Awaken Community

Striving together AS ONE without fear of opposition knowing that suffering may come.

Paul seems content to live his life for the sake of something other than HIMSELF. He seems to be offering a reversal to the natural tendency of humans which is to focus on self.

A pastors heart/hopes for his people. Confident that God will complete what God has begun, I pray your love may abound in knowledge, that you may be able to discern a path that leads to life, and that your lives will be filled with the fruit of life and resurrection.

40 days between resurrection and ascension as the church is being prepared to be the new expression of God’s people in the world.

Jesus resurrection becomes an animated narrative that brings liberation and hope to the oppressed and marginalized.

Jesus enters the city on Palm Sunday to the people wanting him to be king.

What do you do when you come face to face with the possibility that what you believe is NOT true. When your beliefs come under attack, what might be born in this space?

Joshua spent 40 years preparing to lead the people into the promised land. He was ready at 40 and yet had to wait a generation to go into the land.

Joshua and the 11 spies sent into the promised land for 40 days. Do we have the capacity to see what God is preparing us for and wanting to give us even in the face of odds that seem insurmountable?

The life of Moses is often studied in three 40-year spans - 40 years of becoming, 40 years of formation, and 40 years of doing the work. Throughout his life he goes through these spans or phases or seasons of something being born and something dying. 

What connects all the 40's in the bible? 40 days in the wilderness, 40 days of fasting, 40 lashes as discipline. 40's a big deal. In our lives and also in the bible, there's a lot of meaning behind it. 

What comes to mind when you hear the words "repent" and "sin"? Guesses are not much positivity. This morning, we dive into the biblical meaning behind these words and not necessarily the American church's meaning. 

Jesus was among the marginalized for a majority of the time he ministered. What does this say about the kingdom? How does it influence our lives and our community when we say we want to look like Jesus?

What does a life lived under the influence of the kingdom look like? How would it guide our decisions from day to day? And what does Jesus say the kingdom of God is like? This is one more thing that we center Awaken around, another piece of Jesus' life and teachings.

Jenna speaks this morning about Mark 2 where the religious leaders of Jesus' time once again question his disciples and their seeming snub at the rules and practices of the time. 

This morning, Micah shares about how we can see the thing behind the thing. For the Pharisees, it was washing your hands that made you clean. But what Jesus worked to change was the religion for religion sake; you can wash the outside of a cup and it's still dirty inside.

Pastor Kelly Chatman joins us this morning to continue our series on the Life & Teachings of Jesus.

For our second week of the series, we're talking about the third way; non-violence and peace making. It's the way of Jesus and of his kingdom.   ***This week we made the hard decision to be back online for a few weeks due to the surge of covid cases.

At Awaken, we say we're about the well and not the fence. We prefer to gather around the well instead of building a fence to decide who's in and who's out. Which begs the question - what's in the well? What do we center ourselves around? Starting this week, we'll name those things that we center our community around. 

As a community, we reflect on 2021 and share some of the ways we saw God working in our lives through the year.