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The Big Dream of Meadow Heights Church is to be equip people to become an unstoppable source of God's love that changes our world. As we share practical truth from the Bible with you each week, we pray that you'll take new steps toward a life-changing relationship with Jesus. – Listen to Big Dream Podcast instantly on your tablet, phone or browser - no downloads needed. Visit us at meadowheights.com for locations and current gathering information.
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I can feel beaten down until I even despair of life itself. But my feelings aren’t forever. God always provides help and hope when I need a way out.
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Our overwhelming culture can lead us to be anxious about many things. But, we are not alone in our anxiety and we can practice an anxious free life that God invites us into.
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Jesus is enough but my current capacity for trusting Jesus may not be. God makes help available when something blocks my access to peace while I’m learning to trust him more.
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It’s unthinkable that death is the end of someone we love. That resistance deep inside us is an echo of the heart of God. We rejoice because Easter declares that LOVE, not death, gets the final word!
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To learn from Jesus without practicing what he says is a foolish and unstable way to live your one and only life. Wise people build their lives on an unshakable foundation by choosing again and again to love like Jesus and live as Jesus.
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Choosing life over death requires discerning between true and false influences. Seeing the good or bad fruit they produce empowers us to choose the influence we want to follow.
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In Christ, God has already chosen life for us all, but he lovingly lets us choose when and how much we experience the new life he gives. Why would we miss out by going down the wide road when the road less traveled leads to more and better life both now and later?
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Because the way of life is a person, discipleship to Jesus is an experience of loving and being loved. We come alive in God’s kingdom when we choose to practice God’s love, not by our devotion to theories and ideas about God. Our choice to practice love or not determines whether we’re moving closer to or further from the invitation of Jesus to beco…
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We anticipate with great hope the day that God’s justice fully arrives and forever changes the world. Trusting God to be the judge frees us to live in love. By learning a life of love now, we’ll be prepared for a future when only love will remain.
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No judgment doesn't mean no feedback or input, but it does mean we don’t see ourselves as superior to others. Instead, we live in mutual relationship with them, humbly giving and receiving feedback. It’s in the absence of judgment that we are free to help each other grow and flourish in love.
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Fake news about God, ourselves, others and reality lies at the root of all that is wrong in the world. When we act on these lies, destruction always follows. But when we see and act on the truth about God and ourselves, we will also see the truth about others and reality. The truth frees us to live fully in love.…
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We are constantly tempted to place ourselves in the center of everything, creating a false orbit that traps us in perpetual judgment. But when we recenter our lives in God and receive his love as the grounding force that provides everything we need, we’re empowered to love people instead of judging them.…
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The culture teaches us to respond to judgment with judgment in a never-ending cycle, fueling more and more anger and hate. Jesus invites us to the slow burn of love that’s kindled by a commitment to remain in love in the midst of judgment.
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There’s no need to work harder or climb higher to get more love, because we have all the love we can live in right now. We are learning to live in that love, so we practice love to become more loving.
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God’s love is directed to us, dwelling in us, and flowing through us—back to God, to ourselves, to others, and to all creation. As the much-loved children of God, we become an unstoppable source of God’s love that changes our world.
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Everything depends on disciples who learn from Jesus how to love like Jesus and live as Jesus. Such disciples resist a culture of division and judgment since we cannot love and judge others at the same time.
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From the cradle to the cross, our faith is grounded in the scandalous story of a God who dives into our mess to love us at any cost. To live in such shocking love is to give it to others, as well.
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Life is hard. But when we practice surrendering to the love of God in all situations, we can learn the worry-free life Jesus invites us into.
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God meets us in the good, bad, and ugly of our real lives, and he cares more about all of it than we do. Because God is always with us and at work, we can let go of worry and surrender to his loving care.
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When we live in the fear of not having enough, we become enslaved by greed and injustice, convinced we have to take care of ourselves. But when we believe Jesus and trust that God always has enough to graciously care for us, we are set free to love and serve others with generous hearts.
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Life in the love of God lasts forever. When I choose to treasure his presence in this life, I’m already learning to enjoy him in the next one. Love is the one treasure that cannot be destroyed and that I will never lose.
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If we see what our eyes are trained to see, it matters who I trust to train me. The life I get will be shaped by the trainer I choose.
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Greed is deceptive and so subtle we may not even know we have fallen into it. Surrendering to the law of love offers us a way to escape the trap of greed.
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We see what our eyes are trained to see. Learning how to see aright leads to inner transformation from darkness to light.
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I can live for the approval of others or from the love of God that’s already mine. The first is exhausting because it never ends, and the other is transforming because it never stops. The reward is what happens in me, not what people see. But the treasure I want is the treasure I get.
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When prayer is unanswered, we can’t assume it was because God said “no.” We trust that prayer accomplishes much, whether we can see it or not. When a prayer that aligns with God’s will doesn’t bring about God’s will, or when anything happens contrary to God’s will, we only know that our prayers make some kind of impact, moving the world toward God’…
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In a broken world, temptation is a normal part of our lives. But because God is always present and at work, we don’t have to face those temptations alone. Our response to temptation is an opportunity to become more or less like Jesus, and we get to choose what we want more.
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The self-sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus declare that the sin of the whole world is abolished and forgiven. We experience that forgiveness when we acknowledge that we need it and trust that we have it. But if we refuse to release those who’ve wronged us, our capacity to enjoy our own forgiveness is diminished.…
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Our culture of abundance may lead us to believe that we can take care of ourselves. However, when we recognize that our Father is the giver of the daily good in our lives, we learn to live out of gratitude for those gifts. Then our prayers of petition can move beyond me to we and we can partner with our Father to become the answer to some of those …
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Hallowing God’s name is less about the words we do or don’t say and more about living out our Father’s love. When we bear his name by loving (everyone at all times) in all we do, his kingdom comes and his will is done on earth as it is in heaven.
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Prayer is how we participate in the life and activity of God who is always present and at work in and around us. We are changed as we surrender to God in prayer. But prayer is also how God shares God’s power with us to change what happens in our world. God acts in response to our prayers because God delights to involve us in the work.…
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The beauty of our life with God will never outrun the beauty of our vision of God. But as we behold God’s beautiful love revealed in Jesus, we become more like who we see.
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In a world full of noise, stimulation and indulgence, spiritual practices help us grow in awareness of God and alignment with reality. They free us FROM the enemy’s hold and free us FOR real life.
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If we practice for recognition, we already have our reward. But when we practice to form Jesus-like character, that reward is both now and forever. Our motive matters because we always reap what we sow.
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Spiritual practices are not just the homework of the Christian life. They free the Spirit’s transforming power to flow through us and into the world.
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We live in the story that best helps us make sense of the world. When we choose to inhabit the story of God’s people that’s been unfolding for thousands of years, we get to live as the much-loved children of God. Our spiritual practices help us become the person the story tells us we are.
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Jesus doesn’t expect us to be perfect people. Jesus is calling us to become the kind of people who are capable of living in perfect unity with one another.
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The more we get our life from Christ, the more we can understand broken people just trying to get their core needs met in false ways. By the power of the Spirit, we can view others, even our enemies, the way Christ did, with compassion and hope for restoration rather than with judgment.
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We tend to justify doing anything to our enemies except love, which only harms them and us. But loving our enemies is not just for them; it’s for us. Nothing transforms me more than loving people I don’t like or who don’t like me.
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We want to retaliate against and resist those who interfere with our desires because we assume that violence solves problems. Jesus’s call to self-sacrificial love must override and restrain our instinct for retaliation. Since love means “to will the good of another,” we can’t perpetrate violence against someone and love them at the same time.…
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Our first instinct is to respond to evil done to us with the same evil done to them. Jesus invites us to imagine a new way of being human that doesn’t plot revenge but reflects God’s generous love instead. Love creates ways to challenge evil without engaging in evil.
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A phase is defined as a timeframe in a kid's life when you can leverage distinctive opportunities to influence their future. So don't miss it!
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We all pass on something we love to someone we love. Nothing is more important for us to give to the next generation than an understanding of who God is and how God loves. Since the love of God holds everyone and everything together, to leave this task undone is to fail at what matters most.
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Excessive and unnecessary words invite mistrust and create loopholes to get out of our commitments. Speaking the simple truth frees us to live in love and build trust with those around us.For links and more info, visit:https://www.meadowheights.com/hub
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The goal of marriage is not to avoid divorce but to learn to love in a way that reflects the love of God. A healthy marriage takes steps to keep moving in that direction. Although the ideal is to be with one person for life, in a broken world the ideal sometimes gets broken, too. It’s only by God’s grace that any of us get married, whether for the …
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Our culture has sold us a myth that marriage is the fairy tale ending to our search for romantic love, but Jesus shows us what true love really means. When we remember that we are brothers and sisters in the family of God first, every relationship in our lives is an opportunity to learn what it means to love each other like Jesus loves us.…
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We all assume that as long as lust stays in our heads it’s not hurting us, God or anyone else. But we cannot imagine someone as a much-loved child of God and a sexual object at the same time. Jesus compels us to live by love in our imaginations as well as our bodies.
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Because Jesus’s death and resurrection include everyone, we can choose to see anyone with eyes of hope and not judgment, starting with the person in the mirror. Although we still often live out lies about who we really are, that false self is dead and our true self is now free to live in the newness of life.…
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Confession is a lifestyle of truth-telling about ourselves. It’s about becoming aware of our whole selves so that we can live as we are, in both our weaknesses and strengths. When we practice this together as a community, we experience healing and the freedom of honest relationships with each other. What a gift!…
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Reconciliation seems unrealistic and sometimes impossible but must be radically pursued. Our humility with God and openness to his Spirit will result in mutual submission to each other. Then we will enjoy life in the freedom of God’s love and offer others the same.
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