Passion Creek Church: Recent Episodes

Trey Van Camp

This is the podcast of the teachings of Passion Creek Church in Queen Creek, Arizona with Pastor Trey Van Camp.

We live in the age of the trickster.

Every civilization has a name for him. The Polynesians call him Maui. The Norse, and Marvel, call him Loki. The Greeks named him Odysseus. Paul describes him in Ephesians 4:14 as human cunning. The trickster is never direct. He is always disguised. What looks like a gift can carry an army. What looks like peace can hide a war. And once you've survived enough Trojan Horses, you stop trusting gifts altogether. Every apology might have an agenda.

Which is where we find ourselves. We've learned the language of peacemaking without living the virtues of peacemaking. We know the words: forgiveness, boundaries, accountability. We can even have ChatGPT write our apology texts. The problem is that it can give us the script but never the soul. Techniques, devoid of transformation, are just a bag of tricks.

But Paul isn't only preaching about the manipulators out there. He warns us about the manipulator in here. When you've been manipulated, it gets easy to justify retaliation. Which is why he gives us the posture before he ever gets to the process.

"Without the posture of Christ, peacemaking is no longer a practice that matures us, but a ploy to manipulate others."

Ephesians splits right down the middle. Chapters 1 through 3 tell us what Christ has done. Chapter 4 opens with therefore. Peace has been received. Here is how peace gets practiced. Paul gives us the posture in four steps. But it isn't a staircase you climb up. It's steps you go down.

Because ever since Genesis 3, humanity has been climbing. We climb for significance, for status, for control. And when someone hurts us, we don't want to move toward them. We'd rather tower over them. But reconciliation happens at eye level. Every virtue Paul names is another step down. The good news is not that we found a way up to God's level, but that God came down to ours.

"Peace was made when God took the first step down. So it shouldn't surprise us that Paul's first instruction to peacemakers is to start coming down too."

People of Peacemaking | Proverbs 1

Conflict isn't just about what happened. It's about who you're dealing with.

Before Solomon teaches us how to speak wisely, forgive wisely, or make peace wisely, he teaches us to recognize four different kinds of people: the simple, the young, the fool, and the wise. Each requires a different response.

In this first message of our Formed by Peacemaking series, we'll discover why misdiagnosing a person's character often leads to making conflict worse—and why the first person a peacemaker must honestly identify is themselves.

In this message you'll learn:

Why Proverbs is about wisdom, not just knowledge.

The four types of people Solomon introduces.

The difference between the untrained, unproven, unteachable, and unoffendable.

How the fear of God and life's tests reveal our character.

Why biblical peacemaking begins with confession before correction.

What Got Us Here Won’t Get Us There

In the early 2000s, Disney was on the brink of collapse. Shareholders were revolting. Morale was at an all-time low. The board finally forced out longtime CEO Michael Eisner.

Here’s what makes that story fascinating. Eisner’s first decade was historic. His last was abysmal. Same man. Same company. So what changed?

Disney grew. Eisner never grew with it. Every decision, every ride, every film had to run through his micromanaging leadership. That style worked when the company was smaller. It was destroying them two decades later.

Enter Bob Iger. In his memoir, The Ride of a Lifetime, Iger describes building his entire vision around three clear priorities. That vision transformed the company. Iger understood something Eisner never did: what got Disney here wouldn’t get Disney there. They didn’t need an updated Mickey. They needed an updated method.

Churches face the same tension.

By God’s grace, our church is growing. But the win isn’t a bigger crowd. It’s deeper formation. People embracing the practices of Jesus. Generational patterns changing. Men and women stepping into their calling.

And that kind of growth forces an honest question: can the methods that got us here faithfully take us there?

Part of the fear around growth is legitimate. Growth can veer into vanity. A pastor gets an ego, a church chases numbers, the mission gets lost. That danger is real and worth guarding against.

But there’s another challenge we don’t talk about nearly as often. Growth creates complexity. More people means more stories, more needs, more questions. It’s like moving from two kids to three. You go from man-on-man to zone defense.

So how does a growing church organize itself around spiritual formation? Paul answers that exact question in Ephesians 4.

Serving Grace

Everything hangs on one sentence: “Grace was given to each one of us” (Ephesians 4:7).

In the first half of Ephesians, Paul celebrates saving grace. That’s what most of us think of when we see the word. Without it, we’re separated from God. It comes by His mercy, not our merit.

But here, Paul shifts to serving grace. Saving grace gives us a place in God’s family. Serving grace gives us a purpose in God’s family. We aren’t just recipients of grace. We become participants in it.

And who receives this serving grace? Each one of us. Not the professionals. Not just the staff. Every follower of the Way.

Paul even quotes Psalm 68 with a twist. The original says the King received gifts from people. Paul writes that Jesus gave gifts to people. This King isn’t just here to receive. He’s so generous, He distributes His ministry through His whole Body.

Five Ways Of Seeing

Then Paul does something surprising. Instead of listing abilities, he lists people: apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers.

Notice this isn’t a list of the ministers. It’s a list of the equippers. The leaders equip. The saints minister. Without that understanding, churches make attenders, not disciples.

Here’s one way to grasp these five gifts. They can all walk into the same church, look at the same people, and notice something different. The apostle says we need to build and multiply. The prophet says we need to hear from God and pursue holiness. The evangelist says we need to reach the lost. The pastor says we need to care for and protect people. The teacher says we need to understand and live God’s truth.

None of them are wrong. Each sees a different part of what the Body needs. The problem comes when we assume what we see is all there is to see. The prophet needs the shepherd. The evangelist needs the teacher. We need each other because the Church needs all of Jesus.

Your Next Step

This is why we’ve built a Discipleship Pathway around teaching, community, and practice. It’s not a shift away from anything. It’s a step further in. The goal is simple: deepen your discipleship and develop your gift for the Body.

You can’t choose your gift. You discern it. Through prayer, practice, and community, you discover where God has empowered you to serve others.

So here’s the question worth praying over: what’s your next step on the pathway? Formation doesn’t run through a handful of people at the top. Grace was given to each one of us. Including you.

Some passages of Scripture come with baggage. Ephesians 5:22–6:9 might carry more than any of them.

Take a brief look at history and you’ll see why this may be one of the most dangerous passages in the Bible. Husbands have twisted “wives, submit” into permission to dominate and control. Verses about children have been used to silence honest questions and excuse abusive parenting. Slaveholders quoted “slaves, obey your earthly masters” to defend the indefensible.

And it’s not just history. We all bring our own stories to this text. If you grew up in an unhealthy home, the word “submit” can put your nervous system on high alert. If “I love you” was followed by control or fear, it’s hard to imagine these words describing something beautiful. And if you’re not a Christian, this passage might be on your list of reasons why.

Here’s the idea that reframed everything for me: the danger is not in what Paul wrote, but in how it’s read. Just as a hammer can build a home or demolish a window, God’s Word brings life when it’s rightly handled — and spreads great harm when it’s wrongly wielded. Passages become dangerous when they’re detached from the bigger gospel story.

It starts with mutuality, not matrimony

In many Bibles, Ephesians 5:22 begins a new paragraph under a heading like “Wives and Husbands.” But headings and verse numbers were added centuries later by editors. In the original Greek, verse 22 continues the sentence in verse 21: “Submitting to one another in the fear of Christ, wives to your husbands…”

Paul doesn’t start with holy matrimony. He starts with holy mutuality.Submission here is mutual — not one-sided, not domineering, not hierarchical.

Then Paul does something quietly subversive. Household codes were common in the ancient world, but they spoke only to the man of the house; everyone else was talked about, never talked to. Paul addresses the wife before the husband, the child before the father, the slave before the master. He treats wives as disciples, children as responsible, slaves as moral agents — every person made in the image of God, with dignity and purpose.

What each of us lays down

Submission literally means “to arrange yourself under” — not forced obedience, but a willing posture chosen out of reverence for Christ. In a gospel community, everyone gives something up. The wife lays down self-rule. The husband lays down self-interest. The child lays down self-will. The father lays down self-assertion. The worker lays down self-pity. The boss lays down self-importance.

This is easier said than done. Our default settings fight against it. The consumer mentality treats people as resources to use; the crusader mentality treats people as rivals to beat. Both view submission as net loss. What happens when you submit and they don’t submit back? What if they take advantage of your sacrifice? What if they never change?

The principle and the power

The gospel answers with both a principle and a power.

The principle: our mutual submission flows from our reverence for Christ, not our reaction to people. There’s a drumbeat under every role in this passage — “as to the Lord,” “in the Lord,” “as you would Christ.” If our willingness to submit depends on the other person deserving it, we’ll always find an excuse not to.

One thing must be said plainly: if you are being abused, this passage is not God telling you to stay and endure it. Abuse is the opposite of everything Paul describes.

The power: the main command in this whole passage isn’t “submit” — it’s “be filled by the Spirit.” Ephesians 5:18–6:9 is one long grammatical flow, and the Greek makes the main verb unmistakable. Speaking, singing, giving thanks, submitting — these are what a Spirit-filled life looks like. Mutual submission isn’t merely an ideal to aspire to. It’s the fruit of a Spirit-filled life.

Which means the invitation isn’t to try harder. It’s to surrender deeper. This kind of life isn’t produced by stronger willpower; it’s produced by God’s presence. And it’s not a one-time decision — it’s a daily surrender.

So here’s the reflection I’m carrying into this week: where am I white-knuckling a relationship God is asking me to surrender instead? Maybe start there, with five honest words: “Fill me, Holy Spirit… again.”

Stop Living Like You’re Going To Run Out

On June 25, 1967, the Beatles debuted a new song during the first live international satellite broadcast in human history. Roughly 350 million people across 25 countries tuned in at once. It was the first time technology had connected the world in real time, and the most influential band on the planet had the chance to say anything they wanted to all of it.

They chose “All You Need Is Love.”

Credit where it’s due: they weren’t wrong about the diagnosis. We do need love. Our families need it, our communities need it, you need it. But the Summer of Love built its vision on a definition of love untethered from commitment, more about self-expression than self-sacrifice, more about discovering yourself than denying yourself for someone else. We’re still living in the wake of that definition.

There’s a sad irony here too. Less than three years after that broadcast, the band that sang “all you need is love” had broken up. We shouldn’t judge them too quickly, though. We’re all prone to the same thing. Marriages fall apart. Friendships dissolve. Churches split. Left in our own power, none of us are naturally quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.

A Letter Without a Fire to Put Out

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians stands apart from his other letters in an important way. Most of Paul’s writing is reactive. He writes to Corinth because they keep finding creative new ways to sin. He writes to the Thessalonians because they’ve quit their jobs, convinced the end is imminent. He writes to Timothy because fear has gotten the better of him.

Ephesians isn’t putting out a fire. Paul is painting a picture: a church where enemies become family, where broken people are made whole, where love isn’t just defined but actually displayed.

And right at the hinge point of the letter, before he tells anyone how to live or love, Paul drops to his knees and prays. Specifically, he prays that the church would be filled with the fullness of God’s love.

Why start there? Because your vision of God’s love determines the shape of your entire life. If you believe God is distant, you’ll live anxious. If you believe his love must be earned, you’ll live like a performer. If you believe he’s withholding, you’ll live fearful and controlling. But if you believe he delights in you, you’ll live secure.

There’s a real difference between knowing God loves you and actually believing it.

Gradual, and Multi-Sensory

Paul’s prayer reveals two things about how this comprehension actually happens.

First, it doesn’t happen all at once. Paul prays in a kind of staircase: being strengthened in your inner being, then Christ taking up full residence in your heart (not just visiting, but holding keys to every door, including the ones you keep locked), then becoming rooted and grounded in love as your actual operating system, and finally being filled with the fullness of God. This is the slow work of spiritual formation, becoming a person with greater and greater capacity to both receive and give love.

Second, it doesn’t happen in one way. We tend to assume love is something you learn in a classroom, like memorizing facts about the ocean. But Paul prays that we’d “know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge.” That’s not something you take care of in a single lecture. It’s something closer to diving into the water itself.

You experience God’s love in community, when people pull their chairs closer instead of pulling away from your honesty. You experience it in practice, in things like Sabbath rest, which you can’t learn from a textbook, only from doing it. You experience it through the Holy Spirit, who ministers directly to your deepest wounds. And you experience it in both moments and marathons: the instant where you finally feel like you don’t have to hide anymore, and the long seasons of endurance that shape you over years.

The Problem Was Never Scarcity

A couple adopted a five-year-old girl from Haiti named Addie, whose parents had died in an accident. Her first night in her new home, she watched her two teenage brothers devour an entire dinner and clear the table. She went quiet, convinced she’d just witnessed the last meal she’d see for a while.

Her new mother didn’t just tell her there was more food. She walked her to the fridge, the pantry, the freezer, and showed her everything. “Honey, you’ll never go hungry again.”

That’s what Paul is doing in this prayer. He’s opening the fridge. He’s opening the pantry. He’s saying: stop living like an orphan. Stop living like God’s love is scarce. Look around. There is more than enough.

The problem was never a shortage of God’s love. The problem is our capacity to receive it. Many of us are sitting at the Father’s table still living like we’re starving.

The Thinker And The Gates Of Hell

There’s a statue most of us have seen at some point, even if we can’t immediately place where. Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker has become one of the most recognized images in Western culture, and for good reason. The figure is strong, capable, self-possessed. He sits alone, deep in thought, as if the answers to life’s greatest questions are just one more moment of reflection away. He is the ideal of the post-Enlightenment man: guided by reason, defined by his own greatness, needing nothing outside himself to become everything he was meant to be.

It’s a compelling image. Many of us have, at one point or another, seen ourselves in it.

But the longer we live, the more that image fails us.

Careers plateau. Marriages are harder than we imagined. The beauty and strength we once had quietly fades. We look inside for the strength to overcome, and we find more disappointment than we expected. The rugged individual who can think his way to his best life turns out to be a myth, and we feel that in our bones even when our culture keeps selling it to us.

This is exactly where Ephesians 2 begins. Paul doesn’t ease into the bad news. He leads with it. “You were dead in your trespasses and sins.” Not lost. Not broken. Not misunderstood. Dead. It’s the most severe word he could choose, and he means for us to feel the weight of it, because dead people cannot heal themselves. Dead people cannot improve themselves or save themselves. A dead person needs someone else to do all the work.

That is the diagnosis. And it matters, because good news only lands with power after the bad news has hit.

Then come two of the most important words in all of Scripture: But God.

“But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, made us alive with Christ, even though we were dead in trespasses.”

The whole passage turns on that pivot. Before it, the focus is on us, our condition, our failure, our death. After it, the focus shifts entirely to God. And that shift is the entire point of the gospel.

Look at who does the acting in this passage. God loved. God showed mercy. God made us alive. God saves. Christianity is not a religion that puts God at the top of a mountain and hands you a list of things to accomplish if you want to reach Him. It’s the story of God coming down the mountain to find you where you are.

That’s grace. It’s a gift, not a wage. Not something earned. Paul is explicit: “For you are saved by grace through faith. This is not from yourselves, it is God’s gift. Not from works, so that no one can boast.”

Faith, simply put, is trust in a person. It’s the posture of someone who stops white-knuckling their own life and leans into the arms of a Father who is strong enough to carry them. If you’ve been trying to manage your sin, outrun your shame, or earn your standing before God through sheer effort, this passage has a word for you: lay it down. You’re laboring under a burden you were never meant to carry.

And here’s where the story of The Thinker takes a turn that matters.

What most people don’t know is that Rodin never considered The Thinker his masterpiece. That statue was actually designed to sit at the top of a much larger work: The Gates of Hell, a massive, towering set of doors covered in more than 180 individual figures. The Thinker wasn’t made to stand alone. He was always part of something bigger.

So are we.

Ephesians 2:10 says we are God’s workmanship, created for good works He prepared in advance. The point of salvation isn’t self-actualization. It’s being placed by a master artist into a story far larger than ourselves. The people around us aren’t background scenery. They’re the good works God has already prepared for us.

The gospel isn’t a monument to human achievement. It’s a monument to divine mercy. And the life that flows from it isn’t about becoming the best version of yourself. It’s about stepping, freely and joyfully, into the work God has already set before you.

There’s More Going On Than You Can See

Most of us live on the surface. We wake up, manage our circumstances, navigate our relationships, and try to keep our heads above water. But what if the most important things happening in your life aren’t visible from the surface at all?

That’s the provocative claim at the center of Ephesians. Written by Paul near the end of his life, this letter isn’t a self-help manual or a list of spiritual tips. It’s more like someone grabbing you by the shoulders, pulling you to the edge of a boat, and telling you to put your head underwater. The ocean is bigger than you think. There’s a world down there.

Ephesians tells a cosmic story with domestic implications. Through Jesus, heaven has invaded earth — that’s cosmic. And if that’s really true, then every part of life, from our relationships to our daily rhythms, should be shaped by it — that’s domestic. The letter peels back the curtain on what’s really going on beneath the surface of our world.

Chosen: The Story Started Before You

The opening section of Ephesians contains the longest single sentence in the New Testament. In one long, breathless run-on, Paul celebrates something stunning: before the creation of the universe, God has chosen to save a remnant of humanity and bring them into his new family.

This has stirred centuries of theological debate about predestination and free will. But Paul isn’t primarily writing doctrine here. He’s writing worship. He’s not making a precise claim about how we get saved so much as celebrating what we’re saved into.

Think of the difference between a guest list and a party invitation. Both acknowledge there’s a party and some people will be there. But the invitation focuses on what the guests are going to experience — and that’s where Paul wants our attention. We’ve been chosen to be made holy and blameless, adopted into God’s family, and given a new primary identity. Not based on our work, our success, our kids, or our bank accounts. Based on belonging to the King.

Your salvation isn’t fragile. It’s not a coincidence or a byproduct of something else. It was planned from the beginning.

Inheritance: The Story Ends in Renewal

But that’s just the beginning. Paul traces a thread that runs all the way through scripture: the idea of inheritance.

In the Old Testament, inheritance always meant land. God promised Adam and Eve Eden. He promised Abraham a homeland. He led Israel through the wilderness toward a Promised Land. And when they lost it to exile, the prophets promised restoration.

By the time Jesus arrives, Israel is technically in their land but crushed under Roman occupation. And the question hangs in the air: what happened to the promise?

Paul answers it. The inheritance was never just about land. It’s about a world fully saturated with God’s presence — a new creation where everything broken is made whole, everything lost is restored, everything under the rule of Jesus. That’s what we’re waiting for. That’s what we’re headed toward.

And here’s the practical piece: the Holy Spirit is the down payment on that future. A taste of what’s coming. The presence of God now, as a preview of his presence then.

Power: The Story We’re Living In Right Now

Paul ends with a prayer over the church in Ephesus, and it’s worth noting what he doesn’t pray for. He doesn’t pray for spiritual victory over their enemies. He doesn’t pray for cultural dominance. He prays for wisdom, hope, and power.

Because we live in the middle chapters of this story. The outcome isn’t in doubt — Jesus has already won — but there are real spiritual skirmishes happening all around us. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is somehow at work in and among ordinary people gathered together as the church. It’s not a flashy power. It doesn’t compete with spectacle. It’s quiet. It forgives. It serves. It transforms.

It helps people lay down control instead of grasping for it. It sustains daily, unimpressive prayer over years of ordinary life. It pushes back darkness through unnoticed acts of love.

What This Has to Do With Us

Three things worth carrying with you.

First, God isn’t reluctant to save. The story of your salvation began before you existed. When you bring your sin, your weakness, your failure to Jesus, he doesn’t shake his head. He rushes toward you.

Second, your salvation is part of a bigger story. You were saved into a community, and your salvation is the beginning, not the end. Every act of forgiveness, every reconciled relationship, every moment of service is a small working model of what the new creation will look like.

Third, God is still redeeming all things. Your circumstances don’t determine the value or meaning of your life. Every unanswered prayer, every quiet struggle, every overwhelming season is being held by Jesus.

Most of us are too focused on the surface of the water to see what’s underneath. But there’s a bigger story going on. The question is whether we’re willing to wake up to it.

The Overview Effect: What Ephesians Wants To Do To You

On Christmas Eve, 1968, astronaut Bill Anders was orbiting the moon aboard Apollo 8 when he looked out the window and saw something he wasn’t expecting — Earth. Hanging in the blackness of space, fragile and luminous, rising over the lunar horizon. He grabbed his camera and took what would become one of the most famous photographs in history.

Later, reflecting on the mission, Anders said something remarkable: “We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.”

Astronauts call it the overview effect. It’s the cognitive shift that happens when you see the world from a completely different vantage point. Your perspective doesn’t just expand. It’s transformed. The way you think, see, and live is never quite the same.

That’s what the book of Ephesians is trying to do.

The Letter

Ephesians is one of the most quoted, most memorized, and most frequently referenced books in the New Testament. And yet most of us have barely scratched the surface of it. Not because it’s long, but because of what it contains: a cosmic story stretching back before creation, prayers that attempt to describe the nature of our relationship with a transcendent God, and intensely practical instructions for how to live in a world shaped by spiritual forces we’ve mostly stopped paying attention to.

Before diving in, it helps to understand what kind of document Ephesians actually is. In the first century, a public letter from a philosopher or religious teacher wasn’t like an email. It was a carefully crafted, collaboratively written, publicly performed intellectual and spiritual essay, the product of months of work, costing thousands of dollars in modern terms, designed to compel people to rethink something fundamental about how they were living. When Paul wrote Ephesians, that’s the tradition he was working in.

The letter breaks into two halves. Chapters 1 through 3 are cosmic, a sweeping account of God’s plan for all of human existence, showing how a fragmented humanity is being recreated into something new through Jesus. Chapters 4 through 6 are domestic, intensely practical instructions for how that cosmic reality should reshape everything from our marriages to our work ethic to how we treat each other on an ordinary Tuesday.

The City

To understand the letter, you have to understand Ephesus. By Paul’s time it was the capital of Asia Minor, a thriving port city built on commerce, upward mobility, and status. It was also home to the Temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, where people worshipped a goddess of fertility through sexual acts in hopes of gaining favor, wealth, and success.

Ephesus was a city of power, pleasure, and what could only be described as magic: an obsession with manipulating spiritual forces for personal gain.

Sound familiar?

The gods have changed names, but the temples are still standing. We sacrifice our time, money, and energy to the pursuit of comfort, success, and an image carefully curated for others to admire. We’re not burning incense at a pagan altar. But we know how to perform for approval. We know how to exhaust ourselves climbing toward something that keeps moving further away.

The Riot

When Paul arrived in Ephesus, something extraordinary happened. The power of the gospel was so real, so disruptive, so genuinely different from what the city had to offer, that people burned their spell books in a public bonfire and walked away from their old lives entirely. A silversmith named Demetrius, who made his living selling figurines of Artemis, started a riot because the gospel was putting him out of business.

Don’t miss that. The economy of the city was directly affected by the Kingdom of God.

That’s what the gospel actually does. It doesn’t just change what you believe about the afterlife. It interrupts the economy of your everyday life.

The invitation of Ephesians isn’t escapism. It’s awakening. An awakening to the reality that heaven hasn’t stayed “up there.” It has invaded earth. The Kingdom is already breaking in all around us.

You don’t have to keep performing, climbing, controlling, and sculpting. In Jesus, you are already loved.

That’s the overview effect. And Ephesians wants to give it to you.

After leading the Israelites to rebuild their city’s walls, Nehemiah faces opposition. From his enemies, he’s distracted, falsely accused, and tempted to fight back against his opponents in his own strength. But instead, Nehemiah continues with the mission God has called him to. He relies on God’s strength, justice, and protection rather than giving in to panic or self-sufficiency. Today as we end our Peace by Piece series, we must expect to face spiritual opposition as well. From Nehemiah, we can learn that being mission-focused means committing to the goals God has laid before us and relying on His strength when we face suffering and attacks from the enemy.

What if the people God needs to build something remarkable are already in the room? In this message from Nehemiah 3, we explore one of the most overlooked chapters in Scripture — and discover that the list of names buried inside it is actually a portrait of how healthy culture gets made. Priests, merchants, goldsmiths, daughters, and everyday families all working side by side, each building the section of wall closest to their own home. We unpack what it means to be a Home-Grown church, why culture always outlives the people who created it, and what's at stake when ordinary people choose to show up — or don't. If you've ever wondered whether your contribution matters, this one's for you.

TIMESTAMPS

0:00 - Relaunching at Queen Creek Jr High

05:08 - Culture Outlives Us

09:57 - Priorities Shape Us

22:29 - Serving Where Needed

28:17 - Harder and Heavier Work

32:42 - Hotel v Home

36:42 - The Sheep Gate

In the book of Nehemiah, we pick up the story of God’s people continuing to rebuild their city. When Nehemiah, one of Israel’s leaders, hears about trouble in Jerusalem, he doesn’t react impulsively or cynically. Instead, he strives to honor God and others in how he prayers, responds to trouble, and helps build his city. Over time, God begins to shape Nehemiah’s heart before calling him to step into action. As we continue to look ahead at who we want to become through this building initiative, we want to be honor-filled like Nehemiah. To do that, we must examine how we respond to brokenness, how we pray, and where we fall short of honoring God and others.

As God’s people continue building the temple in Ezra 4-6, they face opposition from their enemies. In their panic, they stall their building project for 16 years. But God uses prophets like Haggai and Zechariah to remind them that God’s presence overcomes their fears. Jesus reminds us in Matthew 7 that like Israel in Ezra 4, we too will endure hardships and obstacles. But rather than giving into panic or abandoning God’s call altogether, putting the teachings of Jesus into practice allows us to continue relying on His presence over our performance.

0:00 - Shutdown at the Movies

3:19 - The Age of Panic

7:55 - Ezra 4 & the 16-Year Hiatus

20:33 - Stirred & Strengthened

25:45 - Do Not Die in Haran

31:47 - Practices Push Through the Panic

In Ezra 3, the people of God gather to rebuild the Temple. Despite their fears, they prioritize God’s presence and are able to finish the altar to consecrate themselves back to God. But some are disappointed. Rather than looking ahead to what God might do, they looked back to compare their current situation with their preferred past. As we continue to build our future, we want to prioritize Jesus and His presence, even when facing fear or disappointment. Being “Jesus-First” means we give, pray, serve, and worship for God’s presence alone, not our progress.

We're Not Just Building a Building

Ten years is a long time to wonder about something.

For most of our church's life, the question of a permanent home has hovered in the background. And honestly, looking back, I think the timing matters. We needed all of this time, all of these years of being formed by Jesus together, before we were ready to take meaningful steps toward building something permanent. God has been building us peace by piece. Now we get to build with him.

But before we talk about what we're building, we need to talk about why.

We're Living the Same Story

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah sit near the end of the Old Testament, and they tell a story that feels surprisingly familiar. Israel has spent years in exile, displaced from their homeland by the Babylonian empire. The temple, the place where God's presence dwelled among his people, has been destroyed. The city walls are rubble.

But God makes a promise: they'll return. They'll rebuild. And God will come to dwell with his people again.

That's not just their story. It's ours.

Even here in our city, the simple and sacrificial way of Jesus runs directly against the grain of the self-centered, power-driven culture around us. We are, in a very real sense, a people planted in hostile soil. And like Israel, we have a choice: assimilate to the culture, retreat from it, or build.

We're choosing to build.

The New Testament makes clear that God's people are now his temple. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians that the Spirit of God lives in us. Peter describes the church as "living stones" being built into a spiritual house. The presence of God that Moses encountered on the mountain, that the temple was meant to contain, that Ezra and Nehemiah longed to restore, is here when we gather together for worship, fellowship, and service.

What we're building isn't just a building. It's a place of encounter.

Two Prophets, Two Challenges

While Israel was rebuilding, God sent two prophets to keep them on track: Haggai and Zechariah. They had different styles, but the same mission.

Haggai was blunt. He looked at God's people focused on their own comfortable houses while the temple sat unfinished, and he called it what it was: misplaced priorities. The question he puts to them is the same one worth sitting with today. What am I actually using my life to build? Is it purely for my own comfort and security, or am I leveraging it for something larger?

Zechariah was a visionary. Where Haggai shook people up, Zechariah lifted their eyes. His message was simple: this is not a small thing. "Not by strength or by might, but by my Spirit," says the Lord. Don't despise the day of small things. Keep pressing on.

We need both voices. The challenge to get our priorities right, and the vision to remember why it matters.

What a Building Makes Possible

A permanent home isn't the goal. But it opens doors that a portable church setup can't.

It means space for teaching, not just on Sundays but through workshops on theology, marriage, and parenting, and potentially a K-6 Christian academy where kids are shaped by scripture every day. It means real hospitality, a space where the loneliness and disconnection so many people in our city carry can be met with genuine community. It means margin, the ability to actually practice Sabbath and linger in worship instead of watching the clock because we have to tear everything down. It means moments: salvations, weddings, breakthroughs. And it means marathons: the sacred weekly rhythms that form people over decades and get passed down to their grandchildren.

The Next Steps

Over the next several weeks, we're inviting our church into this initiative together. Our goal is 100% participation, because the whole body moving together matters more than the size of any individual contribution. We have a two-year financial goal of $2.5 million, which covers both our ongoing ministry operations and meaningful steps toward building at our future site. And we're doing it through a single unified fund, so no one has to choose between supporting what exists today and building what comes tomorrow.

Commitment Day is May 17th.

Between now and then, the invitation isn't to give. It's to pray and ask God what participation looks like for you.

We aren't building a name for ourselves. We're trying to make space for God to dwell here, peace by piece.

The story we’ve been told about life isn’t working. Most of us have placed our hope in ourselves, believing that peace, happiness, and freedom come from looking inward. But this has left us more anxious, less hopeful, and still hungry for meaning. But on Easter, we orient ourselves around a better story. In John 20 we see Jesus meeting three groups of people who represent many of us today. To those grieving, Jesus comes to us as a Gardener making all things new. To the fearful, he is a Peacemaker coming to offer us peace. To the doubting, he is a Pursuer who comes to make himself known. Because of the resurrection, we’re given peace, purpose, and power through the Holy Spirit. Easter is a celebration of the truth that the empty tomb is good news, both for our real lives today, and into eternity.

The Bible Isn’t the Point (But You Can’t Get There Without It)

There’s a story near the end of Luke’s gospel that doesn’t get enough attention.

Two disciples are walking away from Jerusalem, heading toward a village called Emmaus. They’ve just watched Jesus be crucified. Their hope is gone. And as they walk, talking through everything that happened, a stranger falls into step beside them.

The stranger asks what they’re discussing. They stop, looking at him with disbelief. He’s the only person in Jerusalem who doesn’t seem to know what happened. So they explain everything: the miracles, the arrest, the cross. And then the stranger opens his mouth and takes them through the entire Hebrew scriptures, showing them how it all pointed to this moment.

It’s what I can only imagine was the greatest Bible study ever given. And it has everything to do with how we read scripture today.

God Has Always Been Trying to Be Known

The story of the Bible is the story of God pursuing his creation.

It starts in Genesis, where God doesn’t snap creation into existence or simply will it to be. He speaks. “Let there be light.” That’s not a small detail. Actions can reveal that something exists, but words reveal what someone wants. God speaks because he wants to be known.

When Adam and Eve hide after the fall, what does God do? He calls out to them. “Where are you?” Even after the first rupture in the relationship, God is looking for his people with his words.

That impulse doesn’t stop. The first time the Bible mentions itself is in Exodus 17, when God tells Moses to write down what’s happened so that future generations won’t forget. God’s spoken word becomes a written word, preserved across time so that people who weren’t there could still know the story they were living inside.

Moses receives all of this, leads his people through the wilderness, and then asks for something more. “Show me your glory.” He’s heard God’s voice. He has the written law. But there’s something he’s still after: encounter with God himself.

God tells him no one can see his face and live. But Moses’ longing points to something real. Knowing what God says is not the same as knowing God.

The Word Became a Person

The Gospel of John opens with language that would have stopped both Greek and Jewish readers in their tracks.

For Greeks, the word logos meant reason itself, the organizing principle of the universe, the logic behind all of reality. For Jews, John’s opening lines echoed Genesis: “In the beginning, God created…” and now “In the beginning was the Word.”

John is doing something remarkable here. He’s saying: that thing the Greeks called logos, the ultimate logic behind the cosmos? It’s not an idea. It’s a person. And the Word that spoke creation into existence, that called out to Adam in the garden, that thundered on Sinai, that has been pursuing humanity since the beginning? That Word became flesh.

Jesus is God’s fullest self-revelation. Not a book. Not a set of rules. A person.

The author of Hebrews says it plainly: in the past, God spoke through the prophets in many ways, but in these last days he has spoken through his Son. The same Word that was present at creation is now walking around in sandals, eating fish, asking questions, touching lepers.

So what does that mean for how we read the Bible?

The Bible Points Beyond Itself

Jesus, still walking with the two disciples on the Emmaus road, shows them how every thread of scripture points to him. But then, when they reach the village, he keeps walking. He doesn’t force himself through their door.

That’s not an accident. God wants to be sought. He’s always wanted that. He doesn’t force himself on us, even in scripture. The Bible is an invitation, not a guarantee.

Jesus confronted the Pharisees about exactly this. They had the scriptures memorized. They had built their entire lives around the written word. And they completely missed Jesus standing in front of them. You can know the Bible inside and out and still miss the whole point.

The point is encounter. The point is meeting the Author behind the words.

Whatever you come to the Bible looking for, you’ll probably find it. Rules. Validation. Ammunition. The Bible has been twisted and weaponized throughout history by people who came to it looking for something other than Jesus.

But if you come to it wanting to meet Jesus, that’s what it’s built for. That’s what it’s always been built for.

Back in Emmaus, the two disciples invite the stranger in. He breaks bread with them. And suddenly they recognize who he is. They turn to each other and say, “Weren’t our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road?”

That’s the invitation. Not just to read the Bible, but to let it lead you somewhere. To let it lead you to someone. Burning hearts. That’s what’s waiting on the other side of the words, if you’re willing to look for more than information.

Have you encountered Jesus? Or have you just been reading about him?

Scripture as Mirror: The Freedom Behind Confrontation

In 1964, Norman Rockwell painted "The Problem We All Live With" for Look magazine. It depicted 6-year-old Ruby Bridges walking to her first day of school during desegregation, escorted by headless US marshals, with a tomato splattered on the wall behind her meant to resemble blood.

Rockwell received more hate mail from this image than any other in his career—not from Black Americans, but from average citizens angry that he showed something true, real, and ugly about America. It wasn't the content that made people uncomfortable. It was the confrontation.

Here's what's profound about the painting: Where are you positioned as the viewer? Rockwell made you both an observer of the image and a participant in the story. It forced viewers to confront who they really were in light of the Black American story.

Scripture works the same way. It's a mirror that confronts us, challenges us, and calls out our assumptions about God, the world, and ourselves. The question is: will we look intently at what we see, or will we walk away?

The False Self and Fig Leaves

Genesis tells us Adam and Eve were created naked and felt no shame. They lived in wholeness and vulnerability without fear of confrontation. But after eating the forbidden fruit, their eyes were opened. Genesis 3:7 says "they realized they were naked, so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves."

The fig leaves are a physical symbol of a spiritual reality. When confronted, our inclination is to hide—from others, from ourselves, and from God.

Our version of fig leaves today is what psychologists and theologians call the false self—the version of ourselves we project to others to hide our weakness, woundedness, and wickedness.

Weakness: The parts we're insecure about—our fears, personality quirks, things we feel unconfident in

Woundedness: Our embarrassing history, family of origin, trauma

Wickedness: Our sins, failures, willful disobedience—the anger we can't shake, the addiction we can't break free from, the pride in how we treat others

The false self is a coping mechanism based on self-reliance rather than God's love and providence. What are you hiding behind? Your busyness? Your personality ("I'm just not wired that way")? Maybe even something good you're subtly putting before God—your family, career, health?

The Four Levels of Sin

Early church fathers and mothers understood how deep the false self goes. They identified four levels of sin:

Gross Sins - Obvious wrongs most people would agree are bad: sexual immorality, deception, greed. These are easy to identify but also easy to use to make ourselves feel better. "I might have an anger problem, but at least I'm not an alcoholic."
Conscious Sins - Things that are socially accepted but at odds with Jesus' way: How do you spend your money? What media do you consume? How do you talk about others? These confront not just our behaviors but our will and freedom.
Unconscious Sins - Sins of motivation: doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. Dysfunctional relational patterns others experience in us. You might not yell at your spouse, but do you harbor years of bitterness?
Attachments - Good things that become bad things because of our reliance on them. Success in ministry. Career. Family relationships. If we lose these, we question who we are. A false self built on career success crumbles after retirement.

Looking Intently Into the Mirror

James 1:23-25 says: "Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and after looking at himself goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom and continues in it... will be blessed."

Scripture has power to show us who we really are if we're willing to look intently. Most of us approach the Bible cognitively—asking about context, author, genre. These are good questions, but if that's where we stop, it's just a higher form of control.

Try going deeper:

How do I actually feel in response to what I'm reading?

Where do I come alive? Where do I feel resistance?

What aspects of my life are being touched?

What do my reactions tell me about myself?

If you don't feel resistance to anything when reading the Bible, you're probably not reading enough of it.

When you feel challenged, discomforted, or exposed—that's an invitation to submit something in your soul to God. God forms us most deeply in the places where we are least like Jesus.

The Gift of Confrontation

James says whoever looks intently finds "the perfect law that gives freedom."

Freedom from the false self you're killing yourself to construct. Freedom from wounds you'd rather hide than heal. Freedom from the weight of sin you'd rather manage than confess. Freedom from the fear of being found out.

Remember how God responded to Adam and Eve's fig leaves? He went looking for them. He didn't wait for them to get their act together. He found them, confronted them, and even though He kicked them out of the garden, God went with them.

What if that's how God is trying to call out to you today? What if the sign you're waiting for isn't behind a dream, vision, or miracle? What if it's behind confrontation?

What are you hiding behind? What part of Scripture are you ignoring out of fear? What if that's exactly how God is trying to get your attention today?

You don't have to cover yourself up to be seen by God. If you've given your life to Him, He's already forgiven you. The sins you're hiding, He's already paid for.

Let the mirror do its work.

Scripture works best when we allow it to work slowly over the long haul in our lives. But this confronts our impulse to seek immediate results and instant satisfaction. Where Scripture plants small seeds that bloom slowly over time, we often live too hurried and impatient to allow it to do its deepest work in us. But by adopting both a daily pace and a humble posture, we can slowly train ourselves to endure while letting Scripture do its deepest work in our souls.

In Ephesians 6, Paul describes the armor of God and tells believers to take up “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” When Jesus faces off with the devil in the wilderness, he uses Scripture as his main defense. Each temptation from the devil was met with a specific truth from God’s Word. In the same way, we too are called to apply Scripture specifically to our lives in order to combat the deceptions, accusations, resistance, and temptations from the enemy. The more we saturate our minds with Scripture, the more the Holy Spirit brings specific verses, promises, or truths to our minds in the moments we need them most.

“Sweeter than honey to my mouth…” That’s how the Psalmist describes the Bible in Psalm 119. Which means that Scripture is not just information to absorb or rules to obey, it’s meant to reshape our desires. Where most of us either indulge or suppress our desires, the Bible aims to redirect them back towards God. In order to allow ourselves to be reshaped by the Bible, we practice meditating on it. By meditating, we’re not rushing or skimming, we’re savoring. We’re slowing down with God’s Word to allow it to slowly sink from our heads into our hearts. Over time, as we consistently meditate on God’s Word, our thoughts begin to align with God’s thoughts, and our desires begin to align with His.

In order to be formed by Scripture, we must learn to submit to its authority. In Psalm 119, the Psalmist describes God’s Word as a lamp, something that illuminates just enough for us to take one small step of obedience to Jesus at a time. This means that Scripture can’t simply be read, it must be obeyed. If our attitudes, actions, behaviors, and beliefs are never redirected by the Bible, then we aren’t treating it like a lamp unto our feet. But by ruthlessly assessing the darkness in the world and our own hearts, and by radically accepting the light of God’s Word, we can slowly practice submitting to Scripture and obeying it as truth.

The Christian life is not defined by a single powerful moment. Instead, Scripture shows us that formation happens through both moments and marathons. In Acts 19, the church in Ephesus experienced a defining moment where God moved powerfully to save its people and bring revival to the city. But years later, Paul wrote Ephesians to guide them through the long obedience of faithful discipleship. Eventually, Jesus Himself addressed this church in Revelation, warning that perseverance without love leads to drift. The invitation of the gospel is not to grit our teeth through the race, but to keep falling in love with Jesus. To do this we must learn to guard our hearts, walk in community, practice faithfulness, and rely on the Holy Spirit to form us peace by piece over the long haul.

All of us want peace, transformation, and a life that reflects Jesus. But becoming like God is not something we can accomplish on our own strength. Paul reminds us in Ephesians that transformation is only possible through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not a force but a person who dwells within us. We can grieve Him through our words and relationships, even while remaining secure in our salvation, sealed by His presence. And while those who follow Jesus already have the Spirit within them, we are continually invited to be filled by Him through repentance and surrender. As we walk together in worship, gratitude, mutual submission, and love, the Spirit forms us, peace by piece, into the likeness of Christ.

All of us are aiming our lives at something. We have a vision of the kinds of people we want to become over the course of our lives. But if we’re honest, few of us know how to get there. We either falsely assume we turn into people who look like Jesus by accident, or we rely on big dramatic moments to define us. But change happens through teaching, community, practice, the power of the Holy Spirit over the long haul. In Ephesians 4, Paul reminds the church that everything around us is forming us and shaping us into who we are. The cultural waters we live in shape our desires, habits, and imaginations. Our practice, then, becomes counter-formation. We say “no” to the default patterns of our culture so that we can say “yes” to a better way of life. This type of discipleship looks less like dramatic sprinting and more like walking; slow, ordinary, and repetitive. But over time, our daily practices shape who we become. Slowly we’re formed into the likeness of Jesus over the long haul. To walk faithfully and practically, we use a Rule of Life: a simple way of ordering daily, weekly, and lifestyle rhythms around practices that shape us into who we want to be.

It’s no secret that America is experiencing a loneliness epidemic. Though most of us are surrounded by people, digitally connected, and relationally busy, few of us have actually experienced the deep and life-giving reality of authentic community. In Ephesians 4, Paul paints a picture of what Christian community can look like. Rather than giving us model, brand, or method, Paul describes community as a body. Just like a body, each person within a community has a part to play in supporting those around them. But also like a body, if one person is unhealthy and unwilling to change, the rest of the community can get infected. Lying, anger, stealing, foul language, and bitterness can cause damage to the communities we find ourselves in. Because of this, true community is a risk. But it’s also the way in which we can grow more like Christ, accept his love, and share that love with those around us.

This week in the Peace by Piece series, we explore Ephesians 4:1, focusing on the crucial role of teaching in Christian formation. Many of us are shaped by ideas and images that subtly pull us away from God’s truth. True transformation doesn’t happen through quick fixes or isolated frameworks, but through a holistic, patient process of engaging with the essentials: Teaching, Community, Practice, Holy Spirit, and Moments & Marathons. This process requires confronting the lies we believe, renewing our minds with Scripture, and allowing God to form us piece by piece over time. As we grow in this grace, we begin to embody the peace of Christ in a chaotic world.

In a cultural moment marked by anxiety, reaction, and fragmentation, the church is tempted to respond as either a consumer or a crusader. Drawing from Ephesians 3–4, this message invites Passion Creek into a new imagination—one rooted not in speed, technique, or outrage, but in formation.

Becoming Peace by Piece names the slow, patient work of God in forming a people who are not tossed to and fro, but who grow into maturity measured by Christ’s fullness. Peace is not something we manufacture by willpower, nor something we passively receive—it is something done for us in Christ and formed in us over time as we guard our hearts and walk together under His easy yoke.

In Matthew 20 Jesus tells a parable about a master who rewards his workers based on grace, not their merit. In the parable, Jesus explains that God gives grace out of his goodness, not our productivity. Most of us struggle with this truth today. While we’re grateful for God’s mercy extended to us, we can grow bitter when God gives mercy, providence, and blessings to those we don’t think deserve it. But this comparison keeps us from experiencing joy from God’s grace towards us. To avoid becoming bitter with God’s generosity towards others, we practice contentment.

In Matthew 18:21–35, Jesus tells a parable that exposes the danger of harboring unforgiveness. In the story, a servant is forgiven for his great debt by a king, but then refuses to forgive others who owe him a great debt as well. Jesus uses this parable to show that unforgiveness is poison to our souls. It hardens our hearts against others, turns wounds into bitterness, and bitterness into bondage. But forgiveness is freedom.

Jesus invites us to forgive not merely for our hearts, but from our hearts and ultimately to our hearts—receiving His forgiveness so deeply that it transforms the way we see and treat others.

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells two stories that illustrate what it means to wait for him to return. In the first story, ten bridesmaids wait for the arrival of the groom and the start of the wedding celebration. Half are ready when the groom finally comes, but the other half miss the wedding entirely because they’re unprepared. Jesus’ warning is simple: true disciples don’t just wait for Jesus to return — they prepare their hearts and lives for it.

The second story shifts from a wedding banquet to a final judgment, where Jesus separates sheep from goats. The separation isn’t based on religious activity or spiritual knowledge but on on who was willing to serve “the least of these.” Both of these stories teach us what it means to wait expectantly for Jesus to return: meeting needs, serving others, and working to prepare the world for the Kingdom to come in full.

The parable of the Good Samaritan is another popular parable of Jesus that often gets overlooked. In this story, Jesus describes a Jewish man in need on the side of the road. Religious experts and the “spiritually mature” pass him by, but a Samaritan, one of the most despised people to the Jews, stops to help him. In our lives today, we can be tempted to simply pass by those whom God is calling us to love and serve. We’re either too busy, we see them as too bad, or their situations are too broken for us to reach out in love. Like the man Jesus tells this story too, we can be caught asking “who exactly is my neighbor?” rather than “who will I be a neighbor to?” But by asking this question, we can begin to allow Jesus to transform us into people who are truly spiritually mature, people fully capable of loving and serving those around us.

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells a parable about a master who leaves on a trip and trusts his

servants with his finances. On the surface, it’s a simple story about stewarding our

resources while we wait for our Master, Jesus, to return. But like all of the parables,

there are layers to this simple story. It’s actually a revelation about who God really is —

a generous Master who wants to help us live our lives to the full in the Kingdom. Jesus

teaches us that our resources (financial, physical, relational, spiritual) are stewardship

capital meant to be leveraged toward higher Kingdom value, not hidden in fear.

But like the servant in the story, most of us hang on to our resources because we

falsely believe our wealth and stability are more valuable that the life Jesus offers. By

letting go of our attachment to our stuff, and by investing what we have in the

Kingdom, we can experience both the generosity of our Master and the abundant life

he wants to give us.

The Parable of the Prodigal Son is one of the most well-known parables of Jesus, but it’s also one of the most overfamiliar. Most of us skim past the rich details that Jesus includes when he tells it, so we miss the deeper truths and invitations of this story. By slowing down, we see that this parable is actually about two sons. The Younger Son represents all of us who are driven by desire. When we orient our life around what we think will make us happy, we end up farther from God and others. The Older Brother represents those of us who are driven by duty. When we attempt to earn the free love God offers us, we grow resentful and bitter towards those who we consider lower than us. Both of these sons are lost, and both are in need of their father’s love. But what we learn from this parable is that regardless of which brother we relate to, the solution to our search for love is simple: repenting by returning home.

In Matthew 13 Jesus tells a parable about wheat and weeds. At first wheat and weeds look the same, but over time their distinctions become clear: wheat produces life, and weeds produce death. When he explains this parable to his disciples Jesus tells them that the wheat represents the people of His Kingdom, and the weeds represent those deceived by the enemy. Both exist in the world today, and like the weeds, those planted into the world by the enemy are difficult to spot. As we follow Jesus today, this parable teaches us that revival always has a rival—Satan sows deception, distraction, and division right alongside the work of God. And while we can’t always tell the difference right away, our call is to remain faithful, alert, and hopeful in Christ until the final harvest.

In Luke 14, Jesus gives us a parable full of paradoxes. In the parable, many are invited to a banquet, but only the outcasts and marginalized show up. The paradoxes are that God’s greatest blessings can also become our greatest barriers, the gospel is both radically exclusive and radically inclusive, and to dine with Jesus is also to die with Jesus. To become good hearers of this parable and receptive to its gospel truth, we too must wrestle with these paradoxes that remind us God’s invitation to His Kingdom is urgent, costly, and worth everything.

In Mark 4, Jesus tells a series of parables back-to-back, and they all have to do with seeds. In one, the Kingdom is compared to a seed that’s planted and prepares the ground for a harvest. In the second, the Kingdom is compared to a tiny mustard seed that grows into an enormous tree. Both of these reveal important aspects of the Kingdom: the Kingdom will prepare the world for both justice and flourishing. Jesus tells these parables as reminders to his disciples and to us that the Kingdom is coming, and it will fulfill the longings for justice and renewal we all carry, but it won’t come the way we’re expecting it to. It will start small, look unimpressive to the world, and will be ignored by those around us. And yet, participating in this subversive Kingdom is how we join God in bringing justice and flourishing to the lost world around us.

The first parable recorded by the three gospel writers Matthew, Mark, and Luke is a parable about seeds. Jesus explains that like a seeds planted among different types of soil by a farmer, the words and teachings from Him are shared among different types of people. Some reject His words and teachings, some don’t allow it to take root, and others give up following the way of Jesus by giving into the worries of this age.

But there are a few who hear God’s word, receive it by applying it to their lives, and bear good fruit. These are the people who allow God’s word to confront and convict them, and who reorient their lives in response. In order to be these types of people, we must receive the seeds God generously wants to share with us, and learn to apply them to our daily lives.

One of Jesus’ favorite ways to teach about the Kingdom was through parables. Some of his most well-known stories are parables, and together they make up nearly one-third of all his teachings in the Gospels. And yet, parables are also among the most misunderstood.

Most of us assume Jesus used parables as simple illustrations to make spiritual truths clearer, or as moral lessons to show us how to live. But Jesus himself explained that parables serve a deeper purpose: they draw some people into the Kingdom, and they push others away from the Kingdom. Parables aren’t just moral tales, theology lessons, or simple illustrations. They are surprising, subversive stories that confront us with the reality of the Kingdom.

And just like our response to the parables, our response to the Kingdom is never neutral: we can resist and turn away, or be drawn in and transformed.

Paul had a sense of urgency when it came to sharing the gospel. In 2 Corinthians 5 and 6, he tells us that we will all appear before God one day and give an account of how we lived as witnesses. He also says that our job is to persuade people to believe in the gospel because “today is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2). But today, few of us live with this sense of urgency. Rather than fearing God and His judgement, we fear other people and their opinions. We also write people off as being unlikely to accept the gospel if we were to share, and most of the time, we simply forget to live our lives as witnesses. But witnessing is not an optional practice. Both Paul and Jesus teach us that to be a disciple is to be a witness. When we learn to examine our fears, our flesh, and our forgetfulness, and then bring them to God, we can become effective witnesses who lead others into the Kingdom through the practice of Invitation.

In Corinth, Paul faced a city with culture similar to ours. The highest values in Corinth were social status, success, and self-image. You were only accepted if you were able to present the most successful version of yourself to the rest of the world. But rather than boat in his accomplishments, successes, and brilliance, Paul did the opposite. He vulnerably demonstrated his weakness to those he shared the gospel with. By being honest about his sins, struggles, and his hope, Paul allowed the gospel to shine through his weaknesses. To learn from Paul means we must also be willing to share our weaknesses with those we witness to, choosing to be honest about ourselves and our lives. We can do this through the practice of conversation — simply talking honestly and intentionally with others about our hope in Jesus.

When Paul planted the church in Corinth, his method was simple — preach Christ and Him crucified. Paul was able to clearly and courageously call people to repent and align themselves with the true King, Jesus, and the church in Corinth was born. Our job as witnesses today is the same — preach Christ and Him crucified with courage and clarity.

And while courage comes with time, clarity takes effort. Most of us have an incomplete gospel story. We tend to emphasize one part over another, and often miss out on the depth and complexity of what salvation really is. To become effective witnesses who clearly and courageously preach the gospel, we must learn the full gospel story: Jesus has come to rule and reign over the world through His death and resurrection, and anyone can live in the Kingdom here on earth and into eternity if they repent from their sins and align themselves with Him.

As we begin our last practice together, the practice of Witness, we look to Paul’s teaching in 2 Corinthians. Writing to a church in the middle of a diverse and pagan culture, Paul encourages the church there to live their lives in such a way that their alignment with King Jesus is evident. Much like a strong aroma will either draw others in or push them away, Christians should remain so close to God, each other, and the lost that their lives draw those who are willing closer to God.

Like the church in Corinth, our Witness practice must start with our with-ness. We must remain so close to God that others find our lives appealing. We must remain so close to each other that we’re able to rely on each other for support. And we must remain so close to the lost that we actually have opportunities to draw them into communion with the God who created them.

n John 17, Jesus prays His final words before the cross—not just for His disciples, but for us. He asks the Father to keep us safe from the evil one, make us holy by His truth, and unify us in love. And in verse 23, we see the breathtaking truth of the gospel: the Father loves us with the same love He has for His perfect Son.

In a world that chases comfort and avoids pain, Jesus offers something deeper: joy that is born through sorrow, not apart from it. In John 16, Jesus prepares His disciples—not with easy answers, but with enduring hope. This Vision Sunday message explores the paradox of Christian hope: that even in our darkest seasons, God is shaping us through the pain and leading us toward resurrection joy.

Jesus warned us: if we truly abide in Him, the world won’t celebrate us—it will resist us. In this message from John 15, we explore four ways the world hated Jesus—and still hates His followers today: misunderstanding, misrepresentation, marginalization, and even martyrdom. But we’re not left alone in the resistance—Jesus gives us His Spirit to walk beside us through every fiery trial. Learn how to suffer faithfully, live joyfully, and pray dependently in a culture that misunderstands the way of Jesus.

In John 15, Jesus invites his disciples into a deeper understanding of what it means to follow him. Like a branch that’s intimately connected and attached to a vine, we too are made to attach ourselves to Jesus. But to attach ourselves to Jesus means we must detach ourselves from other things. Whether it’s our work performance, our future hopes for success, or our reputation, abiding in Jesus means we have to see the better life he offers us and unattach ourselves from the life we’re trying to create on our own. But when we do this, when we orient ourselves around Jesus daily, we are able to love others well, bear real fruit, and live out the life we truly long for.

Instead of rushing past the familiar line “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” we’re invited to slow down and receive it not just as a doctrinal statement, but as a personal proposal from the Groom to His Bride. Don’t pass over the Passover, don’t pass over the proposal, and above all—don’t pass over the Person of Jesus.

In John 13, we witness a table full of disciples—some confident, some comfortable, and one quietly unraveling under the weight of hidden sin. While no one else sees it, Jesus is compassionately aware of the spiritual battles unfolding in the hearts around Him. This sermon calls us to follow His lead: to open our eyes, love one another deeply, and courageously step into the mess with grace and truth.

Jesus spends the last of his time on earth with his disciples and a sense of urgency. In the days leading up to the cross, he gives his disciples everything they need to know before he leaves. But he starts on the night of Passover by doing the most menial and humiliating thing a Jewish Rabbi could do: he washes his disciples’ feet. By doing this task, Jesus shows his disciples two things. First, he shows them that his ultimate purpose in going to the cross is to wash us spiritually clean. Like washing feet, his death on the cross would be a humiliating act that actually gives us freedom from the sin that stains us. Second, Jesus gives us an example to follow. By following Jesus’ example, we too can model self-sacrifice and humility in a way that allows us to become 4th soil disciples in the 4th quarter.

Prayer is so important because it allows us to delight in God’s presence, discern His heart, and depend on His power. But prayer is so powerful because it actually directs God’s hand. When we pray, prayer moves our heart and will to align with God’s heart and will. But it also moves God’s hand to directly interfere into the affairs of humanity. And yet few of us actually believe this. Some of us fall into the trap of fatalism, falsely believing God has already set the future and our prayers won’t actually change anything. Others of us fall into the trap of naturalism, falsely believing that prayer is less important than action. But throughout the scriptures, God does change his mind in response to his peoples’ prayers. In Exodus 32, after receiving the 10 Commandments, Moses prays on behalf of the Israelites and God relents. In 2 Kings 6, Elisha prays for the eyes of his servant to be opened to the reality of God’s power through prayer. If you track the theme of prayer throughout the biblical story, one thing becomes abundantly clear: prayer moves the hand of God to action. It’s our prayers, usually on behalf of others, by which God advances His Kingdom to push back the darkness in the world around us. Put simply, God responds when we pray. By praying bold prayers that just might move God’s hand to action, we practice turning our inward-focused minds, hearts, and bodies into outward-acting agents of God’s kingdom.

In the middle of teaching on prayer, Jesus tells us to ask, “Give us today our daily bread,” “forgive our sins,” and “deliver us from the evil one” (Matthew 6:11–13). These requests span a spectrum: from the mundane, to the messy, to the monumental.

Daily bread reflects ordinary needs we often overlook—food for the day, a safe commute, help with our to-do list. “Forgive our sins” gets messy, confronting our failures and the challenge of forgiving others. “Deliver us” points to overwhelming needs—healing from deep wounds, restored relationships, freedom from bondage. Yet Jesus makes no distinction. Bread, forgiveness, deliverance—all are gifts from a generous Father.

If God truly is our Father, He wants us to ask—for small things and big things. Because asking reveals humility. It takes honesty and vulnerability to admit we need help, that we rely on His power. Prayer expresses this dependence. When we bring God the mundane, the messy, and the monumental, He responds. Not always how or when we expect. But Jesus reminds us: “Who among you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him” (Matthew 7:9–11).

If the goal of prayer is to delight in God’s presence and develop deeper communion with Him, few of us want to settle for a one-sided relationship. At some point in our prayer journey, we’ll want to actually hear from Him. This is what Scripture calls discernment. And while prayer is about delighting in our personal relationship with God by sharing our hearts with Him, it’s also about learning His heart for us and for those around us.

When we pray to discern God’s heart, we’re asking to know God’s will. But we’re also asking that God would form and shape us into the kinds of people who are actually capable of accomplishing it. This means discerning God’s heart is less about finding the right path when faced with a decision and more about tuning our hearts and desires to God’s heart and desires. This is partly what Jesus means when He tells His disciples to pray, “Your Kingdom come Your will be done…” (Matt. 6:10). Discerning God’s heart is about surrendering our will to God’s. We want His will, not ours, to be done in our lives, in the lives of those around us, and in our world. Praying this way is about alignment. We want to bend our desires to God’s desires. And not just for ourselves.

We want to develop the heart God has for those around us as well. We want to hear from God, we want to respond to His voice, and we want to become people who carry out His will.

It’s pretty significant that the one time we’re told the disciples ask Jesus to teach them something, they say, “Teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1). After everything they saw Jesus doing—preaching, performing miracles, healing, casting out demons—what caught their attention was the devotion and commitment Jesus seemed to have when it came to prayer.

When Jesus answered his disciples’ request, the first thing He told them to do was address God as a Father. “Our Father in heaven…” as the prayer goes. Many of us know it by heart, but this was a radical move on Jesus’ part. In a culture full of both reverence and uncertainty about the divine, Jesus was demonstrating to His disciples a very simple, yet radical truth: God is knowable. He’s not simply “up there” in the clouds, nor is He passively waiting for us to approach Him with the right words, mantra, or sacrifice. God is near, and we can talk to Him the same way a child would talk to their father.

The starting point of prayer is delight. We can’t develop the kind of prayer life Jesus had until we get our heads and hearts around the truth that God wants to be near us in prayer more than we want to be near Him. To truly delight in God requires a proper theology, a patient consistency, and a practicing community.

When Jesus teaches on the deadly sin of Lust in Matthew 5, he’s addressing a dep- rooted problem in the human heart: the desire for excess at the expense of others. Most often, Lust happens when our sexual desires override our capacity to love and serve others, but Lust can be identified in more ways than just sexual desire. Anytime we use and manipulate other people for our own pleasure or gain, we Lust. But through the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, we can slowly replace Lust with the fruit of Self-Control. By choosing to give up control instead of gaining control over others, and by learning to redirect our desires, we can slowly become people capable of truly loving those around us.

On Easter Sunday we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. By rising from the dead and walking out of the grave, Jesus defeated the three main enemies of humanity: sin, Satan, and death. It’s good news for all of us, but only if we’re willing to accept it. In Matthew 11, Jesus responds with judgement towards those who consistently reject Him and His miracles. But by the end of the chapter, Jesus extends an invitation for those willing to repent. By laying down our pride and putting our hope in Jesus, we find Him gentle, lowly, and willing to give us rest.

Fickleness might not be one of the seven historically recognized deadly sins, but it is prevalent in our community and it is deadly. All of us shy away from difficult conversations, give up at the first sign of discomfort, and loosen our commitments when we’re inconvenienced. But in the Garden of Gethsemane, just before his crucifixion, Jesus models what faithfulness looks like. By bringing our pain, fears, and discomfort to God in honest prayer, we allow him to hear us and align our hearts with his will. This is how we allow the Spirit to bear the fruit of faithfulness within us.

All of us are familiar with anger. It’s usually our first reaction when our pride is hurt, our wills are obstructed, or when we’re wounded by others. And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. God himself gets angry towards sin, wickedness, and injustice. But unlike God’s anger, ours isn’t often righteous. Instead, it festers within us and warps our ability to truly love others. Anger, properly understood, is actually a sign that something deeper is going on within us. By learning to examine our anger before reacting, confessing our anger to the God, and allowing Him to meet us in our anger, we can slowly make space for the Spirit to replace our anger with the fruits of kindness and goodness.

At first glance, the sin of Sloth doesn’t seem all that bad. Most of us who live hurried, busy lives could probably use a little more Sloth to help us slow down. But Sloth isn’t just slowing down or being lazy. According to the scriptures, it’s the combination of two sins that have plagued humanity from the beginning of time: avoidance and apathy. We give into the sin of Sloth when we choose to avoid difficult conversations, choices, or promptings from the Spirit, and we experience apathy as we slowly lose our love for God and for others. But by the grace of God, we can resist Sloth when we practice Patience. When we choose to endure hardship, engage in difficulties, and lean in to discomfort, we dig the roots of Sloth from our hearts and allow the Spirit to turn us into people marked by hopeful patience.

Of all the deadly sins, envy is one of the most damaging and undetectable. We casually look down on those who are more successful than us, we ignore the bitterness that takes root in our hearts towards others, and we slowly begin to see the people God has called us to live in community with as enemies rather than family members. But as dangerous and elusive as envy is, the gospel gives us a way out. In James 3, James gives practical instructions to those struggling with envy: “if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your heart, don’t boast and deny the truth… the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who cultivate peace.” (Ja. 3:14, 18). We can make space for the Spirit to grow the fruit of Peace in our lives by practicing gratitude and honor. When we give thanks for what we have, we learn contentment. When we choose to honor instead of envy others, we experience peace.

Most of us probably wouldn’t consider ourselves “gluttons.” But when we look at how we spend our free time, how we respond to boredom or hardship, or what we do for “rest,” we likely find ourselves giving into excess and impulse. By definition, this is gluttony: consumption without contentment. To find happiness or satisfaction, we often chase cheap impulses, or what some call “pseudo-joys.”

But this problem isn’t new. Jesus calls it out when the crowds followed him after they ate the five thousand loaves and fish that he gave them. “Truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled.” Instead Jesus reminds the crowds, and us, that He is the Bread of Life that satisfies our deepest desires. This is the fruit of joy.

By practicing both fasting and feasting, we can slowly train ourselves to resist gluttony and instead embrace the true joy that Jesus offers us.

At the top of the list of the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5 is love. But as simple and cliché as it sounds, love is one of the most difficult fruits to embody. And what most often prevents us from loving others well is greed. One of the seven deadly sins, and one of the most difficult sins to free ourselves from, greed prevents us from loving others and serving God sacrificially. We express our greed either by hoarding our resources, ignoring those in need, or controlling what we get in return for our generosity. To combat the greed that naturally grows inside of our hearts, we must learn to submit ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit. By acknowledging our weakness, and by pursuing self-sacrifice, we allow God to grow the fruit of love within us.

At first glance, the fruit of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5 seems either like an impossible checklist or an arbitrary virtue list. But Paul’s instruction to “walk by the Spirit” so we can bear fruit actually goes back to the Garden of Eden. God commands his people to be fruitful, and he promises to help them do it. After the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, he sends us his Holy Spirit to do in us what we can’t fully do ourselves — bear fruit. The fruit of the Spirit isn’t a random list of things we should try better to embody. It’s a picture of what a life yielded to the Spirit can look like. To help us submit ourselves to the work and pruning of the Holy Spirit, we observe Lent. By fasting, abstaining, or just saying “no” to things that pull our hearts away from God, we allow his Spirit to bear fruit in us that we can’t produce on our own.

One of the sharpest and most consistent criticisms God gives against His people throughout the scriptures is the sin of neglect. As God’s people, the Israelites were chosen as a nation among nations to bring God’s light to a dark world. God’s people were always supposed to care for the poor and marginalized, and to bring the good news of God’s Kingdom to the lost around them. But rather than care for them, they often neglected them.

In Isaiah 58, God’s people wonder why their prayers and fasts haven’t been acknowledged by God. God’s response is that they fast in vain; their focus is only on themselves while they neglect those in need around them. Instead, God describes a holy and honoring fast as one that leads to care for their neighbors.

When we fast, we have an opportunity to direct our attention and our prayers away from ourselves and toward others. We use our bodies to cry out to God on behalf of those who have needs in our cities, communities, and neighborhoods. In our hunger, we identify with those who don’t have food in abundance like we do. We align ourselves with the poor and needy among us. From those with deep physical, relational, and emotional needs to those who have the ultimate spiritual need: reconciliation with God through the power of the gospel.

Fasting is hard because it’s a form of self-denial. We suddenly become aware of our weakness, frailty, and imminence. It’s a reminder that our bodies need sustenance to survive, and without food, we’ll eventually die. But just like our bodies need food for life, our souls need God. David knew this well when he fasted and pleaded with God in Psalm 69. As he denies his body food, he learns to confess his needs before God and redirect his trust back towards Him. Like David, we too are powerless to accomplish our deepest desires and weak when it comes to uprooting the deepest sins in our lives. We all have needs that only God can meet — prayers we need answers to, sins we can’t overcome, and decisions we need God’s will revealed for. To help us redirect our trust in God and to confess our needs, we fast.

In Psalm 63 David is a King on the run. His wealth, power, and possessions have all been stripped away and he finds himself in a desert, fleeing for his life while his own son tries to kill him. And yet, in this season of pain, David’s deepest longings are satisfied by God’s presence. Though most of us today won’t experience our lives endangered in a desert, we will find ourselves in seasons of desert pain at some point or another. But unlike David, our impulse to avoid pain prevents us from experiencing satisfaction in God as we often seek comfort in our “cheaper desires.” To help us refocus our attention to God, train ourselves to find true satisfaction, and experience more of our union with Him, we practice fasting.

As we begin our fasting practice, we must first come to terms with the reality that most of us have a low view of our bodies and how they relate to our spirituality. Like the rest of the western world, followers of Jesus tend to either worship their bodies or treat them like an evil with desires that need to be controlled. And there’s some truth to this. Our bodies are both broken and redeemed. But rather than worship our bodies, punish them, or ignore them, the way of Jesus offers us an alternative. To help us reconnect our spirituality to our bodies, and to help us learn to say “no” to our cheap desires, we practice fasting.

To become the 4th soil, we need to become people with both courage and clarity in sharing the gospel. But most of us are too consumed by fear, shame, and confusion, and our attempts at becoming effective evangelists fall short. We fear losing friendships and facing rejection, we’re ashamed of the offensiveness of the way of Jesus, and we’re confused by what the gospel actually is. Timothy, Paul’s pastoral protégé, dealt with many of the same problems. In 2 Timothy 1, Paul gives an encouraging reminder to Timothy and to us: the power of the gospel comes from God who saves us from death and gives us new life. While it’s God who ultimately saves people, it’s our job to sow the seeds and trust in the power of the gospel.

We live in a pivotal moment of our culture. Societal upheaval, corruption, and fear create the potential for another major shift in our society, either toward ruin or renewal. And while the world around us gives in to panic and distraction, the call for the church remains the same: endure hardship. In 2 Timothy 4, this is the command Paul gives to Timothy and his church as they wrestle with the same issues we wrestle with today. Like soldiers, farmers, and athletes, the church’s job is to stay committed to our task, be aware of the season we’re in, and commit to finishing the race God has called us to. Here at Passion Creek, our aim is to become the 4th soil by enduring hardship through the practice of prayer.

We are living in the 4th quarter—a time of urgency and opportunity to consecrate our lives and become the fourth soil. Drawing from Mark 4, the call is to resist distractions, align ourselves with God’s Word, and bear lasting fruit. Today, we focus on the chokehold of deceitful desires and how self-control, powered by the Holy Spirit, frees us to live as God intended.

Modern culture has shifted from a “should” society to a “could” society, glorifying self-indulgence while leaving us more broken and dissatisfied. Through the lens of scripture, we see the destructive power of unchecked desires—whether in Esau trading his birthright for stew, or Paul’s warning in 2 Timothy 3 about people becoming lovers of self and pleasure over God. Desire, though not inherently evil, becomes destructive when disordered or directed away from God.

Paul’s exhortation to exercise self-control teaches us that spiritual maturity requires both mastery and mystery. While we actively train ourselves to resist sin (mastery), we rely on the Spirit’s power to transform our hearts (mystery). Fasting emerges as a key practice to cultivate this balance, helping us reorient our desires toward God and find true fulfillment in Him.

We live in an urgent time. With the church in decline, deconstruction increasing, and people abandoning their faith in droves, followers of Jesus need to know how to navigate this cultural moment. And Jesus offers us an answer. In Mark 4, he tells a parable about a man who plants seeds in four different types of soil. Most of the seeds are fruitless, except in the 4th soil. Our goal at Passion Creek is to become this fourth soil. We want to be a church that hears God’s Word, receives it, and bears fruit. We do this by resisting the worries of this age, deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things, and instead reorient ourselves around God Himself.

Every Christmas, we embark on the journey of Advent, reflecting on the hope, peace, joy, and love brought by Christ’s first coming and ultimately brought to the full at His second coming.

But love—especially God’s love—can be the hardest to understand and accept. This teaching explores God’s profound love through the four Gospels, using a poem, a prophecy, a purpose statement, and a parable.

In this Advent message from Luke 2, we explore how chronic anxiety has gripped our society, robbing us of playfulness and joy. Drawing on insights from Luke’s account of the shepherds, Pastor Trey VanCamp reveals that joy is not just an emotion but a motor—a driving force that sustains us in the tension of the “already, not yet” of God’s Kingdom. By embracing joy as both a miracle and a muscle, we can navigate life’s challenges with hope and resilience. This teaching encourages us to “rejoice always,” grounding our joy in Christ and looking forward to His ultimate return.

In this episode, we dive into the first Sunday of Advent, exploring the profound theme of hope. Through the stories of Zechariah, Herod, and Mary, we reflect on how biblical hope isn't mere wishful thinking but a tangible, future-oriented anticipation rooted in God's promises. From Zechariah's skepticism to Herod's fear and Mary's faithful response, we see how hope challenges and transforms us.

Journey with us as we uncover how Advent invites us to embrace both celebration and waiting. We’ll reflect on the tension between our present struggles and the ultimate restoration promised by God. Whether you're wrestling with doubt, longing for control, or striving to live faithfully in the waiting, this episode encourages us to reorient our hearts and lives around the unshakable hope found in Christ.

Key Takeaways:

How the stories of Zechariah, Herod, and Mary offer different responses to hope.
The meaning of Advent as a season of both waiting and celebration.
Practical ways to live with hope, drawing strength from God's promises for the future.

Join us as we step into the Advent season, grounding ourselves in the transformative power of hope.

Our church gathers every Sunday at 9:15a & 11a at Queen Creek Junior High.

20435 South Old Ellsworth Road, Queen Creek, AZ

https://passioncreek.church/sundays/

The last third of the book of Acts shows Paul in chains. After being falsely accused of starting a riot and desecrating the temple, Paul will face imprisonment, two assassination attempts, a shipwreck, and then house arrest. And yet, Paul knew all of this would happen. The Spirit consistently warned him that going to Jerusalem would lead him straight into hardship, but he’s still told to go anyway. Paul’s submission to the will of God models for us what it looks like to allow our goals, plans, and outcomes to be formed by Jesus alongside our habits, schedules, and lifestyles. By surrendering our will to God’s will, we too can build courage in the face of adversity and faithfulness in the midst of suffering.

In Acts 20, Paul models what a church pastor should be by speaking directly to the elders in Ephesus. He tells them how he’s pastored, inviting them to follow his example in humility, service, vulnerability, and courage. He also warns them that, should they neglect their calling, the people they shepherd will be vulnerable to wolves. For us today, being a part of a church means submitting ourselves to the guiding and guarding of the spiritual authority placed over us. It also means we are on guard against Satan and his schemes as he threatens to sabotage the church with deceit and manipulation. By maintaining a posture of humility and by fixing our gaze on Jesus, we can become fruitful people who resist the schemes of the Enemy and bring the goodness of the gospel to the world around us.

In the second half of Acts 19, Paul starts a riot. After confronting the false idols and spiritual powers in Ephesus, some of the local businessmen revolt. While Paul escapes and the church in Ephesus grows, just a few years later Paul has to write to them reminding them to continue following the way of Jesus intentionally rather than being formed by the idols of Ephesus unintentionally.

Today, our temptation is much the same.

To avoid being formed and shaped by the idols of our city and culture, we must intentionally allow ourselves to be formed into the image of Jesus by examining the stories we hear, the habits we practice, and the relationships we surround ourselves with.

There are two major encounters with the power of God in Acts 19. The first involves some of John the Baptist’s disciples who have heard about Jesus but haven’t experienced the fullness of His presence. Paul meets them, prays over them, and they get saved. The second involves some Jewish sorcerers who hear about Paul performing miracles and attempt to wield the power of God for their own gain. Their attempts fail, the real power of God prevails, and revival sweeps across Ephesus. Although we don’t live in a city as obsessed with magic and spirituality as Ephesus, we still need power today. And like the disciples of John and the Jewish sorcerers, most of us are missing something. We either neglect the presence of God altogether, or we try to manipulate the power of God for our own gain. But by naming the fears, distractions, and sins that separate us from God, we can experience His real presence and power in our lives today.

As bold, committed, and seemingly successful as the apostle Paul was, he wasn’t immune to discouragement. After his time in Athens, Paul goes to Corinth where he continues preaching the gospel to a city with mixed responses. However, after years of both fruitfulness and rejection, Paul has grown weary. God meets him in a dream to offer encouragement and a promise that he’s still doing what he’s called to do. Many of us can find ourselves in a similar place of discouragement. We can face the same vices, hit the same roadblocks, and struggle with the same sins our entire lives. But just like Paul, we too must remember that in order to experience God’s resurrection power, we must endure God’s cruciform pain. We endure the afflictions of the cross by setting our affections on Christ.

In Acts 17, Paul finds himself in a city very different than what he’s used to. Grand temples, pagan altars, and false idols fill the great city of Athens. When he begins sharing the good news of Jesus with the people of the city, he’s mostly ridiculed. But eventually, he’s invited to share his beliefs in front of a small crowd in the Areopagus court. As Paul explains who the true God really is, he confronts and dismantles the pagan idolatry that fills that city. He proclaims the good news that God is bigger than any temple, can’t be contained in any statue, but is also nearer to us than our very breath. Today, our world is the same as Athens. We can be tempted, like the Athenians, to share devotion that solely belongs to God with other worldviews, religions, and ideologies that oppose the way of Jesus. But to truly seek first the Kingdom means we too must confront and dismantle the idols in our lives and give all of our worship and devotion to the King.

As a church planter, Paul was always on the lookout for “foxes” that can ruin the good soil of the Kingdom — things like cynicism, gossip, and bitterness. But when he meets the Thessalonians and the Bereans, he encounters something different. Rather than brushing him off or blindly accepting his message, the Bereans model healthy skepticism. They are students of God’s Word who orient their lives around His truth. Similarly, the church in Thessalonica is later commended by Paul because of their response to the gospel. Rather than simply believing the right things, they commit to living the right way. Today, we can learn from both the Bereans and the Thessalonians. Being students of God’s Word means we have the right theology and the right practice. By reorienting our daily lives in response to the gospel, we too can become a model healthy church free of evil “foxes.”

In Acts 16, Paul and Silas finally reach Europe. As they arrive, they encounter three different people in different seasons of their lives, yet all in need of the gospel. Lydia, a successful businesswoman, reorients her wealth and resources toward God and his Kingdom. A demon-possessed Slave Girl is set free by the power of Jesus. A Roman Jailor about to take his own life finds both physical and spiritual salvation. In each of these encounters, the outcome is the same: the Kingdom breaks into their everyday lives and changes everything. Like these three people, all of us are in need. Some of us need literal and physical saving, and others of us simply need hope. Regardless of our status, financial situation, or season of life, Jesus promises to meet our needs. But to allow him to do this requires us to surrender our lives, our needs, and our resources to him.

Most of us know what it’s like to receive a dream from God — we have a sense of purpose, direction, and perseverance to walk in the calling God has laid out for us. But at some point, we hit resistance. Rather than bring us through upward mobility, our God-given dreams bring us through disappointment, difficulty, disagreement, or detours. In these moments, it’s tempting to give up on the dream altogether. The apostle Paul experienced this well. He’d been given a glimpse of what it would look like to participate in bringing God’s Kingdom down from heaven to earth but quickly experienced every kind of setback. But rather than give up on God’s calling over his life, Paul was obedient. By looking at Paul’s story from Acts 9-16, we learn that God-given dreams come with setbacks. But these are always for our guiding and purging. God’s “no’s” guide us to a better “yes” and purge our souls from sinful passions and desires.

As good, true, and beautiful as the gospel is, there has always been resistance to it. In Acts 15, we see the natural human inclination to fight against the reality that God forgives us simply because of our faith in Jesus — some Jewish leaders began forcing extra rules on new Christians. Peter, Paul, and the rest of the apostles give a wise response to these new Christians: they tell them to guide their hope back toward Christ alone, but also to guard their lives by following a way of life. The church today faces a similar issue. We’re either tempted to try and earn something that’s already been freely given, or we’re tempted to accept what’s been freely given without reorienting our lives in response. To follow Jesus is both to receive a free gift and to reorient our lives in response. We choose to put our trust in the person of Jesus and allow his free gift of grace to transform us as we submit more of our lives and desires to him.

Acts 14 tells a story of Paul and Barnabas living out Kingdom principles while experiencing a tough situation. After miraculously healing a disabled man, they’re hailed as gods before eventually being run out of the city and nearly killed. But even in the midst of these strange circumstances, Paul and Barnabas never abandon the Kingdom way of living. Rather than accepting the peoples’ worship, fighting back against their persecutors, or quitting their mission, they exercise self-control, endure hardship, and do the work of evangelists. Today, our call is the same. Despite persecution, hardship, and the world around us vying for our devotion, we can seek the Kingdom by dying to ourselves, enduring hardships, and working as evangelists announcing the good news of the Kingdom.

In Acts 13, Paul confronts a Roman governor and a Jewish sorcerer. Both of these men have power. One has magic, the other has politics. But neither of these powers is strong enough to keep the power of God’s Kingdom from spreading. Paul demonstrates this Kingdom power, and the gospel continues to spread. As followers of Jesus, we must respond to Jesus as a King who comes to earth announcing a Kingdom. But just like the men that Paul confronts, this Kingdom directly clashes with the kingdoms of the world and the kingdoms of our souls. How do we respond to Jesus’ Kingdom? Do we leave the world’s kingdom like Sergius? Do we cling to our own rule and reign like Elymas? Are we ready to face the worldly and personal kingdoms in conflict like Paul?

All of us have different feelings and attitudes when it comes to giving money to a local church. For some of us, it’s a regular and assumed part of our discipleship. For others, it’s a financial goal. And for others, it’s an exploitative way for churches to get more money. Regardless of how we feel about tithing, it’s difficult to be a generous person who lives out the way of Jesus without a regular rhythm of supporting the Body of Christ. In 2 Corinthians, we see a picture of what it looks like to become a community that generously tithes their money for the sake of the Kingdom. The grace of God allows them to give above and beyond what might seem possible. At Passion Creek Church, we find it helpful to think of the tithe as a starting point, not a stopping point. To practice tithing is to practice letting go of control, putting our trust in God, and participating in the Kingdom work that God has called us to.

Luke 19:1-10; 20:20-25; 21:1-4

2 Corinthians 8:1-4; 9:6-11

In Luke 16, Jesus tells a perplexing parable. It’s a story of a dishonest manager who uses his master’s wealth to serve those around him. While Jesus’ doesn’t praise the manager’s dishonesty, he credits his ingenuity. This manager saw himself as a steward, not an owner, of his master’s possessions. When we examine our own perceptions regarding our money, most of us view ourselves as owners — we are the sole owners of our money, wealth, and material possessions. But the way of Jesus is the way of stewardship. By seeing ourselves as stewards of all of the things God has blessed us with rather than owners, we’re free to live generously. At the tail end of this parable, Jesus makes a startling claim: if you trust God with fiscal matters, He will entrust you with spiritual matters. Our goal is to become a church of stewards who generously give what our Master has given us to expand the Kingdom and bring others into communion with Jesus.

Like all our beliefs, the attitudes and dispositions we have toward money are largely shaped by our past – our family of origin, our cultural background, and our church experiences. In Luke’s gospel, we see at least 4 different ways of viewing money. Like the Rich Fool in Luke 12, some of us believe that the good life is found when we hoard the most for ourselves. Others of us live more like the Rich Young Ruler in Luke 18; we falsely assume that God will always bless us financially as a reward for our faithfulness. Or we doubt God’s generosity towards us altogether and live more like the Older Brother in Luke 15. But in Luke 21, we see a picture of someone who really trusts in the God of abundance and not in the uncertainty of wealth. A widow, giving all that she has, is commended by Jesus as a picture of what true generosity looks like. We too can reshape how we view money and the way we give by reorienting our minds around the truths of scripture, reshaping our habits to reflect generosity, and participating in a community of Jesus-followers committed to doing the same.

Fewer sins are as deep-rooted and hard to detect as greed. Not many of us would admit to being greedy or materialistic, but greed, by default, lives inside each one of us. Jesus makes this clear in Luke 11 when he confronts the Pharisees who hid their greed from others and projected generosity instead. While they appeared holy and generous on the outside, Jesus calls out their inner attachment to money. A few chapters later, Jesus makes his criticism of greed even more clear: to ignore the greed that lives inside all of us makes it impossible to truly love God and others. To Jesus, greed is a poison. And yet, Jesus offers us a solution. The only antidote to the invisible poison of greed is the visible practice of generosity. Our goal is to become disciples, not donors, who practice generosity as a way to keep our greed away from our souls. We redirect our worship towards God by holding our money and wealth so loosely that we give freely, because we trust in the God of abundance.

As our church looks ahead to the rest of the year, we want to pause and remind ourselves of the vision we started the year with: to make friends and love other people. However, most of us have realized by now how difficult this really is. Jesus holds us to a high standard by commanding us to love our enemies in Luke 6, and so does James when he tells us to confront our bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in James 3. But the gospel gives us hope. By doing the holy work of faith, dying to ourselves, and practicing agape love, we can maintain the friends we’ve made this year and truly love both our friends and our enemies.

When most of us think of prayer, we think of talking to God. While this definition of prayer isn’t wrong, it can sometimes feel formulaic. We begin to assume that if we ask God for the right things in the right way, we’ll get what we ask for. But in Acts 12 we see God’s people contend with God in desperate prayer that doesn’t fit a formula. As Herod begins to intensely persecute the new church, Jesus’ disciples learn that following Jesus is unpredictable. But they also learn that in prayer, their true hope is in being drawn closer into the presence of the Father. For us today, though God might not answer all of our prayers, we can rely on God’s presence, God’s ability, and God’s goodness. Prayer looks more like turning ourselves towards God’s love than attempting to earn God’s love.

When Peter walks into the house of Cornelius, a Roman Gentile who follows the Jewish God Yahweh, everything about the gospel movement changes. Until this point, the gospel was good news for the Jews; their long-awaited Messiah had come to the world to rescue them from Sin, Satan, and Death. But now, this good news is opened up to include even the worst pagan Gentiles. Jesus isn’t just the Savor of the Jews, he’s the Savior of the whole world. Just like Peter must realize how big and inclusive this good news is, we too must learn what it means to preach and proclaim the gospel to everyone around us. By confronting our own biases and committing to the global movement of the gospel, we too can participate in the story of salvation that God has been telling since the beginning of time.

As one of Jesus’ disciples, Peter knew what it meant to reorient his life around the love, lifestyle, and leadership of his Rabbi. He led like Jesus, and he lived like Jesus, but Peter still had to learn how to love like Jesus.

In Acts 10, Peter is confronted with his next marathon: overcoming his prejudice. As a Jew, Peter believed that the gospel was only good news for his own people. But when God reveals the global scale of the gospel by showing him that Gentiles are just as loved by God as Jews are, Peter must confront his prejudice.

Like Peter, all of us have biases. We classify, exclude, and judge people based on ethnicity, social status, or political tribe. But to follow Jesus means we must love everyone the way Jesus did, even when we disagree with them. Just like Peter, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, we too can participate in the marathon of overcoming our biases and extending the gospel to all people.

In Acts 9, Paul experiences his moment. He encounters the risen Jesus in an instant and his life is forever changed. But then, Paul begins his marathon. Rather than jumping straight into the work of the ministry that we know him for, Paul spends years cultivating a slow, gradual, and deep relationship with God. From Paul’s life, we learn that God always works slowly in us before working extraordinarily through us.

But God won’t force His work in us.

Like Paul, we must learn to trust in the slow work of God, yielding more and more of our idols, passions, and desires to him in surrender. Only by letting go of our expectations and accepting God’s grace can we slowly grow into mature disciples of Jesus who greatly impact those around us.

In Acts 9 we meet Saul, a murderer and enemy of the new Christian movement. Saul has built his life around what he believes is the righteous way of God: zealously eradicating evil from the world. But then, in a moment, Saul is transformed. He meets the risen Jesus and learns that the righteousness of God doesn’t come by our earthly power, violence, or force. Instead, it comes through Christ. God in human flesh, coming to take our punishment and suffer violence on our behalf. We can learn from Saul by accepting our own brokenness and inability to achieve righteousness. Like Saul, we learn that to be a follower of Jesus is to let him be a warrior for us against sin and evil. Jesus is our only hope and confidence.

Acts 9:1-19 CSB

Acts 8:26-39

In this message, we learn about one of the first false converts of the early church: Simon.

Acts 8:1-24

The final part of peacemaking involves making peace with who we really are and who God made us to be. At some point in our lives, our perspective shifts. We realize that we aren’t the hero of our story in the way we thought we’d be. We make mistakes, poor choices, and few of us experience life exactly the way we thought we would. And yet, God can still redeem the lowest parts of our story. In fact, the most influential people in the biblical story all experience dramatic low points. At the end of Genesis, Joseph seems to be at his lowest point. But through his work of forgiving his past, forging new patterns, and framing his pain, God is able to fulfill Joseph’s purpose. Making peace with our purpose means making peace with disappointment, failure, and regret. But it also means making peace with who we actually are today. We look back at our lives, and ahead to our future, in order to fulfill the purpose God has for us.

One of the hardest parts of our lives to make peace with is the pain and suffering that follows us. All of us experience hardship, and for some, it’s the defining attribute of our lives. Whether from death, loss, infertility, chronic illness, sudden diagnoses, relational hurt and betrayal, or simply from apathy and the monotony of life, all of us have painful experiences. Making peace with our pain doesn’t mean we ignore its reality. It actually means the opposite. Unlike Abel in Genesis 4, we don’t allow our pain to stir up bitterness in our hearts. Instead, framing our pain is a way for us to vocalize our pain to God. We name the emotions connected to our pain, and we voice these emotions back to God. But we also declare God’s faithfulness back to ourselves. Like Jesus in the Garden before His crucifixion, we use our pain as a reminder that God is still faithful and in control. And even in our lowest, God is still near.

Once we’ve made peace with our past, we must learn to forge new patterns. To do this requires us to take ownership for the ways we contribute to the pain of the people around us. All of us have ways of coping with pain in our own lives, and some of these coping mechanisms can be good. If we’re lucky, we learn from our parents what it means to own up to our mistakes, forgive others, and resolve conflict well. But all of us also carry negative coping mechanisms into our relationships as well. Some call these negative coping mechanisms attachment styles. We learn how to get what we want from people and how to avoid pain that comes with relationships. Put another way, all of us tend to cope by becoming either peace-fakers or peace-breakers. We fake peace by ignoring conflict, pain, and hard conversations with others. We break peace by blowing up on those around us, storming off, and giving into anger and resentment. And like all negative coping mechanisms, these patterns are often fueled by lies we believe about ourselves, others, and God. By making peace with our patterns, we’re intentionally confronting our flesh. We’re calling out the selfish parts of who we are and refusing to let it rule over our relationships. Like the Psalmist in Psalm 139, we’re inviting God to search us and know us to get rid of the offensive and sinful parts of us (Psalm 139:23-24).

All of us are shaped by our past. Where we come from, who we come from, and the way we were raised all shape who we are today in profound ways. Most of us have a basic awareness of our family of origin, but few of us have done the hard work of learning about our past to better understand who we are today. As a result, all of us unknowingly transmit the same narratives, patterns, pains, and expectations as our family before us. To make peace with our past is to return to an ancient tradition from the scriptures. Throughout the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, God tells His people to remember where they’ve come from, what God has saved them from, and the promises He has made (Deut. 6:12, Isa. 46:9, Ps. 143:5). Making peace with our past means we must forgive our past. We must take intentional time to see where we come from. We learn about our family of origin to better understand where our behaviors and patterns come from, both good and bad. But most importantly, we look back in order to recognize God’s providence and care for us in our lives. By recognizing both positives and negatives in our past, we’re able to see how God has used our family of origin to shape who we are.

In Acts 7, a pivotal moment occurs in the story of the church. Stephen faces false accusations from the Jewish high priests and is forced to defend himself in court. But rather than responding with anxiety, he delivers a speech, tracing Jewish history from Abraham to Moses, and emphasizing God’s presence with His people. It’s a brilliant display of his wisdom and knowledge, but more importantly, it’s a lesson to the church today. By highlighting the rejection experienced by Joseph and Moses, Stephen shows us that we are God’s new temple, and we will face the same rejection for our commitment to Jesus. But just like the people mentioned in his speech, we must remain committed to stewarding our influence rather than seeking more power. When we commit to loving and serving our enemies, practicing the way of Jesus together in community, facing persecution with hope and endurance, and seeking influence rather than power, we serve as God’s new temple, representing his true character to the world around us.

Many of us fall into the trap of believing the myth of comfort: if something goes wrong, we must be doing something wrong. We falsely assume that if we’re doing the right things, we won’t face suffering, opposition, or conflict of any kind. But in Acts 6, we see why this is a myth. As it grows, the early church faces conflict. There’s complaining within the church and persecution outside the church. But rather than giving up on those around them or giving in to those around them, the church endures internal resistance and external persecution. By learning to abandon the myth of comfort, we too can become non-anxious in the face of resistance.

To follow the way of Jesus in today’s age will often put us at odds with those around us. Our convictions and beliefs are seen as archaic at best, and dangerous at worst. Like the early church, the world around us will pressure us to cave to its own ideals, and then blame us when things go wrong. And more often than not, when faced with this blame, we react poorly. Most of us will fall into two temptations; some of us will give into a failure of heart. We’ll lose our connectedness and love for those around us, especially those who resist us. Or we’ll give in to a failure of nerve. We’ll cave to the pressure and anxiety around us, and bypass the calling God has for us. To counter these temptations, we can learn from Peter and the apostles in Acts 5. After being miraculously freed from prison for preaching and demonstrating the gospel, the apostles resist a failure of heart and nerve by moving in proximity to those they’re called to serve, staying true to their message, and relying on God to continue saving them.

Until Acts 4, the beginning of the church experienced miraculous success. People joined the church daily, shared what they had with one another, and gained more and more favor with outsiders. But in Acts 4, all of that changes. Suddenly confronted with the gospel truth, Jewish leaders give in to their anxiety and start harassing the disciples. Peter and John are forced into court, interrogated, and threatened. But instead of toning down their message, they get bolder. Peter remains a stable non-anxious presence amidst the fear of the culture around him. Our culture is much the same today. And like Peter we also have a choice; we can either tone down our message, or get bolder in proclaiming it. By reminding ourselves that Christ is our cornerstone, we too can remain non-anxious and continue spreading the good news with those around us.

We live in a paranoid world. From the chaos, violence, and immorality around us to the anxiety, pain, and trauma inside us, most of us live in a constant state of fear. And without any hope of rescue, this paranoia leads us to either alarmism, or escapism.

But the gospel story gives us a better hope.

Jesus came into a world just as paranoid as ours, and he confronted the root of our paranoia; we’re all stuck in spiritual slavery, sin, and sickness. And by living the perfect life, dying the death we deserved, and rising again, Jesus offers us hope. But to choose this hope takes an act of “metanoia,” or repentance. When we repent, we actively choose to reorient our lives around the reality of Jesus and his resurrection.

In Acts 3, we meet a man unable to walk sitting outside of the temple. Separated from the presence of God and others, this man was left to beg for a living. But when Peter and John encounter him, they offer more than gold or silver; they offer him healing, both for his body and for his shame. Like this man, many of us today carry shame from our wickedness and woundedness that pulls us away from God and from others. And like Peter and John, at some point we will have the opportunity to extend healing from God to others. In order to deal with our shame and heal the shame of others, we must learn to confront it.

Most of us carry unrealistic expectations when it comes to church community. We all want the perfect personality to lead us, the perfect people around us, the perfect programs to serve us, and the perfect place to make us comfortable. But few of us fail to realize that community based around these things won’t feed the deep longing we have in our souls for genuine community. Instead of settling for personalities, programs, people, and places, the book of Acts invites us to see what a more true and genuine community could look like. At the tail end of Acts 2, just as the gospel movement is about to spread, we see a glimpse of this type of genuine community shared by the first disciples. Rather than settling for personalities, people, programs, and places, they commit to the teaching of scripture, deep and vulnerable community, intentional rhythms of practice, and reliant prayer for the Spirit. The goal of our church is to do the same.

One of the most powerful themes throughout the book of Acts is that God’s people are empowered to bear witness to Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. God’s presence with us through the Spirit allows us to do what we could not do on our own, like share our faith boldly, know Jesus intimately, and do the work of the gospel powerfully.

In Acts 2 we see how the Holy Spirit first came to all believers during Pentecost, and learn how the Spirit empowers us today. In the Holy Spirit, God reveals himself to others through his people, God removes the obstacles to knowing him, and God receives all those who respond to him with faith and repentance.

The book of Acts is the beginning of a story that we’re a part of. Luke, a Gentile physician and early follower of Jesus, writes about the origins of the church, the movement of the gospel, and the lifestyle of the first Christians. But his main goal is to do more than write a history book. Luke wants us to learn that the work that Jesus began in the gospels continues through his people, and by extension, through us today. Jesus commissions his disciples to continue the work of the Kingdom by receiving power, living open to the Spirit, and bearing witness to his life and resurrection. When we take our role seriously and reorient our lives to make space for the Spirit of God, we too can bear witness to the way of Jesus and change the world.

Many of Jesus’ interactions with the lost happened over a meal. In Luke 7:34, Jesus is accused of being “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” The Gospel of Luke illustrates this well: In Luke 5, Jesus is described dining with tax collectors and sinners at a man named Levi’s house. Jesus is anointed by a sinful woman while eating at a Pharisee’s home in Luke 7. And when Jesus forgives and restores Zacchaeus, the Jewish tax collector in Luke 19, he first invites himself over for a meal.

Bottom line: Jesus’ proximity to those living counter to the way of God was scandalous to the self-righteous and life-giving to the self-rejecting.

Again, if seeking and saving the lost was his mission, then sharing a meal with them was his method. As Jesus’ disciples, we’re instructed to do the same. By practicing hospitality, we create a safe space for those opposed to the way of Jesus to encounter and experience the love of God. We don’t affirm people’s sin, but we do affirm that they’re loved and valued image-bearers of God.

If “loving your neighbor as yourself” was the second most important commandment in the scriptures according to Jesus, then it’s something we should make a regular part of our day-to-day life. But in our hyper-individualistic and self-serving culture, few of us actually get to know the strangers we interact with on a daily basis.

Jesus and his disciples faced similar issues in their day. Loving their neighbors was difficult because of boundary lines and discrimination that occurred between Jews and Gentiles. Later in the biblical story, the early church faced violent opposition and persecution due to their commitment to King Jesus. And yet, the more meals they shared with their “enemies,” the more their enemies became friends. Over time, those friends became part of the family of God.

Henri Nouwen defines hospitality this way: “the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy.” People will always expect our hostility until they experience our hospitality. By getting to know the neighbors in our lives, even our actual neighborhood neighbors, we create spaces and opportunities to serve those around us and demonstrate the love of God.

When the people of God are described throughout the Bible, they’re most often described as a family. And when family gathers for dinner, they share more than just a meal. They share life, stories, laughter, questions, tragedies, and celebrations. Throughout the scriptures, the people of God use meals to mark this kind of fellowship.

The art of eating together with those we’re close to is a lost one. Meals have been commodified and looked over as nothing more than a relieving break from the mundanity of work at best, or an inconvenient break in our daily rhythms at worst. We might enjoy an occasional date night, birthday celebration, or holiday feast, but the regular practice of sharing life at a table is one that fewer and fewer people in the West are participating in.

For Christians to recapture this lost tradition, we must intentionally make space in our schedules to be hospitable toward those in our community. Feasting regularly with other followers of the way encourages us, strengthens our bonds, and nourishes our souls.

But there’s also a shadow side to community. Without love, grace, and intentionality, we can fall into the trap of familiarity, codependency, resentment, and idealism.

All throughout the Gospels Jesus is described eating, feasting, and partying with common people. Jesus is almost always going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal. The early church adopted this practice as well. The book of Acts tells us that the first followers of Jesus made it a regular habit to break bread from house to house, eating with “joyful and sincere hearts.” And as the meals spread, so did the gospel.

But for Jesus and his followers, a meal was about more than just food; it was a means of grace. Meals were a way for the Son of God to come near people and offer conversation, friendship, and healing. Every dinner shared with a sinner was a way for God himself to extend a merciful hand of salvation to those who least deserved it. This is why the communion was often shared as part of a full meal.

When we partake in communion, we’re eating a meal together. We’re reminding ourselves that through his sacrifice, fellowship, and hospitality, God has cleared a space at his table for us. Taking communion is our way of feasting with our Savior.

Throughout the Biblical story, the people of God usually find themselves in the minority. From slavery in Egypt to oppression and persecution by Rome, God’s people have always had to learn how to live in a culture that isn’t their own. In the prophet Jeremiah’s day, the Israelites found themselves exiled in Babylon surrounded by enemies and paganism.

But rather than assimilate into the culture or separate themselves from it, God instructs his people to pursue the well-being of their city. We find ourselves in a similar situation today.

As we form tight-knit communities of proximity, vulnerability, and practice, we will become increasingly at odds with the world around us. And yet, it’s through these very communities and friendships that God intends to renew the world. By committing to accomplishing the mission of God, our friendships can do what God instructed the exiled Israelites to do: renew our city.

When it comes to developing deep friendships that form and shape us into the image of Jesus, one barrier often stops us: preferences. Rather than commit to a community of people who hold us accountable and build us up, we find it easier to surround ourselves with others who think like, act like, and approve of us. But the people of God have never flourished this way.

In Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, God institutes a set of practices and behaviors (the 10 Commandments) meant to shape and form his people into his image. And when Jesus starts his earthly ministry, he chooses 12 unlikely men who wouldn’t normally get along to reorient their lives on him.

For us today, becoming a community of practice means putting aside our preferences, committing to each other no matter how different we are, and reorienting our lives on Jesus.

One of the hardest but most rewarding features of any healthy friendship is vulnerability. We get the most out of our relationships when we allow ourselves to be fully known and truly loved. And yet, few of us actually experience this type of freeing love.

Instead, we live in private shame over our weaknesses, wickedness, and woundedness. But the gospel frees us from fear and shame.

By learning to practice vulnerability with those around us, we become capable of deep and valuable relationships. To get the most out of our friendships, we move from proximity to vulnerability.

As connected, informed, and globalized as we are through social media and the internet, we’re also becoming more and more lonely. Fewer and fewer people admit to having close friends, and as life becomes more automated and individualized, it’s easier to go through our days without any meaningful interactions with other people.

But this is far from the life that God designed for us. From the opening pages of Genesis to the end of the human story in Revelation, we see that God has always intended us to live in close proximity to one another — Adam walked with God and was still lonely before Eve; Abraham is called out to create a new close knit family; Jesus does ministry while in deep relationship with his disciples; Paul takes close friends like Barnabas and Timothy with him on his ministry journeys; and the early church grows because of their radical inclusion of their neighbors.

To recapture these lost relationships and live the way God intended, we start with a simple step: moving towards people in proximity the way God moves towards us.

This message looks at the 3 names of Jesus in Matthew 1.

In this message, we look at 1 John 4:7-16 to learn the true definition of love.

Pastor Caleb looks at the story of peace throughout the Bible.

In this message, Pastor Trey examines Luke 1 & 2; Isaiah 8 &9 to learn what joy is and how we build more of it into our lives.

In Luke 1, we learn the secret to hope is getting silent with God.

In this message, we study James 5 and discover the meaning behind a "prayer of faith."

As James nears the end of his letter, one of the last encouragements he wants to give is a call to perseverance. In a world accustomed to anger, favoritism, slander, and ambition, it’s easy to feel the pressure to give up on the practices of Jesus, the truths of Jesus, or even on the way of Jesus altogether. But James reminds us that perseverance in our relationships with others and with God will reap rewards.

Everything we deeply desire, from formative friendships to a tangible hope in God, requires us to pass through suffering with endurance, not sidestep suffering with escape. When we commit to loving each other well and maintaining hope in God, we become people able to reject the lies of the world and live out the truth of the gospel.

As humans, we’re all accustomed to greed. By default, we strive to hoard and live extravagantly in order to build up wealth for ourselves and our families. But according to James, this lifestyle comes at a cost. Not only do we feed our greed at the expense of the poor and oppressed, but we also bring rot to our own souls.

The more we indulge, the less like Jesus we become. But the gospel frees us from this trap of greed.

In Christ we have no reason to hoard, live extravagantly, or perpetuate injustice because we have true and lasting contentment that comes from living a life focused on the Kingdom in communion with God.

After warning about the dangers of the world, flesh, and devil, James confronts us with two subtle sins that can easily pull followers of Jesus away from God and others: the sin of slander and the sin of sufficiency. Slander makes us judge and criticize others as we puff ourselves up, and sufficiency makes us prioritize our will over God’s. When we live by the way of the world, tempted to give in to our every desire by our flesh and the devil, we can’t help but give in to these subtle sins. And both of these sins reveal a lack of holistic and complete trust in God.

But the good news of the gospel permeates these areas of our lives.

By surrendering our deepest sins of the flesh to God, we slowly free ourselves from the need to put others down to make ourselves feel better. And by surrendering our future to God, we slowly free ourselves from the need to have more and do more in order to experience joy.

When most of us think of resisting the devil, we might imagine something like demonic possession, exorcism, or a dramatic and visible display of blatant evil. But the devil’s influence in the world is more subtle than that. Throughout the scriptures, Satan’s primary tactic isn’t force, it’s deception.

From the beginning of time, Satan has used lies to distort God’s truth, turn people away from the way of Jesus, and live according to the world and flesh. And if we’re not aware of his tactics today, we can unknowingly give in to these lies as well. But James 4 promises us that the more we learn to resist the devil, the more we can find freedom through Christ from Satan’s deception.

In James 4, we learn that on some level, followers of the way of Jesus are at odds with the world we live in. While we have a responsibility to love the created world, steward our lives to make it better, and love the people in it, it’s clear that the cultural air we live in is becoming more and more hostile to the way of Jesus. From sexuality and gender to justice and violence, the world normalizes rebellion against God and retaliation against man. To resist the world, followers of Jesus must choose to accept Christ’s love over the world’s promises.

James 4

We live in a culture today that encourages us to satisfy any and all of our desires as we pursue our “true selves.” The only caveat the world gives us is that our desires shouldn’t hurt other people. Otherwise, those desires are good. But what if the people we really hurt in satisfying our desires is ourselves?

In James 4, we learn that not all desires are good, fulfilling, or even authentic to who we’re made to be. When the church buys into the lie that giving in to all our pleasures will bring us joy, James reminds us that this actually results in more conflict and sin. Instead, James invites us to deny our desires, stop the waging war of passions within us, and humble ourselves in confession before God. Doing this feels like self-denial, but it’s the God-designed way for us to experience true grace, healing, and satisfaction.

One of the greatest dangers plaguing the church today is also one of the oldest — selfish ambition. Since the church was first established, the people of God have experienced conflict, disagreement, and division, and often times these circumstances provide an opportunity for us to become bitter, envious, and boastful.

But James 3 shows us what it looks like to endure conflict well. Rather than give in to the bitterness and envy that comes naturally to us in conflict, James instructs us to practice godly wisdom. We reject selfish ambition and instead choose to be people of peace, mercy, and good fruit.

Throughout the Bible we read that our salvation comes from our faith in God alone. The apostle Paul reminds us that we’re saved, declared righteous, brought near to God, and adopted into the family of God all by our faith, not by our works. It’s often people’s faith that Jesus commends, and at times, the disciples even ask God to increase their faith. All of this begs the question, what exactly is faith? In chapter 2 of his letter, James gives us an answer. Contrary to what most of us might think, faith isn’t the same as belief.

According to James, just believing the right doctrines about God isn’t faith at all. Instead, faith is described throughout the Bible as whole-hearted loyalty and trust. Faith starts with our minds and beliefs but moves to our lifestyles and habits. And for James, the most important element of faith is our lives. We demonstrate the trust we have in the good news of Jesus and his Kingdom when our faith moves us to good works of love for God and for our neighbors.

It’s part of our human nature to play favorites. We often move towards, look up to, and speak highly of those who have wealth or achievements while also looking down to, ignoring, or withholding mercy from those who lack these things. Christians aren’t immune from this sin of favoritism, and it goes back to the very beginnings of the church. James likely witnessed his half-brother Jesus correcting this sin by extending mercy to the poor, the ignored, the marginalized, and the outcasts.

According to Jesus, the Kingdom belongs to the least of us. As a leader of the early church, James applies the way of the Kingdom to how we treat others. By accepting the free mercy of God as a gift rather than as something we have to achieve, we can then extend that same mercy to everyone regardless of their wealth or status. But to try and earn mercy or to withhold it from others is to neglect the heart of the gospel itself.

James 1 confronts us with a painful reality: life will be hard. We’ll be persecuted, gut-punched, and exposed as we continue practicing the way of Jesus in our everyday lives. But James 1 also gives us a vision for the kind of people we can be if we endure these hardships with humility and patience. The church is at its best when we’re people who speak graciously, serve selflessly, and live holy.

To become this type of church, James invites us to examine how we react when people offend us, and when the Bible confronts us. When in conflict with others we often react with anger, and when exposed by the Bible we often react with apathy. But to learn to submit ourselves to God in both of these situations will allow us to mature into the kind of church God has called us to be.

Jesus’ half-brother James is first known as a mocker to Jesus and a doubter of faith. When we first see him, he’s trying to stop Jesus’ ministry and prevent him from fulfilling his purpose. But after witnessing the resurrection of his older half-brother, James’ life is transformed. He’s called an apostle by Paul, considered a pillar of the early church, and eventually gives his life as a martyr for his faith in Jesus.

The book of James is a book about transformation. It’s about how to put our faith into practice, starting with how we respond to trials. For James, the first thing we must understand as faithful followers of Jesus is how to face our trials, find wisdom, and fight temptation.

James 1:1-18 CSB

In Mark 10, Jesus interacts with a man who many of us can relate to — he’s wealthy, sincere, and desires to follow Jesus. But when he asks Jesus what else he can do to experience a joyful life in the Kingdom, Jesus responds by targeting the one thing he’s still clinging to: his wealth.

Many of us struggle with the same issue today.

We want to experience life and life in abundance, yet we’re unwilling to let go of what that life might cost us. And while the gospel isn’t about earning anything from God, it does require us giving up our idols and attachments that we’re seeking eternal life from instead. But like the rich young ruler, Jesus lovingly invites us to simplify our lives so we can trust our past, present, and future completely to him.

When most of us think of simplicity, we think of digital minimalism, materialism, and wealth. But few of us would consider the practice of simplicity as something that involves our speech and relationships. And yet, when we examine how often we use sarcasm, exaggeration, and flattery to manipulate people and get what we want, we might be surprised to see that our speech is not simple or wholesome by default.

Jesus himself says that our speech is an automatic result of what’s already in our hearts, and the apostle James warns us that our speech has the ability to stain our whole bodies. Left to our own, we can find ourselves trying to manipulate others, gain status and approval, or win arguments.

To fight against these impulses we practice simplicity of speech; we speak honor in place of flattery and contempt, secrecy in place of gossip and exaggeration, and silence in the place of rage and manipulation.

As Americans our identities are often shaped by the quantity and quality of the stuff we own. Security, stability, and satisfaction are only possible when we buy and accumulate more wealth. And while we’re really after deep contentment, we falsely believe that the very joy we’re searching for is still on the other side of the next purchase. Cue our endless cycle of buying more so we can desire less.

But Jesus offers us a better way.

He does this by confronting our attachment to our stuff and our lack of trust in him, and also by modelling a life of simplicity. When we study the Scriptures, we find a deeper truth than the lie we’re trained to believe — real contentment is actually found by limiting what we own and increasing what we give.

We live in the age of the attention economy. From social media ads and online shopping to streaming and news, our hearts and minds are often cluttered and rewired for discontentment. We live chasing accumulation, or what Jesus calls “the worries of this age, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things.”

And for most of us, this discontentment comes directly from our digital consumption.

But the way of Jesus is an invitation to simplicity — learning to be content with less, not more. To start this practice, we must first train ourselves to curate our digital consumption. By limiting our digital intake, we can rewire our brains towards contentment and train ourselves to be more present and attentive to God and to those around us.

For resources on simplicity, go to: https://formedbyjesus.com/simplicity/

TIMESTAMPS

0:00 - Formation is happening whether you like it or not.

2:20 - Mark 4v1-20

7:48 - Nothing crowds our time and attention like the digital world.

19:05 - The Practice of Simplicity

20:53 - Our definition of simplicity

22:35 - Jesus practicing solitude

28:18 - The way OUT of the digital chokehold

36:32 - Don’t fear the desert.

Revelation offers a paradoxical picture, where we witness both a joyful feast of reconciliation and the call to confront evil with determination. Communion represents this promise, while the contradictory battle against societal norms mirrors the war aspect. By embracing both, we can faithfully follow Jesus in the middle of Babylon.

In the 20th century, two books were written to predict our future: "A Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley in 1931 and "Nineteen Eighty-Four" by George Orwell in 1949. Both books had different ideas about how our future could be grim. Neil Postman compared these books in his work "Amusing Ourselves to Death," where he said Orwell feared the truth would be hidden and people would be controlled by pain, while Huxley feared the truth would be lost in irrelevance and people would be controlled by pleasure.

In the book of Revelation, some people read it like "Nineteen Eighty-Four," seeing evil events happening through force and obvious tactics. Others read it like "A Brave New World," where evil systems and powers subtly deceive and seduce us away from Jesus. Revelation 17 talks about a Prostitute, representing a seductive force in the world.

Babylon in the Bible is like a city without God, and it symbolizes any place that goes against God. The Prostitute in Revelation seduces people by making sin seem normal and by rewarding strategies that go against what Jesus taught. But we can choose not to be a part of Babylon's ways by turning towards Jesus and living a different way. We can be citizens of heaven, not of Babylon.

Everybody has a deep internal longing to know where we came from and where we’re going. The Christian faith should answer these questions, but our answer often falls short. Instead, Revelation offers us a better conclusion to the human story. Rather than being raptured up to a spiritual heaven, Revelation 21-22 tells us that the world ends in renewal, not destruction.

If God’s redemptive plan includes the redeeming of the created world, then we can take part in renewing creation today. We live in the new reality of renewed bodies, we work to renew relationships with each other, and we partner with God to bring about the Kingdom in the world today.

People often get excited about predicting the future or trying to figure out when the world will end, but Revelation is more about understanding what is happening in our present time.

The dragon in the story wants to harm people, and he uses two other creatures to carry out his plans. One of them uses the power of the government to intimidate and control people. This can be seen in history when leaders have used their authority to manipulate and oppress others. The other creature uses deception and propaganda to trick people into believing false information or ideas. It’s like when advertisements or media twist the truth to persuade us in certain ways.

The message Revelation 12-13 is that we need to be discerning and wise in our understanding of the world around us. We shouldn’t be easily swayed by false ideas or manipulated by those in power. Instead, we should seek truth, be critical thinkers, and strive to live according to what is right and good.

So, rather than getting caught up in trying to predict the future or obsessing over sensationalized interpretations, we should focus on understanding the present, recognizing the forces that seek to harm and manipulate, and staying grounded in truth and wisdom.

Throughout Revelation, there are key interludes that interrupt the narrative

and provide insights into true reality. In Revelation 14, we encounter one such interlude that unveils a series of messages given by three angels. These messages serve as an encouragement for us to align ourselves with Team Lamb in the cosmic battle against Team Dragon.

However, to fight like a Lamb requires us to resist Satan’s apathy and embrace a lifestyle reflective of Jesus. To do this, we practice witnessing, enduring, and suffering.

The book of Revelation talks about judgments and the suffering of people. It reminds us not to feel superior and gives hope to persecuted Christians. The judgments are meant to soften our hearts and lead us to salvation. They come in groups of seven, like seals, trumpets, and bowls. The book also tells us about the four horsemen representing deception, tribalism, injustice, and sickness. But in the end, God will make things right and there will be no more suffering.

Revelation is a book that shows us a different way of understanding the world. It tells us that things are not always what they seem. Jesus, who is both powerful like a lion and sacrificial like a lamb, is the one who can save the world. By focusing on Jesus and His sacrificial love, we can find hope, purpose, and power in our lives.

In chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation, John writes letters to seven different churches. He affirms them for what they are doing right and corrects them for what they are doing wrong. It’s like a teacher giving feedback to help them become all they were designed to be.

For example, the church in Ephesus is commended for avoiding false teachings and enduring hardships, but they are told they have forgotten to love God and others. The church in Pergamum is praised for being courageous, but they are criticized for tolerating wrong behavior. And so on for the other churches.

The main point for us today is that Jesus wants us to be a people of love who avoid false teachings and endure hardships. We need to love God and others, and not be swayed by wrong beliefs. It can be tough, but Jesus promises us a reward if we stay faithful.

No other book has been twisted or tamed more than Revelation. It’s important to remember that:

As a theologian, St. John intends for us to read Revelation Christologically, not chronologically.
As a pastor, St. John intends for us to read Revelation with a focus on discipleship, not on decipherment.
As a poet, St. John intends for us to read Revelation literarily, not literally.

We believe studying Revelation will awaken and deepen our discipleship and refocus our attention on Jesus.

At the close of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus ends with a warning: our obedience to his Word is what makes us true disciples. While most of us would agree with this idea, few of us live it out. We’re either too afraid of becoming legalists, too obsessed with information alone, or too unwilling to humble ourselves and live out what we read. In each of these cases, we fall short of the blessing of being formed into a person of love.

But the cross frees us from falling short.

By accepting this gift of grace from God, we have freedom from earning God’s love. And by embracing this freedom we’re able to truly live out God’s commands and experience the transformative power of His word.

All of us tend to twist the Bible to mean something it doesn’t or tame the Bible to make its teachings more palatable for us. But both ways of handling Scripture lead to our destruction and deformation.

Instead, throughout the Scriptures, one of the most common metaphors for engaging with God’s word is eating it. We eat the text when we meditate on it, study it, and submit ourselves to it. We chew on passages, mulling their truths over and over in our minds and rethinking how we’re living our lives in light of what the Bible commands. And while this way of meditating on the Bible confronts and challenges us, it’s also the way we allow Scripture to form us into better followers of Jesus.

All of us are living by a story. We tell ourselves stories about our identity, our purpose, and about how to find meaning and success in life. We also tell ourselves stories about the world around us, how it got this way, and how to fix it. The stories we believe end up being the stories we live out. But these stories we tell ourselves often fall short of reality.

The Bible presents us with true reality, and it does so by telling us a story. Each part of Scripture, each book, each genre, each poem, and each law, fit together to tell one unified story that leads us to Jesus. And by learning to read Scripture as a story.

We’re bombarded with messages from political pundits, popular culture, social media ads, and news stories, all urging us to be true to ourselves, vilify those who are different, and pursue our own happiness no matter what the cost. These lies offer happiness but instead bring us slavery, just like how Satan deceived Adam and Eve in the Garden. Satan still uses lies to lead us astray from God today.

To follow Jesus in today’s world, we must seek and live by the truth. Reading Scripture helps us understand what’s true about the world, God, and ourselves. However, just reading the Bible isn’t enough. We must also let it shape us by setting aside our assumptions, presuppositions, and personal experiences to submit to its authority.

Matthew 5:17-20; Mark 2:23-28; Matthew 22:23-28

In this message, Pastor Trey addresses if we should still keep all of God's commands as New Covenant believers.

Most of us know what a life of following Jesus should look and feel like, and yet most of also know we aren’t fully experiencing this life. While we want to be people defined by our fruit of love, joy, and peace, we’re often more acquainted with the bad fruit of anxiety, fear, and idolatry. The simple reason for this is that we haven’t learned how to abide in Jesus.

When Jesus compares himself to a vine and calls us his branches in John 15, he’s inviting us to live a constant life of redirecting our minds, hearts, and bodies to him. By being in close intimacy and proximity to Jesus, we slowly take on the characteristics of Jesus. And the more characteristics of Jesus we take on, the more fruit we produce. This is the process of abiding.

Where we once found hope and meaning outside of ourselves in the church, the city, or the market, today we’re left to create our own hope and meaning from within ourselves. We follow our hearts and feelings, no matter the cost to ourselves and those around us.

But where society says choice is now the highest value, tolerance the highest virtue, and denying yourself is the new unforgivable sin, how should Christians respond? What hope does Jesus offer?

In John 14, Jesus makes another countercultural claim about himself: that he alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Each of these statements is a direct counter to the values and virtues of today. Only in Jesus do we have access to God. Only in Jesus do we experience true reality. And only in Jesus can we have life and life to the full. To respond to the way of the world and live in a way congruent with these claims of Jesus, we practice self-denial.

John 11 is a story of resurrection. But it isn’t Jesus’ resurrection. Just before he’s handed over to the Roman authorities to be crucified, Jesus brings his friend Lazarus back to life from the grave. In doing so, he demonstrates both his power over death, and his sympathy in the midst of it. This story reminds us of the authority Jesus has over the grave, but it also reminds us of the severity of our sin. Death is the result of our rebellion against God and his Kingdom. Yet despite our guilt, God still heals us. The resurrection of Lazarus points forward to the resurrection of Jesus, and also to our resurrection. The message of Easter is that like Lazarus, we are dead in our sin and broken from the source of life. But also like Lazarus, Jesus forgives us and promises to one day resurrect us too.

John 11 CSB

In John 10, Jesus calls himself “the good shepherd.” In doing so, Jesus clams several things about himself. First, it Jesus makes a claim about the character and nature of God. As shepherd of the sheep, Jesus is the one who protects, guides, and nurtures His flock. Secondly, Jesus is a “good” shepherd. The Greek word translated “good” describes something true, wholesome, good, and beautiful. As a good shepherd, Jesus stands against that which is wicked, mean, evil, and unloving. And not only is Jesus good in character, he’s also good in action. His ultimate act of love is to lay down his own life for our own good. Lastly, if Jesus is our shepherd, we are his sheep. Without a shepherd, we’re vulnerable to false teaching and to our own sin. But by communing with Jesus daily, we learn to distinguish his voice and follow his way to life.

Of all the symbols or metaphors Jesus could use to reveal something to us about God, on the surface, “a gate” seems a bit anticlimactic. Despite what we may think, though, Jesus was actually correcting the false ideologies about God that were and are still prevalent today. He reminds us that even in our seasons of suffering God still loves and protects us. He also declares that true life and salvation are attainable, but only through him. And finally, he clarifies that his invitation to true life is on offer for all who are willing to admit that they’re lost.

In John 8:12, Jesus claims to be “light” and says that those who follow him will not walk in darkness, but will experience life. While this promise may sound appealing, accepting Jesus as “light” requires us to confront our own darkness first.

In the Bible, darkness can refer to our wickedness, ignorance, or tendency to hide our sins. In our wickedness, we love what God hates and hate what God loves. In our ignorance, we remain detached and reactive. And in our hiding, the devil tempts us to keep our sins hidden.

However, the good news is that the gospel offers a way out of the darkness. We can overcome our wickedness, ignorance, and hiding by stepping into healing.

At some point, we must face the reality that the things we often chase in this life leave us unsatisfied and wanting more. Achievements, possessions, and desires seem to promise everlasting life but drain the life from us as we cling to them for something they can’t provide.

We get caught in a cycle of getting what we want, finding it unsatisfying, and moving on to the next thing.

But when Jesus taught the crowds in John 6 that He is the bread of life, He made the radical claim that He can satisfy in ways that the things of this world cannot. This satisfaction is on offer to all who are willing to take it, but taking it means first yielding our envy and selfish ambition to Jesus. Although submitting these things can be difficult and painful, Jesus offers life that truly satisfies on the other side.

For the modern mind, the Sabbath is typically associated with a day off work to attend church, get things done around the house, and binge on the latest TV show. While this may offer the illusion of rest, it is far from a holy day set apart for the Lord.

The Bible presents a different view of the Sabbath, which involves focusing our minds, hearts, and bodies on the adoration of God. It includes thinking of God throughout the day, turning our attention from worldly things to God, and loving and serving others. Without worship, the Sabbath can become a day of self-centeredness rather than a day to honor God.

Rather than simply resting, worship transforms the Sabbath from a day off work to a day centered on God’s character and nature.

A key element of Sabbath is the practice of delight. When we take the time to stop and to rest, we find ourselves more aware of the goodness and beauty in the world around us. This recognition and enjoyment of creation is called delight, and it’s something that God himself does. Scripture is full of God delighting in his creation, including us. God delights when we delight. But most of us are too unaccustomed to delight.

Simply put, we don’t know how to play. We know how to indulge, how to escape, and how to numb, but few of us have cultivated the Godly qualities of playfulness and joy in our lives. God institutes Sabbath not as a day of restriction and rigidity, but as a day of delight so we become people defined by our joy.

When we use Sabbath to practice delighting in God, in others, in creation, and in ourselves, we allow the Spirit to form us into people of delight.

The idea of rest seems simple enough. We all want rest, but never seem to get it. Always just outside of our reach, rest seems either something to laugh at, or something to buy. But one of the most radical things Jesus teaches us is that he is able to offer us true rest without requiring us to work more, do more, or have more.

When we practice Sabbath, we stop all our work and worry so that we’re able to become people of true rest. Like Israel, we remember that we’ve been saved from the oppressive yolk of productivity, and instead we’ve taken on Jesus’ yolk of ease. We reject that lie that our worth and value come from what we do, and that rest is a commodity we have to earn. In this way, rest is a countercultural rebellion against the powers and systems at war against God and his kingdom.

To practice Sabbath is to accept the invitation to rest while living in a world of hurry.

In Exodus 14, Moses finally leads the people of Israel out of slavery and into freedom. But before they can enter the promised land, God tests them. He puts them between Pharaoh and the Red Sea, he leads them to undrinkable water, and then he makes them wander long enough to run out of food. Each time, the Israelites complain.

They would rather remain in slavery with stability than have their freedom without control.

In many ways, the story of Israel is the story of the Christian life. Like Israel’s struggle to detach themselves from Egypt, we struggle to detach ourselves from our sin. To confront us with this reality, God tests us. But from the life of Moses, we learn that the best way to endure seasons of testing and turn our attention away from our old life of sin, is to practice praise.

Our society is obsessed with redefining reality. We look to technology, entertainment, and education to pull our attention away from the reality of sin and attempt to control our future.

But at some point, reality hits us.

Whether in the form of a global pandemic that shuts our lives down, or 10 ancient plagues that shut a nation down, God often allows us to experience harsh reality checks to reveal our idols and point us back towards him.

When we practice communion, we remind ourselves of this reality. We remember that we are not God, that we cannot save ourselves, and Christ is the ultimate sacrifice. Jesus loves us, he’s rescued us, and he’s here when we’re willing to surrender our control.

When Moses first encounters God, he’s at his lowest. Defeated, alone, and in the midst of an identity crisis, he finds himself wandering the wilderness embarrassed and ashamed. And it’s in this moment that God meets him.

God reminds him that he is gracious, personal, and that he’s not done with Moses yet. But to take the next step of faith, Moses must be willing to accept his limits and come face-to-face with his true self. Like Moses, the two most important questions we can ask today are “who am I?” and “who is God?”

And also like Moses, asking these questions invites God to meet us with both comfort and confrontation. He comforts us by reminding us that he is gracious and wants to restore us. But he also confronts us by inviting us to see who we really are.

To engage with our true selves and receive clarity on who God is, we practice the Examen. By praying through pivotal moments of our lives, decade by decade, good and bad, we invite the Spirit to reveal both who we truly and who God truly is.

Moses’ origin story begins like any other story: he’s born among a people in need on saving, he goes through tests and trials to shape him as a leader, and he receives his calling from a divine encounter with God.

But in the middle of his birth and his calling, Moses finds himself in the wilderness. His past mistakes have led him to a desolate place where his identity is lost, and his hope is destroyed.

Like Moses, all of us will find ourselves in the wilderness at some point. Our sin, fear, and suffering bring us to a desolate place where we come face to face with our own brokenness and the brokenness of the world around us. But in the wilderness, God speaks.

Like Moses, God often leads us into the wilderness to separate us from the external noise of the world around us and the internal noise of our anxious souls. By leaning into seasons in the wilderness, we turn our focus to a God who hears us, remembers us, sees us, and knows us.

During the advent season, we are called to celebrate the first coming of Christ and anticipate His second coming. This means we celebrate the fact that sin has lost its power over believers and anticipate the day sin loses its presence among believers.

But in a season filled with joy and anticipation, we still feel the pain and tension of living between the two comings of Christ.

Although the devil has lost its dominion over us, he still has an opinion that can influence us. His lies create in us a spirit of arrogance, anxiety, and apathy.

In 1 Peter 5, the Apostle gives us 3 ways to resist the roaring lies of the devil.

If you ask 10 people what they expect from their pastor, you will probably get 20 different answers. Throughout history, pastors have been expected to be all sorts of things.

But what does God expect the pastor to do?

In 1 Peter 5, God lays out the three expectations for every pastor: to be an elder, a shepherd, and an overseer. In this message, we will learn what these terms mean and how it effects our life with Jesus today.

By the grace of God, you will encounter a fork in the road where you have to make a decision: you can live by faith in Jesus, or you can die by fire without Him (Matthew 25). If you put your faith in Jesus, you can’t help but express your joy through songs like, “I put my faith in Jesus, my anchor to the ground, my hope and firm foundation, He’ll never let me down.”

But what happens when it seems like He does let us down?

We set ourselves up for major disappointment when we confuse our eternal condition with our present one. Because contrary to popular belief, stepping up your faith is stepping into fire… and that’s a good thing. In 1 Peter 4, we are encouraged to look at our trials like a fiery furnace: burning off our impurities & idolatries to further glorify Christ.

In this message, we will learn about the three stages of faith that only come from stepping into the fire.

In the Secular West, suffering has no role in the meaning or purpose in life. Therefore, you are considered “blessed” if you somehow find a way to mitigate disappointments and minimize pain.

But can anyone really get away with a life free from pain and disappointment?

In chapter four, the Apostle Peter gives us hope by paradoxically giving us a dose of reality. In this life, you will experience the pain of temptation (v1-3), reputation (v4-6), and expectation (v7-10). But in Christ, your pain can become a key ingredient to the life God designed for you to live (v3).

In Peter’s day the church in Asia Minor was experiencing mild persecution, mistreatment, and social hostility because of their commitment to following Jesus. As tensions begin to rise in the world around them, they have two options; they can either stoke their fear of the future or allow God to stir their faith in Jesus.
Like the church in Peter’s day, we too experience social hostility. And we too have the same options; we can either stoke more fear about the world around us or allow God to stir our faith in Him.
By looking to Jesus’ life as an example, we see what it looks like to endure suffering and stir our faith. Rather than fighting back against the culture or assimilating into the culture, we allow God to grow our faith when we work to transform the culture through our suffering and submission. The first step in doing this is to honestly ask ourselves, “who am I called to submit and suffer for?”

Although the culture we live in pushes us to create our own individual identities, our brains are wired to find our identity within the context of a group. Naturally, we discern our purpose, discover our belonging, and decide our values based on the communities we find ourselves in. As followers of Jesus, it is incredibly important to shape our group identity and practices around the humility and confidence given to us through the gospel. In 1 Peter 2, Peter warns us to avoid the common practices of the culture around them: malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander, and encourages us to center our lives on the cornerstone of grace. Today, we live out this same identity by practicing humility and confidence within our community.

One of the most repeated instructions given throughout scripture is the command to “be holy.” We see it as a command directly from God given to the Israelites in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, a statement made by Jesus in the gospel of Matthew, and in the middle of 1 Peter 1. To be holy simply means to be set apart. Holiness is first something that describes God. He is set apart and distinct by his moral perfection, but also by his very nature. But God can also make us holy through Jesus. Holiness, then, is something that is both done to us and something done by us. We are made holy when we repent from our sins and are saved by the blood of Jesus. But we can also be holy through our actions. As followers of Jesus, we live holy lives by aligning our thoughts and desires towards the way of Jesus. In order to do this practically, we must recognize the areas of our thoughts and desires that are not conformed to the way of Jesus. We do this through the practice of confession.

All of us need something meaningful and transcendent to give our lives purpose. In seasons of suffering, pain, or even just mundanity, we all reach for something beyond ourselves to make sense of who we are and what’s going on. The Bible calls this hope. 1 Peter is a book about hope. It’s a letter written to dispersed Christians living abroad in modern day Turkey who are experiencing pain. As Gentile followers of Jesus, they’ve committed to living lives that look radically different from the world around them. As a result, they’ve lost friends, jobs, homes, and their very identities. Peter opens his letter by giving them hope. He gives them an identity in their exile and strengthens their faith formed in their suffering. Today, we too live as exiles. We’ve committed to following Jesus in a way that has cost us social status, friendships, relationships, jobs, and our very own identities. But by allowing Peter’s letter to speak to us, and by asking ourselves where our faith and identities lie, we too can find hope that’s both living and life-giving.

1 Peter 1:1-9 CSB

Throughout the storyline of the Bible, we see that God’s desire is to bless all of humanity. It starts with Adam and Eve, but rather than spread God’s blessing and goodness to the world, they spread sin and death. But God doesn’t leave humanity hopeless and helpless. Instead, he chooses the people group of Israel to provide blessing and healing to the rest of the world. As a nation of people set apart by God, Israel was given the unique opportunity of allowing God to bless the whole world through them. Today, we have the same opportunity. But rather than waiting for the nations to come to us, Jesus’ last command while on earth was to go to the nations ourselves. As we allow ourselves to be formed by Jesus, we must remember that we do this for the sake of others and not just for our own self-improvement. We also must remember that God’s intention is to restore all of humanity from all nations. By intentionally praying for the nations, giving sacrificially, and by actually going to the nations, we can continue God’s work of providing blessing and salvation to the rest of the world.

Our workplace is one of the most strategic places where we can effectively share the gospel. We spend roughly 1/3rd of our life there, we regularly interact with the same people there, and we contribute to the well-being of society by what we do there. However, most of us also have negative feelings and experiences associated with work. We wake up, toil, grind, and come home exhausted only to do it again the next day. Or we work tirelessly to get more power, approval, security, and comfort. At its best, work is a necessary evil. At its worst, work is a false god that never gives us what it promises. But the way of Jesus provides us an alternative: to see our work as the means by which God uses us to restore beauty, goodness, and well-being to the world around us. By seeing our work through this lens of restoration, we can start detaching ourselves from these lies about work and begin utilizing our workplaces to invite other into the way of Jesus. Rather than living to work and working to live, followers of Jesus can love to work and work to love.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to share the way of Jesus with our lost neighbors. Political tribalism, spiritual suspicion, and the recent phenomenon of religious deconstruction all form a perfect storm of hostility towards Christians who try to invite others to follow Jesus. In Jesus’ day, the world was much the same. But rather than combat or retreat from the world, Jesus confronts the world’s hostility with hospitality. The meals that Jesus shared with others were invitations to relationship, opportunities for reconciliation, and a demonstration of the love that God has for all people. Today our mission and outreach must come from our discipleship to Jesus, and not the other way around. This means that we must learn the practice of hospitality as a way to invite others to witness the love of God. When we share a meal with others, we remind ourselves that God chose to seat us at his table in the Kingdom despite our sin. We also demonstrate to our neighbors that the love of God is on offer to everyone who wants to accept it.

In our day and age, healthy relationships built on mutual love and service between generations are rare. We easily find ourselves frustrated with the problems left behind by those older than us, or frustrated by the ambition and naiveite of those younger than us. But these frustrations only keep us stuck in our own struggles and fears. Those in their first half of life find themselves ambitious, but lonely. Those in their second half of life find themselves faithful, but angry. In Titus 2, Paul gives practical instruction on how we can overcome these frustrations by mending our relationships. When we commit to listening to and learning from others in different life stages, we complete the family of Christ and act as an alternative community who prizes each other’s gifts and stages.

Honest relationships, genuine connections, and healthy friendships are all hard to come by in our modern age. While we might experience increased connectedness through the internet and social media, most of us lack real friendships with other people. As a result, we default into radical individualism or rugged tribalism, both of which feed our experienced loneliness and isolation. But the way of Jesus offers us a remedy to our loneliness by way of community. When Jesus lived on earth, he entered a world of broken people and invited them to live life with him. And the community that he formed with these people wasn’t jeopardized by their drastic differences. Instead, their relationships with each other were strengthened by their commitment to their rabbi. Today, we can experience the same type of life-giving relationships by adopting Jesus’ 4 components of community: Proximity, Vulnerability, Practice, and Mission.

Until recently, disciples of Christ Jesus always valued and treasured the weekly gathering of the saints. It was a consistent place and time to habituate our minds, hearts, and bodies toward a community of love, joy, and peace through the acts of worship, service, and communion. But with the advent of the internet, do we really need to be together in person to accomplish these functions of the church? Looking to the wisdom of 1 Peter 4:7-11, we learn the grace of God is poured out on the saints when they gather together to stay alert, love each other deeply, and open up their hearts without grumbling. By humbly using our gifts to serve one another in the church, we reject the lies from the world that community must be entertaining, idealistic, virtual, and tribal.

Life is more demanding and complex than we all imagined it would be. To take the edge off, we look to stories to help us make sense of life. In the modern age, the default narrative we believe is the myth of self-actualization and self-expression. But have we ever stopped to question how helpful this story has been for our souls and our society? Following the leadership of Jesus, we learn to resist the lies of the Enemy by adopting His teachings of reality. We experience this freedom by (1) identifying an anxious thought or feeling, (2) detecting the lie beneath the sensation, and (3) declaring the truth of God’s word to our weary and wounded souls.

The end goal of the Christian life is to commune with God so that we become people of love, joy, and peace for the sake of our neighbors (Ga 5:13; 16-26). The problem many of us face is that we simply don’t know how to get there. Without a roadmap, we naturally give all our attention and time to self-gratification, pleasure, and selfish ambition. Instead, Jesus offers us a better way to live. By learning to walk in the Spirit rather than in our flesh, we slowly begin to kill the desires of our flesh. We do this by training ourselves with the practices of Jesus rather than trying to better ourselves through our own willpower.

The Modern Age believes change exclusively comes from more knowledge. As a result, civilization is convinced it will progress into a utopia as our access to information increases exponentially.

But how do we explain the evil and brokenness we still see in the educated regions of the world? How can we explain the gap between what we know is right and our perpetual failure to do what is right?

Knowing the anatomy of the soul, Jesus, our Rabbi, doesn’t just inform our intellect but shapes our desires. By default, our desires are shaped by the world in 3 ways: (1) the lust of the flesh (2) the lust of the eyes, and (3) pride in one’s possessions [1 Jn. 2:15-17]. But by design, we can begin to redirect our desires by anchoring our identity in the love Jesus has for us through the consistent practice of abiding [1 Jn. 4:7-16].

In week one of our vision series, we learned about what it means to be formed by Jesus. Rather than allowing ourselves to be formed by the world, the flesh, and the devil, Jesus offers us a better way to live. When we allow ourselves to be formed by Jesus, we slowly become steadfast people who are able to love others the way that God loves us. In order to do this, we must position ourselves to be formed by Jesus’ love, life, and leadership. Leaving out any one or two of these elements makes us stuck, stubborn, or stingy.

God can work with any plan, but He only works through His power.

We are counseled by God through the Scriptures. We commune with God through the Sacraments. We are comforted by God through the Spirit. We are connected to God through the Savior.

Ecclesiastes 7:13-18 - We learn how to deal with disappointment by leaning into the Father, not into a formula.

Ecclesiastes 3 CSB

In a secular world without God, mankind rushes to find meaning in other places like justice, pleasure, and work. In today’s hustle culture, a career has the allure of solving all our problems.

But is work really working? Does it satisfy our eternal ache for significance, contribution, and recognition?

With the help of a successful entrepreneur, Ecclesiastes teaches us the limits of our labor. The work never ends, it multiplies our grief, and keeps us in the captivity of tomorrow.

Thankfully, Jesus doesn’t call us away from work but a new way to work.

Ecclesiastes 2:18-26; 4:4-6 CSB

We should do whatever it takes to get happy and stay happy. At least that is what our culture tells us every single day.

But is this pursuit of pleasure working? Is it really what we are made to pursue?

With the help of an embittered Teacher, Ecclesiastes teaches us the paradox of pleasure: the more we pursue it, the more we will lose it. This isn’t to say God wants us to be miserable. Quite the opposite. We were made for something so much more than pleasure.

Ecclesiastes 2:1-11, 24-25 CSB

Time, chance, and death are the enemies of hope. Most of us try to escape these enemies through romance, creativity, or religion. But every endeavor is ultimately futile and meaningless in the hands of mortal men. But what if immortality made a visit?

2,000 years ago, Jesus promised us a life free from the chains of time, chance, and death. He delivered on this promise when He rose again on the third day.

In this message, we will cover the different paths we take to find meaning and discover why the resurrection is the only hope we have.

1 Corinthians 15; Ecclesiastes 1

Good Friday service on Right Standing with God and Light Living with God.

Matthew 9:18-26

When you come to Jesus, you'll be more burdened than you could ever imagine and more blessed than you could ever believe.

Every human is on a search for the good life. And society assures us the only wrong path to take is the one forced upon us. But how often do we stop to consider if the path we are taking is fulfilling its promises? 2,000 years ago, Jesus of Nazareth made the audacious claim that He is the only way to the good life (Jn. 14:6). According to Jesus, our apprenticeship to Him will lead to a life filled with love, peace, and joy. But this abundant life doesn’t happen from mere mental assent. It is a life that spends its time: (1) being with Jesus, (2) becoming like Jesus, and (3) doing what Jesus did. In tonight's message, we will cover the different paths people take and discover how Jesus is the only one delivering on His promise.

Notes: Isaiah 53:3-4

Title: Amazing Jesus

Lord, I don’t understand You, but I trust You.

Matthew 8:1-4

Jesus isn’t just good, Jesus is God.
Jesus isn’t just a teacher, Jesus is the Temple.

Matthew 8:5-13

God’s favor isn’t rooted in behavior. God’s favor is rooted in a Savior.

Luke 7:4-5

Self-Righteousness
Self-Rejection

“Faith that amazes Jesus emerges from a person that is amazed by Jesus.” Rich Vollidas

Matthew 8:8-9

“Think of authority this way: the capacity for meaningful action. When you have authority, what you do, or do not do, makes a meaningful difference in the world around you.” Andy Crouch

God’s authority doesn’t come to those who manifest their destiny, it comes to those who confess Christ’s divinity.

Matthew 8:14-17

“God is always faithful, but he is extremely unpredictable. You cannot rely on your assumptions about what he will or will not do… Look at the apostles in the early days of the Church. Peter was supernaturally delivered out of prison from the edge of Herod’s sword, the same sword which only days previously beheaded James the Son of Thunder… So why all the difficulty? Why does God insist that the world remain unyieldingly chaotic? My conclusion is this: only in a world where faith is difficult can faith exist. Only in a world where pain is real can love be proved.” Andy Squyres

Lord, I don’t fully understand You, but I fully trust You.

Daniel 9 CSB Your anxiety for the future is often rooted in the shame of your past.

Daniel 7 marks a transition in the book. We are now learning about the future of the world.

Daniel 7 CSB

King Nebuchadnezzar lived in the spirit of Babylon by flexing his pride. His attempt to become a god actually turned himself into an animal. Only the Way of Jesus makes you fully human.

How do we exemplify and embody the courage of Christ?

A look at the life & faith of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Luke 1 & 2

Why celebrate Christmas? To rejoice in the first coming of Christ and look forward to His 2nd and 3rd coming. The characters of Christmas remind us God’s delays are not God’s denials. In the midst of heartache, we can hold to the Christmas truth that God is not punishing us but preparing us.

In our journey with Jesus, we learn the beauty of changing the outcomes of the world around us and in us through the power of the Spirit. However, some symphonies remain unfinished. This, too, can bring glory to God and joy to the church.

John 21:18-25

We cannot address the stages of the Christian life without also addressing the stages of emotional maturity.

1 Peter 2

4 Stages to the Fight of Sin + 4 Practices Romans 7:14-8:2

We learn from Paul’s letter to Galatia that we were created to be formed fully into the image of Jesus, but many feel stuck in their spiritual growth. Using a map of spiritual growth, we can begin to envision what God has next for our lives.

Reality isn’t what most of us expected it to be. As each year goes by, our anxiety and despair drive us to long for the coming of Christ and the end of the world. But are we putting our hope in the right place? Are we being lulled and intoxicated like the rest of the world?

The North star for our generation is to keep showing that we’re growing! This embedded growth obligation has led us to assume that grief cannot coexist with belief. But what do we do when grief knocks on our door? What happens when a plague halts all our progress? We can grieve without hope through the practice of ignorance and illusion or we can grieve with hope by embracing the death and resurrection of Jesus.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

Why are we in such outrage and how do we get out of it? The Apostle Paul gives us a way forward.

Our generation has a fragmented view of the flesh and freedom. As a result, unbelievers see the commands of God as oppressive and repressive. Conversely, many believers see these commands as desirable yet impossible. We are not without hope. Through the blood of Christ and the discipline of the body, we can experience true freedom apart from the flesh.

Satan is a tempter, accuser, and deceiver. 1 Thessalonians 2:17-3:5

Our digital world normalizes rebellion against God and incentivizes retaliation against man. This is why we need to take a step back from it all.

1 Thessalonians 2:13-16 CSB

In a world full of fakers and movers, we desperately need spiritual fathers and mothers.

1 Thessalonians 2:1-12 CSB

The 4 idols of the Christian life. 1 Thessalonians 1:7-10

1 Thessalonians 1:1-7

The Commission Tradition makes space in the sermon to encounter the forgiveness of God.

The Charismatic Tradition makes space in the sanctuary to encounter the power of God.

John 15:1-11 The Contemplative Tradition makes space in the solitude to encounter the love of God.

The Catholic Tradition makes space in the sacraments to encounter the presence of God.

John 6 CSB

The character tradition makes space through self-denial to encounter the holiness of God.

Matthew 23:1-12 CSB

Beginning our new series, "A Kingdom of Tribes"

We are learning from the 6 traditions of the Christian faith.

Matthew 18:1-5

1 Timothy 6:17-21 Simplicity is a counter-cultural way to give and a Christocentric way to live.

Pastor Caleb Martinez walks us through Paul's doxology as the Apostle concludes his first letter to Timothy. In this message, we learn about 4 attributes of God and how that should practically change our daily life.

Paul encourages Timothy to grab hold of what is already his in Christ. Three reasons we don't: all-consuming greed, all condemning guilt and all controlling grief.

1 Timothy 6:11-12

4 Reality Statements about Money and 2 Practices from 1 Timothy 6:6-10

1 Timothy 6:3-5

There are 3 ways we try to find meaning outside of the resurrection but they all come up empty... Matthew 26

Mark 8:27-34

2 Cor. 4:9; John 17:13-24

Pastor Trey examines the doubt and despair of John the Baptist. 2 Corinthians 4:8; Matthew 11:1-6

New Series: Wounded Healer

1 Timothy 6:1-2 CSB

1 Timothy 5:17-25 What should we expect from church members? From pastors?

How does the church care for the widow? Is there ever a point where helping can actually be hurting? 1 Timothy 5:3-16 CSB

1 Timothy 5:1-2 CSB

1 Timothy 5:1-2

1 Timothy 4:11-16 CSB

Listen to this message as Pastor Caleb Martinez identifies two false gospels and how Jesus offers us something so much better.

In this message, Pastor Trey walks through 1 Timothy 4:11-16 and reflects on the journey God has taken Passion Creek Church in the last 5 years.

In this message, Pastor Trey introduces the 3 practices for our new year.

Jesus came to bring a peace the world could never give.

Humanity is afflicted because we are weak, wounded, and wicked.

John 14:27, 16:33, Isaiah 10-12

There are 4 ways joy is a grift (based in Isaiah 8) and one way joy is a gift (based in Isaiah 9). Merry Christmas and happy Advent!

Isaiah 7:1-14; 2 Kings 16

What are the markers of a resilient church? Pastor Caleb Martinez gives us 3 points of application.

1 Timothy 3:14-16 CSB

In this message, we look at the 4 distinctions of a qualified deacon.

1 Timothy 3:8-13

Paul is more concerned for the pastor's character than his competence. In this message, we look at the three marks of a resilient disciple of Jesus.

1 Timothy 3:1-7 CSB

In what capacity should women lead in the church? How do we explain one of the hardest passages of scripture? In this message, we look at the context of Paul's words to the women at the church in Ephesus.

1 Timothy 2:8-15 CSB

1 Timothy 4:1-10 CSB

Are you feeling stressed over the state of our country and our world? In this message, we explore 3 truths that may prove to be liberating for your life.

1 Timothy 2:1-4 CSB

The version of your origin story shapes the vision of your future glory.

What is the origin story of mankind? How is the church to usher in the kingdom of God in a beautiful way in an ugly year like 2020?

1 Timothy 1:18-20 CSB

Christians have a way of disguising coping as hoping. Coping worked in March but it's doing incredible damage to us in October. In this passage, Paul encourages Timothy to meet the Lord in the middle of his limitations.

1 Timothy 1:12-17 CSB

Are we a steeple full of sheeple?

In this message, we examine the two false gospels that are alive and well in 2020. We end by talking about the true gospel that gives us the only true hope.

1 Timothy 1:3-11 CSB

1 Timothy 1:1-7 - an overview of what's to come.

How do we raise our children in the 6-12 year old range? We talk about it by looking at Ephesians 6:1-4 and Luke 2:52.

Ephesians 6:1-4 - We must lay the proper foundation for our children in the first 5 years of their life. What is most essential? A heart of obedience and self-control.

In this message, Pastor Billy & Lisa give their practical advice on how to raise teenagers in the Way of Jesus.

We are called to outdo one another in showing honor and yet the world seems to race to undo one another of honor. In this message, we learn that honor starts in the home. How come it is so hard for us to honor our parents? This message gives us two reasons and two applications. Ephesians 6:1-4

How do we change? In this message, we talk about the process of change and it involves a lot more than just saying, "I want to change!"

Ephesians 3:20-21

What does a life without lack look like in 2020? In this message, we compare and contrast the False Self with the Full Self. The Full Self experiences the fullness of God by embracing the joys of desire, detachment, and discipleship. The false self assumes God cannot be trusted, cannot be generous, and cannot be sufficient.

Ephesians 3:17-21 CSB

A remnant is imminent when it's willing to get different.

Paul prays for: a different posture, a different power, and a different purpose.

Ephesians 3:14-19

We all want revival to be a reality but are we ready for the reality of a revival?

The church is worth suffering for, serving under, and standing with.

Ephesians 2:19-22 - How do we balance the friction between cooperation and conviction?

When your perks become your purpose, you'll lack depth beneath the surface.

Ephesians 2:5-10 - the what, how, and why of salvation.

It is a blessing to feel the gravity of your own total depravity.

Ephesians 2:1-5 - We are depraved, deformed, deceived, and disintegrated through the world, the devil, and the flesh.

Ephesians 1:15-23 In a society that is constantly spinning the narrative, it is imperative that the church shifts the narrative. Mainly, concerning our hope, our dignity, and our power.

Unless our love is shaped by the Trinity, it will not become our chief identity. Ephesians 1:3-14

Our identity is shaped by: 1) being loved by the Father, 2) becoming love in the Son, 3) doing love through the Spirit.

One of our biggest problems in these Not-So-United States is our identity. In this message, Pastor Trey looks at Ephesians 1 to establish the foundation of our identity in Christ. It is truly the only identity that can be simultaneously humble and confident.

You will be reckless and restless if you adopt the wrong prospectus.

Analyzing Acts 19:1-20, we see Paul's plan to establish a Jesus loving church in Ephesus. It has so much relevance for our society today.

We must make personal the presence of Jesus.
We must make personal the practices of Jesus.
We must take personal the passion of Jesus.

Looking at Ephesians 6:21-24, we learn that God has a vision for every church in every era to be a "fairy-tale landscape of grace" in the middle of hell on earth. Our prayer is that you'd see how peace, love with faith, and grace only make sense in the context of community. You rob your soul of immunity when you deny your role in community.

Ephesians 6:17 The word of God is a powerful weapon when we understand and use it in its proper context.

Ephesians 6:17 - what does Paul mean when he says we are to put on "the helmet of salvation"?

Your fractured vision of God's love produces a fragile version of your hope.

Pastor Trey and Caleb walk through the 3 daily and 3 weekly practices that will draw us closer to the love of God and neighbor during these hard times.

Ephesians 6:16

Ephesians 6:10-15 // The church is "in decline" and has lost a seat at the table of power and influence. Why did this happen? Should it be our goal to gain it back? Or is there a better question to ask?

There are 3 stories of hope but only one has an answer to sin, Satan and death.

This isn't the Palm Sunday any of us expected and it wasn't what Israel expected 2,000 years ago either. Mark 10:35-45

Ephesians 6:10-14 - The truth isn't powerful until it gets personal.

Virtual Groups: https://bit.ly/3adeeq2 Virtual Group Guide: https://bit.ly/2xgmK9g 5 Day Devo: https://bit.ly/3bm4HgN Kids Video: https://bit.ly/3dljA4D Message Notes: https://bit.ly/3adertk

When our community faces affliction, do we lead by consensus or do we lead by conviction?

In Ephesians 4:1-6, we learn how the 3 persons of the Trinity give us the power to enact 3 practices that will eradicate the 3 problems that divide our community.

“Tribalism seems like a way to restore the bonds of community. It certainly does bind people together. But it is actually the dark twin of community. Community is connection based on mutual affection. Tribalism, in the sense I’m using it here, is connection based on mutual hatred... Life is a battle for scarce resources and it’s always us versus them, zero-sum. The ends justify the means. Politics is war. Ideas are combat. It’s kill or be killed... Tribalism is community for lonely narcissists.” David Brooks

The connection between the gospel and marriage is not an after-thought. Pastor Caleb Martinez shows us that God created marriage to reveal a deeper reality of God's love for us.

Looking at Ephesians 5:22-33, we learn that God has called men to be both woundable and responsible.

We can move forwards if we redeem these 4 words: helper, respect, submit and splendor. Ephesians 5:22-33

Walking through Ephesians 5:29-33, we look at how emotions play an integral role in marriage. It seems many of us have an improper view of emotions. Some of us deaden our emotions while others of us are driven by our emotions. How has Jesus offered us a third way of living?

You'll have no problem telling when a story is clear and compelling. In this message, we examine why the gospel is the most clear and compelling message ever told. Romans 1:1-17

Our practices are either forming us or failing us.

Looking at Proverbs 4, we learn that our minds are deceived through destructive ideas and distorted images... thankfully, Jesus comes to redeem us and reveal a new reality that is only found in Christ.

Mary and Martha were both devoted to Jesus but only one enjoyed Jesus. As we approach 2020, it is our prayer that we become a people that determine our steps with the following metrics of success: Presence, Formation and Mission.

Matthew 2:1-12 - we examine the Christmas story from the vantage point of the Wise Men.

In our attempt to simplify hope, we wind up hurting a lot of people in the process. Simeon sees Jesus and recognizes the paradox of peace and pain, life and strife.

Passage: Matthew 2:1-18 In this message, we compare and contrast the way of Herod with the way of Jesus.

Pastor Trey examines the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth in Luke 1. This passage is a great reminder that the Advent season is a lot about waiting in silence... and silence isn't as bad as you and I are led to believe.

Ephesians 5:18-21 - Pastor Trey explains why Paul is comparing drunkenness to being filled by the Spirit.

Ephesians 5:14-17 // We cannot preach redemption if we do not teach routine.... We cannot preach routine if we do not teach redemption.

Looking at Ephesians 5:8-14, we examine how Christ empowers us to be a light to a dark world.

Paul is constantly warning Timothy and the Ephesians from engaging in "empty words and arguments." In this message, we do a deep dive on what that means for us today.

Book referenced: Edwin Friedman's "A Failure of Nerve"

Ephesians 5:3-5 can be seen as troublesome or tiresome. However, in light of the gospel these verses can truly be seen as transformative.

Ephesians 5:1-2 Therefore, be imitators of God, as dearly loved children, and walk in love, as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us, a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God.

Guest Speaker Dan Darling speaks on a topic that is tremendously important for our time: Human Dignity.

We will always be victims of our symptoms if we do not fix our systems. Ephesians 4:25-32 - What culture are you creating?

In this message, we begin a new collection of talks centered on the Right Fight. The solution isn't to stop fighting... the solution is to stop fighting the wrong fight. Ephesians 4:17-24

It's difficult to be disappointed with God when you are dysfunctional. However, it's difficult not to be disappointed when God doesn't show up even though you are disciplined. Isaiah 43:18-19