The Park Road Pres Podcast

Embrace Grief and Loss

And you may notice that not everyone who suffers a lot of grief and loss actually grows from it… In fact, most people get damaged by it and may get bitter or cynical or withdrawn… Loss is not an automatic path to growth and maturity.

Receive the Gift of Limits

Today, a fourth quality: the spiritually/emotionally healthy person RECEIVES THE GIFT OF LIMITS. He or she knows when to say "no" both to bad things…and even to good things. She understands some basic truths about who she is and about how the world is and about what it means to be redeemed and what that doesn't mean. Spiritually and emotionally healthy people have had those truths seep into their motives and aren't easily pressed into a mold of someone else's expectations or someone else's goals or convictions. He's comfortable in his own skin and secure in his identity and calling under God.

Live in Brokenness and Vulnerability

A third quality in the kind of emotional wellbeing that always accompanies true spiritual maturity i.e., 3) Live in Brokenness and Vulnerability. In the spiritually and emotionally healthy person, there's a freedom from that natural defensiveness, from aversion to criticism, insecurity and hypersensitivity that most often accompanies our human, fallen condition.
We'll see that the Apostle Paul enjoyed that kind of inner liberty AND he also saw its absence in some of the young Christians he loved and served as Christianity was being established in the ancient world. Let's look at:#1 – A Dead Mindset Facing a Weak Apostle #2 – A New Rationale to Redirect Boasting #3 – The Practice of Upside-down Boasting

Break the Power of the Past

What influences both positive and negative, good and bad has our upbringing, our past, memories, regrets, successes and traumas, sources of satisfaction – how does our history influence the way we think, speak and act, ways we think about God, ways we treat others and ourselves.Using these classic passages, let's look at our history:1) An UNDERestimated Influence2) An OVERestimated Influence3) A Usable Influence

Look Below the Surface

Today, one of the skills necessary for the exercise of emotional health is the ability to look below the surface. We have to be able to see that, "what you see isn't always what you get." People may do the right things but be motivationally disconnected, going through the visible motions but without the right emotions. Something else is going on below the surface. Let's look at:
1) Our Preoccupation with Surface Appearance2) Getting to the Heart of the Matter

The Sanctification Gap: Models for Change

Today, we address again this sanctification gap – how we're declared righteous but don't always act, speak, think or feel righteously. When we think about sanctification or progress in the spiritual life – how do we go about it i.e., how to make spiritual/moral improvements to our character? How do we turn what God says about us in Christ (i.e., that we're NOT guilty and that we're righteous in God's sight – "saints") how do we turn God's declaration of righteousness into actual, practical character change?
In these sections written by St Paul, we see: 1) The "Common-Sense", Acceptable Way of Progress 2) The Counterintuitive, AcceptING Way of Progress

The Sanctification Gap

People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.– Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler), A Series of Unfortunate Events #11: The Grim Grotto (2004) 
How about an example? John uses God to validate his strong opinions on issues ranging from the appropriate length of women's skirts in church to political candidates to gender roles to his inability to negotiate issues with fellow non-Christian managers at work. He does not listen to or check out the innumerable assumptions he makes about others. He quickly jumps to conclusions. His friends, family, & coworkers find him unsafe & condescending.
John then goes on to convince himself he is doing God's work by misapplying selected verses of scripture. "Of course that person hates me," he says to himself. "All those who desire to be godly will suffer persecution." Ultimately, however, he is using God to run from God. – Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (2014; pp.23-24) 

Imperishable Life

Listen in as Associate Pastor, Dr. Phil Letizia, takes us through 1 Peter 1:17-23 discussing what it means to live as "Resurrection People." 

Though You Have not Seen Him, You Love Him

Listen in as Dr. Phil Letizia talks about the Lavish Implications of Easter through a sermon that goes through 1 Peter 1:3-9.

Easter Sunday: Mary Magdalene - Apostle to the Apostles

Today, we look at this fascinating person named Mary Magdalene. 
In all four Gospels she's credited with being the first person to see Jesus Christ alive after the resurrection.
IF, as some have tried to maintain, since the start of Christianity, IF the disciples of Jesus concocted the story of Jesus Christ's resurrection – if they thought they would get famous or wealthy or considered to be super-spiritual heroes and THAT'S why they invented this story of the resurrection, IF the story was fabricated, Mary Magdalene would have been the worst possible choice to be the first witness because she was a woman with a shady reputation. 
People who rejected Christianity may have concluded that she'd been insane… "so why would we possibly trust her testimony? She's mentally ill!" That TO ME, is an indicator of the story's authenticity.
I want to look at her today and what she might tell us about WHAT Christianity IS and what IS its basic message to the world: 1) Who was Mary Magdalene? 2) Who was the Gardener she met?