by Mike Adkins | Jan 6, 2023 | Christian Life, Message Series
Every year Webster’s dictionary releases a “word of the year.” It’s a fascinating exposé on pop culture in a single word. How do they choose it? Emotionlessly. The process is based solely on search engine statistics and algorithms that determine which one word...
by Jeanne Harrison | Jan 6, 2023 | Christian Life, Counseling
Stress isn’t an emotion. It’s a physiological reaction to an emotion, like fear or anxiety. I learned this in therapy last year, when my stress reached a tipping point, manifesting itself in chronic chest pain and shallow breathing. I had always viewed anxiety like a...
by Nathan Fowler | Jan 6, 2023 | Christian Life
Is there a better surprise than unexpected goodness? Living in a broken world, one filled with broken people and broken systems, we can come to expect injustice and unkindness. But that’s not who God is. The better we know God, the better we find Him to be. We cannot...
by Mike Standish | Jan 6, 2023 | Christian Life, Family Ministry
You shouldn’t be running in church. My sister and I heard those words a lot growing up. As a kid “sanctuary” was communicated to me as “a place of stillness and silence.” In my mind, church was no place for fun and rowdiness. Sometimes the opposite of “stillness and...
by Kelly Adkins | Nov 25, 2022 | Christian Life
For 28 years of marriage, I insisted on a real Christmas tree, because real trees equaled real joy. We’d travel as a family the Friday after Thanksgiving, hunting and opening and shaking and fluffing dozens of Frasier firs till we crowned “the perfect one.” We’d...
by Jeanne Harrison | Nov 25, 2022 | Christian Life
Reinventing yourself is one of the privileges of growing up. You don’t have to be the awkward adolescent with braces and a lazy eye forever. One day, the braces come off and the contact lenses go in, and you metamorphose. You leave that person behind – the loser, the...