Brene Brown on the Messiness and Beauty of the Gospel, Christ, Forgiveness

Christians are Sinners...Along with everyone else; and that's great news!

“Christians are sinners. That’s who Christ died to save. That’s what the Holy Spirit convicts us about. We’re sinners throughout life, and because the Spirit is in us, we are unhappy about our sin. Instead of doubting our salvation, which is what the Devil wants us to do, we need to continue to believe the promise of God that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness for Jesus sake. We trust Christ for forgiveness of what we do wrong, but also for the gift of His righteousness so we know we are accepted by God for Christ’s sake, and not because we lived up to our intentions or promises to Him. Remember that only Christians struggle with the issue of assurance, and that is because the Holy Spirit in us constantly brings us into to the light of the Father’s love and the grace of Jesus Christ. Accept what Christ has done for you and apart from you. Meditate on the promises in the Gospel: they are yours and are always all true for you. Read about Jesus’ tender love for sinful people. Rest in the finished work and gracious righteousness of Christ. If you go through a time of being unsure, expect your assurance to return as you focus on Christ, and not on yourself.”

-Michael Spencer, from “Faith’s Crumbling"

Join us this coming Fall, 2013 and be part of our next Starting Point Groups! We would love for you to be part of something, we expect, will be different from anything you've experienced before...We look forward to the privilege of getting to know you.

On human worth in relationships: Does anyone, including God, delight in us?

“Why do we so infrequently delight in one another? It’s people who don’t know us well that often find the most to appreciate in us. And that leaves us worried that to know us is to not delight in us. Because we long to be delighted in, we keep friends at a distance from which they won’t see the bad.

“The problem, I think, is that we don’t really believe there is something terrific in us that would arouse delight. Or, if there is, we believe that the deeper things, which are more true about us, are bad. Goodness lies on the surface. Badness runs deep. We’re having a hard time believing the centerpiece of the New covenant [the good news of Jesus], that forgiven people have caught a glimpse of Christ and that the Spirit has used that glimpse to create goodness within us, a goodness that is more defining of who we are than our badness.”

-Larry Crabb, Connecting, p. 13

Professor and author Brene' Brown made a simple but profound statement when she said, "We are wired for struggle and worthy of love." Unfortunately, most of society, the world, and a great deal of religious dogmatism seems to disagree. As a result, we are left with the thoughts, emotions, hurts and frustrations that Larry Crabb has expressed above. At Starting Point we explore the tensions of these dynamics, and wonder together about how the Gospel of Jesus cuts against the grain of standard religious and worldwide tendencies to evaluate worth based on a "what have you done for me lately" paradigm. Come join us to see if there is even hope of another paradigm...

Christianity...Just for the sake of "harnessing the young and giving comfort to the old?"

"Young people are told from birth to be good and do good. They live with rules, grades and expectations. Those who are successful in keeping those rules and meeting those expectations often find grace to be difficult to accept. To them, grace can seem like a covering for evil. They usually think that when the grace talk is over, the behavior is going to be bad, and Christian young people are usually most careful in the area of distinctive and different behavior.

"Christian young people who have made different moral choices than the majority may truly not see the wonder of grace. They haven't sinned enough. Or to be more exact, they don't see the outrage of their own sins clearly. The foundation of morality their parents and teachers built in their lives may make it difficult to see their own sinfulness honestly. The culture war focus that rages around Christian young people puts unusual emphasis on making choices and "being righteous." It's not at the exclusion of the Gospel, but it's often at the expense of the Gospel." -Michael Spencer

What do you think? Do you think the concept of God's reckless grace just allows for bad behavior? Is religion just something that, as one band feared might be something simply to "Harness the young and give some comfort to the old?"* Have you been "ruled out" by churches/religions in the past? Is faith in Jesus that...or is it something completely different? These are the types of things we grapple with at Starting Point...We invite you to join us!

*From the band Caedman's Call; song-"Prove Me Wrong"

Real Hospitality and the Grace of God

Can a God who judges also be a God who is gladly and indefinitely hospitable?

"Think of your experience of God's grace in terms of hospitality: at a point of great need and alienation, he takes you into his family, provides a cleansing bath and gives you new clothes; he invites you to his nourishing table and blesses you with his presence. And he extends this welcome indefinitely. This is what God is like and what he wants us to be like. Hospitality means welcoming others and offering provision, protection and blessing. It doesn't happen only at our dining tables. Our texts this week reveal the shape of hospitality. In serving others, we actually serve God, as the Abraham story and Jesus' teaching about judgment make clear. In fact, our hospitality communicates the gospel and embodies God's grace, especially when we offer it to those with the greatest need and the least ability to pay us back." (Italics mine)


Scriptures: Genesis 18:1-17; Deuteronomy 10:12-22; Psalm 23; Ruth 2 and 4:13-22; Matthew 25:31-46; Luke 14:1-14; 3 John

We invite you to pay attention to the wonder of an indefinite welcome of God and what that might mean to you...Join us at Starting Point as we wander into the questions,frustrations and hopes that lie in this idea...Can a God who is judge also be a God who is hospitable?

Beginning to Understand...It's O.K. to be "Bent"

image via by Photos8.org

“When mercy stole quietly into my soul, the trembling stopped and the tears—which in my self-estrangement had dried up—began to flow again. The touch of infinite kindness to my nothingness wasn’t mere tenderness; it was suffused with a gentleness that transcended tenderness. And yet the experience was so subtle that mercy entered my heart unnoticed.

“The shabby streets of my soul were still littered with the debris of vanity, dishonesty, and degraded love. It wasn’t as if a sanitation worker had suddenly appeared to rid the neighborhood of every mound of unsightly garbage. When mercy came in the back door, my character defects didn’t bolt out the front door; they went underground, but they didn’t leave (and still haven’t). What happened is virtually impossible to explain—and it’s better for that. What I intuitively apprehend now, in retrospect, is that mercy kissed my brokenness, Too-Much-Love (John 3:16) cradled a wounded child, and for a biblically valid but inexplicable reason it was okay to be bent.”

-Brennan Manning, The Wisdom of Tenderness, p. 143-144

We invite you to come as you are, where you are, with where you've been and what you've been...Along with all the questions you might have. All of it belongs in the grand story...

What changes us? Relationships...

“Inevitably, what changes people’s lives is not some concept or principle. It’s not some bestselling self-help book or the memorizing of Scripture. Instead, what powerfully transforms, over and over and over again, is relationship. It’s the presence of Jesus embodied in a friend, a therapist, a pastor, a group, in Christ’s broken body shared in the Lord’s Supper. It’s a palpable taste of shalom.

It’s the relationship that transforms.”

-Chuck Degroat, Leaving Egypt, p. 201



Starting Point at Cedar Springs is first and foremost an exploration of, and an invitation to, relationships-with others and with God. Join us as we seek to realize how our lives, our journeys, our stories are remarkable parts of a grand, relational narrative. It's messy, it's mysterious, and it is beautiful.