How’s your prayer life? If that question makes you sigh, you’re not alone. Maybe prayer isn’t something to perfect or dutifully perform. Maybe it’s the life-giving response to the God who is already with you.
Journaling Prompts
What portion of the Lord’s Prayer challenges you the most right now?
What might it mean for Redemption to become a community that inhabits the Lord’s Prayer? What would this mean for you personally?
How might asking even though God already knows make prayer more approachable and practical for you? In what ways might you begin to awake to God’s presence through approachable prayer?
Practice — Pray
Read the Lord’s Prayer slowly.
Find a phrase or refrain that feels important for you to speak back to God right now (ex. Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us). Take some time to repeat that portion of the Lord’s Prayer multiple times back to God.
Share with God whatever else is in your mind. Speak freely. God already knows.
Conclude your time praying the Lord’s Prayer.
Generosity
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How’s your prayer life? If that question makes you sigh, you’re not alone. Maybe prayer isn’t something to perfect or dutifully perform. Maybe it’s the life-giving response to the God who is already with you.
Generosity:
In a world crowded with our words, preferences, and interpretations, Recovering the Bible means listening to the voice of the risen Christ who still speaks to us here and now.
Journaling Prompts
How does the idea of Deus Dixit—that God has Spoken—challenge your understanding of the Church, the Bible, and what God is up to in both?
Has there been a time in your life where your engagement with the Bible looked different? What changed, and why? What do you think this could look like in this phase of your life?
What might it mean for you to engage with the Bible sacramentally—as a means of encounter of the Risen Jesus who still speaks?
Practice — Listen
Do the following alone or with a small fellowship of others.
Slowly read Job 38:1-40:5 & 42:1-6. Let the text speak for itself. If there are things you don’t understand or questions that arise, set them aside for now—or jot them down and come back to them later. For now let the text read you as much as you are reading it.
Don’t read looking for takeaways but read anticipating that God speaks through these words still.
To be clear. You will likely not feel anything. You are not broken. You are not doing it wrong. God’s speaking in the scriptures often works in us and on us slowly—often imperceptibly.
Consider sharing how the practice went with those you read with or with someone you trust after the fact.
Generosity:
What is the Bible for? Many of us have a complicated relationship with Scripture—it has been misused as a tool of exclusion, harm, and control. But what if Jesus is right, and the Word of God is actually a good gift meant to give us life? Recovering the Bible begins with receiving God’s word, not as a weapon, but as a locus of divine encounter where we are formed into a liberated people of hope.
Journaling Prompts
What does your relationship with the Bible look like right now? Why do you think this is? What do you wish it looked like? What would a small first step in that direction be?
In what ways do you see yourself reading the Bible to gain information? In what ways is this helpful? In what ways is it restrictive?
Does the idea that the Bible is a gift of God for the people of God resonate with you? Why or why not? In what ways does this challenge or change what you expect from the Bible?
Practice — Lectio Divina
Do the following alone or with a small fellowship of others.
Lectio: Read Luke 4:1-13 slowly, notice any words or phrases that stand out.
Meditatio: Pause and ponder what God might be bringing to your attention.
Oratio: Respond to what’s been unearthed in prayer with your own words, desires, hesitations, or questions.
Contemplatio: Rest in God’s presence by sitting in silence, receiving His love and peace as a generous gift.
Consider sharing with those in your group or with someone later what God impressed upon you through meditating prayerfully on this passage.
Generosity
In God’s gift of worship, we are caught up in a counter-liturgy that makes us a different kind of people — a political alternative to the world.
Journaling Prompts
Where have you seen the Church lose the plot of Jesus’ story in the way it shows up in the world? Where have you seen it offering a hopeful alternative?
What might it look like to center “worship” on strange fire—forms of worship that seem more powerful or practical but deviate from the story of Jesus? Which of these more common forms are you tempted toward—ideology, morality, vibes, something else?
In what ways does our gathered worship serve as “an embodied counter-vision” of your life in the world? Are there particular moments you find compelling and others you find challenging? Why might this be the case?
Practice — Reflection and Community
Read Hebrews 11-13 and notice the story these chapters place us within.
Take a few moments to ask where living into Jesus’ story in gathered worship resonates with your vision of the world and where it disrupts your vision of the world.
Take some time either at a Redemption Table, or over a meal with a friend, unpacking what you noticed. Listen to their reflections as well.
Spend a moment praying with and for one another.
Generosity
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Recovering a vision for what Church is meant to be begins and ends with Jesus.
Journaling Prompts
When you hear the word worship, what pops into your mind? Where, if at all, does Christ being our High Priest fit into that picture? Consider why that might be.
What is your relationship with “Church?” How does the claim that the Church is necessary as a worshipping community compatible or incompatible with that current relationship? What resistance to this idea do you feel? What relief?
How does worship being something Christ does for us rather than something we do for Christ help you begin to reimagine worship’s place in your life?
Practice — Silent Prayer
Set aside a few minutes of quiet. Draw your attention to Christ mediating you to God and God to you—to the commune you have with Godself in Jesus.
As you are able hold this reality in your mind: in Christ, you are being offered to God, and in Christ God is being offered to you.
Simply sit in that reality. God is with you and you are with God in Christ. In this moment you need not do or say anything, have nothing to prove, nothing to perform—just be with the God who is with you.
Generosity
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In the midst of manipulation and deceit, God sees Leah, hears her, and listens. God elevates the otherwise overlooked.
Generosity
In a world devastated by famine the Widow of Zarephath shows us what it means to be in the care of a God of abundance.
Prompts
A World of Scarcity Where does your life feel like it’s lived in a world of scarcity? Where do you feel stretched thin—stressed, afraid, or at the edge of what you can give?
A God of Generosity How does it strike you that God doesn’t just deal with scarcity from a distance but actually inhabits it? In what ways might this challenge your assumptions about what God asks or desires from you?
A Life of Feasting God doesn’t promise to solve every problem right now, but God does promise to be with us in them—inviting us to live from that place of “with-ness.” How might God’s presence reframe how you see God’s provision and your own scarcity?
Practices:
Living into Generosity
Consider the places where you feel most stressed, overwhelmed, or stretched thin. What might it look like to live into God’s vision of abundance in that very place?
This week is there something small worth sharing—an hour, a meal, a kind word, a resource—with someone else you might otherwise want to hold on to? Rather than tending to your scarcity, consider a small way you can give in an act of entrusting yourself to the God of abundance who is with you.
Generosity:
Eve is best known as the Bible's Original Sinner—but she is also and more importantly the Bible's Original Believer. In the face of loss and hardship, she continues to recognize and testify to God's goodness and God's help. She names her son Cain, saying, "I have produced a man with the help of the Lord" (Gen 4:1).
Generosity:
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The little-known story of Zelophehad's daughters reveals a God who hears and responds to the vulnerable and overlooked.
Journaling Prompts
A God who sees, hears, and reconciles. How does this story invite you to believe that God sees and hears you—and is including you in the reconciliation of all things?
Justice as relational wholeness. How does this shape your understanding of salvation and what God is up to in the world?
Joining God’s work. What would it look like to join God in what God is doing, given his heart for the marginalized and vulnerable?
Practice
Extending the Table
Take a moment to consider who around you might feel like they are on the outside—overlooked, unseen, or unheard. Extend hospitality to them by sending a text, grabbing a coffee, or sharing a meal. Do this not as an act of charity, but as an act of communion—extending the embrace of the God who sees and hears them.
Generosity
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It can feel as if nothing can stand in the way of tyrants and empires. Yet Shiphrah and Puah remind us that God sees the oppression, sees us, and invites us to join the emancipating God—even in small acts of resistance.
Journaling Prompts
Where and how do you see “empire” at work today? Where do you believe God is most present in what you’ve named?
What are the “little bits of good where you are”? How can you show up there as one shaped by the reign of Christ?
Shiphrah and Puah’s resistance was a tremendous act of justice, yet it did not stop the empire’s plans. How does that tension sit with you? How do the larger stories of the Exodus and Jesus help you place this tension in context and speak to your present experience?
Do you struggle to believe that Jesus reigns over all powers, authorities, rulers, and empires? In what ways do you embody this—and fail to embody this—in your daily life?
Practice
Listen
Sit with the claim that Jesus reigns over all powers, authorities, rulers, and empires. Ask Christ to open your eyes and heart to the spaces and opportunities for Christ-like resistance—however seemingly small or significant—in your life right now. Write down what comes to mind, then end with a few moments of prayer
Generosity
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We like to think life with God is neat and quiet. But Tamar shows us otherwise. She refuses to stay in her place or accept her lot—and in the drama, the scandal, and the silence, God is with her, bringing about a story more redemptive than she could have imagined.
Journaling Prompts
What did it feel like to see a woman like Tamar featured in God’s story of cosmic redemption? What assumptions or biases did this challenge in you?
How does the injustice in Tamar’s story—and God’s blessing of her—speak to the responsibility of the community? What might this reveal about God’s heart for the poor, oppressed, and marginalized? Who might be a modern-day equivalent, and how are you being called to care for or include them?
Is there a part of your story that feels “too messy” for God to work with? How does Tamar’s story invite you to believe God might be at work—even there? What doubts or fears come up when you consider that possibility?
Who have you believed God couldn’t be working in or through? What would it mean to expand your sense of God’s mercy and presence to include them? What hesitations or boundaries do you feel around that?
Practice
Respond.
Take a few moments to name the places in your life that feel especially “messy”—complicated, painful, or unresolved. Ask yourself: Do I believe God could meet me here? What emotions or resistance rise up?
Then, spend a few minutes in silence, resting in the presence of the God who sees you, stays with you, and does not turn away from the mess.
Generosity
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Money can be all consuming, a never ending cycle of desire. But Jesus invites us into a way of living free from greed, reflecting God’s divine philanthropy as the church.
Journaling Prompts:
“The alternative to the world of greed is a people capable of participating through worship in the love of the Father for the Son through the Spirit.” - Stanley Hauerwas
Reflect honestly on your relationship with money - do you feel like you never have enough? Do you save to avoid being without? Do you spend out of enjoyment? Be honest and vulnerable before God. He can handle it and loves you through it.
In God’s upside down kingdom, where we share out God’s goodness in giving us what we need - Where do you see opportunities?
Practice:
Gather together and share where God is working, ask the tough questions, listen and pray with one another. We are not meant to do this journey alone.
Generosity:
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A Jesus centered life moves our concern from possessions to people.
Journaling Prompts
Moralism and community
How do you see the idea of putting ourselves at the center of things giving way to moralism at play in your lived experience? What might this look like in a religious context?
Transactional or loving community?
In what ways are you tempted to approach church as a transactional community versus one of love? How might this be an extension of how you think about God?
A Jesus Centered People.
What does a Jesus life look like for you right now? What might further direct your imagination towards that reality in this moment of your life?
Practice
Gather.
Take some time this week to gather with the church over a common table to enjoy one another, share life, and share a meal. Gather some old friends or make some new ones and share a meal together.
Generosity
Jesus invites us to reimagine our relationship to money and how we spend our lives.
Journaling Prompts
“You cannot serve God and money.”
What is your reaction to Jesus’ words? What might be the reason for this reaction to Jesus’ teaching here?
How do you view your work?What would it mean for you to consider your work as an avenue of serving God verses making money?
God abundantly and generously gives us all we need and more—even God’s very self.What might living as if this were true cost you? What would you possibly gain? What might be holding you back from letting go and inhabiting this reality? Explore what might be at the heart of this.
Practice
Prayer.
Explore the roots of your resistance to letting go, is it security, status, coping, something else? Bring this part of yourself to God in prayer. Be real, be raw, be vulnerable. God can handle the real you, that’s the you God loves.
Meaningful Conversation.
This week or next gather with one or two others to sit down and openly share your resistance, questions, desires, and whatever else might have come up for you in reflecting on Jesus teaching.
Consider other practices of gathering, generosity, or thanksgiving which may help you cultivate a Jesus centered life.
Generosity
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In John 10, Jesus reveals that he will sacrifice his body for the sake of his sheep. Let's spend this morning marveling at simplicity. We get to be God's sheep because we have a good shepherd.
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This sermon explores four stories in Acts to demonstrate that Jesus Christ is the active and living Lord of the Church. He is the one leading the mission. His challenge and summons to the Church is: Catch up with what I am already doing.
Eunuch Acts 8:26-38
Paul Acts 9:1-16, 26-27
Peter Acts 10:9-20, 27-35, 44-45; 11:1-4, 17-18
Antioch Acts 11:26; 15:1-19
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In the face of the human concern of image curation, God fully knows us and calls us beloved (not cursed).
Generosity:
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Resources:
Breeze, Jacob. “Jacob Breeze.” Church on Morgan, 25 Feb. 2025, Spotify,https://open.spotify.com/episode/2l9rny8GTTdQEi4GVBPoed?si=ee4503f6499e4877.
Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Anchor Books, 1959.
Kierkegaard, Søren. The Sickness Unto Death. Translated by Alastair Hannay, Penguin Books, 1989.
Koester, Craig R. "The Wedding at Cana (John 2:1–11): Reading the Text in the Cultural Context of Ephesus." Faculty Publications, no. 28, 2017, http://digitalcommons.luthersem.edu/faculty_articles/28.
N.T. Wright Online. “Made in God’s Image.” YouTube, uploaded by N.T. Wright Online, 5 Apr. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8gtYZpnG1Y&t=219s.
Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. Project Gutenberg, 11 July 2001, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1523.
Wells, Sam. “Being with.” YouTube, uploaded by St. Martin‑in‑the‑Fields, 2 Aug. 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2Zci7KBXms.
For so many of us the assumed relational ideal is marriage and kids. But is that where Jesus is taking us?
Journaling Prompts
“In the resurrection, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage…” (Matt. 22:30)
How does Jesus’ statement challenge or comfort you? What does it reveal about your deep longing for love—and how Christ is making all things new?
What is it about your current relationship status (single, married, divorced, widowed, dating, celibate, etc.) that feels like an obstacle to being with God?
In what ways might this part of your life—the thing that feels like a barrier—actually be the place God is encountering you?
Practice
Pray across relational difference.
Think of someone in our community whose relationship status differs from yours. Take a few minutes to pray for them:
• for their flourishing.
• for their sense of belonging in our church.
• that God would meet them in their specific vocation and desires.
Ask the Holy Spirit to reshape your vision of the church—not as a collection of similar life stages or statuses, but as a communion of people held together in Christ.
Resources:
James V. Brownson. Bible, Gender, Sexuality: Reframing the Church’s Debate on Same-Sex Relationships. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013.
Robert Song. Covenant and Calling: Towards a Theology of Same-Sex Relationships. London: SCM Press, 2014.
Jacob Breeze. “Why the Church Calendar? (Parts 1 & 2).” Hymnistry Podcast. Accessed June 23, 2025. https://open.spotify.com/episode/4wEpkY9J1ep30pdOiRr0Fd?si=PZGKF0QmQo2N1IA_ynjcRg.
Sam Wells. “Baptism–not marriage.” https://andygoodliff.typepad.com/files/a-sermon-by-sam-wells.pdf.
Is there such a thing as a healthy Christian sexual ethic? Many of us have shed shame-based teachings, but are still searching for something life-giving. What does sex look like in light of resurrection?
Journaling Prompts
What is your relationship with your body in general—and your sexuality more specifically? How has your theology shaped that relationship, if at all?
From abstinence to activity, what does healthy sex mean to you?
What might a healthy sexual ethic look like within a new creation community?
Practice
Take a few minutes to become aware of your body in God’s presence. Find a comfortable position. Take a few deep, slow breaths. Bring your attention to your body.
Starting at the top of your head and slowly moving down to your feet, notice each part of your body and how you feel in it.
Then, slowly move back up from your feet to your head. As you do, become consciously aware that God’s love includes your body—all of it. Every part. God loves you. All of you. Take a moment of stillness to sit with that in God’s presence. What comes up for you in this practice?
ResourcesBooks & Book Chapters
Browning, James V. Bible, Gender, Sexuality: Reframing the Church’s Debate on Same-Sex Relationships. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013.
Bretherton, Luke. “Chapter 12: Intimacy.” In A Primer in Christian Ethics: Christ and the Struggle to Live Well, 213–230. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.
Oldfield, Elizabeth. “Lust.” In Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times, 151–168. Michigan: Brazos Press, 2024.
Articles and Essays
Williams, Rowan. “The Body’s Grace.” Lecture presented at the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, London, 1989. https://www.anglican.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/the-bodys-grace.pdf.
Rienstra, Debra. “Rowan Williams for Dummies: On Human Sexuality.” Debra Rienstra (blog), September 15, 2016. https://debrarienstra.com/rowan-williams-for-dummies-on-human-sexuality/.
Magazine & Online Articles
“Tinder and the Dawn of the ‘Dating Apocalypse.’” Vanity Fair, August 6, 2015. https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/08/tinder-hook-up-culture-end-of-dating.
“Why There’s No Such Thing as Casual Sex.” Time, March 31, 2022. https://time.com/6160096/rethinking-sex-christine-emba-review/.
Generosity:
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