Dead-ends seem like defeat. But for the faithful, we need to recognize that the paths of the Kingdom go someplace. That should encourage us to work for detours and keep advancing, like the Joseph saga in Genesis. Even Jesus can learn something about dead-ends in Matthew 15. And you?
Dead-ends are what many of my students at the prison feel like they're facing with long sentences and life sentences. My Life Mapping class is designed to help them detour from the prison mindset, and find meaning in where they are, knowing that God's promise didn't stop when they went behind the wire.
The amazing story of Joseph - sold into slavery, falsely accused of sexual assault, imprisoned, and left for dead more than once - shows how dead-ends can be detoured. He becomes the powerful right-hand man for Pharaoh in the end, able to help his weasel brothers when things turned dire for them.
In Matthew, Jesus begins by teaching people to get out of a dead-end, their concern with dietary cleanliness. Jesus teaches how the heart is most important in determining one's standing before God, not what you eat or how you eat it.
But then Jesus encounters a Syro-Phoenician woman, a Gentile, who takes Jesus's dead-end thinking and teaches him something that would change the scope of his mission.
Learn more with the sermon video below, and note the downloads below the video panel.
Dead-ends are what many of my students at the prison feel like they're facing with long sentences and life sentences. My Life Mapping class is designed to help them detour from the prison mindset, and find meaning in where they are, knowing that God's promise didn't stop when they went behind the wire.
The amazing story of Joseph - sold into slavery, falsely accused of sexual assault, imprisoned, and left for dead more than once - shows how dead-ends can be detoured. He becomes the powerful right-hand man for Pharaoh in the end, able to help his weasel brothers when things turned dire for them.
In Matthew, Jesus begins by teaching people to get out of a dead-end, their concern with dietary cleanliness. Jesus teaches how the heart is most important in determining one's standing before God, not what you eat or how you eat it.
But then Jesus encounters a Syro-Phoenician woman, a Gentile, who takes Jesus's dead-end thinking and teaches him something that would change the scope of his mission.
Learn more with the sermon video below, and note the downloads below the video panel.
| 02-24-19-sermon.mp3 |
| 02-24-19-ff-answers.pdf |
| 02-24-19-detouring_dead_ends.pdf |