Focal Passage: Micah 7:1-10, 18-20 Hope is a strange thing to us because we didn’t come up with it. We see our limitations when we utter the word. We use the word almost as a wish, crossing our fingers. When the Bible speaks of hope, it’s not in reference to wishful thinking. It’s rooted in a confident, certain future, because the Bible knows God’s character. For those in Christ, our

Focal Passage: Micah 4:6-8; 5:1-9 In Instanbul, Turkey several years ago, a shepherd was briefly distracted on the job. He turned to see one of the sheep in the herd walk over to the edge of a cliff. The sheep jumped to his death. Then another followed, and another, and so on.  Before he could corral the herd, more than 500 sheep had jumped from the cliff, resulting in around

Focal Passage: Hosea 14:1-9 There’s a sense in which all of us should long for the Day of the Lord, also known as Christ’s return. God has put that longing inside us, but that longing goes beyond us as well! All of Creation is groaning! (Romans 1)  And we can feel the magnitude of it each time we look at tragedy or sorrow and desire justice for injustice. Dylan Roof

Focal Passage: Hosea 10:5-15 A story is told of a farmer who went out to gather some eggs and harvest his crops. As he walked across the farm toward the hen house, he noticed a pump was leaking. So he stopped to fix it. It needed a new washer, so he set off to the barn to get one. But on the way, he saw that the hay needed to

Focal Passage: Hosea 6:1-7:2     Recently, I was watching a movie that dealt with themes of father wounds. The father in the movie made many promises to his sons and failed on all of them. He promised his boys he would throw baseball with them and come to their games. He promised he would take them to get a dog. He promised he would teach them to fish. He

Focal Passage: Hosea 1:2-9; 3:1-5 In 2005, the Guinness Book of World Records said that Percy and Florence Arrowsmith held two records — the longest marriage of a living couple (80 years) and having the largest married couple’s aggregate age (205 years).  Before they died, they left good advice for those who want to have a lasting marriage. Percy humorously said the secret to his long marriage was just two

Focal Passage: Jonah 4:1-11     A passenger in a taxi cab leaned over to ask the driver a question, gently tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention. The driver screamed, lost control of the cab, nearly hit a bus, drove over the curb, and stopped just inches from a building. For a few moments everything was silent in the cab. Then, the startled driver asked, “Are you

Focal Passage: Jonah 1:15-2:10  Every believer in Christ has a testimony. And all of them are great! No matter the background or condition of a person before they met Christ, one thing every believer has in common — we were dead in our sin!  Not half-dead, or a little dead, but dead-dead. Spiritually dead! But God made us alive!  I don’t have a testimony of salvation that would make most

Focal Passage: Amos 9:5-15     The Bible’s “Famous Amos” did not make cookies; far from it! He identified himself simply as one who was “among the sheepbreeders of Tekoa.” He seemed to be saying, “I’m just one of the farmhands from the backside of nowhere.”  But some of the most well-known words of the Bible came from him, words like: “Let justice run down like water, and righteousness like

Focal Passage: Amos 5:4-15     In the past two lessons we were introduced to the Old Testament prophet that one writer calls “Amos, the country cousin — a backwoods ‘cowboy’ from the barren hill country some six miles southeast of Bethlehem, overlooking the Dead Sea.” His early messages were strong rebukes of the sinful nations around Israel, to which God’s people could say “Amen!”  But then Amos began to