Atlanta Westside Presbyterian Church

Atlanta Westside Presbyterian Church

by Walter Henegar

Religion & Spirituality

Why Pay More Attention

God is speaking to you. Are you listening? If Jesus is not supreme to you, something else will be. And you’re not paying close attention, the current will carry you away from him. But if Jesus is supreme to you, and if you are paying closer attention to what he has said, you can become an agent of his divine speech.

A Feast of Refreshment

Elijah was considered the greatest of all the prophets. But despite all his victories, he still runs in fear into the wilderness to escape death, falling into a state of depression, and asking the LORD to take his life. Instead, God sent an angel to comfort and provide for him. This experience taught Elijah that God does not always show up in powerful events. Sometimes, it's in the small whispers.

A Feast of Releasing

The Old Testament law of tithing does not carry over neatly into tithing our income today—but it does illustrate that the heart of God is to include us in his generous feast of grace. The more we grasp his heart, the more we give away with more freedom and more joy. God's priorities for our giving start with ministries that support the worship of God's people, especially local churches, and also the poor and marginalized.

A Feast of Every Word

To live ”not by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” includes obeying God’s moral laws, but it never stops there. It also means trusting his commitment to bless us abundantly with literal food and every other material thing we need. Scripture is a feast that orients us to all of life: Who God is, who we are, why we are here, and where it’s all going. Above all, it means trusting in The Word, Jesus, whose life, death and resurrection is the interpretive key to understanding every other word from God. When the fulness of God’s Word “dwells richly in us” (Colossians 3:16), we lack no good thing.

A Feast of Reckoning

Joseph's dramatic meal with his brothers illustrates the complex currents flowing around all of our tables. In different relationships, we find ourselves in the Guarded role like Joseph, the Guilty role like his older brothers, or the Graced role like Benjamin. Only the sovereign hand of God can steer these stories toward redemption, and that's exactly what God does. Jesus is the true and better Joseph, the Bible's only hero, whose death on the cross makes us graced, and whose Holy Spirit makes us agents of grace to others.

Listening for Change

The only story about Jesus' childhood in the Bible is bookended by two summary statements which cover about 90% of Jesus' life—from infancy to age 30. Together they remind us that Jesus' entire life was one of physical, spiritual and relational growth. He shared the secret of this growth when his parents found him in the temple after the Passover: "I must be in my Father's house" (v. 49) — or more literally, "about my Father's business." This daily dependence on his Father is how Jesus, who already had the favor of God (v. 40) could also grow in favor with God (v. 52). In the same way, we who believe already have the favor of God through Jesus' sacrifice for us, yet we can grow in that favor as we depend on the Father like he did.

The Crooked Family Tree of Jesus

Disfigured Beauty

Isaiah's prophecy of the Suffering Servant suggests that Jesus was not physically attractive, and nothing in the Gospel accounts suggests otherwise. Why? Why wouldn't he be the most beautiful human who ever lived? The answer, Isaiah suggests, lies in his mission to rescue humanity from our dead-end quest to trust in our own beauty. Jesus challenges us to fight to find beauty in the ugly places of grace, and to follow fading beauty to the unfading beauty of God himself.

Jesus: The Word, The Light, The Flesh

During Advent, we look back at the birth of Christ and ahead to his return.

A Bunch of Marys in a World Full of Marthas

In this passage today, we see that Martha is a lot like us. She is driven and has goals and a plan for the evening; she has an idea of how the night will go. She also knows that she has to take charge because Mary isn’t doing it. Martha is also restless and anxious. What we find, though, is that Martha and Mary have different postures around Jesus, the King of kings. Yet, one has chosen something completely different from the other. What does this look like for us today?

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