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

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

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

Few topics make modern Christians more uncomfortable than slavery in Scripture. We rush past those passages or explain them away. But if we're honest with the text, and honest with history, there's something far more radical happening than most of us realize. The World Paul Was Writing Into To understand Paul's household codes in Ephesians and Colossians, we have to understand the world that produced them. In Aristotle's framework, which shaped the entire Greco-Roman social i

Your parents probably gave a lot of advice growing up. Some of it held up, some of it didn't. Waiting 30 minutes after eating before swimming? Busted. Sitting too close to the TV ruining your eyesight? Also busted. "You are who you hang out with"? Confirmed. Studies back it up: your personality is largely the sum of your five closest relationships. But one piece of parental wisdom I keep coming back to is this: you can't get the toothpaste back in the tube. Some things cannot

There is an ongoing debate, one I'd call unserious at best, about whether Jesus and Paul actually taught the same things. Some claim Paul's letters don't fully align with the Gospels, or even outright contradict them. The more provocative version of this argument is that Paul essentially invented Christianity as its own religion, something largely separated from the actual ministry of Jesus. Makes me wonder if these folks have ever really sat down with Paul's letters. Jesus i

What the Seven Ones of Ephesians 4 Have to Do with Ancient Christian Unity Maybe you remember it from youth camp. Arms around each other, swaying gently in the firelight, singing: "We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord... and they'll know we are Christians by our love." It's a beautiful sentiment. But have you ever really stopped to consider what you're declaring? We are one. Not "we should probably try to get along." Not "we agree on most of the major stuff." We a

A Reflection on Ephesians 4:1-24 There's a shift that happens in the middle of Paul's letter to the Ephesians, and it's the kind of shift that changes everything. For three chapters, Paul has been building a case. He's laid out the breathtaking reality of what God has done for us in Christ: redemption, forgiveness, adoption into God's family, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit as a guaranteed inheritance. We are God's temple, the very place where he dwells. It's stunning stuff

from Ephesians 3 Imagine writing one of the most encouraging letters of your life from a prison cell. That's exactly what Paul did when he wrote to the church in Ephesus. He was locked up; the Roman Empire was at the height of its power; and the Christians he was writing to were scattered in small house churches throughout one of the busiest, most cosmopolitan cities in the ancient world. They were worried. Their founder was behind bars. The odds were stacked against them. Th

In our hyper-connected era, we have built digital bridges that span the globe, yet we have never felt more tribal. Despite the illusion of a "connected" world, our social landscape is fractured by echo chambers and ethnic silos. We retreat into the familiar, assuming that true unity is a modern impossibility. To find the solution, we must look back to a group of believers in modern-day Turkey—the church at Ephesus. The letter to the Ephesians (written around AD 60-62) is not

Based on Ephesians 2:11-22 There's a phrase most of us have heard, probably on a meme: "My body is a temple." It gets used to justify healthy eating, justify not healthy eating, and everything in between. But it raises a genuinely important question. What do we actually mean when we say "temple"? Here's a working definition worth holding onto: a temple is the unique location where God's space (heaven) and human space (earth) overlap. It's the meeting point between God and hu