The Source Houston

We are struggling with the concept of joy in the face of something ending.

And it’s not the ending we want, but it’s the ending we need. We don’t like change, but if you want to work towards the goodness of God, if you want to see that good ending, it takes being a person of purpose, love, and hope.

Ken asks, “do I really hate endings?” Sometimes good endings catapult us to more joy! Sometimes the problem is that we can’t have the ending AGAIN.

Sometimes the only things worse...

How many of us when we look at any institution do we say “I trust that”? The more people that are involved, the less we want to trust it. Institutional trust is at an all-time low. It’s a hindrance, not a help.

In the meantime depression, anxiety, isolation is on the rise. Too many people are trying to do it alone - because it does not feel safe to do it together.

Somehow we have to create spaces that defy the distrust of organizations. And we have to be brave enough to realize that the on...

At the heart of what we struggle with, so many times, is that we do not believe transformation can take place. We don’t believe we can fix what’s wrong without money or power that we don’t have.

We want to see transformation in our lives, we want to see change for the better. But we feel like we’re not in a place to make that happen.

When we talk about abundance, we get uncomfortable. It’s all surrounded by our belief about what it takes to have abundance. Because the world has a defi...

Nehemiah knew the immense pain that his people were going through, and so he sought to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem.

Because he knew that if people are ever going to switch from a life of survival to a life that is thriving, they need a sanctuary.

If we want to be witnesses to the deep love of God, we need to be a people who create sanctuary.

Nehemiah 2:9-12a, 15a, 16-20; 4:1-9, 13-15

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As the church prepares for a massive vote on the future of the church, Lance returns to the Book of Acts and the story of Pentecost. “When we talk about membership in the church, it comes from this passage,” he reminds us. “We are part of one body.”

God is calling us to a Pentecost moment, to be all together, one body, one movement, a light shining brightly on a hill. “Movements begin with faith, not certainty.”

On the day of Pentecost, the disciples got busy praying.

We need a Pentecost moment, too. But it can o...

Lance often is asked for things by his children that aren’t the best for them, and after turning them down for a long time, he’ll allow them to discover the downsides for themselves.

Free will comes with choices. But it doesn’t shield you from consequences.

When God tells that He knows the plans He has for us, sometimes it doesn’t feel like good news. Sometimes it’s not exactly what we were hoping for.

But God has a bigger purpose in mind than anything we could ever imagine.

Jeremiah...

When I hear the words “good news,” it feels good, doesn’t it? At the church, we love it.

When we say “good news,” what does that mean?

The idea of good news as something perfect, as paradise, feels good to say. But if we’re honest, something that feels good to say doesn’t make the world not gray.’

How often does the bad news weigh so much heavier than the good news?

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

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Ken doesn’t stay up for New Year’s Eve anymore. But the year has begun, and he’s not going to lean in with a soft start. And the scripture today isn’t a soft scripture.

Every time we think about this star, we think about the journey of the wise men, but Herod saw something different. Herod saw a threat.

Matthew 2:1-12

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The shepherds waiting in the field were at the bottom of society. They were the forgotten, the unknown. They had no reason to believe that they rated a grand announcement of the birth of the Messiah.

Sometimes, we wonder, “is the light of Jesus really here?” The shepherds got their answer in a dramatic fashion, ours may be more understated - but the answer for both of us is the same.

The shepherds remembered that Israel’s greatest king had been a shepherd himself.

A humble beginning doesn’t mean that God doesn’t have gra...

Peace is something we often say that we want. But how often do we chase after it?

How often do we define peace by the terms of idleness? Yet idleness is something we’re very uncomfortable with.

How often when we’re being called to be patient, we really don’t want to hear that word?

How often do we confuse patience with idleness?

James 5:7-10

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In your early childhood, you learn to deal with anxiety, and that learned response carries over through your whole life. We think that the solution to anxiety is in our personality, but these things are formed for us long before that.

So now, what do we do?

Maybe dealing with anxiousness is not about our learned response, and it’s something deeper than our personality. Maybe there’s something that shapes us to be the people that we are called to be.

Philippians 4:4-7

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Righteousness is one of those words where we’ve lost its significance. It’s so far out of reach we put it out of our minds.

But Paul is telling us there is no difference between righteousness and love. To live justly is to live rightly. To live justly is to love steadfastly.

Look outward. Yes, it’s about Christ in you, but the question you should be asking is “how is Christ in them?”

Philippians 1:3-11

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As we journey to hope, sometimes that can be complicated.

Hope is one of those things that feels good to say, but when we look for it, can be hard to find.

It’s so easy to believe we can’t. How many things get in the way?

Plus, Ken tells the story of getting ripped off at the Alamo.

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

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What if someone came up to you and said ‘you’re one of them’?”

We build places of trust and belonging based on the idea that there has to be a them. But what we’re doing is distancing ourselves in order to feel a little safer in this world.

Faith in Jesus, being one in Christ, is something so much bigger than an ‘us and them’ reality.

Galatians 3:23-29

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Today’s message is from the Book of James, and that means that Ken is continuing his lifelong goal to get the church to love the Book of James as much as he does.

James 2:14-26

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Nothing can stop the story of the love of God. Not even a fire alarm.

Mark 12:28-34

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As we hit the crest of this political season, it’s easy to just pick a bad guy, or to not care about what happens. Unfortunately, our faith, whether you want to believe it or not, is super political. Politics is just part of what it means to be human.

But Ken wants to be very clear: the ethic and life of Christ does not begin at the ballot box. That’s not where faith begins. Faith begins with people who want to look to Christ to live a life that is rooted and established in love.

What does it mean for us to be grounded in God through Christ?

The writer of today’s scripture highlights this three different times, to let us know that being grounded is not just important, it is intrinsic to our being, it is the foundation of all things.

1 Corinthians 3:5-23

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Ken went for a hike with some friends, and came across a massive tree, deeply rooted. And wondered what it would be like to be such a tree, with roots deep in the ground, fed by a babbling brook.

To relate to it, he tells the story of Jeremiah, who is struggling to be a prophet of God. Because prophesy has never about prediction, it has always been about purpose. And what Jeremiah wants to see is God’s purpose.

We are on a long journey. But as we seek God and his purpose, our ro...

We have spent the summer walking line-by-line through the Apostles’ Creed, trying to learn and understand our faith. And now, that we’ve come to the place to live it.

If this is where we have rooted our entire lives, are we proclaiming it?

Mark 8:27-30

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Sometimes it’s just important to take a look. And this is going to be a “take a look” Sunday.

Today’s sermon is about the resurrection of the body, and that’s a tricky subject to answer questions about. Because we can understand what the resurrection of the body meant then - but what does it mean to us today?

1 Corinthians 15:12-14, 20-23, 35-50

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Kathrin Meier, the director of Neighbors In Action, an organization that works in Port Houston, a 97% immigrant community that is 98% low income, visits The Source to talk about what it means to partner with a community in need.

“We think we take Jesus to the poor, but we really find him there.”

Ken follows and continues the message.

Matthew 25:31-40

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When we talk about forgiveness, it stirs us up, right at the very the heart of things. It reminds us of the forgiveness we need, and the forgiveness we need to give.

And those who feel like they don’t need to ask for forgiveness tend to elevate themselves over the people they view as worse.

How do we talk about forgiveness without stirring up feelings of shame and guilt?

Matthew 26:26-29

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Continuing our series on the Apostle's Creed.

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When we study the Holy Spirit, we often we try to narrow it down and make it so simple, that we miss out on the best parts. But the truth is so much more robust than we can imagine.

The Holy Spirit shows us that our God is not a distant God. He advocates for us. And even in the darkest hours, where we feel isolated and alone, the Holy Spirit is with us.

John 14:15-20, 25-26; 15:26-27; 16:7-15

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As we recover from the damage of the Hurricane, Amanda explains that while we know what it means NOT to have power, the same power that raised Jesus from the grave is the power that’s in us.

When we find yourself in challenges, we need to think, “…but, God.” God is big enough, powerful enough, for anything we encounter.

What does it look like when we’re a slave to fear, a slave to our addictions? It means we cannot be who God intended us to be.

…but, God.

Ephesians 1:17-23, 2:4-7<...

“What makes a bad thing become a good thing?”

Have you ever looked back at something terrible that happened to them, and seen the way it turned out to have become a good thing in the end?

1 Corinthians 15:1-8

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Ken breaks down how through the crucifixion, Jesus became our high priest. He is the restorer. But he took the lowest form he could when he did it.

“If you are going to participate in the life of Jesus, it is impossible to separate from a call of being a family. You cannot do it.

There is no taking hold of the grace of God and rejecting your brother and sister.”

Hebrews 2:10-18

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In today’s sermon, Ken’s digging into a verse that has sometimes been used by the church to marginalize and hurt other people. But this is not not just an indictment of what other people have done - Ken wants to show us how easy it is for the people of the church to hurt each other.

John 18:28-19:16

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One of the major themes we see in scripture is God as love, God as compassion. And in Jesus, we see that expression, so that we might come to know that fully.

A lot of times we float right past Advent and go to Easter. But not today. Today we focus on the divine intersection of God and man, of the eternal and the temporary.

Colossians 1:15-20

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Ken remembers the playground teeter-totter from being a childhood - the use it was designed for, and the way it was used for chaos instead.

But it captures how many times unity feels so close to us - we can almost touch it, and yet we can’t.

Ken mourns that teeter-totters are mostly gone now. Because there’s a joy in watching a child wait for someone to join them, to create community together, and then to see the dream realized.

Philippians 2:5-11

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As we continue through our series on the Apostles’ Creed, Ken wants to give us some perspective today.

Depending what we’re going through, our world is small or kinda big. And the world can get so big that it overpowers us, and we lose hope.

Astronauts see the world from space, and it changes the way they interact with it for the rest of their lives. There’s something profound that happens if we are willing to let our world be expanded.

Isaiah 40:10-14, 18-31

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When Ken was studying scripture in seminary, he had a professor who would always turn him back to the text. “Let it be fresh. Read it again.”

So Ken asks us to take the story of the Prodigal Son and read it again, and let it be fresh. Because it’s an easy story to miss the boat on. It’s not the story of a son - it’s the story of two sons, and of a father. Of selfishness, and self-righteousness. And learning to recognize the true message of God as Father.

Luke 15:11-32

When Jesus meets with Nicodemus, he is stuck. He sees who Jesus is, but he can’t get past the practical and see what’s really happening. That’s our challenge, too.

God hasn’t just moved, he is MOVING, he is here and now WITH us. And our invitation to that is through His Son.

God is calling us to look out into the world and recognize that we’ve been given a foundation. We can look out into the world and seek the deeper questions of life.

John 3:1-17

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This is Ascension Sunday and Senior Sunday, and Ken finds some similarity between the two. Graduating high school closes a chapter, but it’s not an end - it’s the beginning of something else.

When Jesus returned from the dead, the disciples thought he would restore Israel, but instead, he’s suddenly gone, like David Blaine. The disciples are left stranded, sure that this is suddenly the end. But they’re wrong. There’s something they’re not expecting on the horizon.

Acts 1:1-13

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Ken considers an unexciting day of the week, when it’s just another Tuesday, and the world is getting you down. We meet the disciples after Jesus has been resurrected, as they are fishing, believing that the remarkable part of their lives is now over.

Because sometimes things don’t end the way you want them to. Sometimes they just end.

But sometimes when you think that you’ve been forgotten, you can discover an unbelievable amount of love. Sometimes a Tuesday doesn’t have to be just another Tuesday.

John 21:1-14

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In the story of Doubting Thomas, Ken feels that Thomas gets a bad rap. He’s not asking for anything extra, all he asks for is what everyone else already got. He wants the same resurrection experience as everyone else.

“How many times in the life of our faith do we feel like everyone else is experiencing a resurrection life, and we are missing out?”

John 20:19-31

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What dwells in your heart? Seriously, ask yourself that question today.

Sometimes it feels like we’re just playing 20 Questions with ourselves to figure out who we really are.

Luke 24:36-48

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The distance between Good Friday and Easter is waiting for us, because we know the end. But for the disciples and Jesus’ followers, it was just pain and loss.

But when they get to the tomb, they don’t find what they were looking for. Their plans of grieving are interrupted by by an amazing Word of God.

Luke 24:1-12

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