Water City Church - Oshkosh

Peace?  Did Jesus come to bring us the absence of conflict or something else?

Matthew 10:34  “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword."

Jesus came to uproot the things (priorities, family, agendas...) that we put in the place only the Sovereign God can hold.

The story of John the baptist's lost hope call us to a deeper, messier, truer hope in Christ.  Not in what we believe God should/must do, but in who God is and what he has done. 

Judges 7 Can we be thankful even when God takes us through the thinning?

Judges 6

Judges 6 Before moving to deliever the Israelites, God calls Gideon to "Tear down your father's altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole beside it."  Rescue started with a return to right living.

Judges 12 opens with the close of the story of Jephthah, judge of Israel.  He was used by God...but he cannot be seen as a hero apart from the consequences of his weak theology and insecurities.  Jesus came to bring us into a different type of kingdom, one Jephthah could never have imagined.

Judges 10 & 11

Strong faith and weak theology has serious consequences.

Joshua 14

Philippians 4:10 - 23

Philippians 3:12 - 16