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Week seven of Create the Culture, and our eighth birthday. A short video tells the story of how New Culture began, and Abbie shares what the church has given through the Big Give. Then she opens Luke 19. Zacchaeus finds a way to see Jesus. Jesus calls Zacchaeus by name and says He is coming to the house. Zacchaeus does not wait to clean up. He lets Jesus in, gives away what once made him feel secure, and says I'm all in. Abbie names three movements of consecration: receive Jesus coming close, release what we hold, and recommit to the work He has given us. Jesus follows with the parable of the minas. What He entrusts to us is meant to be put to work, not buried. Abbie traces the same commission through Matthew 28 and Luke 24. Jesus comes close, then sends us to do what He did. Everyone leaves with an envelope holding $8 and an invitation to ask what Jesus would do with it. So What: Consecration is our response to Jesus. We receive His closeness, release what we hold, and recommit to the mission He trusts us with. Now What: Take your $8. Pray about what to do with it, how to multiply it, and who God is putting on your heart to come close to this week. Scripture Luke 19:1-27 (Zacchaeus and the parable of the minas)Matthew 28:19-20 (The Great Commission)Luke 24:36-49 (Jesus appears and sends the disciples)Joshua 3:5 and 5 (Consecrate yourselves)

Week six of Create the Culture. Pastor Abbie takes us to Luke 11 and asks two questions. How did I get here? Who am I becoming? Jesus tells the Pharisees that the outside of a cup can look clean while the inside is not. He is not against their practices. He wants those practices to form hearts of love. Abbie names four ways we are formed: what we hear, how we live, who is around us, and what happens to us. The stories we believe, the habits we repeat, our family and community, and our pain and suffering all shape us, whether we notice or not. Being and doing are not in competition. Our being shapes our doing, and our doing forms our being. Look at your story. Look at your habits. Bring your pain to Jesus. Abbie closes with Psalm 139 and invites us to pray the examen every night. --- So What: We become what we behold and what we practice. Being and doing are complementary, not contradictory. Now What: Spend time in your story, slow down to evaluate your habits, and let the Lord reshape you from the inside out. --- Scripture References: - Luke 11:37-54 (Jesus and the Pharisees) - Ezekiel 36:26 (A new heart) - 2 Corinthians 5:17 (A new creation) - Romans 12:2 (Transformed by the renewing of your minds) - Luke 12:13-15 (The rich fool) - Romans 5:1-5 (Suffering produces hope) - 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 (The God of all comfort) - Psalm 139 (Search me, O God)

Week five of Create the Culture. Ashleigh, from our teaching team, takes us to Luke 11, where Jesus says we are lamps meant to shine in the dark. What we take in through our eyes shapes who we become. The word for a healthy eye, haplos, can mean simple, single, or whole. So does our time with Jesus have our whole attention? Ashleigh admits to praying with a show on in the background. Most of us have a version of that. Martha and the older brother in the lost son story both worked hard and ended up bitter. They lost sight of why. Come back to Jesus first, let His love fill you, and serve from the overflow. Being with Him does not need a formula. A cute Bible and cute highlighters are fine, and so is a few words. The Lord's Prayer carries a lot of weight. So What: Jesus desires us to be with Him and to be His light. Now What: Be with Him wholly, notice the new ways you might be receiving Him, and serve from the overflow. Scripture Luke 11:33-36 (Lamps and the healthy eye)Luke 15:11-32 (The lost son)Mark 1:35-39 (Jesus withdraws to pray)John 15:4-5 (Remain in the vine)Luke 11:1-4 (The Lord's Prayer)Luke 10:38-42 (Mary and Martha) Read the full transcript: newculturechurch.com/series/create-the-culture/2026-10-04 Join a community group or form group: newculturechurch.com/communities Build your rule of life: newculturechurch.com/rule-of-life/build New Culture Church gathers Sundays at 11 AM at 301 S Bedford St, Suite 219, Madison, WI. Be with Jesus, become like Jesus, and do what Jesus did.

Week four of Create the Culture, and the front of the vision statement: what is the culture of Christ? It starts on the beach at Devil’s Lake, where a group of kids goes from joy and delight to “you’re in my territory” in a few minutes. They listened to the people around them and started living it out. We are always being formed, and not everything that has formed us has to keep forming us. The culture of Christ is a culture of withness. Jesus left heaven to commune with us, and He invites us to live with God, not under Him, over Him, from Him, or for Him. Luke 10:38-42 shows the difference. Martha opens her home and then gets lost in the work. Mary sits at His feet, and when she looks up, all she sees is Jesus. That is why New Culture keeps a Rule of Life: scripture, prayer, fasting, Sabbath, Sunday worship, community, and serving the city. It is a practice, not a performance. Start small, be specific, share it with someone, and give yourself grace. Every day is a new day to say, Lord, I’m yours. So What: The culture of Christ is a culture worth centering our lives around because it is what we were created for. Now What: We develop a Rule of Life to intentionally organize our lives around Jesus. Scripture References: Luke 10:38-42 (Martha and Mary)Philippians 2:1-11 (The mindset of Christ)Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew 1:23 (Emmanuel, God with us)Luke 11:1-4 (Jesus teaches His disciples to pray)Hebrews 12:2 (Fixing our eyes on Jesus) Sign Up: Community groups and form groups at newculturechurch.com/communities. Build your rule of life at newculturechurch.com/rule-of-life/build.

Week three of the fall vision series, and the one taught out of order. One person, one place at a time. Then Madison. Now together. Abbie says they did it backwards and that it made more sense that way. It opens in 2013 with a story she tells on herself. Eighteen, first week of college in Minneapolis, too proud to admit she could not parallel park, so she drops a car full of brand new friends at the Sculpture Garden and promises to find parking. She never comes back. She circles downtown until her phone dies, screaming and praying with the windows down, and prays for one light. One bar is open. She walks in, tells the bartender she is lost, and he pauses and asks whether she wants to go wash her face first. That is when she remembers the cat whiskers, and the word she let somebody write across her forehead for Capture the Flag. He gave her a charger, lemonade, breadsticks, and a pizza delivery driver to follow back to campus. Her Good Samaritan was a bartender who said go wash your face, honey. Then Luke 10:25-37, read in full. An expert in the law asks what he must do to inherit eternal life, answers his own question with love God and love neighbor, and then tries to narrow the second half by asking who counts. The argument runs in three moves. Community is required, and it goes back to Genesis, where God says let us make man in our image and then looks at the one man He has made and says it is not good for him to be alone. Community is risky, because rejection registers in the brain the same way physical pain does, which is why so many of us outsource the ask to a search bar. And community is rewarding, but only if you go back in after the first time it costs you something. The fresh read is the middle of the parable. Abbie has preached this passage as loving the stranger many times. This week she noticed the order: the man was hurt by people, rejected by people, and then healed by people. We are hurt in relationship and we heal in relationship, and most of us stop halfway. She spends real time on the two who crossed the road. The priest and the Levite were not villains. They had rituals they could not afford to trigger, so they kept walking, and a man stayed in the ditch for reasons that were perfectly defensible. The Samaritan had a better reason to keep walking and did not. A study she saw the same week: the top two uses of AI right now are therapy advice and connection. Another one, out of Harvard, tracked men for seventy years and found the ones who stayed in close relationships lived longer and healthier than the ones who did not. Isolation is killing us faster than the thing everybody is worried about. None of the tools are evil, and she says so plainly. The question is who rules whom, and what we give up quietly when we stop having to ask a human being for directions. She closes on the oil and the wine. Oil to heal, wine to cleanse, and a Samaritan who had to get close enough to the wound to use either one. That is what Jesus did. He did not shout it from a distance. So What: We are hurt in relationship and we heal in relationship. Stopping at the first half is how a person ends up alone with a search bar and a list of reasons. Now What: Receive the love of Jesus first, then go first with a person. Community groups start Tuesday. Scripture References: Luke 10:25-37 (The expert in the law, and the parable of the Good Samaritan)Luke 10:27 (Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself)Luke 10:37 (Go and do likewise)Genesis 1:26 (Let us make man in our image)Genesis 2:18 (It is not good for him to be alone)1 Corinthians 12:20-21 (Many parts, one body, and the eye cannot say I do not need you)1 Corinthians 13:1 (A resounding gong or a clanging cymbal)1 John 4:7-21 (Let us love one another, for love comes from God)1 John 4:10 (Not that we loved God, but that He loved us)

Week two of the fall vision series. Last week was one person, one place at a time. This week is the place: Madison. Nehemiah is cupbearer to the king in Susa, comfortable and far from the trouble, when word arrives that Jerusalem’s wall is broken down and its gates burned. He does four things in order, and they are the shape of the whole message. He gets the information and asks for more. He sits down and weeps. He prays. Then he participates, first by confessing sins that were not personally his, and later by rebuilding the wall. Then Luke 10, where Jesus sends out the 72 and tells them the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest. The first instruction is prayer. The second is to stay put. Do not move around from house to house, because a meal in that world ran course after course, and staying long enough means you have to talk to people. Madison keeps winning lists. Best place to live, best college town. Abbie shares every one of them, then asks who it is best for, and what the makeup of the survey was. The only way to know is to enter people’s stories. She traced how New Culture learned this neighborhood. Doug Hunt had been praying over these blocks for years and kept a binder on the city planning and the redlining and who owned what. He said, these are the people you need to know. That led to Bayview and Neighborhood House, which started with deep breaths and Christmas cookies, and ended up last week with 200 kids getting school supplies when Neighborhood House had lost its biggest donor and most of its staff. She also told on herself about the Doc Martens sitting in her cart for months, and the day Neighborhood House asked out of nowhere whether she was a size eight. As you serve, you are not left behind. So What: The harvest is plentiful. Loving a city is four movements in order: know it, feel it, pray for it, then participate in it. Nehemiah did all four from a palace hundreds of miles away. Now What: Walk your own neighborhood this week and pray for it. Then sign up for an hour at the Good Neighbor Gathering. Scripture References: Nehemiah 1:1-11 (Cupbearer in Susa hears the wall is broken down)Nehemiah 1:4 (When I heard these things, I sat down and wept)Nehemiah 1:6 (I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself)Luke 10:1-12 (Jesus sends out the 72, two by two)Luke 10:2 (The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few)Luke 10:5-7 (Stay in that house, do not move around from house to house)Luke 19:41 (Jesus wept over the city)John 10:10 (Life, and life abundantly)

Week one of a new fall series. Jesus was on a mission to seek and save the lost, and He did it one person, one place at a time. In Luke 8, Jairus begs Jesus to come heal his dying daughter. On the way the crowd nearly crushes Him, and a woman who has bled for twelve years reaches through it and touches His cloak. Jesus stops and asks who touched Him. Peter points out that everyone is touching Him. But Jesus felt one person in a crowd. Verse 47 is the line the message hangs on: seeing that she could not go unnoticed, she came trembling and fell at His feet. Abbie told on herself twice. Once thanking a man on a plane for pulling down her backpack, feeling wonderfully seen, until he offered to get hers too. It was his bag. And once on her own patio studying this message, when her neighbor’s head came over the fence and she caught herself thinking, do you not know I am studying the holy word of God. The Spirit’s question back was better: what if that is not an interruption but an invitation. Then Luke 9. Jesus gives the Twelve authority and sends them out with nothing, two by two. Showing up empty handed means having to receive hospitality, and we are not sent alone. So What: Jesus felt one person in a crowd and stopped. He is never too busy for the one. Now What: Pray for one person a day this week, and treat the next interruption as an invitation before you treat it as an inconvenience. Scripture References: Luke 8:40-56 (Jairus’s daughter, and the woman who touched His cloak)Luke 8:47 (Seeing that she could not go unnoticed)Luke 9:1-6 (The Twelve given authority and sent out with nothing)Luke 10:1 (Sent out two by two)Luke 5:1-11 (The boat, the nets, and leaving it all behind) This Week’s Practice: Midday prayer and intercession. Full nine week plan at newculturechurch.com/reading-plans.

Week four closed the Esther series with a guest. John Hunter and his wife Suzanne are missionaries with Youth With A Mission, part of the work this church supports. He is a potter, he is seventy six, and he opened with a map, because he says history has two eyes, chronology and geography. He and Suzanne set out to hitchhike to India in 1972 and got as far as Afghanistan. She came to faith in front of the two great Buddhas at Bamiyan. He came to faith at a house in Kabul. That detour is the message. You set out for India and God stops you in Kabul. His word for it is interference. Esther did not grow up expecting to be queen of the largest empire on earth, and it was not on her bucket list. God jumps in, pulls somebody out of a bad situation, and changes things. John told on himself the same way. He moved his family to Virginia to start a school of evangelism and it collapsed before it opened. What came out of it was a homeschool room with slate blackboards and the book of Esther taught to two of his own kids. Then he handed the room his method for studying a person in Scripture. Influences. Character, internal and external. Contribution. Esther’s influence was Mordecai, whose instruction she took without arguing. Her external character won a pageant she had no say in entering. Her internal character was courage. She did not let the conditions she found herself in dictate her behavior. She also refused to carry it alone. She said yes, then told Mordecai to gather the Jews and fast. John spent years lead climbing with his sons, out on the pointy end of the rope, and somebody below was always holding it. He and Suzanne once stopped at a house in Pacific Grove and told two leaders of a Zen meditation center that Jesus is coming back. Both were saved that night, and the man went on to plant churches. He closed on the part we choose. Who we listen to, and who we let teach us. So What: God interferes on purpose. The plan that fell apart on you is often the door into what He was doing all along. Now What: Take the chart to your own life this week. Name your influences, name your character, and name what you are here to contribute. Scripture References: Esther 2:1-18 (Taken into the palace and made queen of Persia)Esther 4:14 (For such a time as this)Esther 4:15-17 (Gather the Jews and fast for me)Esther 5:1-2 (The golden scepter held out to an uninvited queen)Esther 7:9-10 (Haman hanged on the gallows he built for Mordecai)Numbers 12:3 (Moses, the most humble man on earth)Acts 16:30 (What must we do to be saved)

Week three in Esther, and Pastor Abbie gave the series its verbs. Placed, present, positioned. By chapter five Esther has been in the palace five years. Not five days. Some of us are standing somewhere we did not choose, asking God whether this is it. Then she puts on her royal robes and walks into the inner court uninvited, a move that could have ended her life. The scepter goes out. And she does not ask. She invites the king and Haman to a banquet, and there invites them to another. Esther is not only beauty. She has brains. She wants the king alone and Haman in the room. Haman leaves past Mordecai, who still will not rise. At home he lists his wealth, his sons, his promotions, his private invitation from the queen, and then says the line that undoes him. None of it satisfies him while that one man sits at the gate. God pours out blessing above and beyond, and the one thing we have not been given becomes the only thing we can see. He builds a gallows and goes to bed delighted. Then the king cannot sleep, calls for the chronicles, and the record lands on the night Mordecai saved his life. We call that a coincidence. See it in completion and make no mistake, God's presence was moving. Chapter seven is the turn, and Esther does not stop at her own safety. Spare my people. Haman hangs on the gallows he built for Mordecai. She risked an earthly palace, which is a small picture of Philippians 2 and of Jesus, who left heaven to join us in our suffering and died to save all people. For most of us risk will not look like moving away. It looks like knocking on an office door, or asking who could come to dinner. And none of it happens alone. The book is named Esther and it ends on Mordecai. We are not the main characters. She closed with her own ten years in Madison. One year was the plan. She barely unpacked, cried on the drive back for five years, and slept on an air mattress long enough that people still call her Air Mattress Abbie. Then a pandemic, and seasons where the place felt more bitter than blessed. Looking back over ten years, the sentence changes. God was here the whole time. So What: God is present in the place He has you. Right here, right now. Now What: Sit with three questions this week. Where am I placed. How can I stay present. Where do I need to get positioned. Scripture References: Esther 5:1-14 (The gold scepter, two banquets, and the gallows Haman builds)Esther 4:15-17 (Fast for me, and if I perish, I perish)Esther 6:1-11 (A sleepless king, the chronicles, and Haman honoring Mordecai)Esther 7:1-10 (Spare my people; Haman hanged on his own gallows)Esther 9:1-5 (The tables are turned)Esther 10:1-3 (The book ends on the greatness of Mordecai)Philippians 2:6-11 (He made Himself nothing, obedient to death on a cross)Luke 3:21-22 (Father, Son, and Spirit together at the baptism of Jesus)Luke 9:1-6 (Take nothing for the journey, and learn to receive)

Week two in Esther, and Pastor Abbie went straight at the verse everyone quotes. Who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this. It is a beautiful verse. It gets tricky the moment we decide it means one moment. Because when that moment passes, we no longer know how to live or who we are. Two traps sit on either side of it. We spend our lives worried we will miss the moment, or we spend our lives worshiping the one we already had. Esther 3 and 4 turn dark fast. Mordecai will not bow. Haman is enraged and decides that killing one man is not enough, so he plots to destroy every Jew in the empire. Pastor Abbie sat with Haman longer than most preachers do, and the reason matters. Offense left unchecked is dangerous. Our feelings are not bad and they are not to be dismissed, but as we listen we have to tell them where to go. Haman never asked why Mordecai had such a hold on him. We are formed by what we fixate on. He was not yet the villain in chapter three. He got there by choosing the same direction over and over. Then the good news: we are constantly being formed and we are not finished. A diagnosis is not an identity. Circumstances do not define us. Pastor Abbie told her own stories of rooms that were not built for her, of crying in front of a man who told her the trip was for men only, of being 23 and saying she would take whatever leftovers she could get. The exact things she was trying to hide are the things God used. Esther buried her Jewish identity, and that identity became the doorway to deliverance for her whole people. Mordecai never gets a verse named after him and the story does not happen without him. You do not have to be the main character. None of us are. The main character is Jesus. So What: God is forming you through every moment, not only the moments that feel important. Now What: Notice God in your story. Pay attention to the ordinary moments, people, and opportunities He might be using to make you more like Jesus. Scripture References: Esther 3:1-6 (Haman is elevated; Mordecai refuses to kneel; Haman plots to destroy all the Jews)Esther 4:1-17 (Mordecai in sackcloth; the golden scepter and the thirty days; for such a time as this; fast for me, and if I perish, I perish)1 Samuel 17 (Saul’s armor does not fit David; God finds another way to win the battle)Genesis 1:27 (Created in the image of God to bear His image)1 Corinthians 12:12-27 (One body, many members, different roles and the same mission)

We opened a new series in Esther, and Pastor Abbie started where most of us live. What was I made for? Billie Eilish put it in a song and the whole world sang it back. Kelly Clarkson wrote that people wait a lifetime for a moment like this. A celebrity who has arrived by every measure is still asking whether she arrived. So are we. Is this the career I was made for, the marriage, this stage of parenting, this calling? Or is there one day I finally get there? Esther 1 and 2 give us a scandalous palace, a king who discards his queen for disobeying him, and a young Jewish woman swept into twelve months of preparation for a beauty contest she never chose. Pastor Abbie named the harm plainly. Esther is a historical book describing a story, not a prescription. There are things we walk through that God did not ordain and does not want for us. He redeems them anyway. And that is where the thread of Jesus shows up. Jesus never said come and follow this purpose. He never said come to this specific place. He said come and follow Me. Our purpose is less about a moment, a destination, or a place. It is about a person. Esther is the one book that never names God, and that silence is the point. It trains us to look for Him in every detail. For thirty years Jesus was preparing for three years of ministry, hidden and unnoticed. Pastor Abbie only saw her own formation looking backward, in meals around a table and a mom who paid her to read the Bible in a year. The so what is this: Jesus is present with us in the preparation, because He is the person we are preparing for. So What: Jesus is present with us in the preparation, because He is the person we are preparing for. Now What: Look for Jesus in every moment. Practice the Examen this week: replay, reflect, repent, rejoice. Scripture References: Esther 1 (Xerxes’ 180-day banquet in Susa; Queen Vashti refuses to come and is removed; the decree that every man rule his own household)Esther 2:1-18 (The search for a new queen; Mordecai adopts Esther; twelve months of beauty treatments; Esther hides her nationality and is made queen)Matthew 4:19 (Come and follow Me)Luke 2:41-52 (Jesus at twelve in the temple; the hidden years before His ministry)John 2:19-21 (Jesus speaks of the temple of His body)1 Corinthians 6:19 (Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit)

In the final week of James, Pastor Abbie brought us to James 5:13-20, the passage her Bible titles the Prayer of Faith. Happy? Sing. Hurting? Pray. Sick? Call the elders and be anointed with oil. James removes every excuse to stop asking God. But verse 15 is not a formula that forces healing on demand. Paul pleaded three times for God to remove the thorn, and the answer was not healing. My grace is sufficient for you, My power is made perfect in weakness. Sometimes the specific prayer is answered now, and sometimes it is not answered until we see Jesus face to face. We live in the in-between, and we keep praying in faith, trusting He is near. The oil points somewhere. Messiah means the Anointed One, so to anoint the sick in Jesus’ name is to come under His lordship and the presence of the Holy Spirit, who heals and binds us together. Confession follows the same grace, because forgiveness comes first. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven lands before confess your sins to each other, so we come to God already held, with no shame. And prayer was never meant to be a secret solo last resort. It is a communal lifeline. Be honest enough to name the need. Be humble enough to ask. You do not have to carry it alone. Scripture References: James 5:13-20 (The Prayer of Faith: sing when happy, call the elders and anoint the sick with oil, the prayer offered in faith, confess your sins to each other, the prayer of a righteous person, Elijah and the rain, bring back the wanderer)Exodus 30:22-33 (The recipe for the sacred anointing oil; consecrate the tent, the ark, and the people)2 Corinthians 12:7-10 (Paul’s thorn in the flesh; My grace is sufficient for you, My power is made perfect in weakness)Matthew 26:36-39 (Jesus in the garden; Father, take this cup from Me)1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances)James 1:22-25 (The doer of the word; the mirror that we walk away from and forget)Ephesians 4:11 (Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers)1 Kings 17-18 (Elijah prays and the rain stops, then returns)

James 5:7-12 reads like a string of familiar words. Patience. Perseverance. Suffering. The prophets. Job. Pastor Abbie walked us through it verse by verse, and the message underneath the vocabulary is one sentence. Life is more than avoiding pain. It is trusting God enough to stay. Start with who James is talking to. Nathan showed us two weeks ago that James 5 opens with a prophetic warning against rich oppressors. Now the letter turns to the people being oppressed. These are not people with minor inconveniences. They are truly suffering. And James tells them to be patient, the way a farmer waits for the autumn and spring rains. The Greek word for patient here means to be of a long spirit. Slow to anger. Slow to punish. Patient in bearing the offenses and injuries of others. And notice where patience gets tested. Not alone. In relationship. You cannot control another person or the timing of the rain. You can control what you surrender to Jesus. That is what waiting forms in us: people of surrender and trust. Then comes perseverance. The word means to remain. Do not flee the hard, painful thing. Hold fast. And the definition includes a word that stopped Pastor Abbie cold: calmly. Nobody walks through oppression calmly on their own strength. That calm comes from Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. His breath is in our lungs so we can persevere. Pastor Abbie was honest about the kinds of suffering we carry. Some is unjust, caused by someone else’s hands. Some is unexplained, like Job’s. Her cousin wrote an entire dissertation on Job, and after eight years of study her answer to what it means is still, we don’t know. And some suffering, like praying for healing one mile into a 5K you never trained for, is self-induced. God hands us the tools before the race. Spend time with Me. Get to know My voice. Be in community. James picked the prophets as his example on purpose. They stayed true to God’s word and suffered for it. They confronted kings and empires at the risk of their lives. That is the pull Pastor Abbie named: from a balanced life, which arranges itself so we never have to see injustice, to a kingdom life, which moves toward broken things to bring wholeness. The Lord is full of compassion, a desire to help. When we enter someone else’s pain, we become like Jesus, who left heaven to join us in ours. Even the strange ending fits. Do not swear. All you need is a simple yes or no. Under unresolved pain, we are tempted to manufacture explanations and inflate stories. James frees us to sit in the in-between and say, this happened, and I don’t know why. That answer is allowed. Because here is what we do know. Jesus is near. The pain is temporary. Weeping stays for the night, and rejoicing comes in the morning. This week, stay. Be patient with the people who test you. Enter one person’s pain instead of managing your own comfort. And when you have no explanation, hold on to the one thing that is certain. Jesus is near. Scripture References: James 5:7-12 (Be patient until the Lord’s coming; the farmer and the rains; do not grumble; the prophets; Job’s perseverance; do not swear)Job 1 (Blameless Job loses everything in a day; suffering without explanation)Job 42 (God speaks; restoration and mercy at the end of the story)Matthew 5:12 (Rejoice and be glad; they persecuted the prophets before you)1 Kings 19:4 (Elijah flees for his life and asks to die)Hebrews 4:15 (A high priest who empathizes with our weaknesses)Psalm 30:1-5 (You lifted me out of the depths; rejoicing comes in the morning)

James 5 opens with a hard word. Now listen, you rich people. Weep and wail. Your wealth has rotted. The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. It reads like a tonal break from the rest of the letter, and Nathan sat in that tension out loud. This is a prophetic warning against oppressive wealth, and the word that kept rising off the page was the first word of verse four. Behold. Look. So the message is not first about money. It is about sight. When we see God rightly, we see ourselves rightly. And when we see ourselves rightly, we finally see the people around us. Start with God. Every injustice begins with a wrong view of God. He made us in His image, and we keep trying to return the favor, building a god out of our fears and our history until he blesses whatever we already wanted. The rich oppressor in James did not have a true picture of God. So Nathan offered three. God sees. The first person in Scripture to give God a name is Hagar, a servant woman driven into the desert to die. She calls Him the God who sees me. Yahweh sees the people society overlooks. God hears. The cries of the harvesters reached the ears of the Lord Almighty, and the blind man on the Jericho road who would not stop shouting got heard. God comes after. The Lord of hosts, the God who commands heaven’s armies, refuses to leave us. He came, and He will come again. If that is our God, who does that make us? You are loved. Loved so much that He calls you His child, loved with the same measure of love the Father has for His own Son. In the worst moment of your life, the worst thing you have ever done, you were loved over the top in that moment. And the love does not stop at affection. Our posture is sons and daughters. Our position is co-laborers, invited to partner with God against the enemies of sickness, hatred, and racism, and to bring His kingdom. People who know they are loved start to see. The rich saw their fields, their harvest, their profits. They never saw the workers. Neighbors became opportunities. Image bearers became tools in someone else’s story. That is the tragedy James exposes. Our calling is the opposite. Love your neighbor as yourself. Slow your pace enough to see the one in front of you. The pace of the rabbi is usually slow, because you have to have time to see people. If your whole life is a frenzy of work, ask the Lord if that is what He has for you. Then James lands on hope. When the world feels broken and God feels still, be patient and stand firm, the way a farmer waits for the autumn and spring rains. The Lord’s coming is near. There is not a single wrong that Jesus will not right. This week, see the One who sees you. Then go see the one in front of you. Scripture References: James 5:1-8 (Warning to oppressive wealth; behold; the cries of the harvesters; be patient until the Lord’s coming)Genesis 16 (Hagar in the desert; the God who sees me)John 4 (The woman at the well; Jesus sees the outsider)John 14:9 (Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father)Mark 10:46-52 (Blind Bartimaeus; Jesus stops and hears)Romans 6:23 (The wages of sin is death; the gift of God is eternal life)John 17:22-23 (Loved even as You have loved Me)Romans 8:38-39 (Nothing can separate us from the love of God)1 John 3:1 (See what great love the Father has lavished on us)1 Corinthians 3:7-9 (We are co-workers in God’s service)Genesis 1:28 (Created to rule and steward)Matthew 22:34-40 (Love God; love your neighbor as yourself)Mark 12:41-44 (The widow’s two coins)

You are a mist. James does not ease into the back half of chapter 4. He looks at our five-year plans, our savings accounts, our carefully mapped futures, and he says it plainly. You do not even know what will happen tomorrow. You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. The problem is not planning. Work hard. Make the plan. The problem is assuming we are the ones in control of the future. And here is the honest part. We do not reach for control because we are arrogant. We reach for it because we are afraid. We want certainty. We want predictability. We want safety. So we build the plan and we tell ourselves we are secure. Then something fails, because it will, and we no longer know how to live. Control is an illusion. And the things we cannot surrender are the things we are worshiping. An idol is anything we trust to save us. The savings we think will keep us from ever going without. The relationship we think will keep us from ever being alone. Whatever you cannot open your hands around, look there. Then James hands us a picture. The rich man in Luke 12 had a full harvest, and his first thought was to tear down his barns and build bigger ones. When abundance comes, our invitation is not to store it. It is to steward it. God, who can I give this to? Consider the ravens. They do not store, and He feeds them. Seek His kingdom, and the rest is added. Pastor Abbie pressed the line we love to hide behind. “If it is the Lord’s will.” That is not a cop-out for laziness. The Lord’s will is already plain. Love the people in front of you. Forgive. Feed the hungry. Share Jesus. You do not need a dramatic vision to obey. The world needs everyday people showing up to work, walking their block, treating the waitstaff a little bit different. Which lands on James 4:17. Anyone who knows the good they ought to do and does not do it, that is the miss. Knowledge alone does not transform us. We know we should forgive. We know we should pray. We do not do it. Transformation comes when truth moves from information into practice. You do not learn to ride a bike by reading about it. You get on the bike. So here is the invitation. Steward today. Trust God with tomorrow. You cannot control tomorrow, but you can control how you steward this day. Open your hands. Scripture References: James 4:13-17 (Boasting about tomorrow; you are a mist; if it is the Lord’s will; knowing the good and not doing it)Luke 12:13-31 (The parable of the rich fool; consider the ravens and the wildflowers; seek His kingdom)Matthew 6:19-34 (Store up treasures in heaven; do not worry; seek first the kingdom of God)John 15:5 (Apart from Me you can do nothing)