Send us a text

The phrase “generational curses” can feel like a verdict you didn’t choose. We take that fear head-on, unpacking what those Old Testament passages actually communicate and why Ezekiel’s voice reframes the conversation around personal responsibility, practical hope, and real change. Rather than a mystical hex, we explore how family systems, trauma, and learned behaviors create momentum that can be redirected with clarity, support, and grace.

We share lived stories of anger, addiction, money missteps, and relational rupture to show how patterns repeat when no one models an alternative—and how they shift when someone does. Along the way, we connect Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy’s warnings about multigenerational consequences with Ezekiel’s insistence that the child does not carry the parent’s guilt. That tension becomes an invitation: acknowledge what you inherited, refuse fatalism, and choose practices that write a different line for the future.

You’ll hear simple, grounded ways to interrupt the cycle: naming what you absorbed, seeking therapy or wise counsel, building new skills around communication and finances, setting boundaries without bitterness, and letting grace do what effort alone cannot. The heart of our conversation is empowerment and mercy—seeing your past clearly while believing that your next step can be different from your last one. If you’ve ever wondered whether your family history defines you, this is a compassionate, practical roadmap toward freedom.

If this resonated, share it with a friend who might need courage today, and subscribe so you don’t miss what’s next. Leave a review with one pattern you’re choosing to end—what new story will you pass on?

Join us! Facebook | Instagram | www.clcelkriver.org

Send us a text

What if we’ve been asking the wrong questions about the flood? Instead of debating water heights and global maps, we step into the ancient world that first carried this story and ask what they were trying to remember about God, themselves, and the shape of a good life. The conversation opens with a personal miracle and then widens to the tensions we all feel when modern sensibilities crash into ancient narratives.

We explore how cultural memory works—why fairy tales were once brutal, why children’s murals skip the grief—and why the Bible’s flood story is not meant to be cute. Drawing on the insight that scripture was written for us but not to us, we show how the text reveals divine grief over human violence, the desire to cleanse a corrupted world, and the possibility of a true restart. Along the way, we treat science as a partner asking how, while faith asks why, acknowledging that many cultures hold flood memories without forcing a single, brittle reading.

From there, we reframe the story around four anchors: Jesus as the ark and our refuge, obedience that looks odd but preserves life, baptism as cleansing that frees us from shame and addiction, and covenant hope symbolized by the rainbow. These themes move the flood out of the nursery and into everyday practice—learning to listen when outrage sells, choosing peace over performative anger, and becoming shelter for one another when life rises around our knees. By focusing on meaning over mechanics, we recover a story that steadies us through grief, makes us honest about harm, and calls us into renewal.

Join us for a thoughtful, compassionate walk through a hard text that still speaks with power. If this conversation helps you breathe easier or see the story with fresh eyes, share it with a friend, subscribe for more, and leave a review with the lens that most changed your view.

Join us! Facebook | Instagram | www.clcelkriver.org

Send us a text

What if the stories you love sound different once you hear them in their own world? We kick off the year by naming a blind spot many of us carry: we read an ancient Near Eastern text through modern Western eyes, and those assumptions quietly rewrite meaning. So we slow down, step into first-century streets, and let place, language, and culture do their work.

We start with Jesus’ trade. The Greek word “tecton” doesn’t lock him inside a woodshop; it opens to a broader builder. In Galilee, stone ruled construction. Picture a laborer dusted with lime, setting foundations and shaping masonry, and watch how that image charges Jesus’ metaphors about rocks, cornerstones, and houses on solid ground. We trace how medieval European translators, surrounded by forests and timber frames, handed down “carpenter” and how that choice still colors sermons, art, and our sense of Jesus’ solidarity with working-class life.

From there, we reframe modesty in 1 Timothy. Instead of policing skin, Paul likely challenged status display—gold, expensive attire, social flexing that fractured a young community. That shift asks harder questions of our culture: what do we flaunt, and who gets pushed to the edges when wealth becomes a stage? Finally, we revisit the journey to Bethlehem. Rather than a lone couple on a perilous road, think extended family on the move. It’s safer, more communal, and closer to how people lived and traveled in the ancient Mediterranean.

Throughout, we offer simple tools to read more contextually: ask what assumptions you bring, check key words, consult archaeology and geography, and lean on trusted guides like N. T. Wright and Kent Dobson. Small corrections—builder over carpenter, wealth over skin, caravan over couple—can unlock deeper clarity and a more grounded devotion. If this conversation helped you see familiar passages in a new light, share it with a friend, subscribe, and leave a review. What lens are you planning to question next?

Join us! Facebook | Instagram | www.clcelkriver.org