Calvary St. Cloud

Haggai challenges Israel after the exile to remain faithful to their God and rebuild the temple.

The story of Daniel motivates faithfulness despite exile in Babylon. His visions offer hope that God will bring all nations under his rule.

God providentially uses two exiled Israelites to rescue His people from certain doom, without any explicit mention of God or His activity!

Many Israelites return to Jerusalem after the exile, and face some success alongside many spiritual and moral failures.

Jeremiah announces that God will judge Israel’s sins with an exile to Babylon. And then, he lives through the horror of his predictions.

The Song of Songs is a collection of ancient Israelite love poems that celebrates the beauty and power of God's gift of love and sexual desire.

The book of Psalms has been designed to be the prayer and praise book of God's people as they wait for the Messiah and his coming kingdom.

Ecclesiastes opens up the possibility that, living in the fear of Yahweh, death need not rob life of meaning but, ironically, helps us live a truly good life.

The book of Proverbs invites people to live with wisdom and in the fear of the Lord in order to experience the good life.

Job explores the difficult question of God's relationship to human suffering, and invites us to trust God's wisdom and character.

We learn from Ephesians that Christians need to equip themselves and others for the work of the ministry. Using Sunday morning as the starting point, the maturing of the Church relies on community and discipleship relationships to complete the mission of making more and maturing disciples of Jesus.

Description: Paul's exhortation to the Colossians to be established in faith, reminds both them and us of the union we can have with Christ. If we have been justified, we must also grow in sanctification, not by our own strength, but by the power of Christ at work in us!

God's mission for His people is that we would share his message with all nations. Would you join in evangelizing those in your area of influence?

Zacchaeus was seeking Jesus, just as Jesus was seeking him. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. Do you know this Jesus? Do you engage others with the love of Jesus?

The Book of Psalms has been designed to be the prayer book of God's people as they wait for the Messiah and his coming kingdom. In Psalm 19, we discover a pathway to orienting our lives on the God who promises to make us whole in him.

Zephaniah announces God’s purifying judgment on Israel, the nations, and the world. This Judgment Day will remove evil and open up a new future where all people can flourish in love and peace.

Habakkuk struggles to understand God's goodness in the midst of such evil and injustice in the world.

Nahum portrays the violent downfall of Nineveh and Assyria as an image of how God confronts and brings down his enemies. And this portrayal is a glimpse of God’s final judgment of ALL his enemies, of how this can be good news, and our only hope of escape.

Micah announces that God's justice and righteousness was always meant to come through his people, to bring about his kingdom in a sin-stained world. On the other side of Israel’s failure and exile, that project will be carried out by the long-awaited Messiah King and his followers.

Jonah is a story you thought was mainly about a disobedient prophet, a great fish, and some nasty Ninevites. Instead, in this story we are confronted by the rescuing and transforming love of the Sovereign Savior of the World.