LifeSpring Community Church - Talks Online: Recent Episodes
LifeSpring Community Church
In this sermon, Pastor Fran talks about how Jesus is more than the modern Christian package which he illustrates by distinguishing the difference between Christ, the Church and Christianity. He then encourages an honest and self reflective journey of the heart towards restoration and towards the life of freedom and wholeness.
These days more people are getting honest about the variety of things found in the Bible, and it's causing some people to abandon it. Today Pastor Fran unpacks some things we've been taught about the Bible, and how Jesus spoke about it in a way that allows us to accept the Bible as it is, love it even more, and let it point us to the finding of real life.
In this sermon, Pastor Fran talks about why he is still a Christian - even with the past events of questionable church credibility. When we come out into the deep with Jesus, our faith can remain unshaken - no matter the past or present hurt of churches who have lost the plot.
In this sermon, Pastor Fran touches on how we as humans tend to make identities for ourselves and wear our failures that shroud us in so much darkness. Because of Jesus, our identity is recreated and we don't have to wear our failures. We cling to hope that God is restoring all things in due time.
In today's message, Pastor Fran explores what it means that we have become one with Christ in his death, and consequently one with him and his resurrection. He also touches on the fascinating way the early Christians spoke about how God tricked death and the devil by getting them to swallow Christ and bring him inside their walls... and that they never saw coming what happened after that.
Although we see Jesus sacrifice as the ultimate sacrifice, we've been taught to understand it in the same terms as the whole archaic concept of sacrifice. But in this sermon, Pastor Fran debunks that and shows that the Cross exposes all our scapegoating of other people and calls for an end to that, and to the new way of love.
In this Easter sermon, Pastor Fran explores how Jesus, when he appeared to the disciples, invited them out of the darkness of fear, grudges, and retribution, and into a new world where forgiveness, reconciliation, and love reign.
In this message Pastor Fran talks about how we have tended to frame Jesus' death as a sacrifice of appeasement, and shows how the writer of the New Testament letter of Hebrews actually frames Jesus' sacrifice as the end of that whole way of thinking and as a better kind of sacrifice that is more transforming for us as human beings.
In today's message Pastor Fran teaches how the Cross is God's judgment on the way we humans use coercive power and dominate one another, but far from being a judgment of wrath, it is an exposure by love, meant to lead us to an awakening to love.
Pastor Fran Leeman examines the popular modern view of the Cross, the idea that God poured out his punishment for our sin on Jesus, and shows that not only does the New Testament not teach this, but in the end it gives us a divided and distorted view of God. The beautiful truth is that the Father was in union with the Son at the Cross, suffering the weight of our sin and forgiving us to bring us home.
In the first message of this series Pastor Fran talks about how the modern church has had a one-dimensional understanding of the Cross, but the early church and New Testament writers understood the Cross as a mystery, a scandalous wonder layered with meanings that can change our thinking about God and human life, leading us ultimately to great hope and transformation.
In this mornings sermon, David Larson helps us conclude this series in the book of Matthew. He reminds us of Matthew 18:3. "Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."
In today's conversation, Pastor Fran Leeman and Leslie Zurita talk about how if we don't keep Jesus in the center of our faith, even though we're reading the Bible, we can get dragged horribly off track in our faith. In contrast with this, the New Testament writers tell us over and over to fix our gaze on Jesus, who is the Word God has spoken.
Taking this warning from the lips of Jesus, Pastor Fran explores the corrupted views of God and his Kingdom around us today, and calls us back to Jesus' own teaching about God and his Kingdom.
Leslie Zurita explores our longstanding notions about fearing God and contrasts those with the mercy we see in the ministry of Jesus, suggesting that perhaps fearing/respecting God means taking seriously what he value most, things like goodness, compassion, mercy, and restoration.
Today Pastor Fran explores what often feels like a tension between what the bible says about salvation being a free gift and Jesus' talk about taking up our cross and the cost of following him. When we understand the gospel holistically, it makes sense, but to do that we have to stop thinking just about our afterlife destination, and more about God's desire and work to restore our humanity.
In today's message from Matthew, Pastor Fran shares how Jesus announced that he had come to preach the gospel, Good News, and raises the uncomfortable question of whether we modern Christians really understand the gospel that Jesus came to bring. This message will challenge your thinking about modern Christianity and call you to come back and sit at the feet of Jesus and hear what he has to say about finding the new way to be, and to see, and to live.
In this first message of a new series through the Gospel of Matthew, Pastor Fran teaches through the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, and shows us how this story speaks to the very heart of the Good News, and what God seeks to do to make human beings whole and free and good.
Leslie Zurita interviews Pastor Fran to hear some of his personal thoughts about LifeSpring Church right now, about the shifts happening in the American church, and how Christians should navigate the realm of politics in this election year that is sure to be tempestuous.
In this sermon, Pastor Fran explores the story of Simeon, who took the infant Christ in his arms and prophesied that this one would expose some hearts and set others free.
In this Christmas Eve message, Pastor Fran shows how Mary's journey has parallels to our own, and how it can inspire us and give us courage to walk the road before us, and to let Christ be formed in US and brought into the world.
In this Christmas message Pastor Fran explores the impoverished circumstances of Christ's birth, how in this ignoble birth God both exposes our poverty of soul and joins us in it to bring us into the riches of love.
In this sermon, Pastor Fran talks about the mystery surrounding the incarnation secrets. The mystery of God taking on human flesh and clothing himself in our humanity.
Have you ever wondered if there's more to the incarnation than just Jesus being born so that he could die for us later on? In this message Pastor Fran explores what it means that the joy of God has erupted into the world with the birth of Christ, endured the cross, and is now restoring joy to all his creatures.
In this message, Pastor Fran talks about the things that get in the way of seeing each other as the gifts that we are to each other, and about how religion and certain expressions of Christian faith often inhibit significant relationships instead of cultivating them.
In this message, Pastor Fran talks about how crucial fresh starts and second chances are to the forward movement in our lives, and dispels some of the terrible pictures we've been given of God as being stingy when it comes to forgiveness and second chances.
In this first message in the series, Pastor Fran challenges us to reclaim beauty as the central framework for our faith, and shows us how a faith not centered in beauty can't bring real life.
In this sermon, Pastor Fran explores the mysterious questions surrounding our quest to find our real identity, and unpacks how discovering that we are the "Beloved" of God holds the key to that journey.
In this message, Pastor Fran challenges many popular Christian ideas about eternity... what the point is, how we get there, and whether God will ever give up on any human being.
As we look to emerge from the places pain and loss have trapped us in our lives, what would Jesus say to us? What would he tell us about how to move forward the freedom and wholeness he came to bring us? Pastor Fran answers these questions with clarity in this message, and then invites Diane Balaja to illustrate these truths with her own story of pain and awakening.
In this sermon, Pastor Larry leads us into taking a look at the struggle to understand what it really means to be human.
In this message Pastor Fran explores Matthew chapter 9 where Jesus quotes these words of the Old Testament prophet Hosea: I desire mercy, not sacrifice! Religion always goes bad when we see God primarily as judge, and make religious precepts more important than the needs of people.
In this message Pastor Fran discusses the human struggle to discern who God is, the revelation of God's divine love upon the Cross, and our need to let the nature of this "cruciform" love reprogram our very ideas about love itself.
Today, our friend Leslie Zurita interviews Pastor Fran. Relating the sermon last week on where we are going as a church and the fresh wineskin that Jesus is crafting for us as a church community and how we are moving towards that and why.
Christianity is losing its credibility in our culture and many Christians are rethinking what a Jesus-like faith looks like. In this message Pastor Fran argues that the time has come for us to find fresh wineskins to express the new wine Jesus actually brought.
This morning, Pastor Fran talks about baptism in the Bible as we prepare for the baptism of 5 of our friends.
In today's sermon, Pastor Fran and David Larson bring us on a journey into the story of how New Life for Haiti started in the church and migrated into an organization that changes lives on the daily, from education and beyond.
In the last sermon of the This is My Story series, Pastor Fran expresses the importance of starting to view your time in this life as an opportunity to create impactful, sacred moments, which he coins the "altars" along our journey. He explains how to look at the unfolding of our story as a chance to make choices towards your true character that honor and deepen relationships, help others along their journey, or reflect goodness and beauty in a way that imparts hope.
In this sermon, Pastor Fran guides us down the road of peering into the road ahead on our journey with Christ.
In this sermon, Pastor Fran unpacks how wisdom transcends knowledge as spiritual understanding. He shares how he has searched for wisdom along his journey and how we can use it to navigate the unwinding path before us by desiring and chasing it.
In this sermon, Pastor Fran encourages us to find our sole path to our authentic selves. He reminds us that as humans, we are on a journey like Jesus, being made into the free, whole and unique person each of us was wonderfully made to be.
In this sermon, Pastor Fran talks about gratitude and how even the smallest things are gifts from the Lord that we should be thankful for.
In this sermon, Leslie Zurita makes her debut preaching as she describes the dry seasons we go through in our journeys and how to find your way back to feeling the presence of Christ.
In this sermon, Pastor Fran walks you through how to discern God's presence in your path to lessen your fears and increase your hope about your story yet to come.
In this sermon, David courageously shares his personal struggles throughout his journey so far. When faced with the existential question as to why there is evil we've been given a lot of different answers. Learn how look at sharing your burdens and accepting the bad experiences as a step towards "everything rightness".
In this sermon Pastor Fran talks about finding hope and God in the winding path behind us and the unfolding road before us.
Pastor Fran closes up this current sermon series by bringing up two of our church leaders to talk about their own paths of deconstruction/reconstruction in their Christian journeys.
In this sermon Pastor Fran weighs in on questions many of us think about surrounding the Christian faith. What is exactly the point of it all? Are we supposed to be the ones to point to what's good and bad? In this message we talk about discerning what's from God and what's not.
How are Christians to balance the need to discern between good and evil with Jesus' words, "Judge not, let ye be judged"? In this message we explore that balance and focus in on why it's almost impossible to judge and love someone at the same time.
In this sermon Pastor Fran gets brutally honest about how Jesus championed the equality and dignity of all people but modern Christians have not. Christianity has lost credibility in our culture as a result, and it's time for Christians to start taking the teaching and example of Jesus to heart.
In this sermon, Pastor Fran talks about centering our picture of God in the Jesus we find on the pages of the Gospels, and having the humility that motivates us to keep learning and keep seeking better answers.
In this sermon, Pastor Fran compares Jesus' teaching in John 15 about how God helps us bear fruit with the journey of the apostle Peter from denying Christ to restoration.
In this message Pastor Fran unpacks Jesus' words in John 14 about being the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and how no one comes to the Father except through him-- is Jesus issuing an ultimatum, or pointing us down the road that leads to new life?
In this message Pastor Fran talks about how we let other steal our joy, and how being rooted in the Father's love (as Jesus was) is the key to discovering our real identity and the path to actual joy.
In this second message in the series Pastor Fran talks about how beginning in childhood the wounds inflicted by others steal our joy, making the world feel unsafe and getting us to believe lies about ourselves, and shares some clues about how we can find the road to healing and joy.
Pastor Fran begins a new series about seeing over overcoming the obstacles to our joy. In this message, he explores what the New Testament says about joy and how it compares to our cultural notions of happiness.
Today David Larson teaches the good news of God's disposition toward us through the story of the Prodigal Son.
This is the audio version of the information and vision shared at LifeSpring Church on February 27th.
Today Pastor Fran teaches from Luke 5 where Jesus tells us that putting his new wine into our old wineskins will never work. To go with Jesus into his new way of seeing, being, living, and loving we'll have to question some of our assumptions and perspectives, but the result will be the best "wine" we've had in our hearts and lives yet.
This morning Pastor Fran teaches from Luke 4 where Jesus reads from Isaiah in the synagogue in his home town, and speaks about how easy it is to give lip service to love, yet regard people as "the unacceptable other" and disdain them. Christians do it all the time, considering ourselves righteous but never recognizing our failure to see the image of God in all people.
Pastor Fran Teaches about the temptations Jesus was offered in the wilderness, and how these same ideas become the distortions that lead us into a shallow Christian faith... and how the real salvation is something deeper, more transforming, and more life-giving.
David Larson explores the beautiful mystery of the Holy Spirit, and how the Spirit dwells in us and works in us.
In this sermon, Pastor Fran deconstructs a lot of our ideas about the church and illuminates a more New Testament, Jesus-centered picture of what the church community really is.
This morning Pastor Fran explores the mystery of suffering, how none of us escapes it, where God is in it, and where hope lies in the midst of it.
In the first message of the new series Four Mysteries, Pastor Fran Leeman explores how Jesus and Paul both call the gospel (the good news) a "mystery", and how our modern ideas of the gospel, being more transactional, do not do justice to the nature of this mystery. What if the gospel is really the blazing, loving goodness of God revealed in Jesus Christ to make us new, make all things right, and restore to the joy of all things?
In this third message of his advent series Pastor Fran pairs up Mary's song in Luke chapter 1 with the the old carol God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen, and talks about how the seed of all victories can be seen in the Christ child in the manger, and how that seed is most powerfully seen and experienced when we allow the Spirit of Jesus to dwell in us and take us on a journey of change.
In this Advent message Pastor Fran explores how people with a nominal faith and "serious Christians" ask the questions (What Child Is This?), and suggests that we need to ask the question in a deeper way. The goal of knowing who Christ is isn't so that we can be right , it's so that we can be transformed. It's true that God was lying in the manger, but the child lying there was also the new human being.
As we begin the Advent season, Pastor Fran paints a fascinating picture of Mary the peasant girl and how God called her to a journey that did not unfold as she might have hoped and expected. The same is true for us-- we do not know where the road will lead when we say "Be it done unto me according to your word", but when we say yes God catches us up into a story bigger and more glorious than we knew.
In this last message in the series, Pastor Fran talks about how the view of judgment and hell we've been taught eclipses out ability to hear the more profound meanings in certain Scripture texts, and how this is especially true when we come to the last two chapters of Revelation, where John is painting a profound image of God's mercy as the one who will always be saying, "Let everyone who is thirsty come!"
If you've heard modern preachers talk about the Book of Revelation, then you've herd plenty of talk about the coming Millennium, the 1000 year reign of Christ. But the New Testament teaches that Satan has already been cast down and that Jesus is reigning now. You're living in the reign of Christ that John describes, and his triumph is now your triumph. The question is what does that change for us?
Modern preachers like to paint pictures of a coming Armageddon and a Jesus who returns with a vengeance to kill evildoers. In this message, Pastor Fran shows that this is an incorrect reading of Revelation 19, and that when we read it correctly we once again come face to face with the self-sacrificial love of Christ who leads us away from dominating power and into the power of love.
In this message Pastor Fran explains how John (who wrote Revelation) was critiquing the Roman Empire, which claimed to be the agent of the gods for the salvation of the world, and warns us of “civil religion”, which attaches God to national identity. This message shows how Revelation may be the most relevant book of the Bible for the church today.
Pastor Fran explains that when John speaks of “the great tribulation”, he’s not referring to some coming seven-year period, but to the enduring and present tribulation of life in a fallen world. All of us, as we live through the hardships of life and the temptation to live for ourselves rather than for goodness, are living in the Great Tribulation, but Jesus, the Lamb of God, has triumphed over this mess and is bringing us into the fullness of life,
In the second message in this series, Pastor Fran makes us slow down and see how the worship of God is at the heart of the Book of Revelation, and how when the slain lamb is unveiled on the throne of heaven, all of heaven and earth goes crazy with declaring his wisdom, goodness, and glory.
Pastor Fran begins this new series about the Book of Revelation. This introduction to the series exposes the wrong way modern preachers have taught Revelation (such as the Left Behind series) and begins to reveal the actual instructive and inspiring truths it contains. Don't miss listening to this whole series over the next few weeks, because you'll never see Revelation the same again.
Using both Old and New Testament stories, Pastor Fran explores the different ways courage is needed if we are going to build loving and lasting relationships. He emphasizes that courage is not the absence of fear, but the willingness to move through and beyond our fear because people and the joy of relationship, are worth it!
Discussing Peter’s betrayal of Jesus, Pastor Fran talks about grace as the core reality of the new world Jesus has invited us into, and about how when God’s graciousness begins to captivate our hearts, we begin to get a vision for letting grace flow through us in our relationships with others—and in this there is freedom and joy!
Proverbs 18:21 says "Words kill, words give life... you choose". In this message, Pastor Fran talks about how words are the currency we spend in our relationships, and about how realizing the impact of our words can keep us from sabotaging our own desire and efforts to build joyful, lasting relationships.
The way we respond to the wounds we've received in life shapes how we approach our relationships with others. Pastor Fran talks about naming our specific wounds, letting God come be with us in those inside places, and ultimately of being able to forgive those who inflicted them... so that we may be more free, so that we may know joy, so that we may be able to give our hearts to others.
The disciples want to call down fire on the Samaritans, but Jesus says he came to save people's lives, not destroy them. Pastor Fran talks about how easily we either write people off approach relationships for only what we get out of them... and what it looks like to see people and dream God's dreams for them.
Jesus said that the good and evil we do first starts in the heart. Pastor Fran talks our need to become aware of the things inside ourselves (longings, wounds, fears, etc.) that shape who we become and what we bring to our relationships.
We all know who we are, but is what we "know" really true?
We explore how we as a church are discovering who God knows we really are and how wonderful that is.
(There is a portion of this recording containing the audio track of a video that was shown.)
How we think about ourselves typically does not reflect how God sees us. When He looks at us he sees Jesus, his child and he loves us relentlessly.
God's love was brought into the world when Mary gave birth. We are loved enough to give birth to God's love in small and large ways to to those around us.
Pastor Fran's recap of the small group discussion of Sermon #2 in this series (about the Cross)