The Book of Ruth

Today I would like to share some thoughts with you about finding redemption from a bitter life. Some things are naturally bitter, like tea or coffee or dark…

I am preparing a message from the book of Ruth on "Redemption from a Bitter Life." Naomi, an Israelite, moves to Moab due to a famine, and there her husband and her two sons die. She goes back to Israel, and she tells people to call her "Mara," which means "bitter" because she is very bitter about her life. Who would not struggle with this in her…

This week I was reading the book of Judges. And if you are familiar with this book, you know that there is a common cycle that the people of Israel find themselves in.

1. They sin by following after other gods--the evil, false gods of the Canaanites.

2. God punishes them by allowing or proactively sending their enemies in against them.

3.…

A lot of my life was centered around fear, mostly running away from fear itself. Even after I became a Christian, I avoided thinking about the fear that lived within my troubled heart. A lot of the ways I stepped out in faith were my attempts to overcome fears. I chided myself with scriptures: "I can do all things through Christ who gives me…

One of our great fallacies as humans is that we forget. Our memories become faulty, and we may misremeber details.



In college my wife and I became really close with a young couple that we knew from choir. We became such good friends that, though they were several years younger than us, it seemed like they had always been in choir with us. For instance, we kept inserting them back into our choir trip to New York, even though they could not possibly have been there then. We…

Story of Redemption 1.1. - "Intro and In the Beginning" (from Love and Creation) from James Nored on Vimeo.

In thinking about and planning for outreach, we often only focus on adults. And yet teens (and even those younger) can be incredible evangelists for…