2010
designed for adversity
dave brisbin | 07.11.10
What does God value above all else? When you get right down to it, it seems that God's greatest value is freedom. Without freedom of choice, there is no possibility of love. God created us in his image--with the ability to decide and choose--so that we would be free to choose love. Which means God risked that at least some of us would not choose love. Did/can God risk anything? If we can't answer that one, we certainly know that we can be at risk. To be perfectly free is to be perfectly at risk. We constantly trade freedom for security, but Jesus is calling us to risk everything to find the perfect freedom that leads to perfect love. It's when w are at greatest risk, facing greatest adversity that our purpose is being fulfilled. After all, we were designed for adversity.
audio [mp3] | duration: 38:17, size: 6.7 mb


god so loved
dave brisbin | 07.04.10
On the Fourth of July, we revisit the Declaration of Independence to consider inalienable rights and the fact that people would rather suffer, as long as their ills are sufferable, than to go through the necessary revolutions in their lives to make things right. Our greatest inalienable right is God's love itself, and yet we suffer without it, without letting it touch off a revolution within our own hearts that would establish a completely new way of understanding and living life and relationship. Our fear is so great that such a love as Jesus describes and displays can't really be our own inalienable right that we live in a poverty never intended for sons and daughters of God's Kingdom.
audio [mp3] | duration: 34:55, size: 6.1 mb


what then must we do?
dave brisbin | 06.206.10
When a young girl in our community dies of a heroin overdose, how are we to react? There are the usual recriminations and regrets and of course the grief, but beyond that, we can only ask as the followers of John the Baptizer: what then must we do? Even as we practice our faith within a community, a group, what we must do is always intensely personal. The core of our faith life is rooted in the tiniest details of our lives; if it is not authentic there, it will never be anywhere else. If our community is built on the lives of each member, if the walls we build around us are flexible enough to live and grow with the growth of the lives within it, then far fewer young girls will ever fall through the cracks of our love.
audio [mp3] | duration: 35:39, size: 6.3 mb


compare not
dave brisbin | 06.13.10
Our parents and our churches, not to mention schools and other institution have always used comparison with others as a means of modifying behavior. Kind of a wonderful mixture of guilt and unworthiness designed to bring us to God's love. The obvious contradiction in terms has the desired effect of changing behavior, but not of getting any closer to God's love. We often spend whole lives trying to be everyone else but ourselves in some attempt to be better than we think we can be as ourselves--to be someone of whom God will approve. But God's message is simple and straightforward: I love you as you are, just because you're sitting there breathing. We can certainly strive to be the best person we can be, but we never have to try to be someone else.
audio [mp3] | duration: 34:26, size: 6.1 mb


camping outside eden
dave brisbin | 06.06.10
In talking about God's call to adventure--the adventure of our lives as he draws us back to himself--there is always the case of refusing to answer the call. At times in our lives, all of us have refused the call and have felt the pain and stagnation that results when we're no longer living our meaning and purpose in life. Having moved outside the Garden, from innocence to self-awareness, we can't go back; the gates are barred. But if we're too afraid to go forward, we remain camped outside Eden's gates, stuck, purposeless. What are the fears that hold us there? Both the micro fears of our personal lives and past traumas--and the macro fears, the increasing tension and breakdown we see in the world around us? Interestingly, the world of the 21st century is not that different from the world of the 1st century in terms of the attitudes and fears of the people living under Roman rule, and the lessons of the first century church can show us how together we can strike our camp and move out in new directions that will ultimately lead us home.
audio [mp3] | duration: 39:14, size: 6.9 mb


looking back
dave brisbin | 05.23.10
Every character in the Bible is understood through his or her ability to answer the call of God's voice to a new level of meaning and purpose in life: Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Paul all answered their calls. But what if the call is refused as it so often is in our experience of life? Adam and Even were expelled from the Garden and prevented from going back the way they came. Their only choice was to move forward and find another way home. They did, but many of us remain camped outside the Garden, prevented from going back by angels with flaming swords--too frightened to move out into the unknown--living as prisoners in a self-imposed, static kind of hell. The stories of Lot's wife and the Israelites fashioning a golden calf speak of the unanswered call, a looking back at an infantile behavior that can never take us where God is leading.
audio [mp3] | duration: 38:47, size: 6.8 mb


heart's desire
dave brisbin | 05.16.10
A wife's tearful concern that her husband doesn't share her desire for a meaningful spiritual life leads a counselor to ask him if he can answer the question, "Who am I?" He has no idea how to answer such a question, which may be avoidable in his twenties, but not in his thirties or forties. That we come to terms with our desire to answer the most basic questions of life: "Who am I?," "Why am I here?," at different times can lead to concerns of being "unequally yoked" in the short run, but the questions will not be denied indefinitely. Living without meaning (who am I) and purpose (why am I here) creates the pain that eventually creates the desire, our heart's desire, to look beyond the life we know, beyond the rainbow, for the truth of our deepest relationships.
audio [mp3] | duration: 38:48, size: 6.8 mb


beautifully imperfect
dave brisbin | 05.09.10
Mother's Day is a good time to weave the Hebrew meanings of father, mother, brother, son with the name of God to reveal the deep relational viewpoint of the writers of Scripture. To understand these human, familial relationships is to understand the nature of our relationship with God. But what happens when our family relationships are less than ideal, less than functional even? And whose family is not dysfunctional in some way? In our culture, we seek perfection as prerequisite for acceptance and love, but what is Jesus trying to tell us? He tells us to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect, yet loves and accepts everyone he meets in the midst of their imperfection. God's love is actually perfected in his love for our imperfection, and when we learn to love our own imperfections and those of others who hurt us and frustrate our desires--we become perfect too. Or at least beautifully imperfect.
audio [mp3] | duration: 36:21, size: 6.4 mb


the beginning of wisdom
dave brisbin | 05.02.10
It's easy to say that we are all God's beloved. Easy to understand the concept, but very difficult to believe in a way that actually changes our choices and lives--especially in the face of the experience of our lives and the fear those experiences engender. And what about that fear? Scripture tells us that perfect love casts out fear, but it also tells us that fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Can both be true at the same time? It's also easy to say that fear of the Lord is really respect, reverence, and awe--all of which are correct, but that would avoid that it really is also fear. Without fear, there can be no respect, but the beginning of wisdom is not to cower at the extended hand of God, but to realize that God will not save us from the consequences of our actions--that respecting those consequences are precisely the rite of passage that will ultimately lead us home to the Father's love.
audio [mp3] | duration: 34:04, size: 6.0 mb


seeking the sacred
dave brisbin | 04.25.10
As we attempt to live the life of the beloved, as we try to seek the sacred in our lives, where are we looking? We form neat categories and compartments in our lives: here is the sacred and here is the not-sacred, the secular. We endure the secular on our way to the islands of sacredness that we see in largely religious terms. What really is a sacred moment? Can we have one or understand one only in the context of church or religious practice? Are our lives only sanctified if they look increasingly religious? The classic confrontation between the religious and sacred occurs when Jesus is asked to the home of a Pharisee for a meal and some questioning. A woman, a well-known sinner, shows up uninvited to bath Jesus' feet with her tears and anoint them with expensive perfume. The reaction of the Pharisee is formed by his religious notions, while Jesus' reaction is embedded in the touch and faith of the woman at his feet. Non-religious, relational, sacred.
audio [mp3] | duration: 37:54, size: 6.7 mb


the way of belovedness
dave brisbin | 04.18.10
How are we to follow the way of our God-given belovedness as a true way of life? What should be our attitude and our stance in life as we follow the Way? If we really are followers of Jesus, then we are also questioners--we understand that knowing the way to the Father's love is primarily experiential, guided by our intellect but not mastered by it. And the experience of life as Jesus would have us live it, is clearly expressed in two big New Testament clues: Jesus' notion of Kingdom [no surprise there] and also, perhaps very surprisingly, the Hebrew customs surrounding marriage: the two-part wedding ceremony of kiddushin (betrothal) and nissu'in (wedding). These two parts of the Hebrew wedding, separated by as much as two years, created a watershed rite of passage in the lives of Hebrew men and women. It showed them, and can show us, how we are to live our entire lives as one big rite of passage taking us from our broken, human state of being to the belovedness with which our Father is itching to shower us.
audio [mp3] | duration: 35:35, size: 6.3 mb


being the beloved
dave brisbin | 04.11.10
A friend asks whether there are any adults left in our society or only children. It seems that the hurts of childhood and the blurring of lines between adults and children in our culture are conspiring to keep children acting childishly long after their bodies have grown up. Why are we afraid to grow up these days? One reason is that we no longer practice rites of passage--celebrations and rituals that mark the big [and stressful] transitions in life: birth, death, coming of age, marriage, baptism, confirmation in ways that incorporate three essential ingredients...separation, transition, and re-incorporation. When Jesus was baptized, he heard the words, "You are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased." He was immediately driven into the wilderness to find out whether that was really true. His separation from his life and loved ones, his transition through the difficulties of temptation and deprivation caused a deep understanding of the unity with his Father that made re-incorporation into his new ministry the end of a journey that proved his belovedness. To the extent we doubt our belovedness, we will fear the adult world. To the extent that we use big transitions in life to practice our own rites of passage, we can prove our belovedness and gracefully grow up.
audio [mp3] | duration: 38:02, size: 6.7 mb


who do you say that i am?
dave brisbin | 03.28.10
Those of us in non-liturgical denominations and churches have lost touch with the liturgy--the annual cycle of common worship that connects each day of worship to the scriptures--events and people that bring meaning and a sense of journey. Each day of Holy Week has deep significance to the liturgy that goes back over a millennium and a half. Palm Sunday begins holy week with the celebration of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem. When he rode into Jerusalem and the authorities winced as people cheered, waved palm branches, cried Hosanna, [hoshiia na--save us, Lord] what were they expecting of Jesus? A warrior-king to overthrow the Romans? A threat to the established order of things? A ticket to the big time once his new kingdom was established? Everyone had a different idea of what Jesus would bring them--how he would save them. As Jesus rides into our lives each day, what do we expect? Or as he asked his friends and asked of us, "Who do you say that I am?" Answering that question is the first step toward answered prayer in our lives.
audio [mp3] | duration: 38:01, size: 6.7 mb


real life, real faith
dave brisbin | 03.21.10
What happens when real life catches us off guard? When a miscarriage takes the promise and dream of a new child away? When unmet expectations in life bring deep longings to the surface and make old girlfriends and boyfriends on Facebook look much more attractive than a current spouse--the path not taken more alluring than the one we now follow? Is there something in our faith that can inform moments like these or is there a disconnect, where faith plays its role only in the spiritual compartments of our lives, never in the gritty streets where we live. Jesus wept that the death of his friend Lazarus. He felt the grief and sorrow that we all feel, even as he knew that Lazarus would rise again. His faith and unity with his Father didn't absolve him from real life and real sorrow, but carried him through to new life. Our faith is only realized in the heart of real life. And our life is only realized in the heart of real faith.
audio [mp3] | duration: 32:31, size: 5.7 mb


michelangelo's horse
dave brisbin | 03.14.10
If we accept the proposition that our lives are fulfilled in service, that our deepest purpose is service--just as Jesus didn't come to be served but to serve--then inevitable questions ensue. What do I do to serve? Will anything I do make a difference? Will I lose myself and everything I've ever wanted to do and accomplish? What about time for me, time to regenerate, refill, recharge. All great questions. To answer is to realize that service is not a program or ministry and especially not an obligation or burden. As soon as we institutionalize service, we've missed the mark. Jesus lived to serve, but took time to go off alone and pray, took time to play with children, and eat and visit with friends old and new. All that is service too. Service is not something out there to to sought and obtained...like kingdom, it's within, among, in our midst. The great sculptor Michelangelo could walk around a raw block of marble and see the finished horse he was to sculpt fully formed as if encased in ice. All he had to do was remove everything that was not the horse. When we've patiently removed all that is not deepest purpose, our lives become effortlessly meaningful, effortlessly serviceful.
audio [mp3] | duration: 38:37, size: 6.8 mb


from ruin to rescue
mike wood | 03.07.10
It's been reported that most Americans are just one paycheck away from real poverty, the real possibility of living on the streets after one missed check. But if ruin is a serious possibility for many of us, so is rebound! Any believer can put Isaiah chapter 54 in their pocket and be confident of their future. This passage is an example of how God comes to our rescue no matter what condition we are in or whatever circumstances we find ourselves in. There is a path from shame and humiliation to one of genuine humility before God which then thrusts us into His grace and restoration. Isaiah 54 is a poem that can help us because it tells us that God will not leave His people in a ruined state. If you feel you’ve ruined your life--abused it through hard living or hard antics, derailed it through poor choices in relationships or finances...look at that ruin again. Assure your heart with this poem that God has composed for you. There is a promise of a second life, a good and righteous life. A life full of hope and dreams and a life full of good and pure things. If you can worship your God as an expression of genuine trust... then for you, rebound is just around the corner.
audio [mp3] | duration: 35:34, size: 6.3 mb


selling the book
dave brisbin | 02.28.10
There is a wonderful quote attributed to Serapion, a 4th century "desert father" and pioneer of the monastic movement within Christianity: I have sold the book which told me to sell everything and give to the poor. Letting that sink in for a moment begins to do things to our inner selves. When Jesus called the first disciples and they "left everything" and followed, what and how much does that really mean? What are the things, however precious, that we are still clinging to, and how are they blocking us from the full expression of our faith and from the Kingdom life to which Jesus is calling? The Bible, the ultimate expression of truth for a Christian, is pointing us toward the Truth, toward God--and at some level, we know that God is not the book and the book is not God, but until we're willing to sell the book and give to the poor, how will we ever know that we know?
audio [mp3] | duration: 30:48, size: 5.4 mb


homecoming
dave brisbin | 02.21.10
A friend relates to me how he was once asked by a Christian whether he "knew Jesus." Not exactly knowing what that meant at the time, he did know that it meant that he was being qualified--was he part of their group, in their club. He was immediately irritated, but also intrigued. Now many years later, the question remains for him. How do we get to know Jesus, know God? Well, how do we get to know anyone? We find ways to spend time together, and if we don't have that time, we change our habits and lifestyle in order to make time if it becomes important enough. It's no different with God. We call the change in habit and lifestyle by a word we now very much misunderstand: repentance. Far from the mere sense of guilt or remorse that leads to an apology or act of contrition, true repentance is simply a change of direction, a change of habitual life practice in order to get to a new destination. And when repentance is being used to turn back toward our God, it is literally a homecoming.
audio [mp3] | duration: 40:15, size: 7 mb


falling with god
dave brisbin | 02.14.10
Why are we often so afraid? And what are we afraid of? A novice skydiver feels fear constantly rising during day-long training in preparation for a first jump. Then clutching at the edge of an open door looking out over 12,500 feet of air, the fear is almost paralyzing. But seconds after pushing off, falling freely, the fear dissipates in the knowledge that a series of events have been put in motion that will end at the ground one way or another--that all that is left to do is enjoy the ride. We are all afraid of making wrong choices. We are afraid of the harm we can do to ourselves or others as we stand clutching the door trying to make up our minds. But the real truth we're missing is that ever since birth, we've already been falling; a series of events having been put into motion that will end at our death one way or another. Embracing the truth that the choice to jump was never ours to make is the first step toward making the choice to simply enjoy the ride.
audio [mp3] | duration: 40:20, size: 7 mb


the breath of god
dave brisbin | 02.07.10
One of the meanings of spirit in Hebrew/Aramaic is breath. Understanding the spirit of God as breath brings his presence as close and intimate as a whisper in our ear. Sometimes it's hard to capture these shades of meaning in our own familiar language and contexts, so are these understandings of God captured in other traditions that can shed new light on our own? Did you know that "aloha" in Hawaiian literally means "in the presence of wind, breath, or spirit?" In an amazing twist, Hawaiian spirituality closely resembles that of the ancient Hebrew. To begin see the breath of God in the slowing of time, love of the land, power of the spoken word, and family and community is to take the first steps toward an intimacy that blows the warmth of God's breath right across our skin.
audio [mp3] | duration: 47:49, size: 8.4 mb


wings of the spirit
dave brisbin | 01.31.10
What is the universal image of the Spirit as conveyed by Scripture? The word itself, ruach in Hebrew, ruha in Aramaic means spirit, but also breath and wind. The spirit is moving over the face of the water in Genesis 1, blows through Jesus' imagery to Nicodemus in John 3 and through the house at Pentecost in Acts 2. Spirit is always moving--unseen, but having great effect, known by its effect, carrying life and motion into every corner of our lives. In the most real sense, the spirit of God is actually the motion of God through our lives; if there is no motion, there is no Spirit. We know we are reborn in spirit when we see its effect in our lives and choices and the quality of our relationships. When we see that our lives mirror the motion of the spirit, when our resources and time are also in constant motion, never bottled up, held back, stored away in fear, we know we've been touched by God's holy wind.
audio [mp3] | duration: 33:25, size: 5.9 mb


sum of all fears
dave brisbin | 01.24.10
When you take all our negative emotions and compulsive drives and put them together, what do you get? The sum of all our fears. And though all these emotions and drives look and feel very different and play out differently in our lives, they all really boil down to one thing..fear. Fear of what? What are we really afraid of? Though there may be an infinite number of answers here too, when you really cut to the bone, we're simply afraid of being alone, afraid there is ultimately no place for us, no love for us, on one there for us. Everything we do to combat that basic fear is just whistling past the graveyard until we come to terms with what the spirit of God is blowing through our lives. Jesus said that it was to his friends advantage that he would be physically removed from them so the helper and comforter could come. It's only when we stop clinging, just for a moment, to the physical supports--the crutches--we've built up around ourselves that we get the first glimpse of what it means to be free of the sum of our fears.
audio [mp3] | duration: 36:40, size: 6.5 mb


calling no one father
dave brisbin | 01.17.10
Our journey, our faith, our lives are intimately our own. No one can live them for us, no one can transfer the results of their journeys and experiences to us. No one should ever try to step between us and our God, and we should never allow someone to do so. Why did God keep Moses from entering the promised land with the people he had faithfully led through the wilderness for forty long years? Why did God call him to die on the summit of Mount Nebo in sight of the land for such a seemingly trivial offense as striking a rock instead of speaking to it in order to produce water for his people? Why did Jesus warn us never to call anyone father or rabbi or teacher? It is human nature to imprint with the physical rather than the spiritual, to place physical people and images between ourselves and God. The story of Moses being removed from between his people and their God and Jesus' warning never to place someone in that position needs to be deeply understood as we move along our own way to the promised land.
audio [mp3] | duration: 40:37, size: 7.1 mb


the way of love
dave brisbin | 01.10.10
What is the role of a pastor or a church? Is it to tell people what to believe, what to think, how to understand their God? If so, then why are there so many different ideas about such beliefs, thoughts, and understandings? If there were one, absolute and correct way to understand God, it seems we should be able to agree by now. Recognizing the diversity of theological concepts, we see the pastoral role not in terms of creating unity of thought, but in fostering unity of intent and action. To model and motivate, to help usher people into contact with God by going there ourselves and allowing people the space and time to do likewise; to create a safe place for people to linger with God and begin to know him and his love is the beginning of a lifelong journey that no one can take for another.
audio [mp3] | duration: 41:50, size: 7.4 mb


2009
entering the story
dave brisbin | 12.27.09
Stories have been told as long as there have been people to tell them and will be told as long as there are people to tell them because stories draw us into new experiences or connect our own experiences with those of others--or both. But a story is just a story if all we do is listen, no matter how raptly. And when stories, such as those in Scripture, are meant to guide us into new ways of living life in God's presence, listening is not enough--we are meant to enter into the story by understanding how intimately it applies to us right here and now--to live the story ourselves. The story of the Magi coming to visit Jesus as a child is a perfect example of a story we easily stand outside and merely observe until we begin to realize the deep meaning behind the wise men, the star, the journey, and the gifts. When we enter the story, each detail relates directly to our own journeys and illuminates our desire to find the king.
audio [mp3] | duration: 37:28, size: 6.6 mb


lying in a manger
dave brisbin | 12.20.09
The birth of Jesus. There is really so little we know about it. A few paragraphs in Luke 2 and Matthew 2...that's it. And yet it's in the smallest details that we can sometimes hear the biggest truths. The small details are the ones that bring a story to life for us--cue us into the fact that the storyteller really experienced the story being told. That the story rings true at all. The small details of Jesus being wrapped in cloths and laid in a manger because there was no place for them in the guest room, is one of those gems that does all the above. Makes the story real, authentic. And more importantly, focuses us on what it means to be laid in a manger, to release any power, wealth, or standing you think you may have in favor of the ring of faces hovering above you. In whom you must now depend. What lying in a manger meant to Jesus is only relevant when we discover what it means to us.
audio [mp3] | duration: 27:41, size: 4.9 mb


what we have to be
dave brisbin | 12.13.09
Who do we have to be to be accepted, acceptable to God? To the church? To each other? People ask questions constantly about tithing, divorce, gifts of the spirit, church teaching, and other such theological or social issues all with the desire to make sure they are complying with God's standards for acceptance. But when we look at the teachings of Jesus and writings of Paul in Galatians and Corinthians we see a very different emphasis--liberty. What does it mean to be free in Christ? What did Paul mean when he said at Galatians 5 that "Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you." (Message) To know truth that liberates is to know something much more than mere meeting of standards or of following rules.
audio [mp3] | duration: 42:28, size: 7.5 mb


extreme acceptance
dave brisbin | 12.06.09
One of the accepted truths or threads of conventional wisdom that Jesus disputed with both word and action was the concept that correct ideas, theology, ethnicity, or behavior are essential to God's acceptance of us. That we need to think or act a certain way, be born a certain way in order to be accepted, to be saved. In Jesus' life and teaching, nothing could be further from the truth. When Jesus sits and eats with sinners: with tax collectors and prostitutes, Romans and Samaritans and every other type of person understood by Jews to be unclean and contemptible, it's easy for us to miss the gravity of such actions. Understanding just how hated these people were in Jewish society begins to bring home the extreme, unwavering acceptance that Jesus practiced across the board. But it's not until we confront those we find most contemptible in our own society--child molesters, rapists, racists, drug dealers--that we can we even begin to understand. Would we see any virtue in our pastor having dinner at the home of a registered sex offender who just moved into our neighborhood? Can our notion of acceptance ever be that extreme?
audio [mp3] | duration: 41:33, size: 7.3 mb


permission to think again
dave brisbin | 11.29.09
It's often the nature of religion to believe so strongly in its own doctrine or worldview that it becomes the all/only of life. But when such truths are handed down from generation to generation, they become changed if they are not accompanied by the personal experience that brought the truths to light in the first place. We fight quite a bit over our truths: which one is right, that all others are wrong--but are we ever experiencing truth anymore? Have we abdicated our responsibility to seek truth in the first person--become willing to accept the heresay of others? Jesus gave those around him permission to think again, and we need to be fearlessly willing to do just that. Jesus questioned the religious authority of his day in an effort to bring his people out of the slavery of a million accepted truths and into the freedom of one living truth. He gives us the same permission, and carefully reading his teachings shows us how very little has changed.
audio [mp3] | duration: 40:35, size: 7.1 mb


god's voice: what, how, why, who
dave brisbin | 11.22.09
A young man asked how he could know whether he was really hearing God's voice, whether the voice he was hearing was really God, or himself telling himself what he wanted to hear. What a question...whole empires, religions, and many personal projects have been launched by a word from God, without a really good answer to that question. Is it just hopelessly subjective? Is there no way to discern whether we are really hearing God's voice? We typically think of God's direction as a "what:" what it is God is telling us to do. But maybe it's more of a "how:" doesn't matter what we do as long as we do it how God would do it. Or maybe the "why" is most important--motive and intent. Or is it the "who" as in who we are following that presides. There may not be hard and fast rules, but there are certainly clues that can help us tune into the sound of God's voice, which once we've learned to trust, even from unfamiliar places, we will never forget.
audio [mp3] | duration: 37:29, size: 6.6 mb


the third rail
dave brisbin | 11.15.09
The third rail of an electric train is the rail that carries the electricity to power the train. You can touch the first or second rails and be just fine, but touch the third rail and you fry. Social security has been called the third rail of American politics, and there is a third rail of Christian theology too...the doctrine of hell. Many who have touched it have fried, but here we go anyway. Let any conversation between Christians go on long enough, and they will inevitably end up talking about heaven and hell--the ultimate expression of our faith. But do we have the terms right? The right images to imagine the afterlife? What does our concept of heaven and hell tell us about our God, ourselves? Does heaven really mean the absence of any need? Then why does Scripture talk about serving and reigning--serving whom and reigning over what? Does God really send us to hell and throw away the key? What does his justice say about his love? Did you know the word hell never even appears in the Bible at all? Let's touch the third rail together and find out if we can survive.
audio [mp3] | duration: 40:23, size: 7.1 mb


the path not yet taken
dave brisbin | 11.08.09
We have a funny view of the future. Sometimes we call it destiny or fate or God's will. Whatever term we use, we're thinking of the future as a road rolling out before us as completely and fully formed and realized as the road behind that extends into the past. We see our future as pre-existing before us waiting to be stepped into like a new pair of shoes, so we squint and strain and try to get glimpses of that future in order to gain some sense of security over our fears of the unknown. But carefully reading Jesus' teaching gives us another view...that the future doesn't exist at all--until the moment it becomes the present. That what we think of as future is really just a cloud of choices, a set of possible futures radiating from the only time that really exists: this moment. Future isn't waiting for us, we create future with each choice we make in the only moment we ever have.
audio [mp3] | duration: 28:24, size: 5 mb


when effect is not caused
dave brisbin | 11.01.09
When circumstances or events occur in such a way that we suddenly see significance or even profound meaning in them, we immediately think that God must have arranged everything just so that we would see his hand in our lives. But if that is so, what about all those other times that we don't see such meaning and purpose? Is God busy showing meaning and purpose to someone else? And what about those times of pain or sheer anguish? Is God bringing those moments to us as well? How are we to understand the workings of our spiritual lives in the midst of the physical? Simply because things occur together doesn't mean that one thing has caused the effect in the other. We tend to view things from the outside in, but God is trying to teach us to look from the inside out. And from the inside out, it is up to us to see the significance in meaning in a life through which God is always speaking.
audio [mp3] | duration: 39:49, size: 7 mb


conversations
dave brisbin | 10.25.09
We all have questions. But when it comes to questions regarding our faith and theology, there is a common thread to those we most want to ask. Areas of dissonance and seeming contradiction are the ones for which we most want resolution. When the practices of the church or the apparent meaning of scripture contradict the unconditional love and absolute goodness of God that Jesus painted for us, we're left wondering who God really is and what we mean to him. Ultimately there are no answers to such questions that can be framed in words. It's only the direct experience of God's goodness that will convince us, but many questions do have answers that will help us to see past the seeming contradiction, give a clear shot again at the Father's love that will beckon us on to that experience. With that as backdrop, Conversations was an open topic question and discussion session with the entire Sunday gathering.
Let the games begin...
audio [mp3] | duration: 46:58, size: 8.3 mb


radical middle
dave brisbin | 10.18.09
Borders are difficult places to maintain. They are places of transition and transformation; sometimes places of tension. Like a coin landing on its edge, it's much easier to flop down on one side or another rather than maintain the balance necessary to stay upright, to remain balanced on the edges of things. Christian tradition has always taught a middle way, a way of sacred tension that keeps us from extremes--because truth is found never at the extremes. But truth is itself extreme. So the middle way, far from being moderate, is extreme...a radical middle. Between our concepts of good and evil as polar opposites, mutually exclusive oppositions, there is a middle approach that rides the continuum between the extremes and allows us to experience the nature of God's love as it defines the radical middle.
audio [mp3] | duration: 39:39, size: 7 mb


undiverted purpose
dave brisbin | 10.11.09
The last line of the Lord's Prayer has always been a difficult one: lead us not into temptation... Does God do that? Lead us into temptation? And whether he does or not, is it possible to pray for no temptation in life at all? Book of James tells us that God tempts no one--that temptations are the vehicles in life that mature us, make us complete. So what's going on? What is Jesus trying to tell us? Once again our concept of temptation and challenge as bad or evil, our concept of good and evil itself mask the message Jesus is conveying. Every figure in the Scriptures was tempted and tested, including Jesus--necessarily so. But when we peer into the Aramaic underpinnings of this prayer we discover Jesus is talking about remaining undiverted from our purpose, from God's purpose, about not being changed or given over to the trial and the test--to be delivered, which to the Hebrew mind was exactly the same as being saved.
audio [mp3] | duration: 40:45, size: 7.2 mb


forgiven debt
dave brisbin | 10.04.09
In the fourth line of the Lord's Prayer we are introduced to the centrality of forgiveness. Along with Kingdom, faith, and love, the concept of forgiveness ranks as the most essential to our ability to live as Jesus lived--to follow his Way. Unfortunately, we have learned a version of forgiveness that has nothing to do with the forgiveness of which Jesus speaks--in fact it actively opposes it. When we think of forgiveness as a legal term involving apology, restitution, and absolution, we've missed the point entirely. Forgiveness has nothing to do with an apology, or amends, or even restoration of a relationship. It has nothing to do with another person at all. When Jesus says that if we don't forgive, our Father in heaven won't forgive us either, and we think that means God is withholding forgiveness as punishment, we reveal to ourselves that we don't understand what Jesus is talking about. Until we come to understand that forgiveness is as free as God's love, we'll never give up our victimhood, and we'll never know that we're as forgiven as we want to be.
audio [mp3] | duration: 38:11, size: 6.7 mb


daily bread
dave brisbin | 09.27.09
In much the same way that kingdom and God's will are equated in the second line of the Lord's Prayer, the third line shows us the relationship between daily bread and daily needs. Give us the bread of our need this day is a much more literal translation from the Aramaic. Bread in Hebrew/Aramaic means any and all provision and sustenance including the understanding of holy wisdom that will supply the needs of any given day or moment. Everything we need is available to us in this moment--and nowhere else, because all that exists, exists only here in this perfect moment. God is everywhere, but everywhere is just one place: this place, this moment, and we find our needs met in the immersion in God's presence herenow, or not at all.
audio [mp3] | duration: 49:56, size: 8.8 mb


kingdom come
dave brisbin | 09.20.09
In the second line of the Lord's prayer, we come face to face with kingdom and find that Jesus is telling us that kingdom and God's will are really just two ways of looking at the same thing. In the peculiar way of Jewish poetry, Kingdom as the herenow quality of life lived in resonance with God's presence and God's will as his pleasure, desire, and deepest purpose are juxtaposed and paralleled to convey that Kingdom is none other than God's deepest purpose actualized, realized. To realize that purpose on earth as it is in heaven is to make that purpose as real in our hearts as it already is in God's. Understood from these deeply Hebrew/Aramaic roots, kingdom come becomes not so much a plea for God to act outside ourselves, but a rallying cry for us to begin the intense work of inner transformation, of aligning our pleasure and deepest purpose with God's own.
audio [mp3] | duration: 36:57, size: 6.5 mb


our father
dave brisbin | 09.13.09
As we struggle with mental concepts of faith and theology thinking we must believe in certain ways in order to proceed with religion or church or our spiritual journeys, we sometimes throw up our hands and ask as did the follows of John the Baptist, "What then must we do?" Just as the rich young ruler asked Jesus what he must to do to inherit eternal life. Straightforward questions often do not have straightforward answers if the goal is to transform our lives and not just obtain more information. We've contented ourselves with a legal, passive, and intellectual approach to God for too long. Jesus is calling us to abandon our whole line of questioning and come to a relational, active, and experiential approach that brings us the connection that really is the "answer" we seek regardless of the questions we ask.
audio [mp3] | duration: 41:17, size: 7.3 mb


the meaning of purpose
dave brisbin | 09.06.09
Still considering the nature of true faith, we look at Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychologist who survived the horrors of the Auschwitz death camp during WWII to write the classic book, Man's Search for Meaning, and to found a psychological school on the notion of "logotherapy" or the psychology of meaning. Any suffering, any difficulty or challenge can be overcome as long as and as soon as a person finds meaning in it and a purpose through it. Meaning and purpose are two sides of the same thing, just as are faith and works. Purpose flows from a sense of meaning the way works flow from true faith. Which comes first, meaning or purpose? Does it matter? Can you have one without the other? The answers all lie in the heart of Jesus' teachings if we listen closely.
audio [mp3] | duration: 40:13, size: 7.1 mb


what then must we do?
dave brisbin | 08.30.09
As we struggle with mental concepts of faith and theology thinking we must believe in certain ways in order to proceed with religion or church or our spiritual journeys, we sometimes throw up our hands and ask as did the follows of John the Baptist, "What then must we do?" Just as the rich young ruler asked Jesus what he must to do to inherit eternal life. Straightforward questions often do not have straightforward answers if the goal is to transform our lives and not just obtain more information. We've contented ourselves with a legal, passive, and intellectual approach to God for too long. Jesus is calling us to abandon our whole line of questioning and come to a relational, active, and experiential approach that brings us the connection that really is the "answer" we seek regardless of the questions we ask.
audio [mp3] | duration: 34:15, size: 6 mb


wwjd: republican or democrat?
dave brisbin | 08.23.09
With a tongue in cheek title like that, where do you go from there? As our culture war heats up, with the divide between left and right, red state and blue state is growing in this country. With both sides of the debate quoting Jesus and the Bible and claiming the moral high ground, and Christians becoming deeply divided and fearful of the future of our country and world, maybe the question isn't so facetious after all. God can't be supporting all sides at once--does he have a side? Jesus gives us pointed clues to how he processes the cultural and political divides of his time. Firstly, we need to understand the terms of our current culture war--what do the terms left and right, liberal and conservative really mean? Where do they come from? Why do they think the way they do? Secondly, looking at Jesus' masterful ability to move between the micro and the macro, between mercy and justice--give us the tools to live well in Kingdom in the midst of a contentious society.
audio [mp3] | duration: 30:45, size: 5.4 mb


first person
dave brisbin | 08.09.09
Great line from a movie: "We're lost...but we're making good time." Is that possible? To be lost and make good time? We focus so much on destination [and as people of faith, on the afterlife] that we miss the time we're having right now. Making good time is really all we need to do to get to any destination God has in mind. As modern Westerners, we bless space and the things that occupy space. The ancient Hebrews blessed every moment with the presence of God--time. The first thing God blesses at Genesis 2:3 is time. When we can learn to let go of the regrets of the past and the obsession with the future, we can make good time--no matter how lost we may feel at the moment.
audio [mp3] | duration: 37:45, size: 6.6 mb


making good time
dave brisbin | 08.02.09
In English grammar, the difference between first and third person is profound. Both first and second person (I am/you are) deal with ourselves and others directly--necessitate a direct connection and experience between us and another. Third person (he/she/it is) allows space and time to intervene, admits any manner of objective disconnect and heresay. Some things in life are not transferrable--they must be lived, first person, to become real in our lives. In the same way a language or musical instrument learned by one person cannot be transferred to another, our faith cannot simply be accepted from another, learned in a book, pledged in a creed. Faith that will allow us to confidently enjoy the moments of our lives, even the difficult ones, comes only from the direct experience and connection with our God--first person.
audio [mp3] | duration: 35:13, size: 6.2 mb


remembering stations
dave brisbin | 07.26.09
We all have moments when we lose sense of ourselves as separate from each other or nature itself. Moments so full, there is no room for words or thoughts to describe them. We view these moments and church time or prayer time as moments when we are filled up with the spirit of God, and we live our lives as we drive our cars--from filling station to filling station, driving until we run out of gas. But instead of filling stations, each of these moments are really "remembering stations," times when we can remember that each and every moment already contains everything we'll ever need to enter Kingdom. We don't need to fill up, we need to remember that we already are.
audio [mp3] | duration: 37:04, size: 6.5 mb


names of god redux
chuck smith, jr. | 07.19.09
Though there is ultimately just one name of of God, the dozens of names given to him by the writers of Scripture amount essentially to "job descriptions" of how he interacts with us over the course of our lives with him. Who God is to us has everything to do with our experience of God doing his various "jobs" in our lives.
audio [mp3] | duration: 54:01, size: 9.5 mb


names of god
dave brisbin | 07.12.09
What is our faith based on? What kind of faith can withstand the most difficult circumstances of life? What are we convinced of, and why? Is what we believe true, or just what we believe? And how do we know we really believe it anyway? All questions that can only be answered from a direct experience of our God. No second hand heresay will ever do. What happens when people embark on a life of direct experience with God both through the course of their own lives and over generations? The names that the ancient Hebrews gave to their God mark their passage to deeper and more intimate knowledge of who he was in light who they experienced him to be in their lives. From El to Eloah/Elohiym to El Shaddai to Yahoveh to Abba, to the dozens of other names describing the attributes of God, the patriarchs and prophets of Israel show us what it means to experience and know God and to build a faith that can't be shaken.
audio [mp3] | duration: 41:45, size: 7.3 mb


fiddlers on the roof
dave brisbin | 07.05.09
Fiddler on the Roof is a play and a film centering around a poor Jewish husband and father in pre-revolutionary Russia who is caught in the transition between two worlds--the old world of his cultural and religious traditions and the new world of his three marriageable daughters and the coming revolution with its anti-Semitic bent. Struggling to maintain his balance and identity is as precarious as a fiddler trying to play on a steep rooftop. What we may or may not understand is that all of us right now are fiddlers too as we struggle through a similar transition between the world we've known all our lives and the world into which our country and our lives are plunging. As everything familiar and comforting seems swept up in change and storm clouds appear on our horizon, what is happening to our faith, our sense of God's presence? Can we, as did Job, persevere through difficult times with our integrity and faith intact? What was Job's faith based on? What is our faith based on? If it's not based on the same thing, we won't get the same results.
audio [mp3] | duration: 38:23, size: 6.8 mb


fathers and mothers and god
dave brisbin | 06.21.09
On Fathers' Day, it is usual to think of our personal fathers, our relationships with them, their effect on our lives, and effect on our view of our heavenly Father. The ancient Hebrews did the same. They saw their God in terms of the every day relationships around them: their families, tribes, nation. It was natural for them to think of their God in terms of their own fathers and their king, but what we've lost sight of is that they also thought of their God in terms of their own mothers and their high priest who functioned in a different, but necessary and complementary ways. God was both father and mother, not male and female, but embracing the functions of both. Hokhma, holy wisdom or sacred sense, was personified as the feminine agent of order, harmony, and a binding together with the father, especially in the book of Proverbs. But we can experience her today just as our father in faith Abraham did as he finally came to terms with what it meant to be both truly father and mother himself in his binding together with God.
audio [mp3] | duration: 34:47, size: 6.1 mb


brides and grooms and prophets
dave brisbin | 06.14.09
A friend suggested that I teach on Revelation and end times prophecy--something I really prefer to avoid as it tends to be an emotional and interpretive minefield. More importantly, in my experience, emphasis on end times prophecy tends to bring fear and paranoia into people's lives. Before you know it, we're hoarding water and food in our basements and garages. But books like Revelation, Daniel, Ezekiel, Matthew 24 and 25, parts of Thessalonians are in the Bible for a reason. What is the purpose of what we call apocalyptic scripture? What's the difference between it and prophetic scripture? If we know that God is love and never fear, then what are we missing of the message these books offer? One answer comes from a most unusual direction: the traditional Jewish wedding. Until we realize how central these marriage customs were to ancient Jewish life and how they described Israel's relationship with their God, we miss the central point of apocalyptic writings--the encouragement of a people under stress and devastation.
audio [mp3] | duration: 43:19, size: 7.6 mb


insulting the dead
dave brisbin | 05.31.09
Everyone wants to be happy, but seems so few of us really are. We even have a hard time defining happiness or deciding whether the spiritual life really should be characterized by happiness or by sacrifice. We chase after so many things in order to find happiness--things that become piled up in our lives and then begin to define us. What really is the path to happiness and authentic spirituality? Are they in conflict? The same? A story from the ancient Desert Fathers of the 3rd and 4th centuries tells of a young monk who asks his abbot about the best was to please the Lord. The old abbot tells him to go to the cemetery and insult the dead. When he has learned to respond to the insults and praises of men as the dead do, he will have learned something about pleasing the Lord. And so will we.
audio [mp3] | duration: 31:59, size: 5.6 mb


neither great nor small
dave brisbin | 05.24.09
It is natural--and seductive--to think that greater is better than smaller, to place more value in something the more we can make it grow, that if something is good, then it's always better if it's bigger. These are natural thoughts and tend to be true in day to day transactions, and so we port them over to our spiritual lives and our churches and other expressions of faith without further examination. But do they actually apply there? Is bigger better simply because it's greater? To enter the realm of the infinite is to infinitely leave the very meaning of great and small. To continue to pursue greatness when that term no longer has meaning is to miss the point of Jesus' message. And if size doesn't matter to Jesus, what does?
audio [mp3] | duration: 36:38, size: 6.4 mb


beyond religion
dave brisbin | 05.17.09
In realizing that a friend's distress was being made worse because he didn't feel God was listening or speaking or was even big enough to fix his trauma, the larger realization became that we all limit our experience of God in our lives by imagining that God only works through religion and religious symbols. Religion is all about God, but God is not about religion. Religion is our way of expressing our collective experience of God, but over time it unfortunately becomes the substitute for that experience, and the symbols of religion become divorced from the deep meaning they were meant to convey. When we only look for God in religious symbols and forms, we miss the allness of God's presence--working through each one of us, as his hands and feet, to be the miracles of his presence we long for and need in our lives.
audio [mp3] | duration: 36:17, size: 6.4 mb


strong water
dave brisbin | 05.10.09
Mother's Day. In the language of Jesus, the word for mother is "em" or "emma," as children would call their mommies. In the fascinating root and pattern system of Hebrew/Aramaic, em literally means "strong water." But because strong water to the ancient Hebrews was the sticky residue that rose to the surface during the boiling of animal hides, a residue that was used as an adhesive or glue, em came to mean "the one who binds the family together." When we think about the roles of mothers and fathers, we realize how true this is. When we look at Jesus' relationship with his mother, at first glance we see a constant tension, a seeming backing away from family relationships. But on a closer look, we can see Jesus trying to lead his followers to the understanding that true family is not just those with whom we share blood, but those with whom we share spirit and truth. Realizing who our true family really is, is the first step to becoming the "strong water" in all our relationships.
audio [mp3] | duration: 39:10, size: 6.9 mb


tears in the rain
dave brisbin | 05.03.09
What is it we see when we look at each other? Most often we expect what we think we see in people, and then we begin to see only what we expect. In self-fulfilling prophecy, we only see the reflection of our own expectations until we begin to see each other with our Father's eyes. Jesus was the perfect model of someone who saw everyone in his path as his Father saw them. He moved to them, engaged them, listened to their stories. From the Samaritan woman to the little tax collector, Zaccheus, Jesus sees beauty and promise where others saw only the reflection of their own hatred. In our personal lives, every time we break through our expectations, people reveal the richness of their lives to us in undreamed of complexity and passion--at times in the least likely containers. If we don't take time, if we don't care to see and hear, if we don't learn to see with our Father's eyes, all those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
audio [mp3] | duration: 30:46, size: 5.4 mb


a perfect moment
dave brisbin | 04.26.09
Seems that over the last four weeks since Palm Sunday, we've stumbled into a series focused on seeing life and love through the Father's eyes. Jesus tells us to be perfect, as our Father in heaven is perfect. What does that even mean? How can we strive for perfection as humans? Well, was Jesus perfect? We answer "yes," without hesitation, but the scriptures tell us that he "grew in wisdom and stature," so that means he had to learn. Being perfect does not mean being without mistake--it means being filled up and complete, able to live our purpose in life. Jesus did that, and we can too as long as we stop looking to the future for our fulfillment and completion. A perfect moment is not a moment without mistakes, it's a moment that is not leading to any other moment; it's a moment that fills up all the space in head, heart, senses, soul. It's a moment so full that there's nowhere else we need or want to be--a complete statement that leaves us perfectly content. String enough perfect moments together, and you really can have a perfect life.
audio [mp3] | duration: 32:11, size: 5.7 mb


washing feet
dave brisbin | 04.19.09
Looking back at Holy Thursday, the day the church remembers the Last Supper, we dug into the significance of Jesus washing his disciples' feet. This is pretty standard, boilerplate stuff in Christianity, the set piece for humility and servant leadership. But so far removed from the original setting by time and culture, we completely miss the impact of such an act. Putting the ancient eastern custom of foot washing back into it's original context, we see it again as one of the lowest and most disgusting tasks in Hebrew culture. When Peter refuses Jesus' offer, he is operating through all his entrenched beliefs and expectations of Jesus' kingship. He is completely misunderstanding Jesus' message and method, and Jesus tells him he has "no part with him" until he does and can. We are no different. We idolize the powerful and dismiss the lowly, we aspire to greatness and miss so many opportunities to see the value in simple service. Most importantly, we walk right past a God who would wash our feet, serve us, in favor of what we expect greatness to look like.Until we begin to see with new eyes, we have "no part" with God or Kingdom at all.
audio [mp3] | duration: 35:21, size: 6.2 mb


easter sunday '09
seeking the living
dave brisbin | 04.12.09
Probably the most important question that can be asked in terms of the Resurrection is the question Mary and the other women are asked as they arrive at Jesus' tomb early in the morning of the first day of the week: "Why do you seek the living among the dead?" It's a key question because it implies a role for each of us to play in the unfolding drama of the resurrection. Why was it that Mary and every other follower recorded in the scriptures as having encountered the risen Jesus was not able to recognize him until a key moment opened their eyes? The Resurrection wasn't real for them until they learned to see with new eyes, learned to look in new directions. What is it about their, and our, expectations and beliefs that keep the Resurrection from being real for us, keep us looking for Jesus in all the wrong places--among the dead--when he is really right here with us now among all this living.
audio [mp3] | duration: 35:10, size: 6 mb


good friday '09
the shape of our journey
dave brisbin | 04.10.09
Jesus is recorded in the four Gospels as having said seven things as he hung on the cross. Seven is a perfect number in the ancient understanding where every number had a meaning and every word had a corresponding number. These seven sayings form a perfect cycle that gives us a shape to the spiritual journeys of each of our lives...if we read them carefully enough. Looking at each saying in the context of its number-meaning and the action implied in its intent, we find two perfect cycles of three--the three ways God reaches out to us and the three ways we reach out to God--with a choice in the middle that makes all the difference. Although the Good Friday presentation wasn't recorded, you can download and read the script by clicking the link below.
text [.pdf]


palm sunday '09
in the midst of plenty
dave brisbin | 04.05.09
On Palm Sunday, we looked at the story of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, which kicked off the final week before the crucifixion. Setting the stage in terms of the political and religious unrest of that moment brings into sharp relief all the hopes and dreams and dread and fears that were directed at Jesus in that procession through Jerusalem's streets. What was the significance of the donkey, the palms, of "hosanna" itself? What were the people of Israel, their religious leaders, the Romans, and the closest followers of Jesus thinking and feeling, hoping, and fearing about Jesus and what that would mean to their lives? And most importantly, what about our own hopes, dreams, and fears about what Jesus means as he rides through the gates of our lives? If our vision is clouded by what we want or fear from Jesus, we will miss our opportunity to see the truth that will make us free.
audio [mp3] | duration: 35:10, size: 6 mb


the twelve steps
[01.11.09 - 01.29.09]


the smallest things
dave brisbin | 01.04.09
On the Sunday after our annual Christmas Caravan to Mexico, delivering thousands of toys to needy children there, the realization of how we really experience life begins to sink in. As in the unfolding of the day of the Caravan, we experience our lives one moment, one detail at a time--not in an overview or executive summary where the highlights or the "big story" or the list of accomplishments is the focus. We tend to describe the forest as we think about our lives, but we live them one tree at a time. And as we look for meaning and spiritual significance in life, if we can't find it in the smallest things, then we won't find it at all.
audio [mp3] | duration: 35:37, size: 6.3 mb


2008
sermon on the mount
[09.02.07 - 12.28.08]


christmas '08
beautiful chaos
[12.21.08]
At our Christmas Gathering, we took a different approach by dedicating the whole gathering to a look at theeffect of children on our lives and our ability to love in the most difficult circumstances. Starting with Jesus, Mary, and Joseph we peeled back the curtain of time to step into their shoes and see how their lives as parents were not so different than ours--that their dynamics and loves and fears are ours as well. In readings from parents across the country, we glimpsed intimate slices of the lives of parents deeply in love with their children as they worked through the difficulties of their lives. Life is often chaotic. Children are chaos personified. When we learn to see the beauty in the chaos, then we have learned the message of Christmas: that God has come to live among us as a beautiful, chaotic child and when we embrace the child, we find Emmanuel--God with us.
audio [mp3] | duration: 39:15, size: 6.9 mb | text [.pdf]


creatures of a broken heart
dave brisbin | [12.07.08]
If you cannot speak of ocean to a well-frog, the creature of a narrow sphere, then how do you speak of perfect love to a human being--the creature of a broken heart? The well-frog can't comprehend a limitless expanse of water when he's never experienced anything beyond the cloying, cylindrical space of his home. Neither can a human being, who's never experienced anything beyond the broken promises and dreams, betrayals and woundings of his or her home, comprehend the presence of perfect love. And all of us have broken hearts to one degree or another--no one escapes childhood unscathed. But unlike well-frogs, we have a choice as to where we live, and once we have glimpsed the ocean over the edge of our own particular well, everything changes forever.
audio [mp3] | duration: 30:32, size: 5.4 mb


no degree, no regret
dave brisbin | [11.23.08]
We often worry about being too radical when it comes to religion or faith. We fear straying into error or heresy. But when it comes to the nature of God's love, the danger is not that we may be too radical, but not radical enough. The age old question, "What must I do to be saved?" assumes much more than it asks. Why do we assume there is something to do? What do we assume about salvation that we think it's something that needs earning? When we find the nerve to get really radical with God, we begin to understand that everything God has is already ours, that there is no degree to God's love--it's always indiscriminantly flowing at full blast. And that once in the flow of that love there is no possibility of regret.
audio [mp3] | duration: 37:41, size: 6.6 mb


rite of passage
dave brisbin | [11.16.08]
So much of our traditional religious teaching has led us to believe that our spiritual journeys are essentially passive. That we dedicate ourselves to God and wait for our reward in heaven. The romantic notion of "you complete me" in our personal relationships spills over to subconsciously persuade us that something outside of ourselves fulfills and completes as if by osmosis. We say Jesus came to die for our sins, but we forget that he also came to live and to show us how to live in love. The very words for Kingdom in Hebrew/Aramaic show us the nature of the partnership between us and God that is necessary for transformation. There is a coming of age, a rite of passage we all need to negotiate to learn just how fearless we can be, and just how active this journey with God really is.
audio [mp3] | duration: 44:00, size: 7.7 mb


following your bliss
dave brisbin | [11.09.08]
If God's will is not a "what" but a "how," and if with the right "how" any "what" will always be in the center of his will--then what do we do with our lives? All things being equal--follow your bliss. But what does that mean? And isn't that really selfish? Doesn't God require us to sacrifice for him and for others in this life? There are so many cultural and religious barriers to simply living our lives abundantly as Jesus was trying to show us, that few of us every really do. Following our bliss is not in opposition to living in God's will--just the opposite. Following our bliss--the things that we are passionate about and naturally good at and love to do--with the right "how" is the intersection that makes our lives a living prayer.
audio [mp3] | duration: 38:12, size: 6.7 mb


finding god's will
dave brisbin | [11.02.08]
About the most frequently asked question of pastors in counseling is, "What is God's will for my life?" A better question is, "What do we mean by God's will?" Understanding the nature God's will is the first crucial step toward discovering it. Most of us tend to believe that God has a specific plan, a perfect plan for our lives, but for some reason he's not telling, so we must try to find out what that plan is and execute is perfectly or our lives will always be less than he intended. What pressure. Would God play hide and seek with something as important and precious as his will for us? Of course not. God has made his will painfully clear, we're just looking in the wrong spot. What if God's will is not a "what" at all? Not a plan or a thing to do, but a "how" a way of living that will put us in the center of his will no matter what we do? God's will for us is always hiding in plain sight.
audio [mp3] | duration: 37:22, size: 6.6 mb


inside the well
dave brisbin | [10.26.08]
What does it really mean to change one's worldview? Why is it so difficult? A worldview is the hardest thing in our lives to change, because we don't see it as something that needs changing. We see it as reality itself--as just the way things are. Our worldview is the air we breathe and the ground on which we walk. Until we realize that reality itself is being colored by the worldview through which we experience it, we will never see the need to change it. "You cannot speak of ocean to a wellfrog, the creature of a narrower sphere..." Jesus is trying to give us glimpses of what lies outside our wells, the self and culturally imposed limit of our awareness. Understanding there really is another there out there outside our wells is the first step toward the freedom truth will bring.
audio [mp3] | duration: 40:07, size: 7 mb


passionate common sense
dave brisbin | [09.21.08]
Whenever we commit ourselves to a certain school of thought or or invest great amounts of time in a church or religion, often it becomes easy to stop seeing the forest for the trees, to lose sight of the obvious. Sometimes one of the first casualties of our allegiance and faith is our common sense. What is common sense, and what part does it play--should it play--in our faith and spiritual journey? When the Gospels are read from their original context, they and Jesus' message are full of common sense. In a very real way, our common sense is God's gift to us--a trail of breadcrumbs that will lead us back to him, back to Kingdom, if we will not abandon it and will let it do its job in our lives. Once our faith is divorced from common sense, we are capable of any and every inhuman behavior--passionate common sense is at once our way back to God and our checks and balance along the Way.
audio [mp3] | duration: 44:30, size: 7.8 mb


in an instant
dave brisbin | [09.14.08]
The experience during the week of hitting a neighbor's dog who darted into the street as he drove by not only changed the topic of this message, but brought home the fragility of life to Pastor Dave--that the things on which we spend years and countless hours and energy in order to build up desired circumstances in our lives can be gone, wiped away, in an instant. Though we try not to think of life in this way, deep down we know that it's true, and we're terrified of the uncertainty and fragility of life. We spend most of our effort trying to control our circumstances through sheer will and through prayer. But in an obscure Gospel passage in which Jesus tells us that people will not pair off in marriage in the next life, we find Jesus pointing us toward a love that has no degree and no exclusivity: a love that is so consummate that it is almost alien and inhuman. But it is this love, and this love alone, that can allay our fears and allow us to enjoy the ride of a life that can always change in an instant.
audio [mp3] | duration: 36:24, size: 6.4 mb


god and circumstance
dave brisbin | [09.07.08]
Following on from the previous message on Answered Prayer, the prerequisites Jesus lays out to pray "in his name," "according to God's will," and others really mean that we first know who Jesus is--not what Jesus is, but who he is. Who is Jesus really? How did he move through the moments of his life in relationship with those around him? Through clues in the New Testament, especially in the John 9 story of Jesus healing the blind man, we begin to see how Jesus viewed his life and the circumstances surrounding him. And through these clues, we can begin to see how we should view our own, and begin to move into better position to be the light to others that Jesus was to everyone with whom he came in contact.
audio [mp3] | duration: 40:47, size: 7.2 mb


signs of life
dave brisbin | [08.24.08]
With a new puppy as the metaphor for life, we look at life as being warm, wet, squirmy, noisy, messy, annoying, fragile, vulnerable, dependent, heartbreaking and beautiful and precious and vital--all at the same time. What we eventually learn about life is that we either take it all or leave it all behind. There is no picking and choosing of only the parts we like, and life never alters its course or composition for any individual. The secret of life is to see it as it is and make friends with it as it is--live it on its own terms and learn to enjoy the ride. In the famous passage at John 3:16, which we have so often seen as a mere formula for acceptance into the heaven of the afterlife, we begin to see Jesus as not being given only to die, but to live vibrantly and fully, to show us how to love and live fully and perfectly, to give us all the opportunity to scamper after him in that same vitality and completion.
audio [mp3] | duration: 33:13, size: 5.8 mb


parting of the way
dave brisbin | [07.27.08]
Took some time to look at the history of the early church and the split between Synagogue and Church that had completely separated the first Jewish followers of Jesus from the first Gentile followers by the middle of the second century--only a hundred years after the crucifixion. From there, the Western church sank into a gradual anti-Judaism that quickly became an anti-Semitism that fueled the rampant persecution of Jews in Western Europe during the Middle Ages only to resurface with Nazi Germany. Knowing the reasons our church has been completely divorced from its Hebrew heritage and roots explains much as to why we no longer have a Jewish context for the teachings of Jesus and the writers of the New Testament. We then use the example of Jesus' teaching on divorce and remarriage as a prime example of how our reading such passages from a non Hebrew mindset has caused centuries of misery for people living under burdens Jesus never intended.
audio [mp3] | duration: 40:11, size: 7 mb


practicing the presence of God
[06.15.08--06.29.08]


shining like the sun
dave brisbin | [06.08.08]
Attempting to relate how easy it is to lose focus in the day to day details of life, to get lost in the forest for the trees and miss the important things. I almost passed up the chance to say goodbye to a friend dying of cancer because of the crush of my workload, but my wife brought me back to my senses just in time. It's so easy to forget who we are and why we're here, to miss the connection we all share as humans and children of God, or as Thomas Merton put it, it's so hard to help any of us understand that we're all walking around shining like the sun.
audio [mp3] | duration: 37:30, size: 6.6 mb


things unseen
dave brisbin | [05.18.08]
Looking at the nature of relationships as they change over time and especially when people move physically in and out of our lives. How are we to understand the permanence of love and relationship when human relationships are so fragile? Looking at Jesus' words in John 14-17 as he is trying to prepare his friends for his death and comfort them in their fears, we get a glimpse into the mind of God--how he sees us and his relationships with each of us, how life and love lives on regardless of whether it is seen or unseen, and how the spirit of God is always unseen and yet as real as our next breath.
audio [mp3] | duration: 32:03, size: 5.6 mb


forty days
dave brisbin | [05.11.08]
Since we baptized five people that Sunday, this message took a deeper look at the meaning of baptism and then at the totality of our spiritual journeys. Looking at the differing beliefs about baptism, one question emerged: is our "salvation" an event or a process? Does it come all at once at baptism or some other time or is it "worked out" as Paul wrote. Immediately after Jesus was baptised, the Spirit drove him into the desert for forty day--what was the significance of that time before he began teaching? And what does it mean to our lives and our journeys?
audio [mp3] | duration: 32:44, size: 5.8 mb


back to the garden
dave brisbin | [05.04.08]
Here we picked up the thread of trying to get our arms around the notion of God's perfect love with a new image and different perspective. Often our view of life and its difficulties and pain becomes the standard by which we judge all reality, including God--the notion of perfect love goes out the window and our lives are characterized by the fear of not knowing whether we are accepted or acceptable. But if we put our stake in the ground at the point of the Father's love and interpret everything from that perspective, the character of our lives begins to change. Getting back to the garden, the place where we once walked in the cool of the evening with God, in unity, not even knowing we were naked--to make that choice to be one again is the spiritual journey of Jesus' Way.
audio [mp3] | duration: 40:53, size: 7.2 mb


a friendly universe
dave brisbin | [03.27.08]
Trying to pin down the essence of the Way of Jesus, of the spiritual journey. When Albert Einstein was asked what was the most important question that his work could answer, he replied, "Whether the universe is friendly or not." And he was right--not just about his work, but about each of our lives. If we can't answer affirmatively that the universe is friendly--that there is an intelligence, a God who knows us and cares about us and is on our side--then our lives will always be lived in fear. Only perfect love casts out fear. Without a deep belief in the constancy and unconditionality of the Father's love, we really never set foot on the Way.
audio [mp3] | duration: 28.06, size: 4.9 mb


boxes within boxes
dave brisbin | [04.20.08]
How do we identify ourselves--who and what do we identify with? Our identification with our groups or our roles in life run deep and powerfully direct our paths. They are boxes in which we live--boxes within boxes... We're not always aware of these identities we have for ourselves, and we don't always consciously choose them, but regardless, to the extent we identify with a group or a role, we limit our ability to identify with God as pure spirit, and with each other as brother and sister.
audio [mp3] | duration: 35:49, size: 6.3 mb


the fat end of the telescope
dave brisbin | [04.13.08]
Looking at the age old question of destiny and predestination, and how those concepts are often connected to our notion of God's will in our lives. Culturally, we tend to think of God's will as a specific plan God has for us that is part of our destiny--or at least the best possble use of our lives. If we can't figure out or execute that plan, then our lives are destined to be less than God intended. Obviously this creates a lot of pressure in our lives, but is this really what is meant by God's "will." When we look at Scripture and the essence of Jesus' teaching, a very different picture emerges. What really is God's will for our lives?
audio [mp3] | duration: 35:39, size: 6.3 mb


the fifth way
dave brisbin | [04.06.08]
A follow-up to the previous Sunday's message on hearing the voice of God in our lives and how our expectations drive our experience of that voice. The Fifth Way, borrowing the main thesis from Pastor Dave's book, looks at how the tactics and strategies we use to advance ourselves and manipulate our physical circumstances in this life get mixed in with our understanding of our spiritual lives--compromising both. Seeing the Way of Jesus for what it is--a completely different way of approaching God's presence in our herenow lives--a Fifth Way unlike any of the first four we use daily to cope with life, is the first step along that Way.
audio [mp3] | duration: 35:35, size: 6.3 mb


expectation and effect
dave brisbin | [03.30.08]
What does it mean to hear God, to feel his presence? How does God interact with us? Does God speak louder and clearer to some and less so to others, or is his communication with all of us exactly the same? And what of the heroes of Scripture? Did they have an unfair advantage over the rest of us when God was speaking through burning bushes as opposed to what we get today? We touched on all this and looked at the case of John the Baptist, who lost his certainty of Jesus and his ministry as well. What happened to John, what happens to all of us? And how do our expectations of what and how God speaks affect our experience of him? God is the same yesterday, today, and forever--and that's a good place to start.
audio [mp3] | duration: 35:31, size: 6.3 mb


easter '08
i have made all things new
[03.23.08]
The program from the Easter Gathering was not recorded, but if you'd like to read through the script, it is available here. Through a "theater of the mind" production, we looked at the personal emotions and challenges facing the first followers of Jesus immediately following the crucifixion and through to their understanding of the Resurrection. Those stories were then connected to personal stories of transformation and rebirth in those around us.
text [.pdf]


in our right minds
dave brisbin | [03.16.08]
A famous neuroanatomist has a stroke in the left side of her brain and experiences the sensation of not being able to think about her thoughts, of having no language to describe her experience, of having to live the moments following her stroke rather than think about them. Our left brains, the hemisphere that processes linearly and methodically, thinks in language, is all about past and future, and is the voice that separates us from the present. Our right brains, the hemisphere that processes only the stream of sensations that constitute the present moment, thinks in images, has no filter, no objective capacity, and is always part of the stream of consciousness. We need our left minds in order to be human and to live as humans in a human world. But we will never be fully human until we learn to live the better part of our lives in our right minds.
audio [mp3] | duration: 38:16, size: 6.4 mb


colors of god
dave brisbin | [03.09.08]
Reminding us that there is only one source of physical light in our world--the sun...and only one source of spiritual light as well--God. The difference between a religion and a cult, between an expression of God and an experience of God is always the rebirth of a transformed life. Where we see such transformation, healing, restoration, recovery--we are seeing the effects of the light of God. Each transforming life carries a part of that light and Jesus is teaching us to see the light and hold it close, undistracted by the religious or cultish trappings that continue to separate and divide us as people of God.
audio [mp3] | duration: 33.47, size: 5.9 mb


life abundantly
dave brisbin | [03.02.08]
What was Jesus' view of life and spirituality? Looking at a very difficult passage from MT 11, where Jesus says that "the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence and violent men take it by force." What in the world is he talking about? How does that square with anything we know of Jesus and his Kingdom? Like forensic detectives, we look for clues through both the Old and New Testaments to find the clues to Jesus' original intent that points us toward living life abundantly--breaking through barriers to find life, challenge, and freedom in open pasture.
audio [mp3] | duration: 26.41, size: 4.7 mb


message in a bottle
dave brisbin | 02.24.08]
In the context of Jesus' teaching on old and new wineskins, we look at the difference between the message (content) and the bottle (container) by examining the way we process information as individuals and as a culture. The youngest among us process information in an EPIC way, that is: experiential, participatory, image-based, and communal--all active and immersive processes. When we understand that the ancients and Jesus were also EPIC, the fact that we in the middle typically process in a non-EPIC, passive way highlights the transition we need to make to fully understand Jesus' message as opposed to any bottle in which it may come.
audio [mp3] | duration: 38:28, size: 6.8 mb


a muscular spirituality
dave brisbin | [02.17.08]
We look at the sum of Jesus' teaching in the first part of Mt 6 and looks at how we as a society and we as a church have allowed ourselves to become passive in our dealings with life--passive aggressive, even. It's this psychological and spiritual passivity that leads to a permanent victimhood where all empowerment to live as Jesus is leading us becomes impossible. When Jesus tells us to put our treasure in the things of heaven, it's a call to actively immerse in those things that draw us and the Father together. There is no substitute for action in Jesus' Way; it's a muscular sort of spirituality..
audio [mp3] | duration: 36:14, size: 6.4 mb


sacred tension
dave brisbin | [01.20.08]
Looking at the definition of peace and the spiritual journey from a different perspective. The Way of Jesus is not meant to imply the absence of tension in life--just the opposite. One measure of really following Jesus is the presence of a "sacred tension," the purposeful balance between what we typically see as opposites, but really are two sides of the same reality. Looked at this way, the borders in life become the uncomfortable places of transition and transformation that are the hallmark of Kingdom. I feel this is a key concept--please take a listen if you missed it...
audio [mp3] | duration: 38:15, size: 6.7 mb


2007
following the star
dave brisbin | [12.30.07]
Continuing the thought from the previous Sunday (The Star of Bethlehem), we look at how we can follow the star of our desire for more perfect relationships with God and each other. Using concrete examples from scripture and life, we discuss how to break through our own insensitivity, uncertainty, and complacency to take a journey as the Magi did to find truth.
audio [mp3] | duration: 41:40, size: 7.3 mb


christmas '07
star of bethlehem
dave brisbin | [12.23.07]
The gospel of Matthew gives us the story of the Magi following the star of Bethlehem. What was that star? Scholars and historians have been fascinated with that question for two milennia now, but no one really knows. Was it a miraculous star, a comet, supernova, conjunction of planets? Others contend it was an astrological alignment that may only occur once in 40 million years. But even more possibly, all this misses the point. What was it that drove learned gentiles from another race, culture, and kingdom to seek a new king in far off land, and to accept that king as a infant in the unlikeliest of circumstances? Following that star has many implications for our lives right herenow.
audio [mp3] | duration: 35:44, size: 6.3 mb


christmas truce
dave brisbin | [12.16.07]
The Sunday messages, "Christmas Truce" and "The Star of Bethlehem" look at Christmas through the eyes of WWI soldiers locked in the trenches of the Western Front and the amazing, spontaneous truce struck by those British and German soldiers--and through the eyes of the Magi who followed a star across the no-man's-land of desert, culture, and religion to lay themselves down before the truth they found in a speechless, poor infant.
audio [mp3] | duration: 40:09, size: 7 mb


three faces of god
dave brisbin | [11.25.07]
"Three Faces of God" looks at the supreme difficulty of changing our worldviews--about the hardest thing a human can do. And yet, Scripture is demanding just that from us--in fact there are three major wordview shifts recorded in the Old and New Testaments that came completely out of blue sky to three towering figures in Scripture. The message is that without a personal, realtime relationship with God, such worldview shifts aren't possible, and without shifting our worldview, we just can't know out God.
audio [mp3] | duration: 38:27, size: 6.8 mb


orange colorblind: micro and macro
dave brisbin | [10.28.07]
Visiting a drug offender in prison, waiting at the window for him to come to the other side of the glass, a young woman a few seats down is speaking to her husband/boyfriend--and the look in her eyes and the animation and smiles as she speaks makes it clear that she is completely blind to his orange jumpsuit. The law can only see the offense, and punishes in the macro according to its standard. A young woman loves in the micro regardless of offenses or macro standards. When we begin to understand that our God is orange colorblind too, we can begin to relax knowing that he looks at us and smiles like a young woman with her man.
audio [mp3] | duration: 41:17, size: 7.3 mb


all i have is yours
dave brisbin | [10.14.07]
Why do so few people reallly see the connection between themselves and others? Often we can connect with those in our own family or club or religion or race, but then see all others as other. How big is our bubble of connection, who does it contain? If it's small, why? Is it fear of limited resources--that we need to secure for ourselves and our own first at the expense of others? When the older brother of the prodigal sons complains to his father for throwing a party for the returning wayward boy, his father simply says that "you are always with me, and all I have is yours." What part of "all" don't we understand? If we already have all there is to get, why are we outraged to discover that everyone else already has all there is too?
audio [mp3] | duration: 30:57, size: 5.4 mb


the problem of evil
dave brisbin | [08.19.07]
The message is called "The Problem of Evil" and it really was something we needed to discuss, since we're exposed to some really difficult and truly evil behavior in our lives and in the media. How do we deal with all this? What does it mean in terms of how we should treat and feel about each other? And what does it say about God's nature and love? How we deal with the problem of evil in our lives and the world has everything to do with how we view God, each other, and the bigger problem of love.
audio [mp3] | duration: 42:27, size: 7.5 mb


entirely ready
dave brisbin | [08.12.07]
Through a connection between Jesus' teaching in the Lord's Prayer and the sixth step of AA, we examine our readiness for change in our lives--to be delivered from evil.
audio [mp3] | duration: 41:34, size: 7.3 mb


father's day
dave brisbin | [06.17.07]
Here we look at the Hebrew concept of family roles and relationshps that is actually encoded right into their alphabet and language, and how that understanding of family was used by Jesus to begin to teach about the relationship we have with our Father God.
audio [mp3] | duration: 26:27, size: 4.7 mb


inner circles
dave brisbin | [06.10.07]
If you want to know the quality of your relationship with God, if you want to know how securely you are living in Kingdom, look no further than the quality of your relationships with others. And not just any others, but those closest to you, those with whom you hang your toothbrush. The innermost circles of relationships tell us all we need to know about our ability to live and love as Jesus lived and loved.
audio [mp3] | duration: 27:28, size: 4.8 mb


starting where it hurts
dave brisbin | [06.03.07]
We think of negative emotions as "bad," but are they really? Anger, envy, jealously, guilt, even anxiety and stress are the indicators that something is wrong. Like a hand on a hot stove, the pain tells us it's time to move. Negative emotions tell us it's time to move too--to make different choices to see things a different way in order to live a different way. When there are so many choices and so much uncertainty, where do we start? Starting where it hurts is the best way to be relevant and prioritized in our life choices.
audio [mp3] | duration: 33:01, size: 5.8 mb


getting god's punchlines
dave brisbin | [05.27.07]
We often take our spiritual journeys very seriously. That's fine to a point, but if we can't see the humor in life, if our love remains all hard work and no play, then we're missing the point of God's nature and Jesus' message. When we can stop white-knuckling through life and start to enjoy the ride, when we realize that there's always another party in God's pocket and he has an infinite number of best friends, we can start to live as if God has whispered a joke in our ear that breaks us into laughter every time it comes to mind.
audio [mp3] | duration: 32:27, size: 5.7 mb


that's why we're here
dave brisbin | [05.20.07]
At our first regular Sunday Gathering, we lay out the basics of what theeffect is all about and what principles and models we intend to follow in order to become recovered and transformed enough to "live theeffect of God's love" in all the moments of our lives.
audio [mp3] | duration: 52:30, size: 9.2 mb


being here
dave brisbin | [02.13.07]
If you're here, you're not anywhere else. Seems such an obvious statement as to be nearly absurd in its uselessness. But really, it makes an all important point. Because we can only be one place at a time, whenever we say yes to one thing, we say no to everything else. Our presence anywhere says that of all the places we could be and of all the people we could be with, we choose you-here-now. The gift of our presence is the gift of our time, which is the gift of ourselves. Understanding the nature of this gift is the first step toward valuing our presence and making our presence valuable.
audio [mp3] | duration: 29:02, size: 5.1 mb


2006
freedom and forgiveness
dave brisbin | [12.03.06]
Freedom, liberation and forgiveness are the same word in Aramaic: sebaq. To really understand forgiveness is to understand that to be forgiven is to be set free and to be set free is to be forgiven, but the real understanding comes when we begin to realize who is doing the setting free.
audio [mp3] | duration: 30:13, size: 5.3 mb


hero
dave brisbin | [11.05.06]
The hero's journey, that story humans have told themselves over and over in all our myths and legends, has a shape to it that mirrors the journey to which Jesus is calling us. Learning something about the shape of that journey can help along the Way.
audio [mp3] | duration: 36:18, size: 6.4 mb


last daze
dave brisbin | [08.06.06]
In all the hype, confusion, and maze of interpretation about biblical prophecy concerning the last days, what is real, what can be trusted, and what is really important?
audio [mp3] | duration: 50:36, size: 8.9 mb


many are called--few choose to be chosen
dave brisbin | [07.02.06]
When we begin to understand that we are all being called by God, we begin to understand more about God's love and nature, and that the choosing belongs to us.
audio [mp3] | duration: 52:13, size: 9.2 mb


between expectation and circumstance
dave brisbin | [06.11.06]
Everything we need to be either deliriously happy or abjectly miserable exists in the space between expectation and circumstance.
audio [mp3] | duration: 49:23, size: 8.7 mb


enjoying the ride
dave brisbin | [05.07.06]
Life really is supposed to be fun. What's no longer good enough about the Good News that we're not enjoying the ride.
audio [mp3] | duration: 55:31, size: 9.8 mb


hard choices
dave brisbin | [04.02.06]
How do we make the hard choices in life, the really agonizing ones? Thinking in different directions about God's will and the nature of prayer, and looking at Jesus' decision-making process can really help.
audio [mp3] | duration: 41:21, size: 7.3 mb


the shape of the journey
dave brisbin | [03.05.06]
Every person's spiritual journey is unique, but every person's spiritual journey has the same shape and the same markers and milestones. Learning the shape of our journey helps us to gauge process and progress along the Way.
audio [mp3] | duration: 45:33, size: 8 mb


the fifth way
dave brisbin | [02.05.06]
There are four basic ways that we as humans navigate through life--trying to get what we need and manipulating circumstances in our favor. But Jesus is showing us a fifth way, completely out of phase with the other four, that will take us everywhere we really want to go.
audio [mp3] | duration: 51:26, size: 9 mb