A couple of months ago I had one of the coolest experiences I’ve ever had while I was up front preaching.
I was talking about the story of Joshua and the Israelites taking the city of Jericho. One of the story lines in Joshua revolves around a woman named Rahab. Rahab was a prostitute in the city of Jericho and ran an “inn”. The Israelite spies went to stay at her inn and she protected them when the men of Jericho came looking for them. Because of her help the spies promised her that she would be spared along with her family when Jericho was taken by Joshua.
Not only was she spared… she ended up marrying one of the Israelites (a good Jewish boy named Salmon) and she settled down in the new Israel to raise a family.
Now I need to take a break from the story I was telling and let you know about a group of kids who attend Riverside every week. They are from a group home nearby where teens who are struggling with addiction go to learn the tools they will need to recover their lives. Most of these kids have had unbelievably rough lives. They’ve seen stuff that most of us have only heard about on TV or in the movies. The stuff they’ve been through is absolutely heart breaking. Often they feel like God could never accept them because of the where they’ve been, the things they’ve done, and the things that have been done to them.
I keep quoting scriptures like Romans 3:22 which says:
We are made right in God’s sight when we trust in Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And we all can be saved in this same way, no matter who we are or what we have done.
or Isaiah 43:19:
The Lord says, “Forget what happened before, and do not think about the past. Look at the new thing I am going to do. It is already happening. Don’t you see it?”
And I can tell they’d love to believe it… but it’s still hard to leave behind all the things they’ve believed about themselves for so long.
Anyways… they always sit right up front and on this particular Sunday morning there were two young ladies from the group house sitting about 10 feet away from me. They seemed particularly interested in Rahab (I told about how one of the animated videos I saw about the fall of Jericho said that Rahab was an “entertainer” and they got a kick out of that) but I wasn’t expecting what happened next.
The point I was making was how God is so much more interested in our future than our past… and that as long as we were still breathing God could redeem even the most ugly of circumstances. One of the verses I was using to make that point was the genealogy in Matthew chapter 1 (you know… Abraham was the father of Isaac who was the father of Jacob…). I was using the genealogy because not only was Rahab accepted into the nation of Israel but she even made it into the genealogy in Matthew chapter 1. In fact she ends up becoming the great-great grandma of king David. That’s amazing in and of itself… but it turns out, I said, that she was also the great-great-great (31 generations down the line) grandma of a man named Jesus.
I had rehearsed this at home so many times I wasn’t ready for what came next. As soon as I said she was the great, great, great, great, grandma of Jesus one of the girls down front from the group home said, “no way!” (so loud everyone in the building heard her) and I looked at her and said, “I know… crazy right?”. I kept on with the lesson but I almost lost it when I looked down again and she was crying. After church as people filed out and shook my hand she stopped and asked me if it was true. I said yes and she was just speechless… and still crying.
I have no idea how all of this will work out for her… but I love the fact that every week at Riverside I am reminded that Jesus came to seek & save all of us.












So… here it is. But also I need to let everyone know the Riverside email list has been lost. This isn’t horrible news since it was becoming unwieldy anyways. So now the list is automated. If you want to sign up again to be on the list click
figured i was failing at the whole following Jesus thing. But then I read a quote from Max Lucado in his book “Just Like Jesus”. He said that you are not responsible for the thoughts you have. You’re just responsible for what you do with those thoughts. Martin Luther said, “you can’t stop the birds from flying about your head, but you can stop them from building a nest in your hair!”
Fascinating Comments!