Being a foster or adoptive family can be a beautiful thing. It can also be brutal.  God never intended for us to make this journey alone. We were created for community. The foster and adoptive community needs an army of love and a network of support around them so that they can best love on the ones that God has entrusted to their care. Dwell believes that everyone can do something.  They are helping families remain committed.  The journey can be challenging. Dwell is here to empower and equip the community to be involved with defending the cause of vulnerable …

Training is always happening.  That can be a very good thing or a very bad thing.  We all want our kids to turn out the best; better than us.  Unfortunately, what we are is what is being imprinted on them.  So in training them, we have to begin with training ourselves to be the people we want them to be, to be the people God wants us to be. In this message I will not only explore those concepts, I will talk about some intentional steps that we should be taking, first to train ourselves, and then to train our …

Complain or give thanks: which is more typical for you?  There are always things we could wish were better.  There are always struggles we will face on this earth.  Ignoring them doesn’t make them go away, but neither does complaining about them.  Unfortunately, complaining can be a bad habit we fall into and it begins to color every thing we see and say. Have you ever considered what complaining says about God? Have you thought about how an attitude of complaining begins to change your view of God? In this message we are going to look at the connection between …

Last week we dug into the question, “What is success in parenting?” (watch here if you missed it) and we looked at God’s teaching on the matter.  This week, with that target in mind , we will discuss strategies for teaching our children’s life’s most valuable truths. Now if that statement brought and eye roll because you think I will suggest adding some formal program to your already packed schedule, don’t tune me out yet!  That is not the purpose of this message.  Rather, I am suggesting that we take a look at many of the things we are already doing …

What does it mean to be a successful parent?  So often we are just caught up in surviving that we forget to consider the end goal.  We are so focused on what we are doing that we don’t think about why we are doing it.  In this message we want to address the question of our goal as parents and begin the process of looking at how to reach it.  I hope you will join us for this important mini-series.  I believe it will be helpful for everyone, whether you are currently a parent or not.

What are some barriers that prevent people from hearing the Gospel of Jesus Christ?  What are some barriers that prevent us from sharing the Gospel with certain people? Today, we want to discuss some of the answers to these two questions and address them with a third question: “What would Jesus do?”  You see, Jesus gave us a great pattern to follow in the Gospel of John.  We want to look at that account and learn from the Master.  Join us as we hear the call to address the barriers holding people back from meeting Jesus.

What prevents many Christians from sharing the life-giving, world-changing news of the Gospel?  What is it that keeps us from sharing God’s grace in personal, powerful ways?   It is fear. Now sometimes fear is a good, God-given gift  for the purpose of preserving our life.  More often than not, however, it becomes an excuse to keep us from doing what we should.  Fear holds us back from so many good actions and thereby prevents us and others from experiencing God’s blessings.  In the Bible, in the book of Proverbs we read ” The lazy man says, ‘There is a lion …

“We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19) or you could say “We Grace Bomb because He first Bombed us”  In my last message I introduced the idea of sharing God’s grace through Grace Bombs.  But why would anyone want to give a surprise, generous gift to someone they might not even know, someone who has never done anything for them? The above passage from the Bible tells us why.  Jesus was the first and ultimate Grace Bomber.  He gave Himself for us.  He loved us in spite of our rebellion against Him, in spite of all the …