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This Sunday, we open our hearts and hands to welcome Rev. Ray McKinnon, a dear brother in Christ who will bring a word on our worship series, Being Human.

A graduate of John Wesley University, Ray resides in Charlotte, NC with his wife, four boys, cat, dog, and pet gecko. He is a member of the Charlotte Housing Authority Board of Commissioners and a member of the Leading on Opportunity Council, among other leadership roles, such as Co-Founder of New South Progressives, President of the South Tryon Community Development Corporation, Board member of LeadNC, and Co-Vice chair of the Justice and Reconciliation Team of the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church, to name a few. 

We are grateful for Ray whose wise words will speak into Psalm 69:1-16 and the human condition. Fundamental to Ray’s calling is a conviction that faith—true and abiding faith—impacts others and leaves them more whole, more loved, more inspired, and never hurt.

Let us be humbled by the reminder of our humanity, all the while astonished and in awe of the amazing grace that calls us into living out our true and abiding faith with Jesus.

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This Sunday, we begin our new worship series, Being Human: A Series on the Book of Psalms. These days, being human is a pretty overwhelming gift. Fear, joy, loneliness, exhaustion, love, hope, suffering, trust, anger—in this strange season of exile from our “normal” lives, everything it is to be human is intensified. Fortunately, there is a witness in scripture that speaks to our humanity. The book of Psalms is a collection of prayers offered to God by people of faith in all of life’s circumstances. When we read the Psalms, we see that it is good and holy to come to God in prayer with the whole truth of our lives—the holy and the unholy, the sacred and the profane. We see that we are not the only ones who struggle with our humanity. We see that our humanness won’t separate us from the God who loves us.

Sometimes, we catch a glimpse of a new and abundant way of being human. That’s the case in Psalm 133, our scripture for this Sunday. It’s a testimony to the innate gift of being human together—with God and with one another. The psalm praises God for the gift of unity with one another and testifies that it is the place of blessing and salvation. And in response, we’re trying something unusual in worship. I’ll be preaching a sermon on spiritual friendship with my great friend and fellow pastor, Eulando Henton. I hope you’ll listen in.

We have nothing to fear in our failures or in our humanity because we serve a God who knows us and delights in us, who meets us in our highs and in our lows and reminds us that we are not gods, but we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

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“God helps those who help themselves.”

Yeah—this week we’re going to talk about that one, and, spoiler alert: the Bible doesn’t say that.

The Bible doesn’t say that because our God doesn’t operate that way. God clothes the lily of the valley and feeds the sparrow. God feeds disobedient, run-away prophets. God makes the rain fall and the sun set on the just and the unjust. Our Bible is full of stories of God helping those who need it, those who don’t deserve it, and those most of us would consider beyond help. So why are we so easily convinced otherwise?

It’s because we live in a culture where people who can’t help themselves are out of luck. But we are Kingdom people and we are called to another way. God most definitely helps those who don’t help themselves. And, if you are his follower, you are called to go and do likewise.

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“God won’t give you more than you can handle.” How many times has somebody, trying to console, said that to you? How many times have you said it, seeking to comfort someone else? 

Saints, it’s not true—so we need to quit saying it.

The truth is, God does give us more than we can handle. And, actually, God rarely gives us anything else.

So, I hope you’ll listen in as we learn why we so easily believe that lie, and how the truth—even though it terrifies us—frees us for abundant Kingdom life. 

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Smetimes the things we think—about God, about ourselves, about the way the world works—harm us and cause us to harm others. But the reverse of this is also true: right thinking can leads to righteous action. Renewed minds heal wounded hearts. 

This month we’ll be walking through a new “The Bible Doesn’t Say That” worship series to help us expose some of the lies that we believe which ultimately prevent us from living the abundant life Jesus has offers us. This week, we kick off the series with this saying—don’t hate the player, hate the game.

I know this is not a saying that many of us would say in church or during a bible study. But—we tend to believe it, don’t we? We tend to believe that God understands and forgives us of the fact that, sometimes, we gotta do what we gotta do. After all, we’re not the powerful people who make the rules, right? We’re not the ones setting up the systems—though we do get to benefit from those systems.

We say this as a joke, as a way of excusing serious choices.  Until Jesus invites himself in to call us out—like he did Zacchaeus, a man who found a way to live a very successful life in a very corrupt system. For Zacchaeus, meeting with Jesus for a meal did more than change his heart, it changed his life. And this new birth caused Zacchaeus to quit playing games and to get serious about justice.

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We know that we — those of us worshiping at The Grove, those in our extended communities, our neighbors across the nation, and our brothers and sisters in the Church worldwide — are facing hard times.

But Paul reminds us in his letter to the church gathered in Philippi that even in hard times, we can still rejoice. We rejoice not because of anything we have done or because of things that are happening to us, but in faith because we know that God is continually at work in us.

When we discover that we are more sinful than we ever could have imagined and that the sin in our systems is deeper than we ever understood, we can still rejoice.

We can rejoice because God is good and God is for us. We are not doing great things for God. God is working out a great act of salvation in our world and us. And where we are right now is not the end of the story.

Despite everything going on in the world and how little control we have, God is living and is at work . We can be a testament to the fact the way things are is not the way they are supposed to be and is not the way they are going to be.

Listen in as we learn together — not that sin is rampant. We already knew that. But that we continue to bear witness — not to the evil that is passing away but to the goodness of God that is made manifest in Jesus Christ.

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This month we are gathering around Paul’s letter to the church he planted in Philippi. Like us, they were separated from one another. They had no idea when, or if, they would ever be able to see one another again. Paul wrote to his friends from prison, with no guarantee he’d ever be released or that the church would survive his extended absence. Things were—grim.

And yet Paul continually encouraged them to rejoice—in the midst of the uncertainty, in the relationships they enjoyed, even in their suffering. Paul wasn’t telling them to cheer up. He wasn’t guilting them into expressing gratitude. He wasn’t encouraging them to close their eyes and play pretend. He was clearly acknowledging reality and teaching the church why, and how, to rejoice—anyway.

Rejoicing is an act of resistance. Joy is subversive. The powers and principalities of the false culture that is passing violently away would have us believe that joy is a scarce and limited commodity—available only to a select few at great price.  

But we know otherwise. 

Listen in and hear how the good news of the gospel makes it possible for us to authentically rejoice at all times.

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This Sunday, we launch a new worship series at The Grove on the book of Philippians. Back in January, we chose one theme to trace throughout this letter from Paul to the church: Joy.

Now, in this season of loss, anxiety, suffering, and violence, joy doesn’t just seem elusive—it seems offensive. But, maybe that’s just because we’ve never understood joy in the first place. Our current situation may seem like nothing we’ve ever known, but it’s not altogether dissimilar to Paul’s conditions when he wrote this joy-soaked letter.

Plagues were common, war was omnipresent, the state sanctioned violence as the most expedient way to achieve control, and Paul himself was writing from prison awaiting his execution. Yet, he wrote about joy. Not joy he expected to feel someday, as a reward, but the joy he knew—even in the midst of pain and threats.

Never have we ever needed the joy of the Lord more than we need it now. Thanks be to God that, through the scriptures, Paul bears witness to a joy we can tap into, not merely when it is most likely—but when we need it most.

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