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The River Hopes: Let's Get this Party Started.

Unstuck. It’s been almost three years. My husband and I came back from living and serving overseas in the fall of 2014. It was supposed to be only a year, but God had other plans as our parents health declined. Jim figured out how to make continued ministry to pastors in Asia work…commuting.  I’ve been finding ways to be useful, and knowing the Lord has things to teach me in transition. But, last December a handful of  The River  women prayed after church about how we could pitch in with the Refugee crisis... and... something started brewing: "The River Hopes" In January Pastor Todd invited some folks together to talk about our direction regarding outreach as a church. We know  the church is individual believers in community , and not just those few who happened to make it to an evening meeting, so... The consensus was that we should have a better grasp of  what we’re already doing  before we decide where we should concentrate moving fo...

29th Day of Lent: Seeing God's Heart for Order: Genesis Moments

Genesis 1:1-3: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning-the first day. As we look at God's heart for order this week of Lent, we all know to some depth and breadth the truth that in the very genesis moments of our own births and days in this world, we all seek how to bring order and meaning out of each new experience in the world. Because we are all created in God's image and likeness, we are on this quest to bring God's order into the world- to see that it is "good." That the world exists at all reveals something about God. God...

Day 6 Lent: Seeing God’s Heart for Abundance Over Scarcity

“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil.”  Mt. 4, Mark 1:12-13, Luke 4 We first see here God’s abundance in filling Jesus FULL of the Holy Spirit.   And we also see that it is the Spirit who led Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. Jesus faced three temptations in the desert, all in His Humanity, and not in His Divinity! These three temptations remain universal temptations throughout history that all humans must face before we take on any kind of power-as Jesus is about to do in starting His ministry. They are all temptations to the misuse of power for purposes other than God’s grand abundant project for us. 1.  The first temptation to convert stones into Bread signifies the temptation to misuse our practical everyday power (the appetites of our flesh - when we are hungry for money, success, pride, lust, envy, wrat...