Ken

"Sign, sign, everywhere a sign." It's true, signs are everywhere. On street corners, attached to walls, in windows. Informational signs, warning signs, and signs telling you how fast to drive. Churches have signs. Gas stations, too. Electronic signs, LED signs, and handwritten signs. I'd venture to say that we pay attention to only a small fraction of the signs that we pass every day. Such is the nature of signs. Signs are even mentioned in the Bible, but not the kind you might see on the side of the interstate. As the Israelites were wandering in the desert, no "Exit Here" sign ever appeared next to the Promised Land. Instead, the signs in the Bible were activities of God done through people and nature that pointed to his providence and sovereignty. To be properly understood, they had to be interpreted through the lens of faith. Without the lens of faith,…

Endorsements. In our culture, its very common for companies to pay celebrities to endorse their product. An athlete may get paid millions of dollars for allowing their name to be associated with a pair of shoes. Endorsements range from weight loss to hair gain. If former NFL coach John Madden cured his athlete's foot problem with "fast actin' Tinactin", you can, too. In John 6:27, Jesus tells the crowd that he bore God's "seal of approval." 27 Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.” - John 6:27 Don't dismiss this as just another endorsement. Jesus wasn't a celebrity that God was using to promote his product line. In fact, a seal of approval indicates several important truths: The person giving the approval is…

In 26 years of marriage, Tonya and I have lived in San Diego, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Denver – all great cities. We are city people. We like to joke that one criteria for where we live is to be close to professional baseball, though some years the Padres and Rockies tested the definition. Personally, I love being close to music, theater, shopping, and people! As a pastor, I believe that reaching cities with the gospel is the key to truly and significantly impacting our culture. That is why helping start new churches and Mountainview campuses is so important. Cities change countries and only God can change a city. God loves Denver and we believe he wants to use our church to change the spiritual landscape. Over the next 4 weeks we are going to preach straight through the book of Jonah. The story of Jonah is perhaps most famous for one…

In my morning reading of John 6, I've been paying close attention to the words Jesus uses to teach the crowd. Unlike us, Jesus didn't just ramble on in order to pass the time. We have idle words. Words spoken without much thought, therefore, without much (if any) purpose. We might call it chit chat, shooting the breeze, or killing time. I approach the Bible with the belief that it is inspired by God, that the Holy Spirit guided the individual writers in conveying God's message. The Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) cover approximately three years of Jesus' life. We know from the end of John's Gospel that Jesus did many other things that John didn't record, with John surmising that the "whole world would not have room for the books that would be written." So, what does get recorded is there on purpose -- through the inspiration of the…

As a pastor, I've worked with people at all stages of belief -- including unbelief. I'm use the term "unbelief" on purpose. When Christians speak of categories of people, we use many different labels: Lost or saved Christian or non-Christian Believer or non-believer To call someone a non-believer is misleading. I've met many "non-believers" who actually do believe in ... Will power Self-determination The law of attraction Karma Superstitions Homeopathic drugs The Golden Rule Survival of the fittest Tony Robbins Luck In other words, they are very much believers -- they just don't believe in the same source of power that a Christ-follower believes in. By nature, all of us are believers. I've never met anyone who held absolutely no beliefs. Now, they might have been strange beliefs or not-well-thought-out beliefs, but they were still beliefs. Unbelief is different. Non-believer implies a person who does not belief. Unbelief is a…