

Today, as our journey with Jesus continues, we move from identity into living. We are given an invitation to step fully into one of those turning point moments in our lives. We are invited to answer the question, “What do you want?”

If we engage with that question deeply, everything just might change for us because the voice that named us beloved in the waters of baptism now calls us deeper: “Come and see,” the voice says. Will we follow?

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The post Come and See appeared first on Emmaus Road Church.