Unexpected Guest

Unexpected Guest

Dinner with Jesus: Unexpected Guest with Keith. Would we see a masterpiece, or just the mud? In week two of our series on the table in Luke's Gospel, Jesus accepts a risky dinner invitation from Simon the Pharisee, and the meal is interrupted by a woman with a reputation, who breaks from the crowd, kneels at his feet, and pours out worship in a way that scandalizes everyone in the room. She weeps, she loosens her hair, she empties her alabaster jar. And Jesus, who could have pulled away to protect his reputation, receives her. As the whispers rise, Jesus tells Simon a story about two debtors, and reveals a stinging truth: this woman knows the weight of her debt, and Simon does not. The more aware we are of our need, the more open we are to grace, and the more love flows out of us in response. Simon sees only her past; Jesus sees the wounds beneath it and speaks the words she has likely never heard from any man: your sins are forgiven, go in peace. This is an invitation to reclaim the table for the sake of others, and to become people who look beyond the mud and call out the masterpiece.

At This Table As It Is In Heaven

Dinner with Jesus: Jesus' Table with Keith. Christianity didn't take shape behind pulpits or on altars, but around the table. In this teaching that opens a new series, we notice how Luke's gospel is saturated with meals, Jesus is always either at a table, going to one, leaving one, or making one, and how at those tables he broke every dining rule of his day. We land in Luke 5, where Jesus calls Levi the tax collector, a traitor and outcast barred from the synagogue, with just two words: "follow me." Levi leaves everything, then throws a party and fills his house with fellow sinners, and Jesus doesn't hesitate to pull up a chair. When the religious elite grumble about the company he keeps, Jesus answers that it isn't the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. Along the way we're confronted with the modern-day Pharisee in each of us, and reminded of two things: you cannot out-sin the cross, and to follow Jesus is to leave everything and shift from living "for the sake of me" to "for the sake of others." This is an invitation to reclaim the table in an age of division, to take just "one of 21" meals each week to sit with someone far from God, and to pray over every table, "Lord, at this table as it is in heaven."

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."