Have you ever been handed a job, given all the right supplies, and still had no idea what you were doing? When I was in middle school and high school, I attended a private Christian school in Tennessee. Every summer, the school offered "work study" hours for students, matching them with various jobs around campus. Some worked in the preschool or elementary daycare. Others stayed inside to clean offices or file papers. My job was mostly outside. We ran weed eaters, cleared the

Tell someone you're preaching through Ecclesiastes, and you'll usually get the same response: "Oh, that's a downer." Fair enough. But it's also not that simple. Here's what I've come to see in this strange little book: where you stand determines what you see. Ecclesiastes is almost a mirror. If you're wired toward pessimism, the eternal Debbie Downer, you'll find plenty here to confirm it. If you're wired toward optimism, always looking for the silver lining, you'll find that

In my personal ranking of Jesus' parables, three stories are always fighting for the top spot: the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, and the Rich Man and Lazarus. Which one lands at number one changes depending on the day, but all three share something in common. They present great reversals, subverting our expectations and flipping the script on how we assume these stories should go. The priest should be the one to help the half-dead man on the road. If not him, then surely

from the sermon "The Surprise of a Spoiled Man" by Jimmy Johnson There was a certain rich man, splendidly clothed in purple and fine linen, who lived in luxury every single day. At his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered in sores, longing for the scraps that fell from the rich man's table. Dogs came and licked his wounds. That's the story Jesus tells in Luke 16:19-31, and it's not a light passage. It's a hard one. But it's a good one, and it's worth deeply thinking abo

The parables Jesus tells in Matthew 24-25 all point to the same call: stay prepared, stay engaged, stay ready. We never know when the end will come. Like a soccer match ticking into stoppage time, we don't know when the final whistle will blow. And just as only the referee knows when a match is officially over, only God the Father knows when the end will come. Jesus himself says as much: "Now concerning that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven nor the Son,

If you have ever watched a soccer match, you know the frustration. There is no clock counting down. Instead, it counts up, and only one person on the entire pitch, the referee, knows exactly how much time is left. At the end of a half, he holds up a sign with a number on it: 6 added minutes, 7, sometimes as high as 11. Where did all that time go? That was stoppage time, every moment play stopped for a foul, an injury, or a celebration, tracked and added back on. Americans ten

One of my all time favorite bands is Relient K, a Christian punk-pop band that got its start in the late 90s and is still around today. My favorite song of theirs, "Be My Escape" (released in 2004), is about how God wants to set us free when we feel trapped, often in prisons of our own making. There's a line in the second verse that has shaped my faith more than almost any other song I know. And this life sentence that I'm serving I admit that I'm every bit deserving But the

based on the sermon preached by Lucas Johnson as part of our Plot Twist Series. The main text is Matthew 20:1-16 You ever build something with a hundred little parts, the kind of thing that comes with three types of screws and each one only fits in a certain spot? Up close it looks right. Then you step back and something's off. That's what this parable did to me for years. On first read, it seems simple enough. But the more I sat with it, compared it to other passages, and th

Fifteen years ago, Kathryn Schulz gave one of the most quietly devastating TED Talks I've ever watched. It's called "On Being Wrong," and the whole talk hinges on one question: what does it feel like to be wrong? Her answer: it feels like being right. That idea has stuck with me for years, and I've come back to it again and again, including when I studied the Parables of Lost Things in Luke 15 (being lost can feel like you're on the right path). But I think it applies just as

Back in high school, my friends and I discovered a website called despair.com. If you've never seen it, they make "demotivational" posters, the opposite of those cheesy office posters with a mountain range and a word like PERSEVERANCE underneath it. Despair.com's version of that, under a picture of a struggling penguin, reads: "Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can walk." Another one of my favorites is called 'Mistakes.' It says, "It could be that t

The Parable of the Man Who Fell Among Robbers, better known as the Good Samaritan, is one of the all-time great stories. When rabbis and Bible scholars speak about "turning the diamond," this is one story we can turn over and over, seeing something new from every angle. That's why it has stood the test of time and still changes hearts and minds today. So let's look at this story from a few different angles. We can learn about receiving help from a would-be villain, about seei

Luke 10:25-37 Something happened during the World Cup that I haven't been able to stop thinking about. A man from Japan ate at a Mexican restaurant for the first time. Before he even ordered, chips and salsa appeared at his table, free and unannounced. He stopped the waiter and said, "We have not yet earned these." The waiter just shrugged. They come with the table. He posted about it online, and what he wrote stopped me cold. He said that in his culture, "hospitality is a de

I believe Luke 15 contains one of the greatest stories ever told. We usually call it the Parable of the Prodigal Son, but that title doesn't quite do it justice. Tim Keller wrote an entire book titled Prodigal God, making the case that the Father is the truly prodigal one. The word "prodigal" means wasteful or extravagant, reckless spending. Keller suggests the Father, in dividing his inheritance and giving whatever the younger son asked, is the reckless one. And that's the k

Here's a question that sounds simple but isn't: what does it feel like to be lost? Most of us jump straight to helpless or frustrated. But that's not quite right. Being lost doesn't feel like being lost. It feels like you're going the right direction. It feels like everything's fine. You think you're on track. I know this from personal experience. I've been lost in a church building, a Walmart, a mall in New Orleans, the streets of Rome, and the roads outside Glacier National

Something strange happens in our brains when we make a purchase. The pleasure chemical dopamine spikes whenever we're on the hunt. Whether you're browsing Amazon or sifting through used records at the thrift store, we get a rush, a sensation of excitement. It's the thrill of the search, left over from our hunter-gatherer days. Then, once we have found what we're looking for, those pleasure chemicals kick into overdrive. Our heart rates increase. We feel a sense of euphoria. T

In 1986, a man named Roy Whetstine walked into a rock show in Arizona with a collector's eye and a little bit of luck. Sorting through a Tupperware container of stones, he spotted one, about the size of a small potato, dull and a little scuffed up. The seller wasn't impressed with it either. "I'll tell you what," the seller said, "I'll let you have it for $10. It's not as pretty as the others." Roy said yes. He knew what he was looking at. When he cleaned it up and took it to

A look at what the church is and isn't called to do As a pastor, and previously as a youth minister, I have done plenty of things beyond my job description. I've cleaned toilets, cooked meals, and dried out flooded basements. I've helped people move, assembled furniture, given rides. One Sunday morning I had to wrangle a bat out of the church building (not Tulip Street). I don't say any of this to brag, believe me. But I've never once seen "bat removal as needed" listed on a

From Mark 4:1-20 We've grown up with these stories. Maybe you heard them in Sunday school, colored pictures of them, or watched the VeggieTales version. But here's what Dallas Willard wrote in his book on the parables of Jesus: "Jesus was the brightest man and the most capable and creative teacher who has ever lived. Please don't let anyone make a simpleton of him." These aren't children's tales. These aren't Aesop's fables. They are something far richer and stranger and more

I'm a millennial, so when I don't know how to do something, I go to YouTube. There is a tutorial video for almost anything you could ever need to know. I am forever in debt to those folks who simply record the process and give viewers step-by-step instructions on how to complete the task successfully. In Ephesians 6, Paul gives the church a mission: stand. Stand firm against the unseen powers attacking our hearts, minds, souls, and communities. Wouldn't it be great if we had

Paul wrote some of the most soaring, theologically rich prose in the New Testament from inside a prison cell. As he closes his letter to the Ephesians, he doesn't end with pleasantries. He ends with a warning, a call to arms, and one of the most vivid metaphors in all of Scripture: the full armor of God. But before we talk about the armor, we have to get one thing straight. The Victory Is Already Won The outcome is set. But the fight is real. I heard that line years ago from