Gateway Fellowship

The apostles claim that they had rational evidence based first person experience as warrant for their claims about Jesus and the Father (1 John 1:1-4). What do you believe and why? How do you know what you think you know? And how do we engage people who don't believe what we do?

Stan shared some scriptures, some exhortations, and a dream he had recently.

Some thoughts about God's incredibly beautiful design of masculine and feminine and our calling to responsibly reign in life with God. Genesis 1:26 and following was the primary bible passage.

This chat is from Exodus 19 and 20.

Acts 9 is where the story happens. Here are some observations. Being sincere doesn’t make us right, and that’s the hardest kind of blindness to discern. God can reach the “unreachable.” Encountering Jesus is the single most transformative reality on planet earth. Jesus is alive and active (independent of our involvement or knowledge). Jesus wants to involve us in what he’s doing. Jesus usually communicates the next step, not the whole plan. Jesus calls people by name. Jesus is interested in conversation. Jesus is humble and willing to respond to our questions, doubts, and concerns. Jesus factors our history, personality, strengths, and weaknesses into His equation. Jesus really listens to our prayers. Jesus sees people’s value when others don't. Jesus has a plan for your life. Not just the generic, “love God and people,” but the specific who, what, when, where and how. Jesus wants to guide us into His plan. Our part is to seek him daily so that He can easily guide us into it, st

God's intention is that we become the sort of people He can grant our heart's desires. That requires a transforming process!

This chat is about the story in Acts 5 where Ananias and Saphira lied to the Holy Spirit and then fell down dead.

God's infinite power is incomprehensibly great, but what we need is not so much a display of brute force, but rather the synaptic connections in our minds to be upgraded so that we think, believe, experience, and understand what we otherwise cannot. This chat is from the great prayer of Ephesians 3.

Don't be so rigid. Just doing it ain't really the point.

God won't force this on us, but neither can we do it without Him. Thankfully, I'm never without Him, He's always within me.

What we listen to and say matters more than what we might currently understand. When we tune into and broadcast what God is saying we align with and co-create with God. The sober and contrasting truth is that when we align with and broadcast carnal things we often accidentally destroy! It's so important to saturate ourselves with God's words until they penetrate deeply into our very being.

Something about the doubt of the disciples after Jesus' resurrection really grabbed my heart this year. It's so easy to be hard on oneself for doubts, but even they did -- with Jesus standing right in front of them! And why? I guess because life's taught us that things fall apart, and if it seems too good to be true, it's probably some sort of scam. But that's how good the good news really is. It just seems too good to be true. (But it is.)

This chat is about today; Holy Saturday.

But oh, so important.

Tragedy? Certainly. Gruesome? Oh yes. Difficult to face? For me, definitely. The greatest single sin in all human history? I believe so. But on God's side of the decision it was also on purpose. Jesus walked into Jerusalem, knowing what would happen if He did. What's more, the Father asked him to. The question is, "Why?"

I don't think we stop and consider this enough.

People have -- and need -- some sense of a significant future, even if they have to "live on" through their children, the species, or just the universe itself. Our expectations of the future order our present.

I woke up this morning with Isaiah 50:4 on my heart. "The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary."

These need to be kept together but we often think of them separately or even worse, at odds.

Words create worlds. This chat was sparked by Galatians 3 where Paul says that all who rely on works of the law to find life are under a curse, but those who live by faith are under the blessing given to Abraham.