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Praying the Ultimate Questions - What do I care most about?

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A guided prayer meditation to help you bring your ultimate questions to God in prayer. You don't have to either feel the need to hide your questions from God, or walk from faith because of them. Bring them to God in prayer and own them to God in the presence of the Holy Spirit.

By Pastor Lars Hammar

Original music by Stuart Oliver

Based on the book "50 Ways to Pray" by Teresa Blythe. https://teresablythe.net/50-ways-to-pray/

"I Need More Members" - Things Jesus Didn't Say

Learning to love Jesus without checking your brain at the door. Week 7 is going to continue our discussion of being an active, critical thinker in tandem with having a deep relationship with one's faith. This week will start a little sub-series of "Being an Un-Fundamentalist Christian" with "Things Jesus Didn't Say", looking at some popular beliefs about Jesus that are not actually in the Bible. This week it's about the belief that Jesus was interested in increasing the number of disciples and followers. While he did believe in sharing the Gospel (literally - the "good news"), and making disciples "of all nations", he was often very demanding of those who wanted to follow him, and quick to turn away people who were not on board with his agenda. This is not to say that all the disciples he did have always agreed, just that they were willing to go along with Jesus' program, while many others excluded themselves because they could not accept what Jesus said.

Where this becomes such a big issue is in with the obsession today with getting increased numbers in churches, amid a decades-long decline. One strategy is to double down on the old beliefs and promote them harder, while another is to water down and loosen rules and boundaries to make it easier. Is either really the way Jesus did it? Or is his way some of both, and some of neither?

Livestreamed February 24, 2022 by Pastor Lars Hammar of Lord of Grace Lutheran Church in Marana, Arizona.

"God Wants You To Get Rich" - Things Jesus Didn't Say

Learning to love Jesus without checking your brain at the door. Week 6 is going to continue our discussion of being an active, critical thinker in tandem with having a deep relationship with one's faith. This week will start a little sub-series of "Being an Un-Fundamentalist Christian" with "Things Jesus Didn't Say", looking at some popular beliefs about Jesus that are not actually in the Bible. This week it's about the teaching, popular among so many "prosperity Gospel" preachers that God wants people to be rich. In fact, Jesus is so consistently critical of wealth itself, not just its use, that you have to both turn his words into pure "spiritualized metaphor" and put new ones in his mouth. How did we get from a wandering, poor, working class country boy, prophet to a tool for individual material gain?

LIvestreamed February 17, 2022 by Pastor Lars Hammar of Lord of Grace Lutheran Church in Marana, Arizona.

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"You Don't Work, You Don't Eat" - Things Jesus Didn't Say

Learning to love Jesus without checking your brain at the door. Week 5 is going to continue our discussion of being an active, critical thinker in tandem with having a deep relationship with one's faith. This week will start a little sub-series of "Being an Un-Fundamentalist Christian" with "Things Jesus Didn't Say", looking at some popular beliefs about Jesus that are not actually in the Bible. This week it's about the belief that Jesus would condone making people starve to death if they aren't able to find work. The quote "Anyone unwilling to work should not eat" is actually not from Jesus, but is taken from 2 Thessalonians 3:10, and is not even written by the Apostle Paul, but by an unknown writer under Paul's name. We'll explore the context of that particular verse, and contrast it with what we know of Jesus' own actions and teachings around food and hunger.

Livestreamed February 10, 2002 by Pastor Lars Hammar of Lord of Grace Lutheran Church in Marana, Arizona.

"You are going to hell" - Things Jesus Didn't Say

Learning to love Jesus without checking your brain at the door. Week 4 is going to continue our discussion of being an active, critical thinker in tandem with having a deep relationship with one's faith. This week will start a little sub-series of "Being an Un-Fundamentalist Christian" with "Things Jesus Didn't Say", looking at some popular beliefs about Jesus that are not actually in the Bible. This week it's about condemning people to hell, threatening people with hell, or, really, just being concerned much about hell at all, which Jesus didn't do much of.

Livestreamed February 3, 2022 By Pastor Lars Hammar of Lord of Grace Lutheran Church in Marana, Arizona.

Jesus the Prophet: Unfundamentalist Series 3

Learning to love Jesus without checking your brain at the door. Week 3 is going to continue our discussion of being an active, critical thinker in tandem with having a deep relationship with one's faith. We'll look some more at the relationship between priests and prophets, laws and criticism of laws, and how Jesus fits much more the tradition of the prophets than of the law givers.

Livestreamed on January 20, 2022 Pastor Lars Hammar of Lord of Grace Lutheran Church in Marana, Arizona.

Prophets and Priests: Unfundamentalist Series 2

Learning to love Jesus without checking your brain at the door. Week 2 is going to continue our discussion of being an active, critical thinker in tandem with having a deep relationship with one's faith.

This week’s episode deals with the difference in worldview between prophets and priests, how they both have valuable functions, but how the prophetic side gets sidelined in the desire for order, rules, and hard truth.

Livestreamed January 13 by Pastor Lars Hammar

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