ComChurch Teaching and Discussion Audio: Recent Episodes
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ComChurch is a collection of people in Bryan/College Station, Texas committed to the idea that the local church is not primarily an organization or a place, but a living, dynamic community of people devoted to one another and to the mission of Jesus in the world. That mission is simple, but not easy. It is a mission given to us by the one who ate with the characters on the margins of society, loved the people who good folks hated, and gave all of himself so that his friends and enemies could truly live. The tracks below are a reflection of our larger gatherings on Sunday evenings. Feel free to listen in.
God wants us to be in love relationship with Him. Can we describe our relationship with Jesus by sincerely saying: “I love you with all my heart?
Are we living out our story or are we living IN God’s Story? If we’re serious about following Jesus, we have to be willing to die to self and thereby find ourselves participating in His Way.
What is God’s will for my life? Maybe we’re asking the wrong question. Maybe we should be asking: What is God’s will and how can I adjust my life to it? We begin our new spring series with a look at the 7 Realities of Following Jesus Together, and what it means to truly know […]
In our wrestling with the spiritual forces of evil, we must “put on” six things that are important to God.
As we seek to live the Christian life, we are wrestling with a scheming Satan, but we draw strength from God and we know that our enemy has already been defeated at the Cross of Christ.
Sexual immorality has no place among Jesus followers because it isn’t reflective of who we are in Christ.
Paul gives us instruction for God-honoring marriages that also proclaim the Gospel of Jesus.
Submitting to one another, as we also submit to Christ, makes churches, marriages, families, and all of our relationships work the way God designed for them to.
Being controlled by the Holy Spirit will lead us to deeper worship, increased gratitude, and holy submission.
Spiritual maturity is vital for the health of a church, and Paul leads us toward some specific ways in which we can and should be growing.
Paul urges us to be eager for unity in the Church and gives specific instruction on how to get there.
In Genesis 1, God is motivated to create humankind “in his image.” Therefore, understanding ourselves fully means understanding and embracing what it means to be made in the image of God. In this message, we examine some aspects of being image-bearers of God, and the implications that should have for the way we live and […]
Just like Paul, we can pray big prayers and dream big dreams because we know we serve a big God.
We are invited to join with the whole of God’s family who knows pain and futility and even death and watch the miracle of Easter come to life – to watch a God who can handle our brokenness, our lack of purpose, our fear that our lives don’t matter, and even our deaths – to […]
Paul boldly insists that the cross not only saves individual people, but that it also reconciles all of those individuals into one family of God in a whole way, unstained by the kinds of divisions that mark the rest of the world. As he applies that theological truth to our real lives, he reminds us […]
God has created Christians and the Church to be an open, public display of His character and mission. When Paul urges us to embrace a life of good works, he is reminding us not of the burden of right living but the gift of living God’s way. He is pointing us to our created purpose […]
After a sobering word about reality apart from Jesus, Paul has good news: While you were dead in a life apart from God, He saw you, resurrected you with Jesus, empowered you, and freed you from any need or ability to impress Him, depress Him, or alter your standing with Him.
In between Paul’s words about our blessings in Christ in Ephesians 1 and a powerful description of the supernatural impact of what Jesus has done for us individually and for his people collectively in chapters 2 and 3, he inserts a strong reminder about the realities of life apart from Jesus. His words about evil […]
In John 4, Jesus approaches Sammy, the woman at the well, in need of a drink. But as Sammy engaged with him, he revealed more and more intriguing truth about himself. Jesus uses our deepest needs, vulnerabilities, and desires to draw us closer to him. Jesus offers us living water to quench every thirst and well up […]
After elaborate words of praise for God, Paul turns his attention to prayer for the saints. That prayer teaches us, the church, what to pray for and why.
Paul helps us celebrate our present reality of redemption, forgiveness, grace, and discernment, as well as how that affects our eternal future.This week our focus is on the Holy Spirit and spiritual discernment.
Paul helps us celebrate our present reality of redemption, forgiveness, grace, and discernment, as well as how that affects our eternal future.
Paul leads us in worship with one of the most fascinating passages in all of Scripture.
As we begin a new study of the book of Ephesians, we learn important information about who wrote it and why, and what God wants to say to us through it.
We wrap our series on The Faith discussing the promised return of Jesus to set the world right. Though we often shove questions about “end times theology” into the corner as unnecessary or indulgent speculation, the accumulation of pain and unanswered questions in our lives and the world make our ability to see and hope […]
Our church’s statement of beliefs reads, in part: “The Scriptures tell God’s story with creativity and purpose, reflect His character without error, and communicate His Word and desire for His creation with authority and power.” We believe the Bible is a gift from God and that it is crucial for each of us to embrace […]
If we believe in the God of Abraham, who through Jesus Christ gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist, who are we and what have we inherited? Among other things, we are eternally forgiven and alive, freed for real communion with God, and ambassadors for God’s Kingdom.
As we celebrate the birth of Jesus this Christmas season, we are also reminded that He will come again to Earth, this time to judge, rescue, redeem, and remake all things. We live in this “in between time”, and because of His promises we wait with hope. It is that hope in His return that […]
After Jesus Jesus makes a way for rescue from the human cycle of wandering from our home and created purpose, He returns to the Father. In His place, He sends the Holy Spirit, God’s presence in our hearts and in the world as he works out his purpose. That purpose, according to Paul in Ephesians […]
Perhaps the most pivotal anchor points of “the faith once and for all given to God’s people” are what we believe about the death and resurrection of Jesus, where the rescue and salvation that Jesus speaks of in John 3:16-17 is enacted once and for all. The crucifixion and death of Jesus make a way […]
When Jesus begins his public mission, he introduces himself by saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” But what is he calling them to repent of? And what does he mean the Kingdom of God is coming near through him? Understanding what […]
If God is love, if God is good, if God is all powerful and many other “God” things, where is he in a world racked by pain and division and violence and suffering? The scriptures reveal a God who, from the start, has been working from within the world to heal the world…a God who […]
The most basic foundational belief of the Faith handed down once for all people is the belief that God is real and that He is who the Bible portrays him to be. Certainly we can never summarize or fully explain that God, but in His goodness He has revealed himself in many ways, allowing us […]
As humans we have a naturally embedded desire for justice and an undeniable draw to beauty. So why do both justice and beauty seem so elusive, so temporary? Despite our best efforts, the human crusade for justice remains fragmented at best. And our experiences of beauty are usually temporary, giving way to the more mundane […]
Nicodemus was an expert in God in religion, and John records that he came to Jesus under the cover of darkness burning with unanswered questions about spiritual life. We aren’t so different. Despite our habitual efforts to suppress our deep spiritual thirst, something deep inside continues to insist that there must be more.
Jude urges the early church to “struggle hard for the faith once and for all given to God’s people.” The struggle, of course, is to stay rooted in the historic, biblical Kingdom of God as the kingdoms of this world compete for our attention and affection. This marks the beginning of a new series on […]
While we aren’t all called to be evangelists, we do all have a hope to share with the world. Peter gives us some important instruction on how to do that, even in a hostile culture.
Romans 12 urges us to pursue a transformative life with God in what we do and how we live the details of our lives. The invitation is to offer our hours and days and bodies and lives as living sacrifices because God has demonstrated that life with him is worth taking hold of once and […]
We wrap our series on spiritual disciplines with two reminders: We must clear new paths for lasting rhythms of spiritual disciplines in our lives, and disciplines will not satisfy us. They are a gift to tether us to Jesus, who satisfies us.
We were created to do life together. Christians ought to have the best friendships with another, especially in the local church. Hebrews 10 gives us three different ways in which we can practice Spiritual Friendship with one another and help one another live the life God intends for us.
In the parable of the sower, Jesus warns that for some people, “as time passes, the daily anxieties, the pursuit of wealth, and life’s addicting delights outpace the growth of the message in their hearts.” He’s talking about most of us. We complicate our lives with busyness, chasing and spending money, and other unnecessary pursuits […]
Dallas Willard says submission is the highest level of fellowship because it involves humility, complete honesty and transparency, and confession and restitution. Yet many of us resist the concept completely because we’ve experienced such distorted versions of it. How do we understand and practice the Bible’s notions of mutual submission and spiritual authority?
If you follow Jesus, the Bible is essential to you knowing who you are and why you exist. The whole Bible. As God’s people, we must root ourselves regularly in the Scriptures, which remind us of who God is based on his history and who we are based on our history and also empower us […]
Of all the gifts that Jesus offers to humankind, perhaps the one most needed by the present generation is the gift of Sabbath rest. Sabbath has always been a defining characteristic of God’s people. Christians engage in Sabbath because of the rest that was built into the 7th day of the creation story, because of the […]
Confession is our acknowledgement that we’re ever-dependent on grace. We cannot be above ongoing, intentional acknowledgements of our weaknesses, faults, and sins and still be a part of the movement of grace and healing among God’s people. But that’s the good news: the other side of a deliberate move into confession as a discipline is […]
Prayer is a language that must be learned. We need to be taught by the saints who have gone before us how to pray in a way that forms and transforms us. When we look to them, and to Jesus himself, we find a daily practice of stopping at fixed times to recite prayers, psalms, […]
We are meant both to pray fervently for the things of God’s Kingdom here and now and believe that God is building a Kingdom that isn’t always going to fit our grid of what should happen — even maybe what the purpose of my life is or what the purpose of your life is. But […]
Jesus leaves us with little doubt that real life as one of His involves total surrender. Yet we often settle for a one- or two-dimensional faith and then wonder why we feel distant from God or struggle with our faith. Is there an attainable, sustainable path to live a three-dimensional life of faith?
We exist to know God, but how much of our life is truly aimed at that end? The Scriptures and our lived experience remind us over and over that ultimately what matters in life is not how smart we are, how much we accomplish or accumulate, or how successful we are, yet those things often […]
In John 17, Jesus prays for the unity of the church, tying our connection to him and one another to the heart of his mission. This is a crucial reminder that all of our thinking, praying, and working for unity will not be in vain, which should drive us more deeply into that life, believing […]
In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul writes in detail about the nature and purpose of spiritual gifts in the Church, describing a community of deeply interconnected people who value one another as essential members of the Body of Christ. These words are at the heart of every follower of Jesus understanding his or her role in […]
There is an ease with which the Scriptures talk about maturity, and the lack of it, that we generally don’t possess. That’s understandable, but is it worth what it costs us? The intention of Jesus for each of us is that we embrace the Church’s role in encouraging and enabling our maturity and we become a […]
In Revelation 5, the veil between our day to day reality and God’s Kingdom reality is lifted, and we get to see the the real events of Easter weekend unfolding and echoing in the heavens. The picture is of a Savior who overcomes even death by giving his life away, inviting all of Creation into […]
What makes you most passionate? Sports? Movies? Social Issues? The Lord has modeled for us what it means to live with passion in the areas of sacrifice, suffering, and speech. He also calls us to live out of that as we point people to Him and as we pour into the local church.
The characteristic spirit of the Church community is cross-shaped love and unearned grace among its members. Paul says it this way: “You must bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against someone else, you must forgive each other.” How does the church grow into maturity in this area, giving grace to one […]
Our confession of Jesus as Messiah and Lord places us within the community of people who are abiding in God, which means they are actively loving as Jesus loves. And John reminds us how Jesus loves: sacrificially, selflessly, completely, with nothing held back.
The theological basis for biblical community begins with the community of the Triune God who is love. In building a theology of community, we consider five biblical concepts as guides: Community is God’s nature, Community confirms our salvation, Community is Christian faithfulness, Community is the essence of the Church, and Community builds God’s eternal Kingdom.
The last part of our series on our identity and created purpose as members of the Church explores community, which is not just God’s idea; it’s God’s nature. God in his very essence is a community of love: Father, Son, and Spirit. We are lovingly created in the image of that God, which means His […]
However imperfectly, we all hunger to know the God who created us. We face a number of challenges to a deeper relationship with Him, not least of which is the guilt of not already knowing Him as well as we think we should. A new year offers us a chance to reboot that thinking and […]
The Church faces some hard realities as traditional forms of Christianity and the Church’s stature in society are in obvious decline. But God’s love for and presence in the world remain, and we are still alive to know him, love him, and join him in his work to redeem the world.
The mission of the Church is to build on the foundation God has laid in Jesus for the future reconciliation God will finish through Jesus. Three lasting ways we build for the now and coming Kingdom of God are through justice, beauty, and evangelism.
Our mission as the Church is to join God’s mission. God is reconciling of all things on heaven and earth through Jesus, birthing the new creation. What is that new creation and how do we join him in building for it?
What is God’s mission in the world and how does the Church join him in it? Jesus articulated both an immediate and an eternal mission, making it clear that his saving presence was for our earthly rescue and our eternal redemption. The mission of the Church must always be rooted in the whole Gospel – […]
While in Prison, Paul wrote a letter to his friend Philemon, urging him to receive back his runaway slave Onesimus as a brother – as he would receive Paul himself. Though this story of three men and their relationships may seem a small thing, Paul is actually articulating to the Church the ways in which […]
When life is hard – and it is often hard – worship can become a challenge. How do I rejoice or glory in a God who seems absent or disinterested in my plight? Paul says we carry around the death of Jesus in our bodies, a reminder that our God chose to join us in […]
As we continue to explore what it means to follow Jesus, Paul gives us a broader perspective on worship: what it looks like to worship God with our entire life and why it makes sense that we worship, especially in light of His great mercy.
Our final sermon from The Sermon on the Mount explores Jesus’ words and warnings about hearing and heeding his words.
Fear of #fakenews is everywhere. This fear that people will be duped into believing and acting on false information is nothing new. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches his followers that not everything is what it seems to be … nor is everyone.
Judge not: perhaps the two most popular words Jesus ever uttered. But did he mean to prohibit everything we categorize as judging others? What do we do with his instructions for humbly removing the speck we see in someone’s eye? Moreover, what virtues is he seeking to instill in his followers with these words?
Though he is truly God, Jesus also experienced the full scope of what it means to be human. His entering into our reality is essential to his redeeming all of our pain and brokenness from the inside out. God not only inhabits our praises, but in Jesus he also inhabits our sufferings, bringing His true […]
Jesus knows we desperately try to accumulate material wealth to feel secure, then worry even more about keeping our stuff. He outlines 3 reasons we can live free of worry in God’s Kingdom that will challenge, comfort, and transform us. God cares for us; we need a relationship with him more than anything else we […]
The day of Pentecost celebrates the sending of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the church. But who is the Holy Spirit, and how does the Holy Spirit really impact daily living?
Discipleship is always a process of teaching transcendent principles through specific behaviors.
If we will let it, praying the prayer Jesus taught us frees us of chaos, fear, worry, and the tyranny of our circumstances. It leads us out of the frenetic, out of control, disordered life where things that matter less are elbowing things that matter more out of our actual spent time and money and […]
In the middle of his teaching about not confusing faithful religion with religious show, Jesus teaches his disciples to pray. We’ve become so familiar with The Lord’s Prayer that many of us rarely include it as a meaningful part of our life and prayers. But Jesus said this is how you should pray. What if […]
Jesus insists that we should be careful not to advertise our good deeds, instead going out of our way to keep our devotion to God quiet and simple. In this passage, he issues a caution to us about our motives in even apparently selfless service becoming selfish, reorienting us to finding our value in being […]
When we face hardship and suffering, we naturally long for it to end. We look for God to step in when we’ve had enough and put a stop to it. But Paul says we “always carry around in our bodies the reality of the brutal death and suffering of Jesus.” This is tragic news unless […]
Jesus wraps up the first part of the Sermon on the Mount by calling us to love our enemies. Through a series of provocative questions, Jesus challenges us to consider whether we are truly different from the predictable ways of the world – whether we’ve allowed our inner lives to be reordered by the way […]
With some additional teaching, plus helpful questions and thoughts from church members, we dive a bit deeper into the words of Jesus about retribution, violence, and generosity.
Jesus acknowledges that the way we know is defending ourselves and making sure those who hurt us experience some sort of penalty or retribution. But without any ambiguity in his words, he says he is bringing a new way of living into the world – a way that answers violence and harshness with peace and […]
After declaring that he will fulfill the law rather than abolish it, Jesus sets out to illustrate what this means for his followers. The relationship between murder and anger (last week’s sermon) is his first example of the law fulfilled in God’s people, then he continues by discussing lust and adultery, divorce, and the nature […]
After insisting that he came to fulfill God’s law, Jesus launches into several examples, beginning with the law against murder. He goes a step further, telling his hearers that anger is just as destructive and consequential to the soul as murder is to the body, comparing anger to the smoldering trash fires of Gehenna. His […]
When we say “Jesus Is Lord” we are saying that we intend to be his apprentices. This is the fundamental meaning of discipleship. Jesus mentors us through the agency of other Christians, who teach us the art of living like Jesus.
A look at what Jesus taught about his relationship to scripture and what that means for us.
Jesus says we are the light of the world – that we are sent into the darkness and set on a hill for the world to see. Embracing that calling involves risk and vulnerability since we cannot be hidden from the darkness as the light both exposes brokenness and offer hope and shelter. But this […]
The beatitudes are the gateway to living the divine life. In the final of the beatitudes, Jesus reminds us that this life is one that is both counter-intuitive and counter-cultural. Because of this, it is inevitable that the world will misunderstand, misrepresent, malign, and even act violently towards us. This is all a part of […]
When he declares that the pure in heart will see God, Jesus does not mean that the really moral people will see God. The point is not that you get God as long as you avoid lying and cursing and excessive drinking and immorality. This is Jesus saying that those who have an undivided heart […]
Jesus often illustrated terms and ideas more than he explained, and his parable of the Good Samaritan gives us a deeper understanding of his meaning when he says, “Blessed are the merciful.” Contrary to what we often assume to be the point of the story, he is inviting his questioner (and us) to realize that […]
It is possible for us to unintentionally veer away from a daily awareness of Jesus himself and into trying to create or maintain a comfortable life that seems reasonably Christian. But “reasonably Christian” is only real if it’s truly rooted in Jesus as he really was and is — and that kind of life requires […]
John writes that Jesus is one with God and that he shows us exactly who God is, a claim Jesus himself later makes. If that’s true – if we only know who God is by knowing Jesus – it is of utmost importance that we don’t rely on assumptions or summaries of who Jesus is […]
We often think doubt is the opposite faith, but Psalm 27 sets fear against faith. While we can’t always control our doubt, we do have the capacity to choose to trust that there is a better story – a better life – for us than the one controlled by fear and fatalism.
Our world is overwhelmed with and then motivated by fear. When we allow fear to control us, even in small ways, it erodes our created purpose by causing us to forget that we live in God’s world and preventing us from seeing that those we fear were made in God’s image. Psalm 27 reminds us […]