“You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness…” Romans 6:18.

Freedom is an ideal we certainly cherish, celebrate, and even sometimes idolize in this country. “It’s a free country,” we hear, “I can do what I want.” We enjoy freedoms in this country that so many people around the world can only dream about. We have no king, we aren’t forced to have a particular job, marry a certain person, or have a specific number of children.

I can think of several situations in my life when, if you had said the words “it’s temporary” to me, I wouldn’t have believed you.

The heartache of a breakup.

A semester spent in a class I didn’t understand and worse, didn’t care about.

The job that felt like it was sucking the soul out of me.

This past Sunday, Joe held up both a window and a mirror for us to look into. He spoke about our tendency to get into a Christian rut, having made our lives comfortable by avoiding conflict and the hard work of putting ourselves out there for God to use us for His purposes.

This Father’s Day, we were reminded of the goodness of God; the perfect Father who is “in the business of redemption, forgiveness, U-turns, and of molding and shaping our lives to be more like Jesus.”

This Sunday, we were reminded of Jesus being our first love. Like I mentioned in the sermon, I hope you left feeling encouraged and convicted!

Since Sunday, I’ve been thinking about one word from the Revelation 2 passage: "love." Love is something we all desperately want in this life, so much so that we go to great lengths and spend huge amounts of resources on the emotion of love.

This past Sunday, Benjamin Bachman encouraged us, as a body of believers, to really love people - regardless. To try something new in the face of adversity or possible scrutiny.

Is your faith just a series of doctrines, or a list of rights and wrongs, or just simply… beliefs? Or does your faith include a motivation to get out and do the things that God has laid out for you to do?

James 2:14 tells us that “Faith without works is dead.”

This past Sunday, I talked about a part of our brain (the amygdala) that was created to help us to survive those fight-or-flight moments.

You know...when a bear or mountain lion springs out onto your path, or when a loud crash wakes you up in the middle of the night.

This past Sunday, Pastor Joe shared a powerful message about reframing our thoughts. If you find this difficult, you are not alone. From a young age, we are conditioned to think in the world. The input we receive from worldly sources, which counters God’s voice, is constant and loud.

In my message, I admitted that sometimes I feel Christianity would be better without the Christians. Sometimes I think how great church would be if it weren’t for some of the people. Have you ever felt this or admitted it out loud? Having these thoughts and feelings is a hard place to be in.

This past Sunday I shared three questions (thanks Jon Acuff) we should ask every questionable, loud, and repetitive thought... three security checkpoints these kinds of thoughts should go through before they are allowed to travel around in our minds.

Your life will always drift toward your most repeated thoughts.

Sunday we began our "Jerky Brain" series, if you missed it you can check it out HERE!

We left Sunday with an assignment to do two different things:

1. Identify a thought pattern that isn't healthy.

2. Combat that unhealthy thought pattern with truth.