After Jesus’ encounter with Zaccheus in Luke 19, Jesus tells a parable that is difficult to hear and to interpret. Instead of interpreting the parable as meant to teach us about gift stewardship, this teaching takes an alternative perspective on Jesus’ intentions for telling this story. Jesus is not identifying God self with the master, but is rather drawing a contrast between the ways of the kingdom of God (as seen in the story of Zaccheus and Jesus’ death) and the ways of the kingdom of Rome.

Have you ever thought about how much useless information your brain potentially carries? Often times, we can feel a sense of guilt based on ways we could better retain information towards more noble ventures in our lives. Ironically, Jesus confronts a 1st Century religious culture that elevates knowledge “of Godly things” over a new revelation of God’s heart for humanity. In this message, T.D. Davis (co-lead pastor) invites us to become people that are outcome focused based on two of Jesus’ confrontations with religious lawyers.

In a world obsessed with image, status and appearances, it can be so easy to life a live motivated by pleasing others. Approval addiction and people pleasing are cruel masters that enslave God’s people too often. Today we look at 1 Corinthians 4 to see how Jesus is offering freedom to his followers.

How do we savor every season? After nearly 30 years of obscurity, Jesus inconveniently enters into a 40 day wilderness test where he is tempted by the devil. By the time it is all said and done, Satan's tactics and Jesus’ posture helps illustrate a clear spiritual reality: The devil continually desires us to choose against God and Jesus safeguarded Himself through every temptation with unmodified obedience. In this message T.D. Davis (co-lead pastor) offers practical ways we can lean into the model of Jesus and harvest massive spiritual growth as we cooperate with obscurity into the power of ordinary faithfulness.

Jesus uses many different “paradoxes” (or seemingly contradictory statements) to describe the way His rule and reign often contrasts from earthly wisdom. In that vein of thought, one of the most compelling contrasts in the New Testament is the eyewitnessed authority that Jesus uses during His earthly ministry. Rather than ruling from a position of power familiar to those around Him, Jesus’ power paradoxically comes from a place of submission. In this message, T.D. Davis (co-lead pastor) unpacks the positional paradox Jesus uses in His final temptation in the wilderness and the access we have to that power, even in unknown seasons.

Chances are we’ve all got names and faces in our younger years of friends who were just “wild”! Contrasting this sense of joy, friendship, and community is Jesus’ experience in the desert alone and being tempted by the devil. In Satan’s final offer to Jesus is an opportunity to wield power and authority in a way that affirms individualized aspirations and in turn, helps prop up a vision for the “Kingdom of ‘Me’”. In this message, we discover that one of the greatest “friends" in this life is the one who helps incubate the relationship our human souls need most.

Throughout Jesus’ ministry we see Him exercise an ability to not be “swayed by others”. In fact, the first real test to this temptation of applause was in the wilderness as Jesus was tempted by the devil himself. As Jesus emerged from nearly 30 years of obscurity, he had grown a so-called "immunity to praise”. In this message T.D. Davis (co-lead pastor), shows us that Jesus’ secure identity, trust in timing, and transformed imagination were key ingredients developed through an unknown season that helped resist a human strategy of using the wrong mechanisms for even the best motives.

In the decades leading up to Jesus' public ministry, His process of human limitation and growth cultivated a reaction to the potential of being “well-known”. Although affirmation and acceptance is a natural human longing of any relationship and connection, so easily it can become an unhealthy motivation and desire reserved for spiritual fulfillment. In this message, T.D. Davis (co-pastor) shows us that in one of Jesus’ weakest moments, he resists the temptation to stage a superhuman spectacle, even for the purpose of drawing people’s attention to Himself and His message.