God tells Jeremiah he was known before he was formed; Jeremiah says he is only a youth. Harry Wilson pairs that with the harder verse later in the book — if runners wearied you, how will you compete with horses — and asks whether difficulty is obstacle or training.

“Lord, teach us to pray.” Pastor Adam takes Luke 11 as instruction rather than inspiration, and refuses to soften the parable that follows: Jesus commends a kind of asking that a polite person would be embarrassed by.

Mark’s Easter account is the strangest of the four: the women find the stone already moved, and run. Pastor Adam preaches it, and Pastor Jim reads the gospel in his late brother’s Easter tie, answering what difference resurrection makes with someone specific in mind.

A joyful crowd, genuinely mistaken about what it is celebrating. Pastor Adam preaches Palm Sunday as a warning that popularity is evidence of nothing in either direction, and that what the road wanted was a political saviour rather than a universal king.

Simon fishes all night for nothing, a carpenter tells him where to put the nets, and the catch nearly sinks two boats. His first response is to ask Jesus to leave. Pastor Adam takes that seriously: discipleship exposes sin before it does anything else.

Eleven on a mountain, some worshipping and some doubting, and the commission handed to both. Pastor Adam opens Accelerate on the claim that precedes the command, and on there being no difference between believing for forgiveness and being sent.

David inquires, is answered, goes. Then it happens again and the answer is different: circle around, wait for the sound in the poplar trees. Pastor Adam makes the discipline the refusal to assume that what worked last time is the instruction this time.

A long war, a house growing weaker, and a commander quietly strengthening his own position. Pastor Adam reads 2 Samuel 3 as a study in what fear does, arguing that fear is what makes people negotiate, and that God establishes kingdoms for surrendered hearts.

The last Sunday of the year lands on James 1 and its instruction to consider trials joy. Pastor Adam works it through endurance, notes how little in modern life teaches it, and sends the congregation into the new year on three words: exist, perceive, endure.