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Solitude 03 - Encounter with Our Self

Solitude can be deeply refreshing, but just as often, it can feel like painful emotional surgery. We can get away from people, but we can’t get away from our self. And often what we carry into solitude is our pain.

In the third teaching Stephanie Wilson encourages us to follow the example of Jesus by finding a quiet place and going to the place of pain because it is there we meet God. Through this simple but difficult practice of noticing and naming our emotions before God in prayer, and offering them up to God in raw honesty, we can be deeply formed into the people God has always desired for us to become.

Part of the Practicing the Way Series. For info and resources on this series go to redeemercentral.com/ptw

Solitude 02 - Encounter with Our Enemy

In the second teaching John Herron looks at the goal of being alone with God in the silence: ultimately to hear God’s voice over all the other voices in our head, Jesus and his early followers fought battles in solitude. As we face resistance from three enemies of our soul — the world, the flesh, and the devil — in solitude, we learn to fight lies by listening carefully for God’s voice and using scripture to anchor ourselves in God’s truth.

Solitude 01 - The Quiet Place

Distraction is one of the greatest threats to spiritual health in the modern world. We all feel it — we’re bombarded by noise like never before. Jesus has an invitation for us: Step away from it all to be alone with him, for the sake of our souls and the sake of others. 

In this first teaching David Armstrong looks at how Solitude is not a place but a practice, one that follows Jesus’ pattern of retreating from distractions to be fully present with the Father and returning to serve in community.

Note: Sermon begins at 8mins

The resurrection is not a happy ending. It doesn't depend on you or need your permission. The resurrection sees Christ standing in the garden alive on that Easter Sunday morning — having walked through the brutality & death of Good Friday and the forsakenness & silence of Holy Saturday — and he stands present and alive speaking your name, and a word of possibility laced with grace, love and hope.

David Armstrong teaches from Matthew 21 on the events of Palm Sunday. The arrival of Jesus and his disciples into Jerusalem for the Passover Festival is the moment that Jesus project goes public. Jesus entering the city on the donkey — the fulfilment of a 500 year old prophecy — is a form of guerrilla theatre that makes a mockery of the dominant forms of power displayed by the Roman Empire. In one act of parody he exposes this kind of power for what it is; fearful, insecure, oppressive and violent…and simultaneously embodies the very kind of alternative power of the Kingdom of God… co-suffering love expressed in humility and forgiveness.

“Two processions entered Jerusalem on a spring day in the year 30. . . One was a peasant procession, the other an imperial procession. From the east, Jesus rode a donkey down the Mouth of Olives, cheered by his followers. . . On the opposite side of the city, from the west, Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Idumea, Judea, and Samaria, entered Jerusalem at the head of a column of imperial calvary and soldiers. Jesus’s procession proclaimed the kingdom of God; Pilate’s proclaimed the power of empire.” — John Dominic Crossan & Marcus Borg

Fasting 05 - Q&A

David, Armstrong, John Herron & Stephanie Wilson discuss the series on fasting and share some of their learning along the way.

Part of the Practicing the Way Series. For info and resources on this series go to redeemercentral.com/ptw