The Bible is one big story of God's love for us, and that story inspires all the other stories we love and inspires us to participate in what God is doing all around the world today.
Jesus expects us to be able to live like He did, following the commands of the Sermon on the Mount, and trying to become perfect in love, even when it is costly for us to love others.
Jesus calls us to be salt and light and enhance our world by revealing His presence.
The beatitudes are not things we are commanded to do, but rather a reflection of the reality we can experience in the Kingdom of God.
Jesus disrupted the routine of the first disciples when He called them, and often He does the same for us today.
New perspectives on life help us keep our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, and give us hope to hold us like an anchor in the storm.
Just as Paul was thankful for the Corinthian church, Doug lists the reasons he is grateful for First Methodist Carrollton and the strengths we have to offer to our community.
Jesus was baptized not because He needed to be, but so He could demonstrate to us what righteousness is - living in relationship with the Father, knowing that He is pleased with us.
It's a difficult passage, but Herod's slaughter of the baby boys and the flight to Egypt is still part of the Christmas story.
The challenge of Christmas is that God calls us to reach out in love to others, just as He did for us by coming to earth.
God has given us a banner of love, and we need to wave it and raise the standard so people can know His love and hope.
God is the only one who can truly fill us and give us the peace we are seeking, and allow us to bring peace to the broken world around us.
Our whole lives should be lived out of thankfulness, and we are blessed with the opportunity to bless others, even as God wants to bless us.
God calls us to be wise in how we spend our lives and our money, so we can know the abundant life He wants to give us.
We remember the lives of the saints who have gone before us and all those who have impacted our lives, so we can continue their legacy and follow Jesus as they did.
Many of us would like to know with the rich young ruler what we must do to inherit eternal life, and Jesus makes it clear - we must give God everything we have and are and make Him the central focus of our lives.
Just like Zaccheus, we find that salvation is free, but it costs us something to lay down our identity and follow Jesus.
We are called to be faithful and pray without ceasing, even when the world has no reason to hope.
Jesus is looking for those whose lives have been transformed by gratitude, like the one leper who returned to thank Him while the other 9 went on.
The disciples asked Jesus for more faith, but He told them they already had enough - they just needed to put it into action.