Cascade Church Portland

Abraham:: The Lie

Early on in the story of Genesis Abraham is called and confirmed by God and faces a decision. 

How far do you trust in the voice and direction of God? 

Abraham knows that God is going to lead him. He knows God has promised to make him into a great nation. Abraham knows that he has God's incredible blessing, through which all the world will be blessed. Abraham has been promised a specific land to be the location of this promised nation. 

Abraham is forced with a hard decision when he enters into a challenging place after all of these confirmations. Should he work a cunning plan to protect himself or should he trust that God will protect him? If you've ever been faced with a difficult decision in your journey after God, this may ring true for you as well. When do we trust God and when do we take control of the situation to help God's plan along. We invite you to join us in this conversation. 

Abraham:: The Call

Most of life is facing some degree of the unknown.

We don't know how our boss or co-worker will respond to the hard conversation we need to have. 

We don't know if the big risk we feel in our gut will result in horrific failure. 

We don't know if our plan for the errands we have today will actually work out as planned or if one will have to drop. 

We don't know when and how we will die. 

It got real there at the end, didn't it? This message is all about the unknown. Come listen and join us in this conversation.

Relate:: Relational Shalom

Our world is known and experienced through relationships. Our relationship with God, others and our relationship with ourselves are the foundational blocks for all of life and experiences. When any one of these relationships is strained or confused we experience a lack of peace in our world. This lack of peace can lead us down paths of shame, guilt, blame and self-destructive tendencies. 

This week we'll be looking at the concept of Shalom, a peaceful thriving for all people, and how we can both receive and share this kind of peace with all our relationships. 

Relate:: Relation to Self

As we dive deeper into our discussion of relationships, this week's message encourages us to consider our relationship with ourselves. Many of follow destructive patterns when it comes to the way we treat ourselves. Sometimes we relate to ourselves much like a relative we don't see often:  we are constantly seeing ourselves at a fixed point in our lives. Are you focused on a time in your life when you were younger? More reckless? More distant from God? Or are you relating to yourself much like the friend who keeps a record: are you making a list of past mistakes, keeping score, and reminding yourself of how much you've screwed up? Or maybe you're relating to yourself in a another way: you treat yourself like a high intensity coach, holding yourself to the highest, impossible standards. These are just a few examples of the ways we sometimes fall short of a healthy relationship with one's self. A discussion of relationships is incomplete without considering how we can ultimately reflect God's love for us through a healthy relationship with ourselves. If one or more of these is descriptive of the way you are currently operating, I invite you to consider an alternative.

Relate:: The Image of God

We have all been made in the image of God. Each person we encounter is also an image-bearer of God,  equally worthy of respect--our needs and agendas equally important. With this knowledge, this week's message challenges us to dive into relationship with others in a spirit of oneness, actively working against the habit "othering." 

This week's message helps us to consider the practice of negotiating reality and how we can embrace others as the image of God. I invite you to consider how you, through an attitude of reaching across cultural barriers and preconceived ideas, fit into the discussion. How is God calling you into relationship?

Relate:: The God of Love

I have struggled mightily with the concept of loving God with all my heart, soul and mind. That standard feels impossibly high and I was obsessed with how often I fell short of it. That has led me for many years to wrestle with the concept of loving God and experiencing a new way of understanding what that could look like. 

I invite you to listen about the expansive God of the universe and the intimate God of our daily lives. Hear how this seemingly different Gods are one and how that God goes before us with love and grace that we are welcomed to receive. 

Relate:: The Three Relationships

Jesus was asked by the Pharisees what the greatest commandment in all the Law was. It was a test. To be able to reduce all the volumes of law to one greatest commandment is a seemingly impossible task. And yet Jesus is able to put into context every law and regulation that had defined the Israelite people. 

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. And the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. 

We believe these three relationships, with God, with our neighbors and with ourselves are the three primary relationships on which all of our understanding of the world we live in is built on. 

Come hear about how the love from God creates our identity and our ability to love ourself, to love others and can't help butbe directed back to God. 

Advent:: Receiving From God

In the church we often talk about the good gifts of God. God is a giver of joy, peace, grace, justice and hope. The real question is if we are willing to accept them. Our lives can quickly become an endless loop of searching for the perfect job, relationship, friendship, living situation or family situation to finally be ok. We're looking for eternal lasting solutions in the midst of finite, limited stopgaps. Come hear about the path to receiving from God and trading our best answers for God's eternal stream sof living water. 

Advent:: Peace

Peace is a tricky thing to come across in an increasingly hectic world. It seems that we are constantly inundated with noise in our homes, work, and most every public place we find ourselves. There's an almost constant buzz and hum that rolls through our world that make peace hard to find. 

 

But this is where it gets tricky for me. When opportunities for peace present themselves, I don't always know what to do with them. I usually fill those moments with music, my phone, emails or some other distraction. I've started wondering if peace is a gift from God that I'm really not all that interested in receiving. 

 

Now, I do desire peace in my relationships with others. I do desire peace to so fill our nation and world that wars and threats of wars exist only in our history books. Those kinds of peace I can get behind, but personal moments of peace are something different. 

 

This message looks at the relationship between personal peace and corporate peace. How can you receive God's gift of peace in ways that calm the raging waters of your mind and propel you into peaceful relationships with others? That's worth talking about!

Advent:: Hope

The great South African Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu once said, "Hope is being able to see there is light despite all the darkness."

 

Whew! That's a good one. Hope can be a  powerful force in our lives. It's the thing that can best give us perspective on our days and life. 

 

I think of young kids when I think about the powerful interplay between hope and perspective. Have you ever seen a young kid cry like it's the worst thing that's ever happened to them when a dog steals their food or ice cream? That's because it probably IS the worst thing that's happened to them. Think about how radical the highs and lows are with 3-5 years worth of living. You are constantly swinging back and forth between the greatest and worst moments of their life because they don't have enough experiences to compare against. 

 

Hope is the opposite of this way of living. It speaks loudly into the dull and painful moments that this is not all that exists. There is more than today, and there is a light despite all the darkness. 

 

Join us in exploring the hope that we find in the promise and the life of Jesus Christ. We'll hope to see how Jesus can be the very light in the darkness that we hold onto when the sum of our experiences call us to abandon all hope.