Podcasts

What does it mean that Jesus 'did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped' and how do we live that out in our own lives?

We wrap up the series in Ecclesiastes by looking at the multiple refrains throughout the book telling us to enjoy life and ask how we balance the enjoyment Solomon pushes us towards and being generous to the needs around us.

Solomon turns in Ecclesiastes to consider some facts about life that don't make sense if there is a good God that is in control. Among those are the grave injustices that occur in our world each day. This week we consider how we respond to the times in life when it just hurts and there doesn't seem to be a reason why.

Solomon has determined that he won't finding ultimate meaning in life by looking inside himself, so now he turns to God to find answers. And he finds a God who is sovereign, which is a good thing, but not always an easy thing.

Solomon reaches a point of despair as he realizes that, for all he's accomplished, everyone dies and all we've worked for goes to someone else. It is a healthy reminder that our life here is temporary and a call to consider the implications of that fact.

This week we watched Solomon chase after pleasure using all the things that our culture still offers up today: alcohol, stuff, servants, sex and status. And we listen again to the warning that, if we're not careful, we'll waste our life chasing after something that isn't there while missing the joy we were created for.

As we start our series in Ecclesiastes, we are asked the question, 'What do we get for all of our efforts under the sun?' We are asked to take a step back, look at our activity in light of time and nature, and ask, 'What's the point?' And we are warned that if we're not careful, we will invest our lives in nothingness.

We wrapped up our Vision series talking about the importance of spiritual authority in our lives and our church. And we felt it important to talk about this because our vision calls for us to give so much of it away. Listen as we see what Scripture says about the problems we all have with authority, the reason it is a good and necessary part of our lives, and what it was meant to look like.

The church is referred to as the body of Christ. "What does that look like?" "How does it happen?" Pastor Jason takes a look at what scripture says on this issue regarding the Church as a whole and how it plays out as a value within Visio Dei.

This week we looked at a way of understanding the gospel in our time. This gospel should be creating a humble people who are growing in their understanding of God's grace and dreaming of the kingdom He will one day bring to earth while working to make it a reality right now.

What you believe the gospel is, the central message of the Bible, will determine what type of Christian you become. Just as the early disciples presented the gospel differently to the Greeks and the Jews because they were radically different cultures, the church today needs to examine whether the way we are presenting this 'good news' needs to be adapted to our changing culture.

Too often, we over-emphasize the truth of the Scriptures at the expense of emphasizing Jesus as the way, the truth and the life. In the process, the invitation to follow Jesus gets overshadowed by an invitation to believe the right things. Today we look at the idea that the Bible is the true lense through which we understand the Truth, who is Jesus.

Apologies for not podcasting the rest of this series. That decision was made for some confidentiality reasons, but if you'd like to hear the rest of these talks, email jeff@visiodei.org and i'll mail you a cd. This week Hugh Hollowell talked about how God took him on a journey from being a successful stockbrocker to becoming a guy who hangs out with homeless people for a living... really.

We wrap up our Timothy series talking about the importance of 'giving' in the life of a follower of Christ. Our culture is pretty good at teaching us to find our identity in the things that we own. Paul's answer to this problem is a radical step away our obsession with 'getting' and a radical step forward into a lifestyle of 'giving'.

Learning is important... but the goal of our learning should always point us towards love. Let's take a look at Pauls words to Timothy regarding what's important to remained focused on regarding our faith and life. Even still, when instructions aren't enough... we need an example of Love to be insired by. We can find it in the story of scripture.

We all have a set of assumptions and attitudes we bring to the circumstances we deal with each day. Paul encourages Timothy and his church to let the core teachings of the gospel shape those assumptions and attitudes.

The last question we tackle in this series is a difficult one. How could a loving God send people to an eternity in hell? We look at the complexity of this question and examine the idea that people may choose to spend an eternity apart from God as much as God chooses it for them.

This week we looked at the exclusive claims of Christ and their validity. It's easy to say, 'All religions lead to the same god', but when examined, the major religions say some very contradictory things about god and how god relates to man. Can they all be talking about the same god?

One of the ways God helps us understand our relationship with Him is to refer to Himself as our Father. On Father's Day Jeff talked about some insights he's gained about his relationship with God through being a father to 3 small children.