Sola Church: Recent Episodes
Sola Church
A man who brought people to Jesus without saying a recorded word. A man who shared the gospel through hospitality, through relationships, through simply getting the right people to the table at the right time to hear truth. A man who cheated and swindled people out of a lot of money and yet somehow some way he’s an inspiration for us all. A man named Levi paved the road to Easter.
The road to easter starts with you putting your friends and neighbors decision about Jesus into God’s hands and not your own.
The essence of Stage 5 is a concept of sent-ness…being sent to be part of the mission of Jesus. The words of Jesus I am sending you are continual as well. I am continually sending you to do the work of the church…to preach the gospel…the disciple people…to equip the saints for ministry. Thats every day you wake up. Every hour that your breathing you are sent by God to make disciples, to train up his people and to share the message of redemption on earth.
The movement to be come fishers of men behavior is marked by a distinct change from being self focused and a move towards sharing faith, experiences and discipleship with others.
Growing in our faith is important, but how do we get there? Nobody wants to be stagnant and stay in the same place forever, but what does it look like to progress in faith? What practical steps are there to grow? How do we know its happening? Who will help us? There are more questions than answers and I feel like it shouldn’t be so complicated to grow in the way we all desire...That’s why we've named this series, Own Your Growth.
The first Christmas: A series of small decisions made by very regular people to be part of a larger plan that changed the world. That’s what makes our faith great. That’s what makes people great and that’s what makes Christmas great.
Our God wins the award as the most patient planner the world has ever seen because his plan for the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is amazingly elaborate...there are so many pieces in motion over so many generations and geogphical locations and genealogies to make that very first simple Christmas happen just as it did.
How can we be joyfully generous and remain in our culture with the desires and wants that flood our lives? The secret: contentment, gratitude & giving
In a city full of wealth and nice things, Human touch might be the thing we are the most stingy with in our corner of the world, yet its the thing most desperately needed for our messy problems.
How can we be generous with the gifts that we've been given? Who God designed you to be determines what He intends you to do.
How can we learn to be generous with time, our most precious commodity, a place where we, historically, have had the least margin?
Humans are overcomers. Its what we do. We overcome obstacles, we overcome setbacks, we overcome adversity and we overcome even the most shameful things only to be better and greater than we were before.
That is part of our humanity, but what we will learn today, from the words of Jesus is that overcoming is not just a function of work or tasks or planning or actions, but that there’s a spiritual overcoming that is inside of each of us and Jesus actually prays for each of us that we may have that in our lives.
We can sometimes believe that we are islands, alone in this world, getting as much as we can with little to no help, but Jesus teaches us about the interconnectedness of humans and God, so that we may achieve fruit and joy in this life.
One of the greatest things that makes us human is our ability and our desire and ability to serve another. Serving others is the human difference and we’ll explore today how service makes us human.
Opening message in Sola's fall series: What Makes Us Human.
"My hope is that you’ll come to understand that even if we don’t always feel valuable or useful or special that our God feels those things about us. We’re going to use the words of Jesus, the central character of our Scriptures and our faith to show us how our creator, our God feels about humanity and i think you’ll be very surprised how different your view may be of yourself than the one God has of you."
Why Am I Here? This is NOT and existential why am I here in the universe…its a positional question…why am I here in this moment in this place in this time? Have you given that much thought? Most of us haven’t. Most Jesus followers and those considering following Jesus, get stuck seeing the events of the world a bit like a merry go round that spins out of control and we wonder how to stop it or maybe how we can get off. We see things we don't agree with around us and we wonder Why am I here?
A rag-tag group of less than 20 created a movement that changed the world. How? By obeying the last command given by Jesus: Be my witnesses.
Our goals for 2017 center around this concept…when you grow, we grow, which means that as each of us increase our participation, our willingness, our service to the body of Christ, the church grows in health and reach and impact.
We love the idea of Acts of Grace, we love the idea of giving, we love the idea of making a difference much more than we love actually doing it. There’s an allure and an attractiveness to generosity when we start it and when we complete it, but not in the middle. The middle is the hardest part. Its not the fun of starting and its not the thrill of finishing.
Today we kick off a brand new series, called The Marvelous Mess. In this series we are going to explore messes. Not the ones in your kitchen or your car that can be cleaned up with paper towels and magic erasers, but big messes…nasty messes that we make in our lives. The messes that really impact our happiness and our ability to love well and serve well and be productive human beings.
God responds to Habakkuk's prayer in a way that helps us understand why He does what he does.
Intro to the summer series asking the question where are you now god in a world that doesn't always make sense.