God finishes the work and then stops. Pastor Adam opens the Rest series in Genesis 2:3, arguing the world was created into deep stillness rather than activity, and that rest and sleep are not the same thing: without the capacity to rest, sleep does not arrive.

The son rehearses a speech asking to be hired as a servant, and never gets to finish it. Dr. James Smith III preaches the prodigal son on Father’s Day, on a father who was watching the road, and on an older brother who has to ask a servant what is happening in his own house.

Nineveh repents and Jonah is furious about it. Pastor Adam closes UberWhale on the chapter most people skip, diagnoses a geography problem rather than a God problem, and asks whether God is angry about the things we are angry about, and what the anger is actually accomplishing.

The word of the Lord comes to Jonah a second time, and a city turns around on one sentence of warning. Pastor Adam works Jonah 3 around the word “if,” argues that nobody knows in advance who will repent, and puts the closing question plainly: perhaps you have an obedience problem.

Jonah prays from the worst possible address. Pastor Adam reads Jonah 2 as a case study in what a person reaches for when nothing else is within reach, argues that distress is a prayer factory, and asks whether the abundant life is possible inside the fish rather than only after it.

Jonah does not run because the assignment is frightening. He runs because he hates the people he has been sent to warn. Pastor Adam opens UberWhale in Jonah 1, reads the prophet asleep below deck as something closer to a death wish than courage, and argues that crisis is often grace.

Greater love has no one than this. Harry Wilson takes John 15 out of abstraction by way of his own mother, a single parent raising three children in small apartments, and draws a line between building a resume of interesting things and bearing fruit that actually abides.

Luke 8:40-56, brought by neurosurgeon Dr. David Levy — Jairus’… read more

1 Samuel 31:1-13 and the death of Saul and his… read more