Life Covenant Church: Recent Episodes
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To be and make disciples in authentic community for the good of the world, in the presence and power of Jesus.
Some of our KidsLife members recall memories from their recent trip to the Alpine camp.
Pentecost Sunday - the Spirit's role in our formation (Gal. 5:16-25), and the spiritual disciplines of unceasing prayer and examination
Giving God what is God's (Matt. 22:15-22). For the disciple of Jesus, what is the proper relationship to one's government?
The transfiguration: Anticipating a future heaven, but loving God's world now (Matt. 17:1-23)
What defiles a person - the dirty things we come in contact with, or the dirty things that come from within us? (Matt. 15:1-28)
Matt. 12:1-21
God didn't make people so he'd have someone to keep his laws - he made his laws to keep people
Matt. 11:1-30
Jesus offers rest and peace to those who trust him enough to live in his way.
Matt. 9:35-10:20
Those who pray for God's will to be done become God's instruments in seeing his will done.
Matt. 8:1-17
Signs of the kingdom! Jesus came to restore the world to the way it should be.
Matt. 7:13-29
There are only two paths, and you are on one of them! Choose the right path.
Tim and Cameron, with our graduating 8th and 12th graders. What can we do to help our kids' faith stick as they go on to adulthood? Deut. 6:4-9
Matt. 6:25-34
Most of us spend our lives chasing after what we feel we need. Jesus' remedy: put God first, and he'll take care of the rest.
Matt. 6:19-24
How can I use money for good instead of being used by it? Jesus teaches us how to honor God with what we've been given.
Matt. 6:1-8, 14-18
Spirituality is not something we use to gain status with others, but to know and please God.
Matt. 5:17-48
What is goodness, really? God is not looking to just change our outward selves, but to give us new hearts.
Matt. 4:23 - 5:16
Who is really blessed? It isn't always who it seems. Jesus proclaims that the kingdom is available to those who are humble enough to receive it.
Matthew 4:23-25 is the beginning of Jesus and the disciple's public ministry to let people know that the Kingdom of God has come through Jesus. They demonstrate this through 3 Kingdom-Revealing Activities: Preaching, teaching, and healing.
Matt. 4:12-22
What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus? As Jesus begins his ministry, he announces that God's kingdom has arrived, and he calls would be disciples to come and follow him.
Matt. 3:13-4:11
Jesus is baptized, and then immediately sent into the desert where he will be tempted by Satan.
Matt. 3:1-12
A fiery prophet arrives in Israel, preaching repentance in light of the coming judgement, and that One is coming who will save people from their sins.
Liar, Lunatic, Lord. Guest speaker Melody Johnson will be teaching out of Matthew 21:1-22 on Jesus' entry into Jerusalem.
In our final week of the series, we will be looking at an area that we might not associate with our spiritual lives at all: being good stewards of our bodies. Our main text will be 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, where we learn that God cares not only about our spiritis, but our bodies too.
Pray that we might receive our bodies as gifts, and honor God in how we care for them.
This Sunday we will be looking at the spiritual discipline of meditation on Scripture, out of Psalm 1 and Isaiah 31:4. Meditation – the slow reading of Scripture – is the chief means by which we are “transformed by the renewing of our minds.” We will see how this ministry played out in Jesus’ life and ministry, and how we might incorporate it into ours.
This week in How To Grow we are looking at the spiritual discipline of solitude and silence, out of Mark 1:35-38. We see in the life of Jesus regular patterns of getting away to be with the Father, and on Sunday we will consider what it might look like for us to do likewise.
This week we are looking at the spiritual discipline of Sabbath keeping, out of Luke 4:16 and Mark 2:23-27. Here we see that Jesus himself practiced Sabbath as a means of connecting with the Father and allowing the Father to care for his physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. We will see how Jesus did this, and how in our context we might do the same.
This Sunday I’m excited to start a new series, How to Grow: Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People. Our study begins in 1 Kings 19:1-18, with a story of how God cared for Elijah, and a reminder of how God wants to care for us, and how we can lean into his work in our lives.
We'll be discussing Luke 18 and 19, which show two different responses to our Giving God’s love, and His invitation to be givers.
This Sunday we are looking at a different aspect of outreach: compassion and justice, out of Micah 6:6-8. Here God addresses our tendency to substitute religiosity for actually caring for people. Instead of hollow ritual, God calls us to three actions that demonstrate our love for him: act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly.
This week we are continuing with our 2024 emphasis on outreach, asking what mission looks like in a time and place like ours, where the gospel seems like foolishness to so many, and trust in the Church and in Christians is so low. Thankfully, our story is not new, as the New Testament church often found itself in similar circumstances. Our text is Colossians 4:2-6.
This week we start our vision and values series, with one theme in mind: outreach. This week’s text is John 15:26-27, where Jesus articulates his followers role in sharing about him. It is not primarily that of preaching, convincing, arguing, or philosophizing, but simply being a witness – sharing what we have seen and heard.
This week is New Years Eve also known as "Youth Pastor Preaches" Sunday. I'll join many other youth pastors this Sunday as we preach the Word to our people. This Sunday, I'll be bringing the Word with a challenge, "Hiding God's Word In Our Heart." We all know that memorizing Bible verses is a good thing. But we don't always do it, we're not always motivated to actively engage this spiritual discipline. This might be for a couple of reasons, but ultimately it boils down to the fact that we don't know the benefits that we gain by memorizing Scripture. Focusing on Psalm 119:1-20, I'll highlight the benefits of memorizing Scripture & help everyone see that it is something that they CAN do, even if their lives are busy. I'll also challenge everyone to make memorizing Scripture one of their New Year's resolutions (& even invite them to join me in memorizing Philippians 4:4-9 over the next couple of months).
Merry Christmas! The angels announced Jesus’ coming by saying he would bring peace – something we so desperately need. What does this mean, and how can we be part of the peace Jesus brings?
This week, the characters Not Found in the Nativity Scene are the shaming neighbors (Matt. 1:18-25). In Jesus, God’s plans from the beginning of time were coming to fruition. But those plans had to come through a young couple, Mary and Joseph, and one cost to them was enduring the shame that came from a birth out of wedlock. Jesus goes on to endure shame as well, and he tells his followers that their experience will also be that of enduring shame for his name. This particular story provides a valuable lesson in how we can weather shame for Christ’s name as it comes our way.
This week: episode 2 in Not in the Nativity Scene will focus on Five Women of Questionable Reputation, from Matthew 1:1-17. In the ancient near east, when introducing an important figure it was essential that you give their lineage. Matthew does this when he introduces the Messiah, but in so doing breaks two important rules: he includes ancestors with less-than-stellar reputations, and he includes women. All this is very intentional, and foreshadows what Matthew’s Gospel is going to tell us about what God and his Messiah are like, and why that matters to you and I.
This week we start Advent, and with it, a new series called Not in the Nativity Scene, featuring aspects of the Christmas story that don’t necessarily look good on your fireplace mantle or next to the tree. We start this week with The Homicidal Dragon, from Revelation 12:1-12. This is a look behind the curtain, at the spiritual battle that was raging as Satan tried to prevent the birth of the Savior.
This has been such an awesome series . I am a bit sad to see it come to a close, but that is what we will be doing this Sunday in Revelation 3:14-22. Our final word to the church of Laodicea is wholeheartedness.
This week we are in Revelation 3:7-13, and the quality Jesus is looking for in the church is mission. “I’ve opened a door for you!” Jesus says. And the church must be ready to walk through it. We are reminded here of God’s love for the world – a love that compels God to be a missionary God, and to call us to join him in the work of love that he is carrying out.
This week we are taking a break from our Revelation series in honor of All Saints Day. For those who haven’t been with us for these days before, once a year we do a biographical message based on the life of a historical figure who has lived some aspect of the faith in a way worth emulating. Our guiding text is Hebrews 13:8, “Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.” The leader whose life we will be considering this year is one who died quite recently, Pastor Tim Keller of Redeemer Church in New York city. Christlike qualities he embodied include a deep humility, principled engagement with the culture, an equal-opportunity approach to challenging people on both the Right and the Left toward righteousness, and graceful tolerance for those with differing views.
This week we are looking at the church in Sardis, from Revelation 3:1-6, and the quality Jesus is looking for is authenticity. The church in Sardis didn’t seem to have as many challenges as some of the other churches in the region, which perhaps contributed to their problem: nominal faith. From the outside they looked impressive, but they were faking it – just going through the motions rather than really living their faith. Jesus calls them to strengthen what faith they have left and come back to a place of following him authentically.
So this week we will be led in worship by special guest Mark Mekailian! Mark has been interviewing for our worship director position, and the final step in that process is rehearsing with our team and leading us on Sunday (Mark will separately email this week’s band and tech crews with songs and such). Please be praying for the Spirit’s wisdom and guidance for our church and for Mark as we explore whether this is the right fit.
This week we continue our series in Revelation 2:12-17 where the instruction to the church in Pergamum is to cling to the Truth. The emphasis this week is on remaining faithful to God's Word in all things.
This week we are in Revelation 2:8-11, and the quality Jesus is looking for in the church is faithfulness. As the New Testament churches strived to live in the way of Jesus, they frequently found themselves facing severe pressure from the world around them to live just as the world did. For us today, while the persecution may not be as intense, the pressure is ever-present. The question for them, and for us, is will we be faithful to Jesus’ teachings even when it is costly?
Week 2 of Seven Qualities Jesus Looks For in a Church, is Love, out of Revelation 2:1-7. The first letter from Jesus goes to the church at Ephesus, who seems to be doing everything right – this is the church that the other churches wish they could be! But somehow along the way they’ve lost their love for Jesus, and he wants to help them get it back.
This week we start a new teaching series: Seven Qualities Jesus Looks For in a Church, from Revelation 1 thru 3. Session one finds John imprisoned, and worried for the seven churches he oversees, each of which are struggling in different ways. But Jesus appears to John in a vision, giving him a peek behind the curtain into the spiritual realities behind each church’s troubles, and of Jesus himself as the powerful, risen Christ, fully sufficient to lead the seven churches through the challenges they face.
This week Jeremy Gordon is teaching out of Psalm 62:5, exploring stillness in our relationship with God. Words like rest, silence, wait, quiet…all point to a way God would have us live, as we sink into the hope we have in Him.
This week we wrap up our study in the Lord’s Prayer with our last word: “Yours.” Each time we pray the prayer Jesus gave us, we declare that the kingdom, the power, the glory are all his, and therefore, not ours! And in the process Jesus teaches us to learn and live a truth that serves us well in every aspect of life: It’s not about me.
This week we have a special guest, my friend Janelle Look, teaching on the practice of hospitality (out of Luke 5:27-32). Janelle is a fellow Covenanter and a missionary doing urban ministry with Servant Partners.
This week is word 6, “protect” (“lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one”). Even as we live in the goodness of God, we are reminded that we need his help if we are to resist the influence of the world, the flesh, and the devil and live the lives that Jesus invites us into. So part of our daily prayer is asking God to protect and deliver us. Sunday we will talk about how we do that.
This Sunday we are on word 5: grace – “forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). Here Jesus commands us to pray for forgiveness of our own sins, and in the same breath, to release those who have wronged us. Receiving and giving grace is among the most difficult aspects of the life Jesus calls us to, but in him it is both possible and a tremendous blessing for the one who learns it.
This week in Learning To Pray Like Jesus the operative word is “Ask” – “give us today our daily bread.” Prayer is essentially request, as Dallas Willard used to say. But as familiar as this aspect of prayer is, we often struggle with it – Am I being selfish when I pray for things? Are my requests trivial or not spiritual enough? Why do I pray if God already knows what I need? This week we will delve into Jesus’ answers to these questions.
This week we are back in Learning to Pray Like Jesus, with word #3: surrender. When we pray “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” we are affirming that God’s way is the best way, and the best we can want for this world of ours is for it to look like heaven – where God’s will is done perfectly. And this raises the question for you and I of surrender: Will I align myself with God’s will, or demand that he align himself with mine?
This week we are super blessed to have Pastor Melody Johnson guest speaking.
Her message will be out of Mark 4:35-41.
It was a beautiful and heartfelt service last week as we considered the love of our heavenly Father as we prayed for and loved on the Barbosa family in their sorrow and hurt. We continue our journey through the Lord's Prayer this week with the 2nd word which is Worship. We will consider the meaning of "hallowed be your name."
How would Jesus teach us to pray? It starts with “reflect” – what is this God to whom we pray really like? Everything flows from this question, as our image of God is going to set the course for our entire spiritual lives. Of all the descriptors Jesus could have chosen, he gives his followers this one: “Our Father in heaven.” Sunday we will be in Luke 15, looking at Jesus’ picture of what God the Father is like.
Today we start a new series: Learning To Pray Like Jesus. One time Jesus’ disciples (who were as befuddled by prayer as we often are), asked Jesus to teach them how to have a prayer life like his. His answer is what we call the Lord’s Prayer. Over summer we will be going line by line through Jesus’ prayer, learning how he would have us pray. But his instruction begins with two pieces of counsel on how NOT to pray (Matt 6:5-8).
This week is Shema Sunday, and we’ve got some great kids moving up into middle school, high school, and college. Cameron and I will be tag teaming the service, celebrating our kids and sharing from Deut. 6:1-9.
Today is our 20yr anniversary celebration. We have a lot to praise God for, and a lot to anticipate in the years to come. I will be speaking out of Phil 1:6 – that the good work God began in us won’t stop until he has brought them to completion.
- Link to anniversary slide show can be viewed here.
This week we wrap up our Rebooting series with a message on giving (2 Cor. 8-9). Giving may well be the most under-rated spiritual discipline. We don’t always realize how generosity shapes us – fostering unselfishness, combatting greed and materialism, teaching us to have joy apart from instant gratification, etc. This week we will be looking at a passage that talks about the Christian’s relationship to giving – the attitude God looks for, the amount he asks for, and the results he brings in our lives and others.
This week in Rebooting Your Faith is also Pentecost Sunday, so we will be focusing on the Spirit’s work of empowering us to serve (1 Cor. 12:4-27). God’s Spirit equips and empowers us to bring a gift to the rest of the family, that enables us to go deeper into the work God calls his people into.
We are continuing our Rebooting Your Faith series with a message on the idea of witness out of Isaiah 55:1-7, 57:14-21. We are called, sent out, and empowered by the Spirit of God as Christians to share our testimony of what God has done in our lives as we seek to bring others into the story of the gospel.
This week we are back in our Rebooting Your Faith series, talking about fellowship (Acts 4:32-35). We live in a time where isolation and loneliness have reached epidemic levels, damaging our health and the fabric of our society. And the Scriptures warn about this – we are not made to go it alone, but rather we are made to be part of a spiritual community. This week we will look at how the New Testament church kept spiritual community vibrant and life-giving.
Melanie Viana is teaching on the invisible, spiritual battle that all believers are caught up in (whether we know it or not). The text is from Eph 6:10-20.
This week in Rebooting Your Faith we will be on the topic of worship, out of Hebrew 10:19-25. Gathering with other believers to worship God – this is not only part of what Jesus calls us to when we follow him, but it also without question one of the primary ways he shapes us as his people. Emphasis in this passage is that because Jesus has made a way for us to come to God, when his people come we are to do so boldly – with an eye on God’s glory and our neighbor’s good.
This week we are looking at the practice of prayer, out of Matthew 6:5-13. Arguably, no practice is as fundamental to the spiritual life as prayer, yet almost everyone struggles with it in some way or another. Jesus’ disciples were no exception – they needed help here too. This week we will be looking at how Jesus taught his disciples to pray, and how he himself prayed.
This Sunday we are starting a short series with seekers, newbies, and prodigals in mind entitled, Rebooting Your Faith. I begin this Sunday with the question, how do I connect with God? With a meditation on Psalm 1. I will be illustrating how we can spend some time in meditation on God’s Word as a way to reconnect with him in the simplest most basic way.
This week is Palm Sunday, and we will be looking together at Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem (Matt. 21:1-17). The Gospels portray Jesus setting out for Jerusalem with a resolute sense of purpose as he approaches his final Passover week, even knowing the cross awaits him. The events of Palm Sunday help show us why: Jesus came to bring peace, to bring justice, and to bring healing.
I hope you are all enjoying all of this rain from some dry and cozy place with a warm beverage nearby. We are wrapping up our Lenten series, Dust to Dust, with a final message about the resurrected body. We will tackle the myth that our bodies are just a shell for our souls/spirits that we will no longer need once we die and go to heaven. I will be exploring parts of 1 Corinthians 15 with a focus on verses 42-49.
This week in Dust to Dust we are in Gen 2:7, around the myth that my body isn’t the “real” me, just a shell that I walk around in. Not so, God says. Your body is just as much “you” as your inner world. We will be talking about important ways that the body factors into what it means to be made in God’s image, and what that means for our everyday lives.
This week in our Dust to Dust series we are in Romans 6:12-14, talking about our tendency to separate our heart for God from our bodily actions. By contrast, the Scriptures teach us that what while God wants our hearts, he also wants to teach us to do right in our actions. Focus will be on God’s righteousness, and how he imparts that to us.
Week 2 of Dust to Dust we are looking at the commonly held myth that how my body looks is crucial to my happiness (1 Sam 16:7). This is a very human thing, but especially an American thing as we have made an idol of our bodies, how they look, and staying youthful. By contrast, Scripture teaches us that God sees all of us – bodies and souls – and loves us. We are more than our bodies.
Lent is a reminder of our humanness, and in particular, that we have these bodies which we experience as both blessing and curse! Why did God make us bodily creatures? Why is it important? Why did Jesus have a body? Will we have bodies in heaven? How do I honor God with this body he has given me? We are going to explore these questions, starting this week by attacking a myth many of us feel – that our body is somehow bad, dirty, or shameful. God created our bodies as good, and we want to learn from Jesus how to experience them as good. Ps 139:14 is our text.
This week’s value is Grace-full, out of John 8:2-11. We want to be a people who excel in receiving grace from God and in giving it to others. In this account we find Jesus asked to condemn a woman caught in adultery. What he does instead is give us a lesson in how to leave judgment to God, and extend compassion without compromising conviction.
This weekend the value we are looking at is missional, out of Luke 8:40-56. The big idea here is that Jesus had an amazing capacity, even in the midst of a crowd, to see and minister to people one at a time. He sees each of us, ministers to us where we are each at, and invites us to do likewise for those he would bring in our path. And for us, if we are to be missional Christians, then we also need to develop capacity to focus on one at a time.
We are back into our vision and values series with Connectional or “Together.” We will camp out in Acts 2:42-47 as we discuss the challenges and blessings of living in community together.
This week in vision and values: Devotional, out of Col. 3:1-4. The big idea here is that living in a love relationship with God means focusing on being with Jesus. It’s not primarily about serving him, getting God to answer our prayers, or bending him to our will – just being with.
New series, unpacking our core values. This week is “Biblical,” and I’ll be teaching out of Isaiah 26:7-8. Here is the key line: “Lord, we show our trust in you by obeying your laws.” Being believers whose lives are animated by God’s Word is not primarily about will power – it’s about deepening our trust in the One behind the Word.
It is tradition to do our annual checkup message at the start of the year. It’s a play off of your annual physical and new year’s resolutions mashed into one. We will be looking at Romans 12 as a framework for considering what it means to be a “living sacrifice.”
Our text is once again Isaiah 9:6-7, this time focusing on the Messiah as “Everlasting Father.” This is the second reference in this text to Jesus’ divinity, and it also tells us much about what our divine savior is like: a father whose love is protecting, tender, teaching, and sacrificial.
- THERE IS NO AUDIO FOR THIS EPISODE *
Week 2 of our Advent series we are looking at the second name of the Messiah in Isaiah 9:6-7 – “Mighty God.” Last week we learned that the Messiah would be the Wonderful Counselor – the one with a plan. This week we learn he also has power to carry out that plan. And our passage gives us one particular way that power will be used: to bring justice and righteousness – a right world, and right hearts.
So we’re starting a new series for Advent that will take us through Christmas Eve on the names of the Messiah in Isaiah 9:6-7. The first one we will look at is “Wonderful Counselor.” This doesn’t mean that Jesus is a great therapist (though he is), but literally the Hebrew indicates that he has a great and wonderful plan. We see this plan referred to often in the Scriptures, as one that began before the world began, that is not thwarted by our sin and rebellion, that encompasses our redemption, and will find its fulfillment in Christ’s eternal kingdom.
This week will have our annual Open-mic sharing service with the theme of gratitude. We are encouraging folks to consider the question, “How have you seen God at work in your life?”
I will be wrapping up the Idols series this week with a message on the Idol of Youth. I will use Ecc 11:10 and perhaps 12 as a jumping off point to talk about our general denial of death as Americans as well as our clinging to life. I’ll try to address some of what the Scriptures teach us about the true meaning of life and death so as to start a conversation about death and dying that informs the way we live today in the time we are given.
This week we are back in series, looking at the idol of religion (John 17:3). America has always been a highly religious nation – which is good and bad. On the one hand, this creates a positive pressure where true saving faith may be sought and found. On the other hand, it lends itself to a negative pressure where people may take on just the outer shell of religion without any genuine substance. This week we will be looking at three sayings of Jesus that move us away from false religion and toward true faith.
This year we are looking at the life of the most influential Christian you may never have heard of: John Stott, an English pastor and theologian whose work catalyzed global Christianity in the 20th century. Some big take-aways from him: the need for balanced, biblical Christianity, the importance of loving God with all our mind, leveraging our advantage as Westerners for the good of the developing world.
This week we’ll discuss how Jesus deftly navigated relationships, somehow honoring his humanity, while staying true to His mission of serving others in a world that idolized being served. Mt 14:9-23. The emphasis being how Jesus's intention was to withdraw for His own refreshment/grief. But His compassion moved Him toward caring for the lost. Then, after a day of service, He moved back to finding space for His need to withdraw and pray.
We will have a brief message out of Gal 3:26-29, focusing on how in baptism we receive a new identity, a new family, and a new inheritance. Then we will hear from one or more of our baptism candidates, and baptize them. Communion will follow.
This week we are looking at how our politics can become an idol, out of Mk 10:25-35. Particularly in these times, when our political choices feel so consequential, it’s easy put more trust in Caesar than in God to solve the problems around us. And when we do, it becomes that much easier to compromise our faith, damage our witness, and treat our neighbor like an enemy. Two postures Jesus’ took can help us keep free from this idol’s grasp: Jesus took a stand but didn’t align with a side, and for Jesus, winning came through serving, not coercion.
This week we are talking about the idol of romance, sex, and marriage, out of 1 Cor 7:1-40. Our culture tells us that the highest love, and perhaps our highest aspiration in life, is romantic love. Outside the church this can take any number of forms, inside the church it can take the form of an idolization of marriage. By contrast, the Scriptures teach us that we are indeed created to experience deep, significant love with others, but that may or may not include marriage.
This week in American Idols: Bigger Faster More (Mk 1:29-38, Lk 8:40-56). Part of American culture is that we often determine the worth of an object, enterprise, or even people – by its size, efficiency, and quantity. But Jesus shows us a different way – that you can’t actually be present to either God or others in a hurry.
This week we continue with one of the most American Idols: Money. Chiefly, that if money becomes an idol, it can wreck and distort us. We will be using 1 Timothy 6:9-11 as a jumping off place enroute to other passages that show us that if we pursue wealth without a necessary concern for the needs of others, we can quickly stray from God’s design for our best.
This week in American Idols we are tackling that most American of American values: freedom (out of Galatians 5:1-24). Like most of our idols, freedom is a good thing, which God created for his people to enjoy. But like other good things, when we make it an idol it ends up diminishing rather than enriching us. On Sunday we will be looking at freedom as God envisions it vs. some of the ways we distort it, and ask how we can become the kind of people who live in the sort of freedom God desires for us.
This week we start our new series, “American Idols.” In it we will be asking the question, What are some of the idolatries that we as Americans are most prone to? What good things are we most likely to make into ultimate things? This week will introduce the topic, out of Zechariah 10:2. The big idea: our idols lie to us, telling us what we want to hear. Our idols give us comfort, but that comfort turns out to be hollow. And though our idols look like they will bring us freedom, ultimately they become our oppressors. What can save us from these lies? We need a Shepherd who can lead us into truth.
As we are in between series, this week I want to share the story of what is happening in the relationship between our local churches and Torrance PD, and look at how the Bible describes the function of the police in society. We will be working out of two texts: Lk 3:14, which describes what integrity looks like for the officer, and Rom 13:1-5, which describes what God expects of governing authorities more broadly.
This week we’ll wrap up our series as we discuss two parables, exploring the incredible way God functions in the “Master” role, and the peace (or difficulty?) we may find in being the servant. Luke 12:35-38 tells us our loving God serves His ready disciples, and Luke 17:7-10 tells us a humble disciple serves an active God.
Today we have a little bit of parable (the mustard seed and yeast, Matthew 13:31-33), and a whole lot of Moz. The bulk of the message will be Matt and Andre sharing stories and video from what they saw God doing on their recent trip to Moz.
This week our parable is “The Two Sons,” out of Matt 21:28-32. In this story, the first son says the right things but fails to do his father’s will, while the second son flatly tells his father no, but then ends up doing what his father asked after all. Jesus tells this story in praise of simple obedience. He is looking for followers who will not just profess the right things, but do what he asks.
This week’s parable is the wedding banquet, out of Matthew 22:1-14. In this story Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a king who invites people to share in the joy of his son’s wedding. It’s a story about grace – how God’s invitation goes out to all. But surprisingly, not everyone takes him up on his offer. To receive this grace, we mustn’t be too preoccupied or self-satisfied to accept God’s invitation, and we mustn’t try to come on our own terms.
Parable of the Wheat and Weeds
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
’Jesus’ parable of the weeds among the wheat presents the kingdom of heaven as being like a farmer who sows good seed but is surprised to find that it contained seeds that developed into weeds. The weeds and the wheat must be allowed to grow together until the time of harvest, because, like a mustard seed or like yeast, the kingdom of heaven will grow and expand.
Because his disciples didn’t fully understand his allegory of seeds, wheat, and weeds, he explained it to them when they asked for clarification.
Our guest speaker today is Pastor Curt Beeson from the Rock Covenant Church in Manhattan Beach. Today's text is out of Romans 1:16-17
This week we'll be doing a part 2 of the miniseries on the Prodigal Sons with a focus on the elder brother. This message will reinforce the image of the loving father to continually goes out to the son, but it also provides another picture of how we are lost and in need of salvation.
This is part 1 of a 2-part miniseries on Parable of the Prodigal Son. There’s actually 2 sons in this parable that represent 2 failed paradigms about our lives with God. We'll be addressing the older lost son this Sunday out of Luke 15:11-32.
This week’s parable is a bit of an Independence Day meditation: salt and light, out of Matthew 5:13-16. Here Jesus looks out at a crowd of people who would probably not think of themselves as society’s “winners,” and tells them that the Father has chosen them to be agents of God’s inbreaking goodness, truth, and beauty. Our focus will be how we can participate in this good that God is doing.
Wandering sheep and wandering believers, out of Matthew 18:12-20. This parable is told elsewhere in regard to unbelievers, but in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus tells this story to share God’s heart for believers, that if they wander from the flock that they might be restored. Emphasis is on God’s heart for reconciliation among his people.
This week , Cameron (freshly back from paternity leave) and I will be tag teaming. The text is Deut 6:1-9, and the emphasis will be on God’s love for our kids. We will have videos from our graduating youth as well.
Today is about pictures, videos, stories, and lessons learned from Mozambique (various Scripture texts).
The Bible describes the Spirit’s work as sanctifying us, and uses a lot of language to describe our relationship with the Spirit – being filled with the Spirit, walking with the Spirit, keeping in step with the Spirit, etc. But how do we know if this is happening? How can we tell if we are walking with God’s Spirit? One way to answer that is by looking at the Spirit’s roles in our lives. We are told that the Spirit leads us into truth (right head), develops godly character in us (right heart), and empowers us for works of service (right hands).
This week Tyson is bringing the teaching, from Luke 18:1-8. It’s a story about why we should persist in prayer and not give up.
This week is a story about humility, from Luke 18:9-14. Here we find two men praying – one very religious, the other a notorious sinner. But God is pleased more by the sinner, because unlike the other he knows where he stands before God.
This week we are looking at Matthew 20:1-16, where Jesus compares God to an incredibly generous boss. Good as that sounds, ironically we sometimes struggle with God’s generosity because we think we are more deserving than others, or we want more than what is fair, or we envy the good fortune of others.
What an awesome start to our new series, Stories Jesus Told. This week we are continuing with a story about radical forgiveness. It will show us in very clear ways how we can begin or continue a journey of forgiveness for other or ourselves. The passage is in Matthew 18:21-35.
This week we start our new series in the parables: Stories Jesus Told. It will start this week with the parable of the soils, from Luke 8:4-15. Jesus tells us this parable is key to understanding all the parables, and indeed, understanding how people can live a flourishing life. Namely, by receiving God’s Word, holding onto it, and putting it into practice.
This week our friend Rev. Karen Figueroa will be preaching a Palm Sunday message on Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem as King. Please keep her in prayer!
This week we are finishing up Becoming a Person of Grace with Jonah 4:1-11 – Jonah’s anger with God. Finally, Jonah gets explicit about his beef with God, and God ever so gently challenges Jonah to adjust his perspective to be more like His. In particular, God challenges Jonah to stop judging God, to value others above his own comfort, and to see others as valuable, in spite of their sinfulness.
This week we are in Jonah 3:1-10. Everyone loves grace, right? Actually, most of us in our more honest moments would confess a sort of mixed relationship with grace. We certainly love it when we need it, but it can anger us too if it is being applied to those who have wronged us. Sometimes we want to see justice far more than we want to see mercy. What does God do with this? How can he be both a God of justice and at the same time a God of mercy? And what can that teach us about being people of grace?
This week we come to the pivot point in Jonah, where he begins to move from being a person of non-grace to a person of grace (Jonah 2:1-10). We see in his process a roadmap of our own: an awakening to the depth of his own need, a longing for restored relationship with God, and a renewed devotion to following God.
This week we are zooming in on Jonah 1:9-10, which gives us some insight into loving “the other,” whoever that might be to us. One factor we find with Jonah we find was that how he understood himself – his various layers of identities – were not properly ordered. This leads to a distorted view of ourselves, other people, and ultimately God.
As we roll into the season of Lent, we are starting a series in the book of Jonah we’re calling Becoming a Person of Grace. This week we are in Jonah 1:1-17, which is all about running from God. Anyone who has decided to follow God seriously has come to a point where that commitment is challenged – where God commands something that we would rather not hear, and we are confronted with the choice to obey or to run. How do we become people who trust enough to run towards God rather than away? That will be our focus for this Sunday.
This is our last week in vision and values, and this week we will be talking about giving, out of Exodus 35:1-10. Here we find the first “church offering!” And it isn’t marked by high pressure appeals to give what the people don’t have, but God’s desire that those with “generous hearts” would look at what they have been given and give from that.
This week the value we are highlighting is church planting! It will be a few minutes from me, and then Pastor Eneas will be giving the message, translated by one of his sons. The topic is mission, and his text is Mark 16:15.
This Sunday we will be talking about one facet of multiethnic life that has become quite charged in recent times: the idea of “privilege” – what it is, how we should think about it, and what one should do if they discover it is something they have. To address these, we will be looking at the example of Jesus in Phil. 2:1-11, who rather than using his advantage for his own gain uses it to serve others.
This week is going to be a fun one as well, as we are talking about the Bible’s view on women in leadership. Short version: we believe that the best read of Scripture is that leading and teaching is based on gifting and calling, regardless of one’s sex. We will be all over the Scriptures, but our jumping off point is Acts 2:17-18.
Our text is Matthew 28:20, and we will be focused on God’s power and presence with us. Specifically, we will be looking back at some highlights from 2021, and looking ahead to 2022 as well.
This week in vision, we are covering “for the good of the world,” out of John 3:22-30. How do we, in the midst of all the demands of navigating our busy lives, can we continue to live as people on mission? John the Baptist steers us toward the right heart posture with these four words: It’s not about me.
Speaking of community, that’s our topic this week. “authentic community” out of Galatians 3:28 and 5:14. I’ll be looking to paint a picture of what a biblical church really looked like as a place filled with very different people who had to struggle and sacrifice to be together and come together. These first fellowships made a “Rugged commitment” to love one another in Christ in pursuit of their call to realness and genuineness of community.
This week we will be starting a series on our vision and values, beginning with “to be and make disciples.” Our text is Luke 6:40 – “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher.” We will be asking What is a disciple, and How do I become one?
This Sunday is our “annual check up,” and we are asking the question, what did the early Apostles think a healthy, missional church looked like? One area we find the answer to this in the prayers they prayed for the churches. Their prayers give us a window into the dreams and visions they had for God’s people, and also tell us the dangers to avoid. Our text this week is Phil. 1:9-11, where Paul asserts that the kind of love that lasts and bears fruit doesn’t just happen, but flows out of and experiential knowledge of who God is.
After this past season & looking at the 10 Words & the laws behind the words, some of you might be like me & ask, “Okay, but which is THE word? The BEST one? Which one should I REALLY pursue?" This Sunday we will see Jesus settle this long-time debate. When asked which was the “greatest commandment in the Law,” Jesus responded with not one of the 10 Commandments but another command. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind… And… Love your neighbor as yourself (Matt 22:37-39).” These two commands, while simple & straight forward, are extremely difficult. But we shouldn’t let their difficulty intimidate us or keep us from pursuing them. These 2 commands can be an incredible compass for our lives because they really DO encapsulate, "All of the Law & Prophets." If we really strive to keep these commands, then we won’t need to worry about whether we’re obeying God or not- we just will be.
This Sunday we are wrapping up the series with the 10th Word: Honor in the heart, out of Exod. 20:17 (“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”). This seems so simple and almost a given, but it challenges us to examine the inner workings of our hearts as we consider all of the commandments. It takes us from just doing the right thing (or avoiding the wrong things) to having the right heart, intention, character, and will. It dovetails with Jesus’ sermon on the mount and greatest commandments in that it calls us to contentment in God alone and a love of neighbor that extends to how we perceive what is theirs.
This Sunday we are on the 9th Word: Honor reputation, out of Exod. 20:16 (“You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor”). Truth matters, and it especially matters when called on to testify about others. Because people are made in the image of God, we are charged with safe guarding our neighbor’s reputation. This would extend to gossip, slander, libel, etc., and contrasts with the NT admonition that our speech should be the kind that builds up rather than tears down. How much does our world need this word right now??
This week we are on Word 8, “You shall not steal.” The Old Testament teaches that your neighbor has the right to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Consequently, we are not only to honor our neighbor’s personhood, but also our neighbor’s things. In OT law this extends also to fair business dealings, not deceiving or defrauding, and not taking advantage of the vulnerable. For us, this word challenges us to consider whether we are dealing honestly and fairly with those we do business with as well.
"How do you respond when the storms of life come? How do you hold on to hope & trust God despite troubles, strife and chaos all around you? Rev Karen Figueroa reminds us to keep our focus on God, who has promised to be with us in the midst of our storms. He alone can give us the peace that we desperately need. Trust that He will help get you through it and allow that hope to motivate you in the midst of the storm."
Today's text comes from Mark 4:35.
This week we are on the 7th Word – honor marriage, out of Exodus 20:15, “You shall not commit adultery.” In few areas of life are we as tender and vulnerable as in matters of sex and love. As such, God has given his people safe-guards around our sexual behavior to protect, provide, and enrich individual lives and our society as a whole. God’s care for his people and protection of the vulnerable will be highlighted in the message.
This week we are back to our series in the 10 commandments, with word #6: “You shall not murder” (Ex. 20:13). Hooray, a commandment we haven’t broken, right?? Actually there is more to it than that. The 6th word is not just about how we shouldn’t take life, but about honoring life – seeing the image of God in those around us, treating every life as precious, and building others up rather than tearing them down.
This Sunday we observe All Saints Day, with life lessons from a person who is likely the most influential Christian woman of the 20th century, yet whose name most in the church will not know. If your faith journey included youth ministry, a Christian camp, a college parachurch group, the Four Spiritual Laws, or Billy Graham – chances are you owe a debt of gratitude to Henrietta Mears.
This week we are at the hinge commandment where our attention turns from directly toward God to others. Namely, that we are to honor our mothers and fathers that we might live long in the land. Some have called this the most difficult of the commandments, but it is also the only one that comes with a promise. We will try to unpack what some of this might mean for us as we consider all of the complexity and difficulty of honoring our parents who at best are wonderfully flawed or perhaps responsible for a great deal of pain and suffering in our lives. Whatever the case, honoring them is hard. Word #5: Filial Honor
This week we are on Word #3: “Don’t misuse God’s name.” For many of us, this command has basically meant don’t swear, or at least don’t bring God into your swearing! But there is much more to it than that. God’s people represent God – they bear his name. Consequently, when we speak or act in ways that are contrary to who God is, we misrepresent to a watching world just who God actually is.
This week is word #2: “no making images of God.” Often we look at this and it sounds just like the 1st commandment, to have no other gods. But this is a little different – once you have decided to worship God alone, the next temptation is to refashion him into a god who better suits our tastes. This week is all about how our idols diminish God’s worship, and diminishes us as his people.
This week, word one: “You shall have no other gods beside me” (Exod. 20:3). This is the first commandment because it forms the basis for all the others. God – who both created and rescued his people – calls for his people to hold an exclusive allegiance to him. For ancient Israel this was more difficult than you might imagine. Interestingly, the temptation was almost never to reject Yahweh altogether, but rather to keep him, and, just in case they were needed, to add other gods too. The same is true for us.
The ten words are truly amazing. It was just three months after Israel was delivered from slavery that God gives them a charter to live by – a sort of divine “bill of rights” to govern their new society and teach them what it means to love God and neighbor. Throughout the Pentateuch these words are expanded and extrapolated into case law, but these ten words remained foundational – simple enough that the youngest child could memorize them, comprehensive enough that they could form the basis for thinking through difficult real-life situations that arise.
This Sunday is a bit of a stand-alone message before we get into our new series, and I will be talking about how our core priorities and habits help up grow in essential ways. I will be speaking out of 2 Peter 1:1-11 asking the question, How do we actually grow in our faith and relationship with Jesus?
This Sunday the message will be a conversational one between me and my friend Dwight Radcliffe, pastor at the Message Center and professor at Fuller Seminary. Our topic is race and the gospel, and our jumping-off point will be comparing the ethnic/racial/social/political realities of Israelites in the time of Jesus with the American church today.
This will be our last in the series, and the topic is self-discipline. This is one of those keystone habits, where if we can unlock it, it opens the door to host of other benefits. Big idea is this: we create habits, and then those habits create us. We will be hanging out in Proverbs, beginning with Prov. 16:32.
I am going to shoehorn a message into this series as I have been trying to come up with a topic that fits into the series. This is going to overlap a little with some of what has already been talked about, but I want to talk about the importance of soul care for who we are becoming. We will use Deut 4:9 “Only give heed to yourself and keep your soul diligently,…” (NASB) as our jumping off point to talk about the nature and significance of the soul and why it is so important that we take care of it.
This week we are looking at the role of identity in who we are becoming. In specific we are discussing how the question “Am I good, valuable, acceptable?” can weave it’s way throughout our days, and influences the decisions we make. In Genesis 3 we see how humans got away from trusting God and His assessment of who we are. And Ephesians 1 reminds us that we can trust God’s plan, driven by His love, grace and kindness, and refocus our attention away from the question of who I am to the answer that I will always be valued by God.
This week we are looking at the role of authority in who we are becoming. Specifically this: the voices we give authority to shape our thinking. There is a refrain in the Old Testament that we often hear before God reveals his will to his people. It goes like this: “I am the Lord your God. Therefore . . .” God reminds his people continually that he has ultimate authority over our lives, and as such we are to live in his way. Yet all of us have other voices we listen to as well, and these shape us either toward or away from God. If we are to be shaped in the direction God would have for us, we need to be attentive that those voices are ones that reinforce God’s authority in our lives.
We continue our series this week with the topic of Friends. How do our relationships shape and influence us? They are so much more significant than we imagine. We will be pulling from a few different places on this one, but our jumping off text will be Proverbs 13:20.
Week two in our new series, and we are talking about how powerful our thinking is in shaping who we are becoming. The Scriptures are full of commands directing us to think on certain things, as we will slowly be shaped by what we think about most. We will tease this out, and give a couple of spiritual disciplines to help us love God with all our minds. Main text will be Phil 4:4-9.
This week we start our summer series, and we kick it off with a thought, and a question. The thought: when you look in the mirror, the person you see looking back at you is the product of who you have been to this point. Much of that, of course, has been outside of your control, but much of it has been due to your own choices as well, and how these have shaped your character, your outlook, your thinking, etc. Now the question: Who will you be in five years? If you think about it, that question will largely be answered by the choices you make today, and the way those choices shape you in the time between now and then.
Today’s a great day to consider this question: what is the follower of Jesus’ proper relationship to their country? That question feels more complicated these days, with the patriotism of some spilling over into a sort of Christian nationalism, while others, distressed at America’s sinful past and present, wonder if there is a place for patriotism of any kind. To those in either of those places, the Bible offers these words: we are citizens of heaven first, nation second. I find these words give me a lot of freedom in what it means to be an American and a Christian, and I hope it will for the rest of us too. Primary text will be Phil 3:18-21.
Today's message is based out of James 1:19-27 with an emphasis on verses 19-21. I’ll be keying in on the idea of listening as an act of love. So often we are taught and trained as evangelicals to be ready to speak the truth and share our words, but this overemphasis misses the beautiful work of listening and understanding as an expression of care and love and dignity that we can give to others even if we disagree about what is being shared. For James, listening, not speaking, leads to doing the word and a religion that is pure and undefiled.
This Sunday is Shema Sunday, where we focus on the kids – celebrating graduates, and reminding ourselves how and why we invest in our children’s faith. Cameron and I will be tag teaming the service, and our text is Deut 6:1-9.
This week: Acts 28:11-31 – As Paul reaches Rome, we find that the narrative comes to a surprisingly abrupt end. Why? I think those scholars are correct who assert that it is because the story doesn’t end there – each subsequent generation of Christians is called on to continue to write the story. Two questions emerge as Acts concludes: Many throughout the narrative have received Jesus and many have rejected him – which will we be? And second, we have seen the work of Jesus go from Jerusalem to Rome – will we continue the work of being his witness to the ends of the earth?
This week we are in Acts 27, Paul’s dangerous journey to Rome. What does it mean to say that God is in control? For some, those words bring great comfort, while for others they feel like empty sentiment. In this passage, Paul faces near certain death by shipwreck, the sword, and snakebite. Yet God preserves his life and God’s purposes are still accomplished. This passage gives us insight into God’s power and providence, and our right response in light of these realities.
This week we are picking back up on the Book of Acts in Chapter 26 with a focus on the end in verses 15-32 where Paul is making a case before King Agrippa. It is in these verses that Paul gives us a bit of a clinic on what it looks like to persuade someone toward the gospel of Jesus. Themes for this will be repeats, but will touch on Truth, Heart/emotion, Scriptures, and freedom in Christ.
This week is the day in the church calendar known as Pentecost Sunday, so we are breaking from Acts to talk about the coming of the Holy Spirit, from John 14:15-27. Here Jesus tells the disciples that even though he is going away, he will still be with them. They will be given another Helper – the very Spirit of Jesus, who will be with them and in them. And Jesus mentions three functions the Holy Spirit will perform for the church: the Spirit enlivens heart-level obedience, teaches us what is true, and provides real intimacy with God.
This week we find Paul on trial before Felix, Rome’s appointed governor over Judea (Acts 23:12-24:27). As Paul makes his defense before his accusers, he not only gives a denial of those things he is falsely accused of, but also gives us a positive picture of what the church is all about. He confesses what those earliest Christians held to be true: that Christian faith is the fulfillment of the Scriptures, brings hope for this life and the life to come, and causes us to grow in holiness (emphasis will be on 24:14-16, 25).
This week: Paul’s return to Jerusalem (Acts 21:1-23:11). Finally Paul makes his way back to Jerusalem, only to find that he is a wanted man. As he makes his defense before the mob and the court, Paul recalls three encounters with Jesus, each of which lead to a decision point for him. Jesus calls on Paul, as he does all those who want a relationship with God, to surrender his life, his direction, and his future.
This week we are in Acts 20:13-38. Ever wonder what advice Paul would give to a young church in a city that is sometimes indifferent, sometimes hostile to the gospel? This passage records Paul’s words to the church’s leadership, which fascinate me. Of all the instructions he could have given them, he boils it down to this: be shepherds who feed the church truth, and who guard it from error.
This week we are in Acts 19:23-41, the riot in Ephesus. Have you noticed in Acts that just about everywhere the believers go, there is either a riot or they get beat up? What is going on with that? All they are doing is saving, healing, teaching truth, caring for people – why all the hate? Here is the thing: The gospel exposes the idols of our hearts, and our flesh will fight to the death to protect those idols. Our text this week exposes three of humanity’s biggest idols: money, sex, and power. When these get threatened, either in our culture or in our own lives, riots and beatings tend to happen.
Meanwhile, the book of Acts continues to speak to us right where we are at. This week we are in Acts 19:1-22, the church in Ephesus. This passage really highlights the Holy Spirit. What happens when a church learns to live empowered by the Spirit? Believers get missional, bonds get broken, and repentance gets costly. The focus will be on God’s power for those who believe, and his grace for all we need.
This week we are picking back up in our study of Acts in chapter 18. We are introduced to Priscilla and Aquila who exemplify the question, What does a life of ministry look like? We will be exploring Acts 18:1-5, 24-28 as we look closely at how God uses ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things. It challenges us to think about our mindset, practices, and motivation for living for God in all areas of our lives.
So this time of year we talk a lot about Good Friday, and a lot about Easter Sunday, but what about the Saturday in between? What must that have been like for the disciples? On this side of Easter we know what was coming, but they didn’t. And indeed, when we are in the middle of the story we never know what’s coming. This year, after what feels like a year-long Saturday, we are going to talk about the very real hope that Easter provides, even when we’re still living in the middle of the story.
This week we are taking a little different approach to our series – interviewing Alex and Melanie Viana, and how they are seeing the book of Acts being lived out in the mission field. We will cover a number of texts and tell a bunch of stories.
Great chapter this week! Acts 17:1-33. Here we find Paul moving from the synagogue, where the hearers are not always welcoming but at least share his worldview, to Athens where his hearers find his proclamation so alien that they barely even understand what he is saying. Does this sounds at all like ministry in the 21st century? The text gives us some great handles on how to wisely talk about God in a world that doesn’t always want to hear what we have to say.
This Sunday we are in Acts 16:11-40. It’s the story of three unlikely converts, who together illustrate one of the hallmarks of the church: people who would otherwise have nothing in common are made one family by the God who loves them all.
This week we are in Acts 16:1-10, talking about how God speaks to us, and how we learn his voice. This divine guidance is a pattern we see in Acts, and no passage stands out to me as much as this one as an example of the mysterious ways God directs us. Three particular areas we will address: Scripture, divine impressions, and circumstances.
This week we are going trace the progression of Black history in the Bible. It is actually a really fascinating study, and I think has great importance for believers of all colors. We will be all over the place, but our anchor text will be Col 3:11 – “Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.”
This week we are in Acts 15:36-41, where we see Paul and Barnabas have so sharp a disagreement over what to do with a young leader that they end up parting company. It’s a cautionary story, meant to remind us to fight to remain united, to look to the Holy Spirit for wisdom, and to always leave room for a person to change course (the young leader is eventually vindicated).
This week we are in Acts 15:1-35, a pivotal moment in the early church. Here they wrestle once and for all with what for them was a difficult question: what must Gentiles do in order to be saved? Their answer, and their process, informs us on what it looks like to be the church together, and to discern God’s will together
This week, we are back in the Book of Acts chapter 14:8-23 where Paul and Barnabas start to share the gospel in a new context among pagans in a polytheistic culture who have no connection to the Hebrew scriptures or Jewish tradition. What this reveals is a powerful strategy and approach when it comes to sharing the gospel in a pluralistic society.
Our text is Matthew 16:18, where Jesus tells us, “I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” In many ways, 2020 felt like standing at the gates of Hell! Yet Jesus met us, and did some really amazing things. We will be telling that story this Sunday.
This week we are back in Acts, chapter 13:1-52. Here we begin to see a pattern emerge that will become familiar as the book progresses: wherever the gospel goes, it evokes both acceptance and rejection, embrace and opposition. We will be exploring why that is, and how as those who would follow Jesus on mission we must get comfortable with both.
This week we are taking a detour from Acts to talk about how we might become agents of healing and deep peace in these divisive times. Our text is Luke 19:41-44, where Jesus weeps over Jerusalem. He sees the conflict and hatred, and knows it will only lead to more hate, and eventually violence and destruction. Rather than returning hate for hate, Jesus calls us to love all, even those who hate us, because the only thing strong enough to conquer hate is love.
So this week we are back in series, and our text is Acts 11:19-30 and 13:1-3 – the church in Antioch. Here we get our first glimpse of the church as it moves out into the Gentile world, and with that, a look at what the church does: it shares the good news of salvation, helps people become like Jesus, and ministers to those in need. God’s holiness (and subsequent act of making us holy) and God’s heart for people will be emphasized.
Today's message is out of Joshua 1:1-9. Here we find the people of Israel in a scary time, about to go to war, and having just lost the only leader they’ve ever known. And God’s word to them is to “Be strong and courageous!” They can do this, we’re told, because God is with them, his promises are always true, and he has given them his Word.
This week we are in Acts 12:1-18. While it's easy to think that this story is about prayer (prayer is certainly a main theme), the story is more about the response to God in times of struggle & hardship. The story contrasts two faithful & godly followers (Peter & James) who both experienced hardships (their life was on the line). Despite the fact that one was rescued, while the other was not, they were both faithful to the end. When we face hardships, we don't always know what the outcome will be. So how do we develop a faith in God that can sustain us throughout the hardships that we will face?
This week we are in Acts 11:1-18, Peter’s recap of the Cornelius story. Why, we ask, does this story appear twice? Granted it is a very important episode in the life of the church, but it is more than that: Acts 11 details how the church discerned whether or not Peter’s powerful experience was truly from God, or was spiritually counterfeit. Similarly, we live in an age of religious hucksters and a plethora of spiritual experiences – how can we to determine what is really of God?
This week we are in Acts 10:1-48. Last week was the conversion of Paul, and in a way, this week is about the conversion of Peter. Not from unsaved to saved, but the story of Cornelius coming to faith marks a sea change in how Peter and the young Church looked at the world. Namely, it showed them that God accepts all those who accept him. Salvation is not just about Jews getting their Messiah, but the whole world receiving its King.
So we are in Acts 9:1-31, the story of Saul’s conversion. His experience outlines some of the major themes of what happens when one is saved: God goes from impersonal to personal and from an abstraction to Lord, and we find we still need others, and that following Jesus comes with a cost. The theme of God’s kingship and our surrender run through the passage.
This week we will be having our Thanksgiving sharing service as per usual, except this time we will be inviting people to share via Zoom. Hopefully most have figured out how to use this platform and we will be sharing the meeting link and password in the weekly email and on Sunday in the chat during the livestream. This will allow folks to call in and have their video call integrated into the livestream for everyone to see and hear. Pray for this as we are not exactly sure how the moderating will go virtually!
We are continuing in the book of Acts 8:26-40. We are referencing something Tim said early on in the series about being a witnessing church. One of our primary functions as members of the church is to bear witness to the truth and reality of Jesus to all people. Nowhere is that more clearly illustrated than in this week’s passage. It feels like a huge call (and it is), but we cannot do it apart from the power of the Holy Spirit who guides the whole thing.
This Sunday, back to Acts! We are in the martyrdom of Stephen, Acts 6:8-8:1. Here Stephen retells the story of Israel, but with a surprise ending that his accusers don’t like: that they are not the heroes in the story – the worshipers, the Law-keepers, and the prophetic, but rather the idolaters, the disobedient, and the persecutors.
Emphasis will be on humbling ourselves before God and receiving his wisdom over our own.
This Sunday Doug and I will be pulling up a couple of stools, dialoging about the election, and sharing our hopes for the church in the midst of our national division. We will be praying out of Ps 72:1-4 –
Give your love of justice to the king, O God,
and righteousness to the king’s son.
2 Help him judge your people in the right way;
let the poor always be treated fairly.
3 May the mountains yield prosperity for all,
and may the hills be fruitful.
4 Help him to defend the poor,
to rescue the children of the needy,
and to crush their oppressors.
So this year’s saint is none other than Mr Rogers, and the message will be around the power of gentleness: “Through patience a ruler can be persuaded, and a gentle tongue can break a bone” (Prov. 25:15). Sometimes when you want to be heard above the noise, you have to get really quiet. Rogers did this well, offering unconditional acceptance to generations of viewers who he proclaimed to be special, simply because they are made in God’s image.
This week we are in Acts 6:1-7, where the church encounters its first real challenge to its unity. God’s vision is to bring together all different sorts of people into one big family, which is at the same time beautiful and the cause of a few headaches! Here the church wrestles through a conflict born out of cultural differences and racial tensions. Their response is instructive, as they trust that God’s Spirit will work through the body, discern well who is best to mend the situation, and exercise wisdom and sensitivity in resolving the problem.
This week we are in Acts 4:32-5:16, where we are given two contrasting stories – the church at its absolute best, and a picture of just how fallen and fallible we as church people are. And that’s the big take away: the church is always a mixture of holiness and fallenness, as we are all in the messy process of being made holy. This informs our posture toward each other as fellow travelers, humbly helping one another toward our goal of becoming like Jesus.
This week we are in Acts 4:1-31, where Peter and John are arrested for preaching Jesus after healing the lame man. Their response is a remarkable picture of faithfulness under pressure, which can serve us well when our faithfulness is challenged – be it by the external pressures brought upon us by other people, or the internal pressures to compromise that come from our own flesh. We find here two decisions that help the disciples remain faithful: they have already settled the question of who they will obey, and they are already in the habit of receiving strength from Jesus.
This week we continue in our study of the Book of Acts with chapter 3:1-23 with the performing of the first public miracle by the apostles. Through it we discover that there is a spiritual pattern and message to the miracles of the NT that instruct us on the meaning of the gospel and what it means to be a church that heals the broken.
This week we are in Acts 2:42-47, we get a picture of the church’s life together - what it looks like when the Spirit is moving and a church is alive and healthy. Here we see a church that is a learning church, a loving church, a worshiping church, and a witnessing church.
This week we are in Acts 2:1-41, the Holy Spirit coming on the believers, and the church is officially born. If Acts 1 teaches us what the church is, Acts 2 shows us who comprises the church. From its first day, the church is a wildly inclusive community of Spirit empowered, forgiven people, carrying out God’s purposes in the world.
This time of disruption is difficult, but it also provides a great opportunity to examine our beliefs about what a church is and does, to see how the earliest church worked out life and mission together (including issues of their multiethnicity), and how we might live a Spirit-drenched life. This first week will be Acts 1:1-11, on how the church continues to do the work of Jesus.
In John 15, as Jesus prepares to go to the cross, he declares to his disciples that he considers them his friends.
What does it mean, as disciples ourselves, to cultivate friendship with God?
What is the quality of such a connection?
We will explore how we are joined with a Friend who is both transcendent yet immanent, "other" yet familiar, one whose very nature is a juxtaposition of the temporality and familiarity of flesh, with the limitless sustenance of the divine. How can we grow in our understanding of this friendship, and what is our part in its cultivation? We will explore and ask: do we believe that Jesus our friend is for us? Do we live aware of his abiding presence as both a mutual sharing of life and a call to love others radically? Do we approach Him in the familiarity of being friends, and yet in expectancy that he is a Friend whose provision never runs out?
Psalm 72 is our text, and the topic is the just ruler. What does God look for in those who govern? What does it look like for them to govern in a way that displays his righteousness and justice? We will be looking at several aspects of this, including character, care for the needy, and economic flourishing.
As we come to the end of Amos (9:11-15), we find judgment giving way to a picture of hope and grace. When it comes to sin, we’ve found throughout this book that God isn’t playing! Judgment is real for those who fail to live by his righteousness and justice. But as the book ends, we are reminded that God is also the God who restores – those who seek him can be sure he will never reject you, throw you away, or stop loving you.
We are back in Amos with chapter 8 this week, and if you can believe it, it gets worse… this might be the harshest judgement in all of the bible as God Himself shows up to drop the hammer on His people. The roughest part is that they don’t even realize that He is coming to judge them. They will be completely caught off guard because they have deceived themselves into thinking that they are OK the way that they are. In a strange, but important way, God’s judgement is an act of redemption and rescue for a remnant few. I keep thinking about the ways that we can creatively justify our own bad behavior while complaining about that of others. It’s another doozy.
Amos 7:1-17 is our text this week, the main idea being that being a just person is going to cost you. Two costs in particular come out in this passage: First, God has a standard, and being just means you have to live by that standard (versus doing whatever pleases you). Second, a just person will sometimes be loved, but is also going to have to take a lot of hate.
Amos is not messing around at all! This week we are in Amos 5 and a little bit of 6, and he is dropping the hammer on hollow religion, idol worship, and complacent faith. But this lament is not without some glimmer of hope. He gives us an out in 5:4 “Seek the Lord and live.” This serves as a call back to full commitment to worshipping God alone, and Amos specifically makes a call to doing good, hating evil, and establishing justice in verse 15. These are none negotiables for us who follow Christ, and this will be the focus for this week.
What are the things that tend to blind us from seeing injustice when it occurs? Amos gives us three: security, wealth, and hollow religion. We happen to be a society with ample amounts of all three.
Israel had a knack for seeing injustice as practiced by others, but was less astute when it came to seeing their own sin. So God sent Amos to point out the way that they were also violating God’s law. The question we bring to this text is, How can we become people who are attuned to what God wants to correct in us, not just what is wrong in others?
This week we are kicking off a series around the topic of justice. Justice, like love, is one of those sweeping terms that reminds me of an empty balloon. We know it’s a good thing, so we embrace it. But once we embrace the concept we have a tendency to then fill it with whatever our conception of that term is, making us ever susceptible to replacing a biblical concept of justice with a cultural definition. Our aim is to do our best to understand God’s concept of justice, and to grow in our practice of it.
Most of the series will be in the book of Amos, but this week is sort of a preface, out of this verse: “The Word of the Lord is right and true; he is faithful in all he does. The Lord loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love.” (Ps 33:5)
This week’s teaching will be an introduction of the Bible’s take on justice and righteousness, preparing us to go deeper into the OT prophets.
This week we are in between series, and making a stop in Galatians 5:16-25. Each of us has an internal battle raging, between our flesh and what it wants, and God’s Spirit inside us and what he wants. This gets played out for us as individuals as well as on a communal level, particularly in times of high tension, like the one we are living in now. This passage addresses the question of how we can live in ways that honor God and bless each other, even when it is difficult.
This week we have a guest preacher, Karen Figueroa. She is the Academic Dean at CHET, the Covenant’s Hispanic seminary. And is teaching out of Psalm 1, on living a life rooted in God and his Word.
We are calling this week “Shema Sunday,” as we focus in on passing the faith to our kids and youth, and also giving a shout out to those graduating from 5th and 8th grade. Cameron and I will be tag teaming the teaching part of the service, speaking from Deut 6:4-9.
We are wrapping up our series on the Good Shepherd. Ps 23:6 is the text, where David zooms in on the character of the Shepherd’s love – a pursuing love, a persistent love, and an eternal love.
( We will be hearing from Alex and Mel about Moz - see other post)
“Your rod and staff, they comfort me.” Where the first part of verse four speaks to the comfort of the Shepherd’s presence, this part speaks to his power. Part of the sheep’s comfort is knowing that the shepherd protects (rod) and guides (staff). For the believer, we hear this echoed in Jesus’ words that all authority is his, and that he will be with us always.
This week we are in Psalm 23:4a “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me;” This is where the psalmist changes to the first person, and it becomes more intimate somehow. We will be asking the question, how does God’s presence with us allay our deepest fears and anxiety? The emphasis is on the trustworthiness of God and not the gravity of our circumstance. I’ll also spend some time breaking down the power of the ministry of presence if that helps.
This week, Ps 23:3b – “He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.” If they are going to flourish, sheep need someone else to guide them – who knows where green pastures and good waters are, where the trails are sure and predators are unlikely to roam. We need this too, though we often resist it. This Sunday we will talk about how the Good Shepherd leads his people, and our need as sheep to follow closely, obediently, trustingly.
This week: “He makes me lie down in green pasture, he leads me beside quiet water, he refreshes my soul.” What does a sheep need in order to lie down and rest? It must have food, and water, and feel safe. God works similarly in our lives, providing us what we need to experience deep rest. We will be looking at how God does this, and how we can grow in our receiving of his work.
This week we are on the second line of Ps 23:1 – “I lack nothing.” When God is our shepherd, we can learn what it is to experience contentment and joy that is greater than our present circumstance.
So from the time we went to streaming up to the present we have been going week to week, trying to aim the teaching at the need of the moment. This week we are launching into a series called Shepherd – a deep dive into Psalm 23. Our intent is to live deeply into this as a church, using it as a text to guide us as we continue learning to trust in uncertain times. This first week will be on the first line – “The Lord is my shepherd” – and will center around two questions: Do I recognize my need for a shepherd? And who will that shepherd be?
This Sunday, I am going to continue the Easter narrative by looking at the forgiveness and reinstating of Peter in John 21:15-25. Jesus takes great pains to restore Peter after his previous betrayals. He does this by offering Peter space to truly repent and receive grace and by affirming Peter’s call to being a disciple and leader of God’s people. My hope is that this message will instruct us on how to be healed by Jesus as we suffer from the regret and shame of past mistakes that keep us from being who we are called to be in Christ.
Our text is John 20:6-7, looking at the empty burial clothes, and their reinforcement of Jesus’ declaration from the cross that “It is finished!” After death has been defanged, what else is left? Christ is victorious over death, and our victory is in him.
I love the impromptu series we're doing dealing with Crisis. It's been so fruitful & such a good reminder. I am continuing the theme of crisis, by looking at Hebrews 10:19-25. Except that we now we shift our focus out. How do we as a church persevere together in the midst of a crisis? The author of Hebrews gives us 4 practices which help us accomplish that: Hold on to hope, spur each other on toward love & good deeds, continue to meet, & encourage each other.
This week we are in Heb 12:27-13:8. What do we do when our world is shaking? Hebrews tells us that we hold onto what cannot be shaken. This passage gets super practical into what loving God and neighbor looks like in the midst of a world that feels unsteady.
This week we are looking at Jesus’ teaching on worry in Mt 6:25-34. Here he teaches that those who follow him don’t need to worry about their needs not being met, because the Father loves them, and he knows what they need. Instead of clamoring after stuff or worrying about tomorrow, we should seek God first, and trust that he will provide the rest.
In this first response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Life Covenant Church decided to temporarily cancel in-person services in compliance with local and state guidelines. In this message, Pastor Tim Morey offers us guidance on how we can respond to God and others in faith during this global crisis.
Jonah runs from God in part because he doesn’t share God’s heart for the Ninevites. Why is that? Part of the answer is that Jonah’s identity is wrongly ordered. He places his ethnic and national identity above his primary identity: that he is a deeply loved child of God, made in his image. When we place other aspects of who we are – even important aspects of who we are – above our identity as God’s child, we find it distorts how we see God, ourselves, and others.