The Scripture Practice - Study

The Scripture Practice - Memorize

In this message, Pastor Tina walks through the story of Nicodemus in John's Gospel to explore what Jesus means by being "born again." Drawing a vivid picture from natural birth, she reminds us that the evidence of new life isn't a prayer we prayed once in the past but a life now lived in continual dependence on the Spirit, "kept on being filled" day after day. Tracing Nicodemus from his cautious nighttime visit to his bold, public devotion at the cross, Tina invites us to consider our own response: whether we're curious seekers at the start of the journey, weary believers in need of a fresh filling, or ready to place the full weight of our trust in Jesus for the first time. This is an invitation to abundant life that we could never manufacture on our own.

The Scripture Practice - Study

Practice of Scripture: Study with Tina. What if the goal of studying Scripture isn't information, but formation? In this teaching, Tina reframes study not as a task for scholars and pastors but as a means of becoming like Jesus, because you can win a Bible trivia contest and still be impatient, anxious, and controlling. Looking at Jesus' temptation in the wilderness in Luke 4, we see a man so saturated in Scripture that under pressure, weak and hungry, his gut response is to quote Deuteronomy. The wilderness didn't create his trust in the Father; it revealed what had already been formed in him. Which raises the question for all of us: what comes out of you when you're squeezed? Woven through the teaching is Tina's own story of being delivered from a years-long fear, and how learning to glorify God on a hundred-mile bike ride became a journey of surrender, trust, and receiving what she could not produce in herself. She offers practical guidance for studying the Bible as a library and a unified story leading to Jesus, while sounding a sober warning from John 5: it's possible to know the Bible and miss Jesus. This is an invitation to position yourself before God through study, so that when life squeezes you, Jesus is what comes out.

The Scripture Practice - Meditate

Practice of Scripture: Read with Keith. Why were brilliant men and women willing to be exiled, imprisoned, and burned at the stake just to get a copy of the Bible into ordinary hands? In this opening teaching on the practice of Scripture, we begin with William Tyndale, the martyr who smuggled the first English New Testament into England, and ask what he saw in these pages that so many of us have lost. Drawing from Matthew 5, we learn to see Scripture through Jesus' own eyes: not as a theology textbook or a collection of timeless truths, but as a story in search of an ending, with Jesus himself as its climax. And we discover the key reorientation for anyone with trust issues around the Bible: we don't trust Jesus because we trust Scripture; we trust Scripture because we trust Jesus. This is an invitation to read differently, slowly and prayerfully, not just for information but for formation, until our reading becomes a holy meeting where we encounter Jesus on the page. The practice this week is simple: open the Scriptures daily with the heart of an apprentice and pray, "speak, your servant is listening."

The Scripture Practice - Read

Practice of Scripture: Read with Keith. Why were brilliant men and women willing to be exiled, imprisoned, and burned at the stake just to get a copy of the Bible into ordinary hands? In this opening teaching on the practice of Scripture, we begin with William Tyndale, the martyr who smuggled the first English New Testament into England, and ask what he saw in these pages that so many of us have lost. Drawing from Matthew 5, we learn to see Scripture through Jesus' own eyes: not as a theology textbook or a collection of timeless truths, but as a story in search of an ending, with Jesus himself as its climax. And we discover the key reorientation for anyone with trust issues around the Bible: we don't trust Jesus because we trust Scripture; we trust Scripture because we trust Jesus. This is an invitation to read differently, slowly and prayerfully, not just for information but for formation, until our reading becomes a holy meeting where we encounter Jesus on the page. The practice this week is simple: open the Scriptures daily with the heart of an apprentice and pray, "speak, your servant is listening."

The Woman at the Well

John 4v1-45 with Keith. Why would Jesus walk straight into the one place every rule told him to avoid? In this teaching on the woman at the well, we follow Jesus as he crosses every boundary, gender, cultural, ethnic, religious, and moral, to meet a Samaritan woman that everyone said wasn't worth talking to. She comes to draw water alone in the heat of noon, hiding from a town that knows her by her shame. But Jesus has a divine appointment with her. He offers living water that satisfies the ache she has been chasing from well to well, then lovingly presses past her deflections to the very thing she most wants to keep in the dark. Set against Nicodemus two weeks earlier, the powerful religious insider, this nobody from nowhere is the one to whom Jesus reveals the covenant name of God: I am. And once her shame is lifted, she becomes the first to run and tell her town. This is an invitation to stop drinking from empty wells, to drag the hidden thing into the light, and to discover that fake you is doing just fine, but Jesus came for the real you.