There is something really, really important, that sooner or later you need to know about life. And that something is this: there is always something. Like, in your life, and in my life, in a good life, or a bad life, there is always, always, always, [...]

Quick show of hands. How many of you have ever heard of the phrase hashtag goals? Ever heard that before? Now if you are an Instagram user, that should sound pretty familiar. Or couple goals, or relationship goals. If you are about my age, you know, [...]

I wanna take you back, all the way back to 1863 when an escaped slave named Gordon was darting through the fields of Louisiana with the scent of onions on his dark skin. He had been running for 10 days, fleeing from his master, a cruel slave owner [...]

So, here's my question. Do you ever argue with God? I do! For a couple of years now, I have been arguing with God about money. One of the things about being a pastor downtown, at a church like this, is that every single day, outside of my [...]

Brothers and Sisters, we have an extraordinary God. And he offers extraordinary blessings and he still has great plans to do extraordinary things through me, through you and through us. But, please... please, do not forget this one thing. In the [...]

A couple weeks ago, I asked our church family kind of a dangerous question. And the question was this. If you absolutely had to, what grade would you give your prayer life? Now a couple of you called me out on that question. And you're the ones [...]

Have you ever wondered that before? "God, I'm asking you for a good thing. I've prayed once, twice, fifteen times about something I know You care about, but You haven't answered me yet. God, why don't You answer good [...]

A quick show of hands. How many of you have ever packed into the back seat with your parents or maybe packed your kids into the back seats or have just gone on a road trip with friends and have driven through the mountains? Anyone done that before? [...]

Well, I have to admit that I have a love, hate relationship with Christmas. I really love Christmas as a Christian and a pastor because you are all here. It's like my Christmas present to look out and see zero seats available; to know that [...]

So if you had to finish the sentence here on the screen with just one word, what word would you pick? Christmas is a time for blank. If I gave you just one second to think it in the back of your head, could you come up with a one-word answer? [...]

The other day, I was cleaning out a desk in my basement and I stumbled across a picture of my babies when they were just babies. And apparently, when they were totally terrified of the photographer at the mall. It made me so happy when I saw this [...]

So if you had to describe Christmas with an emoji, which emoji would it be? I'll give you a couple options. You could choose from stressed, kind of sad, and super happy. If you ask most people in our culture, the ideal answer, what Christmas [...]

So in your mind, what makes a Christmas a classic Christmas? Like what traditions and what experiences, what songs, what shows, what movies make you feel like this isn't June and this isn't September; this is the month, this is the season, [...]

Today, I wanna wrestle with a really important question. And the question is this. Why are Christians so different? When it comes to sex, why is the teaching of Christianity so different than the teaching of our culture? 'Cause you know, by [...]

A few weeks ago, I sent a survey to the members of our church family, and part of the survey said, "If you could ask God any one question about sex, what would that question be"? And you know what the most common response I got to that [...]

Did you that in the Bible, there is a time when God's people tried to be spiritual but not religious? It's called the book of Judges. And it was kind of like a 300-year experiment where people believed in God and they still prayed to God [...]

It didn't take long to figure out why this guy was spiritual, but not very religious. I was having pizza with my dad and this older couple that we had just met the other day. And my dad and I were kind of giving each other some grief and I was [...]

Does your church tell you the truth? This week we've been wrestling with being not just spiritual, but having some kind of organized religion around Jesus. But that begs the question: Is that religion right? Does that church tell you the truth? [...]

Give me one reason I should come to church. That's what my soccer teammate dared me to answer the other day. I was casually trying to invite him to come to our church and and he stared back and me and said "Give me one good reason". [...]

What does Jesus think about people who are spiritual but not religious? People who pray but they don't have a personal pastor. They have like a personal relationship with God but they don't have an official membership with a church. I bet [...]

Some people would say that there are few things more important in life than trust. More important than finding a special someone or getting married or having kids or starting a business or finding great friends is finding the kind of people that you [...]

A guy that Michelangelo personally knew, Biagio da Cesena, he had a close connection to the pope in those days. And Biagio was not the biggest fan of Michelangelo's work. But Michelangelo, instead of taking the criticism well, instead of being [...]

It is a life changing sentence and I can't wait to share it with you. But before I do, I have to tell you about one thing and that thing is the power of presence. I'm not talking about birthday presents or Christmas presents; I'm [...]

If there is one thing that soccer lovers and soccer haters can agree on, it's that lying is bad. And no one on planet earth lies more than a bunch of soccer players in an important game. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Diving, the [...]

Did you know many years ago, before I moved to this city, Appleton, Wisconsin, someone put an explosive device outside of our Planned Parenthood? Because for many people, this is the issue; the issue we have to go to war for. The issue we have to [...]

If you don't know much about my family, my wife Kim and I have two girls, ages 12 and 11; they're amazing, they're beautiful, like I cherish and love them but can I tell you something about those kids? They were a boatload of work. [...]

When it comes to the issue of personhood, what's your position? If it was just me and you and a cup of coffee and I said when do you think you became a person? What would be your answer? And if I pushed you a little bit to defend it, like why [...]

Some of you have had abortions and many of you haven't. Some of you have walked that road with your sister, your niece, your daughter, your best friend, or your roommate and for others of you, it's simply a theoretical conversation. Some [...]

Many years ago, a woman from my church came to my office with her children and she told me about the abuse. She confessed in a really hushed and meek tone what her husband and what the children's father had been doing in their home. And it [...]

As we dive into this topic, we can't just speak to those who have been hurt but also to those who have hurt. What does God say to you? To us? It kind of makes me think of this guy that I know who's in prison. A guy who saw us on TV and [...]

There is one issue that I haven't yet touched. I haven't planned a whole sermon series about it; in fact, I don't think I've preached a single message on it. And that something is abuse. I was thinking back the other day why that [...]

About six months ago, I got an email from a Christian who is studying to be a chemist and she described to me how she felt stuck; stuck between the truths that she had grown up with in her church and the theories that she was now learning in the [...]

How about you? Nobody's perfect; not even kids. But don't we do good things? Like if our hearts aren't good then why do we have all these Hallmark moments from kids, from grownups, from Christians and non-Christians? We love, we give, [...]

When I was a kid, I had lots of questions about God. That's why during my teenage years, maybe my sophomore, junior year in high school, I challenged myself to actually read this entire book from cover to cover. And after I did, I had way more [...]

Recently a Christian, like many of you, asked me a really unique, insightful question. And the question was this. "Is God not perfect because he doesn't have perfect children"? That's kind of an understatement, right? God's [...]

Does baptism save you? The other day in church I was talking about the blessings of baptism, reading certain Bible passages. And someone texted me the question, I want to get it word for word, they said, "Salvation comes through your [...]

So here's the toughest question I've had to answer in a long time. Can a person lose their salvation? Can someone who's forgiven, saved, adopted into the family of God, like if they took their last breath, boom. They're out of [...]

The other day I got a really great question from a grade school girl at our church. And it's a question maybe you've wondered about in your life too. The question was, "Where is heaven"? She had heard me talk about heaven as not [...]

Why would God allow good kids to die? That's the heart of a question I got the other day in church. And it was about the story of Job. Have you read that part in the Bible before? It's really weird to be honest with you. It says that the [...]

Recently, I got a really good question from a member of our church. A question that you might have asked too. The question was this. "Is it a sin to drink or do any kind of drug"? I was thinking of the complexity of that question and I [...]

Have you ever noticed how common cremation is? When I was growing up, thirty, forty years ago, I remember most funerals happening in a certain way. And just in my lifetime, I've sensed that things have shifted. Not just in other countries or [...]

What should I do if my family doesn't believe in Jesus? That was the question that someone recently asked me. A parent said, "I'm concerned for my kids, for their spouses. I know I should pray but according to God, is there anything [...]

I got one of the toughest questions I've heard in a long time the other day. The question was this. "How do you talk to someone about Jesus if you're pretty sure that their parents, who are deceased, are not with Jesus"? Like you [...]

Who's ready for a tough question? I hope you are because someone posed a really tough question to me the other day. They said, "Do our loved ones in heaven watch over us?" and "Are guardian angels real"? Now, I've had [...]

I've heard conflicting talk about how we are to pray to God. Are we supposed to pray boldly or humbly or both at the same time? Can you please explain how we are to pray? You know, prayer, when you think of it, is kind of a funny thing. [...]

In Numbers 15, God ordered a man to be stoned to death for gathering wood on the Sabbath. That's true. What exactly does keeping the Sabbath Day holy mean for me? I don't do chores on Sunday but my husband does; it's an ongoing debate [...]

Why does Jesus' blood and death save us from hell? Why such suffering to save us and how does this allow us to have a relationship with God? Perfect ending. The short answer is, all right, let's pretend for a second that I'm God and [...]

What evidence can we offer someone who believes the Bible is fictional? Ooh, lots! Here's the best way to convince someone the Bible is the word of God: Challenge them to read it. C.S. Lewis, a famous Christian from the 1900s, once said, [...]

It seems that depression and anxiety are on the rise, especially with the Covid pandemic. That's true. What portions of the Bible can we point people to and, especially teens? Man, it's a great question. So I'm reading a book on, [...]

So my daughter jumped on a bandwagon. A couple of weeks ago, my littlest girl, Mya, had to do a project and she told us as her family that her new all-time favorite Bible passage was Jeremiah 29:11. And if you're new to the Bible and new to [...]