The Next Steps Initiative Refresh — Week 1

Opening a refresh of a two-year generosity initiative, this message starts not with money but with the cross. Using the frog-in-boiling-water illustration, it warns how comfort can quietly pad faith until the message of the Messiah becomes "moral code mush." From 1 Corinthians 1, the teaching shows how God chose a symbol of weakness, shame, and death and turned it into the power of salvation. The single point: what God did for the cross, God can do for you —he chooses the foolish, the weak, the lowly. A long roster of flawed biblical figures—Abraham, Moses, Rahab, David, Peter—underscores that weakness is where God works, and that the next step toward God is possible only because God first stepped toward us.