Godly Success: What is Good to God? (Chris)

After a season of considering the question, "What is success to God?", it turns out that the Bible offers at least one simple answer.  Micah 6:8 tells us to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God.  We will consider the meaning and application of this text in the final lesson of this series.  We also will offer an appreciation for the Reverend Tim Keller -- one of Randy and Chris's favorite Christian thinkers and teachers -- who passed on to heaven this week.

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Godly Success: Absolute Grace (Randy)

In one of our first lessons of this series on Godly Success, we examined the Sermon on the Mount and discovered how it showed us two important points: 1) God’s ideal is absolute and 2) God’s grace is absolute.  Tomorrow, we will dig into Absolute Grace even further and discuss what it is and how we can respond to it. We can’t even begin to understand God’s idea of success until we embrace his grace and let its true meaning soak all the way down to the core of our soul.

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Godly Success: Success in Society (Randy)

For thousands of years, God sent prophets to Israel to teach the people about him, and they began to view following the law as the path to righteousness and acceptance in God’s eyes. By the time Jesus was born, the Pharisees had codified the law into over 600 specific rules and added thousands of additional precepts and guidelines. Like us, they knew their main goal was to love God and one another, yet they failed miserably. In many ways, we are like modern-day Pharisees, striving to follow the rules and live a moral, upright life as if that will somehow save us. Is that what God truly desires? Is that what it means to live a successful life? Knowing the nature of our hearts, God spoke to us not only through words, but also through his actions on earth.  What do the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection tell us about the true nature of Godly success?

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Godly Success: God's Society Part 2 (Chris)

This Sunday, we will continue the conversation started last week about what God considers a successful society.  Society is made up of the elements that bring people together in life: family, neighborhood, community, country.  Our lives are made up largely of the relationships that exist within these elements.  Considering the nature of God (love / justice; order / inversion) and the teachings of Jesus, how are we called to live engaged with each other?  We will consider several passages of Scripture connecting these themes together.

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Godly Success: God's Society Part 1 (Chris)

Society is made up of the elements that bring people together in life: family, neighborhood, community, country.  Our lives are made up largely of the relationships that exist within these elements.  Considering the nature of God (love / justice; order / inversion) and the teachings of Jesus, how are we called to live engaged with each other?  This session is discussion-focused, and we will consider several passages of Scripture connecting these themes together.

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Godly Success: God's Economy (Chris)

The old adage is that politics and religion are two subjects you should avoid in polite company.  In our world of 21st Century American materialism, economics may be an even bigger landmine.  There is a reason that Jesus preached so often on money.  We can get very anxious ourselves on the topic and quick to wall off what is "mine" from what is "yours."  Continuing last week's theme, what is success to God when it comes to economics?  The short reply is "stewardship," but the New Testament offers even more subtle and challenging answers.  This week, we will explore the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16) and the practices of the early Christian church for lessons that still apply to us today.

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Godly Success: Success in Economics (Randy)

That brings us to this week’s question: How does God view success when it comes to the economic sphere?  A month ago, we studied the famous passage in Mark 12:13-17 where Jesus says we must “give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” We learned that the Kingdom of God is something entirely different from the one dimensional (or two dimensional if you heard Chris’s excellent lesson last week) view of politics.  Can we say the same about economics, and if so, how does it inform our behavior in the market?

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