Let me be CLEAR, we should think about God, and we should even seek to think correctly about God. But we are super complex beings. We have big brains, and we have deep spiritual thoughts and experiences. We ponder things like the meaning of life and what Cheetos are actually made of. We seek the divine and the profane all at the same time. We struggle with sin and we triumph over it. Some of you r...  Read More

Here is a question or two to ponder; does our understanding of God limit God? Is God beholden to the words that we say about God? I guess another way to ask the question is to ask if we create God in the image of our words, or even our own image. What?I know that is confusing. We clearly don’t make images or idols of God for ourselves, but sometimes, our words try to capture God just as much as wo...  Read More

Great question. I have felt like in this series and in this discussion we sort of have to figure out why and how we ask the questions first before we jump into the scriptures. You see, it is too easy for a pastor/teacher to set up a scenario where we simply set up a question and then show you the solution. It is clean, it is nice, and we all go home feeling like there are no loose ends. But is tha...  Read More

Do you follow the Bible? I think we all want to. There was a journalist by the name of A.J. Jacobs, who wrote a book called; “The Year of Living Biblically.” and I got a chance to hear him speak after I read the book. It was fascinating. He was an interesting guy and had written articles about outsourcing his life for a month and other interesting experiences. But on this one, he decided that he w...  Read More

INTROThe following is a guide to help facilitate discussion. Feel free to add or subtract or change questions to fit the conversation, and pray for the Spirit to lead in all things.OPENWhen you were a child, was there something you believed in with all your heart that you later learned wasn’t real?  If so, share what it was and how you felt when you found out the truth?HEADRead John 20: 24-29 and ...  Read More

As we finish this first week of dipping our toes into the deconstruction pool, I want you to understand a bottom line that I think is important: “I can choose to trust God with a childlike trust regardless of how certain I feel.” (Peter Enns, The Sin of Certainty).Quite a while ago, Rob Bell wrote a book called The Velvet Elvis. It was pretty widely acclaimed and seemed to bring in a new era of Ch...  Read More