The Well CC (BGVA): Recent Episodes
The Well Community Church (BGVA)
Welcome to The Well Community Church's sermons, lessons, and devotions! The recordings contained here are a part of services where Pastor Joseph and other ministry partners are delivering their messages in-person. We are focused on living out what Paul preached in 1 Corinthians 9:19-22... being whatever we need to be to reach more people. Join us as we push the boundaries of what "church" can be and explore what it means to know God beyond traditions, beyond culture, and beyond conventions.
The life of Jeremiah is one which experienced good times under a good king, trials under bad kings, exile, and finally visions of redemption for God's people. His life and his writing show us a lot about the nature of God and his faithfulness to covenant. In this fifth message, we move on to the "Book of Comfort" which spans chapters 30-33. In this section we see glimpses of the rehabilitation God is working culminating in the pronouncement of a "Righteous Branch" of David whom we know as Jesus Christ!
The life of Jeremiah is one which experienced good times under a good king, trials under bad kings, exile, and finally visions of redemption for God's people. His life and his writing show us a lot about the nature of God and his faithfulness to covenant. In this third message, look at Jeremiah's statements to the political and religious authorities in his day. We see their reaction and God's final promise of restoration. This challenges us to ask ourselves: in what do we place our trust? Something of this world, or the one who knows the plans He has for us?
The assassination of political commentator Charlie Kirk has shaken the nation and revealed some of the greatest heart-problems in our society. This is an impromptu sermon written by Pastor Joseph based on personal convictions, pleading for a recognition of exactly what is happening and the only cure for what ails the nation.
We are performative beings, often preferring the appearance of goodness without worrying too much about whether something is ACTUALLY good. This has become worse with social media, but it's always been a part of our nature. We can see that in the words of Christ and the apostles as they condemned people who were into performative actions but lacked a truly selfless heart. This brings up an important lesson for Christians: just because something has the appearance of "good" doesn't make it good. God knows the heart including our selfish ambitions, wants, and desires. When we simply "perform" like righteous people but do it with a corrupted heart, scripture makes it clear God finds this distasteful.
Message includes a special presentation by Kristiana Poole of "Be The Light", a ministry reaching out to victims of abuse.
The life of Jeremiah is one which experienced good times under a good king, trials under bad kings, exile, and finally visions of redemption for God's people. His life and his writing show us a lot about the nature of God and his faithfulness to covenant. In this second message, we will look at Jeremiah's warnings. Who was Jeremiah warning and what is the relevance to us today who do not live within the same covenantal obligations as the people of Judah?
This is the message and audio for our special baptism celebration held on August 24th at a combined service.
The life of Jeremiah is one which experienced good times under a good king, trials under bad kings, exile, and finally visions of redemption for God's people. His life and his writing show us a lot about the nature of God and his faithfulness to covenant. In this first message we will focus on who Jeremiah is and how he was called. More importantly, how did God sanctify, sustain, and equip Jeremiah for his mission.
After spending the last couple of weeks on the TikTok app, I have come to the conclusion that most issues found in bad 'cultural' theology has roots in a common problem: eisegesis. Eisegesis is reading one's self into the scriptures instead of letting the scriptures stand on their own. So much of what we see in cultural Christianity are individuals wanting to eagerly ask "where am I and where are my perspectives reflected in the Bible?" The question we should be asking is "How is God reflected in the Bible and what I can do to better reflect Him?"
This is less of a message and more a series of examples following from last week's sermon. We will look at six different TikTok videos and break down some of the accuracies or inaccuracies as examples/cautionary tales regarding how we guard our hearts against misinformation and poor spiritual role models.
Hopping online, you'll find a wealth of misinformation on any subject imaginable. Religion is no exception. In a world where everyone carries a digital megaphone, we have to be on our guard for false truth. Many of these would-be teachers may have the very best of intentions, but without truth it poses a huge risk.
It's a cliche phrase, but it really is true: the family that prays together, stays together. In a world full of so many churches that commodify family ministries, it's critical to remember that the family unit is something very intentional and holy in the eyes of God. When we export our faith responsibilities to church programs, we miss out on the glue that keeps families together: God's design.
This second, in a two part series, message will look at what it means to parent in a Godly way, prioritizing God's place in our lives and letting our parenting decisions flow from that point. It is a powerful thought that holds us accountable towards something more than ourselves.
It's a cliche phrase, but it really is true: the family that prays together, stays together. In a world full of so many churches that commodify family ministries, it's critical to remember that the family unit is something very intentional and holy in the eyes of God. When we export our faith responsibilities to church programs, we miss out on the glue that keeps families together: God's design.
This first, in a two part series, will look at God's roles within a healthy marriage and discuss how societal gender debates can overcomplicate something that God made fairly straightforward.
What does it mean to be a citizen of a nation from a Biblical perspective? Many love to quote from the Old Testament when prophets talk about God blessings, or judging, a nation, but does our modern concept of a 'nation' really matter? What ARE we to read from these verses?
We use phrases like "limitless love" and "boundless grace", but in practice this becomes very difficult. Even if we are on-board with acting on Christ's uncompromising compassion, we can grow tired and weary physically and emotionally. How do we power through? What is the motivation to continue the fight when it seems not worth the effort?
A homily remembering Tommy Wright and the resilient love he had for others. Tommy's testimony convicts us all to look beyond the pains and sorrows of our own circumstances and instead ask ourselves, "How might God use me in my brokenness to contribute to God compassion for others?"
Pentecost is about so much more than performative images of flames. It's about commitment that leads to purpose. Christians are great are latching onto the performative, but when it comes to connecting with purpose which drives us to action, we are more guarded. We like the idea of shouting and celebrating our faith, but when it comes to the meaningful life the Holy Spirit moves us towards, suddenly we want to stop the conversation. Could it be that one reason we don't talk about the Holy Spirit is because we're intimidated by what it may ask us to do or be?
In this short message, we will take a look at some common trends across Christ's acts of compassion. What can we learn about the nature of Christ's compassion and how it should drive us to compassionate acts?
It's easy to focus on the things we don't have and completely neglect that things we do have. When we recognize that we are entitled to nothing, suddenly we are able to more easily identify God's abundant blessings which surround us every day.
God didn't give us life just so we could imitate the dead. Our relationship with Christ pulls us to do things we might not normally do. Regardless of what you are called to, you are called to do SOMETHING. There are no passive participants in following Christ. Instead, He calls us all to work while we still have the opportunity to so that we can experience the fullness of life through participating in His glory.
Life is full of trials. When those trials occur, we're often left asking "why God?" The dirty little secret is that seldom do people actually want the answer. They just want to pray for a specific outcome. When we dedicate our lives to Christ, we have to shift our perspective on all things in life, including our trials. That moves us to approach hardship with a very different tone; one which prioritizes how God may be strengthening and preparing for His glory.
When you look at the physical exercise of our faith, there aren't many things in the Bible we see explicitly taught, but baptism is one of them. The fact that we see baptism appear in the Bible should drive us to try to understand the meaning of the act and why it is more than just a cultural trapping or membership ritual. It is blessing that comes from what God has done, not what we decided.
A lot of people look at the Bible as a self-help book. There are pastors who have made very successful careers telling their congregations how God wants them to overcome their weaknesses for their betterment, crossing into motivational speaking. What they lose sight of is that the Bible isn't about you being able to overcome your weaknesses... it's about your inability to overcome and God's mercy to overcome it on your behalf.
Sharing your testimony can be intimidating, especially when it's frames as salesmanship and we're bombarded with images of testimony which look performative. Testimony should be audience-focused to help listeners to see how God's glory surrounds us and may manifest itself in their own lives.
The idea that "we should care for the poor" is really trivialized in our world. Why is caring for those who are poor, rejected, and despised such a big deal to Christ? What we find out is that caring for those who were rejected is a key part of our participation in God's divinely purposeful plan.
You are imbibed with the divine breath of God. That should have life changing, and life GIVING, implications on every facet of your life...
Holy Week is a phenomenal time of preparation for the celebration to come. One thing that makes it even more phenomenal is recognizing the clear connections between Christ and the Passover. The disciples also saw this connection and used the phrase "the lamb" or "the Passover lamb" frequently. Seeing the connections between Christ's actions before Easter and the sacrifices of Passover brings a new meaning and appreciation for the profoundness of our Easter celebration.
We celebrate Easter every year making it easier and easier to see it as yet-another-annual-tradition. The problem with this is Christ's desire to see a true since of sincerity in our hearts. We can see this throughout the Old Testament but also in Christ's anger which burns against those cheapening the celebration of Passover. In this scene, we see Christ's anger against the actions of those profaning His temple, but also anger at the priests and scribes who allow it.
As we studied Revelation, you saw a recurring theme worth digging into: Christ's sole ability to produce the renewal we all crave.
What is Hell and why would God send someone there? If God loves us, wouldn't he want to save us from punishment instead of sending us there? The answer reveals that we may be asking the question entirely wrong.
There is perhaps no more popular icon of Revelation iconography than the antichrist. Images of an evil boogie man exists in many people's minds, Christian and non-Christian alike. However, when we look at the image of the antichrist in Revelation, see something that looks strangely heroic and desirable. It is that image that is the source of the antichrist's danger for those who see him. Even scarier is the realization that the antichrist isn't simply a distant character during the end times, but a present threat for us today.
In the middle of Revelation we hit a series of allegories that would be enough to intimidate anyone. However, when we forge through these allegories and take hold of the broader picture, we can see connections to God's standard of perfection, our own sin, and ultimately Christ's redemption.
The beginning of Revelation opens with an address to some of the churches in the first century. There are plenty of theories on what this may prophetically mean for us, but the righteous lessons couldn't be more clear.
Note: This sermon was super chaotic. Pastor Joseph had nearly lost his voice, there were tornado warnings going off, and one of the windows started leaking. The perfect setting to kick off a series about the 'end times'!
The groundwork for the book of Revelation is laid far before we hit those final pages in our Bibles. In fact, individuals have been speaking about the end-times generically and specifically for quite some time. That provides important context for how we read these pages today and power-through all the symbolism and prophecy within these verses.
A lot of people have opinions on what makes a good pastor, but what does the Bible say? How much of our image of the "perfect pastor" comes from cultural and organizational expectations? Many "good pastors" are deemed "good" more for their image and ability to run a 501(c)3 institution than they are their Gospel... and that's the problem.
Due to events in the past week, we are doing something a little different today. Meredith and Pastor Joseph lost someone beloved to them, but remembering them teaches us something important about how people will know our unification with Christ.
Paul has an interesting metaphor which resonates with so much across scripture: that of pruning and grafting branches onto an olive tree. He uses this to describe the pruning of branches which have rejected the Gospel of Christ and the grafting-in of people who were previously seen as living outside of God's chosen people. As we exegete this passage, we can learn a lot about what it means for us to be grafting into this life and how this makes us heirs of the same promises given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Likewise, it also offers us a heart-shaking message about the power of God to re-graft any branch back into the tree if it believes.
Christ's way of communicating to His people in a way they understand is truly amazing. His parables give us the keys to so many truths of His nature, including Faith and Perseverance. Through Faith and Perseverance we are driven to dive deeper into our understanding of the God who saves. This is why Bible study becomes so important: not only do we get the immediate benefit of learning something new, but it also stresses our ability to hold the faith and persevere by challenging what we THINK we may know about our truly infinite God.
In what do you base your faith? Christ, right? But what does that mean? So many churches use the correct rhetoric, but then their actions seem to paint a picture of esteemed institutions that pride themselves on healthy budgets and robust program offerings. What really makes a church? Christ gives us some very clear answers to this critical question.
Many of your calendars will note that Christmas is long-gone, but the church "Christmas holiday" doesn't end until 12 days after December 25th... today. With this one last remembrance of Christmas, we should look at the newness brought to earth during the events of Christmas and how that spurns us towards total rejuvenation!
During a season we have dedicate to the Joy of all Creation, let us take a moment to simply dwell in His presence.
Mary certainly knew some things about the baby she was about to have, but she didn't know everything. It's almost unthinkable for many of us to go along with a plan that hasn't been explained to us, so how could Mary be so trusting? She reveals a part of that answer in her own prayer of thanksgiving in Luke 1.
God reveals Himself to the main players in the Nativity story through angels. When we look at how God communicated to these individuals, what can we learn about the nature of God revealing Himself? When we think to ourselves "God is being silent", is it possible that God IS revealing Himself, but in ways we do not expect (or desire)?
So many of us are filled with ideas that the "reason for the season" is a baby in a manger; it's not. The significance of Jesus at Christmas isn't that he was born, but that He came at all. The Messiah had been long awaited for millennia since the fall of Eden. Prophets spoke for centuries prior about the coming of our Savior, God with us, who would show us God's compassion and power. The coming of this Messiah is the REAL meaning for the season. The question for us is "are you listening for the reason?" Are we prepared to hear the truth God has for us or are we too busy reading our own meaning into cultural holidays? If we're receptive to what God is showing us, we're destined to be blown away by the sheer Joy of knowing a God bigger than ourselves.
We all know the greatest commandments: love God and love people. Sometimes what we don't really appreciate is that the first of these is "love God". Loving God MUST be the first and foremost important part of our faith. Otherwise, the entire theology of what it means to serve a truly divine God wastes away. Recognizing the dominion of God above all else is to firm foundation God desires, and we need.
A lot of Christians get very worked-up about the optics of their ministry. They want to ensure they're helping the right people, showing up at the right events, and putting the correct polish on their ceremonies. Sometimes, in an attempt to stand up for what is seen as "righteous", they lose an element of genuineness that can be beautiful in its raw form. When we look at individuals who allowed themselves to be "outed" in a raw manner before Christ, we find God blessing them far more than those who sought to observe the correct protocols or optics. The question for you is... when is the last time you were truly "raw" with your faith?
When the pandemic started, the most basic thing society could implement was social distancing. For all the political debate over the merits of social distancing, it's common sense that if you maintain a little space, your likelihood of contracting a communicable disease goes down. As Christians, there is a degree of spiritual distancing that we are called to do for similar reasons: we are in the world, but not of it. There is this degree of healthy distance we maintain spiritually from this world because it keeps us from falling into the same old pitfalls that the world readily provides.
Biblical joy is so much more than a mere feeling. It is a sense of satisfaction which transcends our circumstances. It is a general contentment that allows us to understand there is purpose in the bad times and blessing in the good. Across it all is a perspective focused on heaven.
Jonah gets more interesting when you get past the big fish stuff. We get a glimpse into someone who seems more upset that their own expectations aren't met rather than God's Will. He seems like someone who engaged in a great journey just to loose patience when the expectations HE WANTED isn't realized. We see someone who appears, bluntly, arrogant in the face of God's calling. We see someone... strangely like many of us.
God's perspective is very different from our own. Genesis starts out by saying "In the beginning, God created" which implies God's existence before Creation itself. It is difficult to really comprehend what it would be like to exist before all aspects of Creation, including the fabric of time (something we know is fluid even in our own plane of existence). When we limit God's existence to only what we know, we are bound to have thousands of "How can you allow" questions. However, just like an adult looking back on major events from their childhood, striving to have a eternal perspective can help us understand why "How can God allow" questions are actually very shortsighted.
In the beginning was the Word. These are words we know from John 1. In fact, we know them so well that we just take them for granted. Christ existed far before the events of the Nativity, before the prophets, before Abraham, and before time itself. It should be no wonder that we see the image of Christ pasted all over the events of the Old Testament. Within those events, we can catch glimpses of the Christ and God's true desire for how we reflect His image today.
Did you know that skeptics and critics of first and second century Christianity occasionally referred to the church as incestuous? They would hear the rhetoric of "brothers and sisters in Christ", and then see wives or husbands interacting. This was a misconception on their part, resulting from their fixation with oracles, priests, priestesses, and other religious authorities. Christianity didn't have the same structure so they were misunderstood. This begs the question: why didn't Christ give us these structural roles just like everyone else? Even Judaism had the Pharisaical class and the Sanhedrin to run things. Yet, Christ instructs us in Matthew 23 to regard each other as brothers and sisters. In fact, numerous times in the Bible God uses the family structure to define His relationship with us and our relationships with one another. Why? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that a family unit is a relational structure which existed before corruption and before sin in the Garden of Eden. If it was created by God in the midst of perfect, it makes sense that so much of what God is driving us to be would mimic His perfect design.
We have all heard the oft-cited scripture in 2 Corinthians where everyone is encouraged to give according to their own convictions. This is often used as a counter to those who specify that a certain amount of "proper" for all people. When taken to an unhealthy end, it is used to rationalize our own selfishness; I don't "feel like giving", so I use this scripture to justify myself. This is, of course, a complete misread of Paul's words and actually obscures a beautiful lesson in what should guide our hearts.
There is nothing more terrifying and spiritually tiresome than a restless soul. In a world with so many day-to-day worries and huge life-altering stresses, it's no wonder that so many of us live our lives as if we're constantly being prodded in the side. God built rest into the fabric of creation from the start... technically day 7. It can be hard to see that when we're in the midst of our own personal woes, but within the promise of that rest is hope and redemption for whatever is weathering our wary hearts.
What does religion look like when it is compromised by cultural norms? That is what we find in how Jezebel leads the church of Thyatira in Revelation 2:18-29. We read passages like Jeremiah 17:9, recognizing that our hearts are deceptive, but for some reason totally forget those lessons when discerning whether we're going led to express our religious practices in a way that is more satisfying to ourselves or more glorious to God.
The heart is, above all things, deceitful. What does that even mean? It comes from Jeremiah, but does it have deeper meaning? As with most things in the Bible... of course it does! It has a particularly potent meaning when you compare it to our attitudes towards forgiveness and grace. Despite the fact that God has been so kind and so generous to us, our deceitful heart is great at convincing us that we are owed some retribution!
What does it mean to have a reactive heart? Some of us are simply more emotional than others... is that such a bad thing? When we look at how Christ reacted to the world around him, it was anything BUT reactionary. Christ lived for his purpose and mission which led him to react in an almost muted fashion. It makes you wonder how much more we think of ourselves when we don't feel the responsibility to safeguard our emotions when Christ himself was slow to react to the injustices and insults thrown his way.
The story of Jacob wrestling with an angel in Genesis 32 is one of those often-overlooked passages soaked in exegesis gold. It has so many topics we could dive into. Many scholars and pastors spend hundreds of hours on this one story trying to understand the total context and meaning. If they can't figure it out, why would we even bother? Sometimes we wrestle with the scripture much the same way Jacob wrestled with another being in Genesis 32. Like Jacob, if we embrace our weaknesses in understand the total scope of God's truth, we allow room for God to show us His blessings and wonders through the Bible.
We all love a refuge story, but the conditions that bring us to the requirement for a refuge are less romantic to discuss. We can be brought to our knees by things that are shameful, things which lace us with guilt, or situations that feel totally out of control. In those moments, it's important to ask ourselves "what are we doing here?" What are we doing praying to God and what type of God do we expect him to be in those moments? That may speak volumes about the nature of our relationship.
When you step back from our typical Christian education, it is wild to think that anything overshadows the glory of what Christ did on the cross. We see images of God's glory in the miracles of the Old Testament and rightfully point out "this is clearly a display of God's glory". However, when we talk about Christ's grace every week, year-in and year-out, we start treating it as if it's somehow less wonderous than anything else God has done. Christ is the radiant and glory of God. He is the embodiment of God's Will, sent to earth for our sins. When we stop to revel in what God has done with Christ, how can we dare to minimize it?
When Jonathan Edwards kicked off the "Great Awakening" in 18th century America, he was facing a public who had grown bored with their faith or casual in their experience of God. He sought to wake them up from their sleep by raising their awareness of their sinful state. Today, we have a public bored with Christianity, but their boredom comes at the hands of forgetting the awesome power of God's grace. They see the lights and ceremonies created by man and forget that the wonders they seek do not come from fog machines, stage lights, ornate masses and services, or from one-off spiritual conferences... it comes from the grace and love of Christ.
Our sense of identity is the hidden idol that often eludes our attempts to root out distractions from God's purpose. Identity theory says that we base our identity on our beliefs, morals, and goals. Many Christians attempt to follow Christ by changing only one or two of these traits without focusing on the entire thing. When we do this, we miss out on the true blessing of Christ's regeneration.
Money is one of the few subjects that is sure to make people feel uncomfortable in church. It is probably the most ever-present worldly thing that we interact with and are therefore the most hesitant to give up. The trap many of us fall in is one where we fool ourselves, suggesting that our wealth comes from our own work and that we have claim to it. We forget that our talents and opportunities were never assured. We are not entitled to our jobs or possessions, and if God's plan found it necessary to take everything away from us we would have no legitimate counter-argument. In many ways, our attitudes on money indicate how seriously we take our devotion to Christ. It's not so much that "if you give more, you are more devoted" as much as "if you're afraid you might have to give to a new or calling, that fear may indicate what worldly things are holding your spiritual growth back."
Some churches brand themselves as houses of condemnation. This leads to individuals with 'church hurt' who walk away from the assembly. Others go the opposite direction by branding themselves as houses of justification, telling people that their flaws and sins are perfectly acceptable because "God understands". This leads to believers who compromise their faith to accommodate the world. Still other churches brand themselves as centers of motivational speaking. This leads to believers who are motivated every single Sunday but have poorly rooted faiths which wither when faced with the harsh realities of this world. Then there are a few churches which seem to stand for truth, understanding that God's truth is ultimately what leads to contentment and joy in our lives. How can we be more like these 'houses of truth'?
Sometimes I think we don't talk enough about the Glory of God and how it moves us to fundamentally see the world differently. The reality is that we live in a remarkably privileged world. Illiteracy was at 79% in the year 1900. Today it is around 13% globally. The average life expectancy from the Neolithic period until 1900 was between 30-40 years of age. Today it is over twice that. One hundred years ago, most of the world population lived in what is classified "extreme poverty". Today that number is down to 8%. We are blessed and refusing to acknowledge it is foolishness. The problem is that our blessings have caused some to become entitled, as if they divined these blessings on their own power. When we realize that nothing is "owed" to us and that we are entitled to nothing, the events of our life start to take on a very different hue.
Something happened in Christianity around 100 years ago. Churches got big, started offering programs and services, then followers started getting lazy. We began tricking ourselves into thinking Christianity was more about what we could consume rather than what role God played in our lives. The situation of the current church is complex since we have some churches steeped in decades-young tradition, others obsessed with public image, and yet others pursuing whatever new programs and fads are making the rounds of religious circles. We can talk all day about the problems with churches, but what impact does this have on believers? More importantly, how does this create Christians foreign to the concepts of Christ's followers we find in the Gospels?
This is the brief message and baby dedication for the Sodergren, Robertson, and Stanley families held on May 26, 2024!
Heresies were everywhere during the time of the early church. There were all kinds of odd ideas about the mechanics of salvation. While we've worked through a lot of the "brain work" of theology today, there are still widely differing perspectives on the scriptures. This makes sense when you consider the infinite nature of God and the finite nature of our minds. The importance in recognizing heretical differences between different believers is in understanding how easy we, too, can fall into "bad theology". At the least, this can lead to us having twisted views of our relationship with God. At worst, it can lead to a dark judgmentalism where we start doubting the "theological purity" of those around us. The lesson for us, today, is to guard our hearts against blindly following the philosophies of men, but also to be slow to judge the theologies of others. We may find out that our own beliefs are just as divergent from the truth as other believers that we would call "heretic".
The early church was considered weird by many of their contemporaries. They were seen as being somewhat atheistic (ironically), cannibalistic, and even incestuous. These accusations were unfounded, but a brief glance at scripture will provide some explanation for their misjudgment. We tend to do the same to our fellow Christians today when we see customs and practices different from our own. Like the early Christians, some of these "weird" religious behaviors are rooted in scripture. They can become a problem when they overshadow the God they are designed to reflect, but by themselves they can be powerful ways of helping us express our faith.
What actually is "normal" in context of religion? Is any Christian practice "normal" in the broader context of Christianity's history? Even the most ancient denominations and Christian traditions have been tweaked and updated with the times. It can be easy for us to think that what we do is something "more appropriate" than others, but we all have our quirks. The real question is whether our religious practices are supporting the ultimate goal of a church experience: the building up of one another.
What happens when we remove faith from our sense of "calling"? Insecurities, doubts, and self-imposed limitations. This is exactly what you see in the calling of Moses who went through a gamut of self-doubt when he was being called to lead God's chosen people out of bondage in Egypt. In each instance, we can see God repeating over and over again that it is not through Moses' capabilities or limitations that greatness will be achieved, but through the providence and power of God.
The way we act as a community has a direct impact on our ability to spread the Gospel. That is the picture we see in Acts 4 when Luke sandwiches the idea of "community" around a verse talking about the apostles spreading the good news (verse 33). It's easy to see involvement with your church as little more than volunteering, similar to what you'd do for little league baseball or a community organizations, but in the church it's something more profound. By the testimony of our actions, we can demonstrate to a lost world the selflessness that Christ first showed us.
The early church was definitely a community-driven organization, but do we really HAVE to be a part of the whole "church thing" today? Absolutely. Christ, Paul, and all the apostles seem to place a high premium on the value of community. The word "Ekklesia" used to describe "church" in our Bibles makes no distinction between vague concepts of a "universal church" vs our locally organized church. It's all a part of the body of Christ and we can't claim to want to know Christ while also spurning his body.
It has become somewhat trendy to say "we want to be a first-century church", but what does that really mean? It is just serving more? Giving more? Is it a theological code? The early church can be identified most readily by their strong sense of community. There was no such thing as a "church problem" because it was "our problem". Believers didn't have church branding or institutional programs to unite them, so they had to rely on what really mattered: their identity in Christ. No matter how we cut it, the individualism we see throughout the western church poses a stark contrast from the communal philosophies of the church in Acts. So the question for us is... what type of church do we look like?
Last week we talked about physical baptism, but what do we make of John the Baptist's words who spoke about baptism "by fire"? It can be easy to see the metaphorical and prophetical meaning behind John's words when we look at the life of Christ and coming of the Holy Spirit. In a way, we can look at baptism "by fire" as the counterpart to our physical expression of baptism "by water". It helps us to understand the divine change that only God can make on our hearts which moves us to reflect on God's grace through the act of physical baptism.
What is Baptism really all about? Is it "a public profession of your faith"? Maybe it's a form of blessing? When we look through the scriptures, we can piece together the act of Baptism which looks a lot like a wedding: it's a physical act which represents (and helps us remember) the spiritual change we underwent in our hearts. Despite the fact that we are told to "be baptized", many treat this command as somehow different from other commands. We should stop to reflect on the importance of our baptism so we don't miss out on this blessing that God provides us as a way to physically connect with something God did divinely in our hearts.
Is Christianity REALLY a religion of moderation? With so many taking pride in how extreme they can live their faith, we may be losing sight of what Solomon tells us in Ecclesiastes... to "not be overly righteous" nor "overly wicked". There is a string of "moderate" stances taken throughout the Bible, despite all the cherry-picked verses many like to place on a pedestal, devoid of important context. Christ refuses to take a political stance when challenged with the prospect of Roman taxes. Peter admonishes us to be peaceable and "honor the emperor". So how do we reconcile this with the rhetoric so often espoused by many for "radical Christianity"? Well, where was Christ "radical"? Look no further than his commandments in John 13: to love one another. Christ's love represents the one truly radical area of his life which tells us exactly where we should focus on living to the extreme.
No matter how much we wish it wasn't so, life is full of both high's and low's. In the midst of our lows, it's natural to start questioning things and for our faith to grow weary. We can take solace in knowing that Christ, myself, experienced many of the same feelings we do and yet he was fully aware of the glory he would experience. It's important to recognize the diversity of life experiences because that is the world as those without Christ see it. When we try living as fully insulated Christians, acting like everything is awesome and nothing bad ever happens, we can alienate those just beginning their life with Christ. We can accidentally cause them to ask "what's wrong with me that I'm not always happy?" For their sake and our own, we have to be realistic about the human experience and see that our hope and faith is founded on something bigger than our circumstances.
Is there any harm in using playful little phrases to help describe our life philosophies? "So what" if they don't perfectly match what's in the Bible, right? This is a popular way to look at Christianity, but if you believe the Bible is the recorded Word of God, then it deserves a little more respect. It isn't that the Bible is some idol we worship; but it does contain immense truth and wisdom that can bless us beyond our understanding. When we simplify our understanding of the world to popular or cultural slogans, especially when we trick ourselves into thinking those slogans are a replacement for scriptural knowledge, we miss out on so much God has to offer.
What is our actual purpose for existing in this world? Books have been published and talks given, but the real answer could be a bit more mind-blowing. This isn't just an abstract, theological discussion. Once we seize the totality of our ultimate purpose, it helps to set the stage for all sorts of situations, from how we celebrate in the midst of victory and how wee endure through life's hardships. There is great power in embracing our ultimate purpose... of demonstrating God's glory.
Some people have nightmares about having to talk about their faith while others have given themselves full license to say whatever they want to whoever they want in the name of God. There is such a thing as "diplomacy" when it comes to how we approach others. This isn't only practical... it's also Biblical! We are called to share our faith with the world around us, but also to consider those whom we are speaking to. We should be sensitive to where they are coming from so that we can hear how best to connect their life's journey with the truth we all know through Christ.
Generations are often defined along common experiences which change how a particular group of people see the world. The church has also gone through a lot of "generational shifts" which have seen religious practices evolve and reform. In the midst of a religion which changes so frequently (historically speaking), how can we have faith in the "unchanging God"? We must understand that what may seem like a seismic shift in practice or doctrine to us is often based on what mankind has wrapped around God. We place theologies and institutions around God so tightly that often people forget that the purpose of the religion is to point towards the God... a God who doesn't change simply because the world does. Understanding the unchanging nature of God, even amidst the frequently changing nature of society, helps us understand why it is so important to firmly establish our sense of "self" in our calling rather than in the institutions of man.
Sometimes it's useful to put our normally planned studies aside and just realize exactly who God is. Credits:- Song: "So Will I" by Hillsong United (2017, "Wonder" Album)- Song: "Desert Soul" by Rend Collective Experiment (2012, "Handmade Worship by Handmade People" Album)- Video: "So Will I (100 Billion X) Lyric Video - Hillsong United", Hope Community Church (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2U7ffUM5Ec)- Video: [Lyrics video for desert soul was archived from YouTube, last accessed circa 2018, but does not appear to be available anymore; this is not our original work]All songs and videos included in this lesson are used for educational/commentary purposes only.
Holding a grudge is as intuitive as breathing or drinking. If someone hurts us, we are inclined to remember that hurt as a type of defense mechanism. Some research has suggested that grudges are about trying to reframe a past conflict in our head so we can reinvent that we were the innocent victim and the other party was the aggressor. Regardless of the psychology behind it, grudges are something talked about at length in the Bible (albeit with a variety of language). It's connected to the "golden rule" in Leviticus and spoke about multiple times in the epistles. What is fascinating is that the one more most deserving to hold a grudge... Jesus Christ... did the exact opposite. Even when his best friends turned their backs on him time after time, Jesus remained wholly compassionate and forgiving.
If you're listening to our messages, you are probably already on-board with rejecting religious conformity in the traditional sense. However, it's important to remember that conformity can come in many flavors. Christians live in a two-front war between those who abuse religion to push their own human practices and the world who wants to redefine truth altogether. It can be easy... even seductive... to just pick a team. However, we must be willing to stand boldly between the two lines, fighting stalwartly for truth in the face of a world trying to redefine truth, but welding uncompromising compassion and love in the face of "religion" which often overlooks the humanity of those they are called to serve.
Did you know that only about 9% of all people follow-through with their New Year's resolutions? Sadly, the failure to commit to something isn't exclusive to resolutions; many believers do the same thing to their spirit life. We are great at setting goals of daily prayer and meditation, regular Bible study, and increased church attendance, but we fall into the same old traps which keep us from growing. How can we make sure we are living a life of "fertile ground" upon which we can grow bold faiths? It may be a lot more boring than many Christians make it out to be...
This was the message that went with our Christmas service held December 20, 2023 at 6:30PM. It accompanied an AI generated image of Mary and Joseph, but instead of the normally somber expressions on everyone's face it showed feelings of joy. Tonight we reflect on the joy of our savior's birth and the gift God gave us in Christ's ministry.
Ever wondered why Jesus came to earth as a baby? Why did Jesus have to come at all? Was it that God couldn't save creation without a Jesus? God has options, but there is a grand design to everything He does. We can see this nature in God as we look at the messianic prophecies of Isaiah commonly cited this time of year. When we explore the "why" of Jesus's birth, we can start to understand more about God's desire to connect with His creation.
The Christmas story has been repeated millions of times and yet many of us have a hard time moving past the same elementary school version of the story. The Bible is a rich text with deep meanings from cover to cover. If we want to have a faith which stands up against the adult problems we are bound to face, we must have a faith which grows with our circumstances.
Ever get tired of skeptics and know-it-alls claiming that your celebration of Christmas is a pagan occasion? Even though our practice of a holiday may have some cultural roots in different faiths, there is something special to the Christmas season. It isn't the forms and ceremonies we recognize as much as it is the heart of the matter. This lesson can be seen clearly in another non-Christian holiday celebrated at this time of year: Chanukah. Why might a Christian observe Chanukah even though we don't adhere to the Jewish faith? Maybe it's because of the heart behind the holiday...
Many pastors and church leaders get nervous around the subject of "giving". It can be a sensitive subject with so many stressing over their material wellbeing. Things change when we start looking at "giving" through a Biblical lens. We begin to see how our ability to give is tied to conditions of the heart and who we see as truly leading holding authority over our lives. It's no wonder that those who give greatly are often the most at-peace with their material situation... they've learned what truly matters and who is actually in charge.
The spiritual gift of teaching is about so much more than just education... it's knowledge management! Knowledge is not a trivial thing. Solomon understood that even though knowledge isn't everything, it is certainly a big part of being effective at your calling. It is important for all of us to understand the value of knowledge and for those with the spiritual gift of teaching to recognize their role in building disciples.
During this message, we talk with our kids about why their parents care about them attending church and knowing God. We explain that our parents thought of us for a long, long time before we were even born and that they know God has a plan for us. Even when it seems boring or when we might have other things we'd rather do, it's important to remember that parents help us to know God even when we are still learning.
Administration doesn't evoke the most exciting mental image. Most of us would much rather be serving in some awesome ministry work, teaching kids, preaching, or doing other work viewed as more glamorous or "useful". The problem we encounter is overlooking that administration is a very real spiritual gift granted to many individuals to make the church more effective. We see elements of administration spattered throughout the Bible. When done properly, administrators do far more than simply "do the boring work"; they become critical leaders, supporters, and planners of the essential work God has laid before us.
Sometimes we all need a kick in the pants. That kick can be to encourage us to keep moving or it could be a "knock it off" message from someone giving us a fair warning. Giving people that kick in the pants is a talent... a spiritual gift, even. We call this gift "exhortation" and it's what we see Paul do at the end of most of his letters. He encourages good, virtuous, and moral behavior while also issuing warnings or messages of accountability. It's important that we take these responsibilities seriously and that we remember that all exhortation points to the hope and the love of Christ.
Mercy-showing is a skill pivotal to reflecting Christ's nature, yet it is so often missing from Christians and Christian bodies. Why is that? The Bible has several stories of similar "religious elites" and they weren't spoken about well. As we look at how Christ first showed mercy to us, we must be convicted to reflect that mercy to the world around us. Mercy is for all and should come from each of us. Those with the spiritual gift of mercy-showing have a doubly important job to help permeate the world with a characteristic that is so sorely missing.
When we think of shepherds in a church context, we often think of pastors. However, shepherds so much more than that. Shepherds are any individual who takes the responsibility on themselves to regard the spiritual wellbeing of others over themselves. Our society has heaped a level of celebrity onto the image of a shepherd, but that diverges greatly from the humble role of a shepherd we see championed by Christ. What does it truly mean to be a "poimen"?
We always say that salvation doesn't come from works, but does that mean our works don't matter at all? Not according to James. Our works are often the proof of our inner convictions and devotion and is signifies what we are willing to do or sacrifice in the name of our God. Fortunately, God equips us with the skills needed to serve him. These skills often come in the form of what we call "spiritual gifts". They are God's empowerment of the Holy Spirit through us and can reveal a lot about what God has in store for our lives.
The Bible is a big, complicated book. Though not inaccessible, we benefit from taking a deeper look at the scriptures to see what the authors originally intended. This isn't about reinventing or innovating on the Bible; it's about working to connect our modern language and way of thinking with that of a people and culture 2000-3000 years old. When we start looking at how the authors wrote and the context of their work, we sometimes are shocked to see far deeper meanings behind some of our most common Sunday school stories.
How does a church look different when it focuses on being a family rather than a religious corporation? Often we find that serving in a church feels like work because churches have branded themselves like any other business or industry. However, when we look at church as a family, participation starts to look a lot different. Instead of supporting a position description or officer role, we are just helping out our brothers and sisters in Christ.
What does it mean to "commit" to God? What do we have to do? How do we have to act? What are the requirements for us to commit to God and does that imply that God has requirements for us before we can attain grace? What we find, as we look at examples of people who were saved by grace, is something that looks very different from what we'd call "commitment". It's different from committing to a charity or a social club. Instead, it's about an opportunity to BE COMMITTED to something bigger than ourselves.
Everyone likes the feel-good Bible studies and lessons, but isn't conviction an important part of the Christian experience? Is it that Christians believe that if they feel bad enough that God will forgive them, or is there some theological mechanic at play? Conviction is actually a key to experiencing so much Christ has in store for us. It is through our sense of conviction that we get to see God's forgiveness, God's love, God's grace, and God's glory.
Could being a Christian be as simple as just being considerate? Well... kind of. In a world where everyone tells you that you must have an opinion, sometimes the biggest challenge we all face is not concerning ourselves with judging the piety of those around us. Paul seems to handle inter-believer matters well: do not let those things which are unknown separate us. Instead, focus on that which unites us in Jesus Christ. That means focusing less on what WE THINK makes a good Christian and focusing more on what opportunities God has presented us to actually BE good Christians.
We all appreciate clear communication. Life would be a lot easier if God would just clearly tell us what he wants us to do, but sometimes in that journey of discerning God's will in our lives, we learn a lot about faith. Some miss when God is speaking to them because they expect God to speak in specific ways. However, God knows us better than that. Sometimes the way he knows we'll listen isn't the way we expect to experience him. That's why we have to be always listening... so that we don't miss any of the blessings God has in store for us.
We all have things we regret, but is there any real value in LIVING WITH regret? Paul seems to draw a distinction between feeling grief over how our actions impact others vs feeling regret. The difference is how it nags at us and impacts our ability to continue living our lives. It can be valuable to learn from the grief we feel when we know we screwed up, but we should be careful to make certain that our feelings of grief do not turn into an unhealthy sense of regret.
We have become so accustomed to getting things "our way" that sometimes we have a hard time contemplating what it's like to live by someone else's rules... even if that someone else is God. Many individuals in the Bible have tried to "do the God thing" but have insisted on having it their way. Each time God set them straight. When we seek to "do the God thing" our way, we are tempting fate and testing a God who knows better... and deserves better.
Some people think this world is all about them. We can dismiss those people as somehow foolish or self-centered, but there is something useful to recognizing how people view themselves. A popular phrase I've used before is "no one is the villain in the movie they are playing in their head". It's useful to remember that all of us... even those we detest the most... are all struggling with the same sin-problem and trying to find the truth in a world full of false truths. When we adopt this mentality, we can turn our contempt for a lost world into compassion for a lost world. We can realize that we are no better than them and that if God can save us, he can save anyone!
We all love some bombastic, powerful language surrounding our theology. Imagery of angel legions and a savior on a white horse holding a flaming sword to smite the unbelievers! It's just what Christ wanted us to portray to the world around us, right? Right?! Well, if we look at what Christ instructed his followers, we see something much less... empowered. In the apostles we see the epitome of humility, leading most to their deaths in the name of their faith. Following Christ looks a lot more like servitude than military victory and when we embrace the image of servitude, we are truly embracing the image of Christ.
The statistics are not in our favor. The portion of Americans who profess a belief in a higher power is at an all-time low, attendance at church has failed to recover to pre-COVID levels, and children of church-going families are not following in their parents' footsteps. Sounds gloomy, right? When we look at the life of Christ, we see a savior who stood in the stark minority of his contemporaries and yet he was not dissuaded. Instead of cowering or playing the victim, Christ optimistically told his followers that there was an abundant harvest in front of them!
Christians excel at pointing out when the world doesn't meet the same moral code we believe Christ has called us to live. Whether that, in and of itself, is a problem could be a subject for discussion, but is it appropriate to make sure the world KNOWS how upset we are at their heathen ways? The Pharisees did exactly that and Christ was quick to call them out for forgetting what God had instructed them. Grace and mercy are not exclusive to the New Testament; the entire history of God's chosen people is a history of grace and forgiveness. The Pharisees forgot that and many Christians today seem to have forgotten it as well.
Many of us would benefit from being a little more self-aware. The real value in "questioning everything" is in challenging and testing our faith in such a way that we are firm in our beliefs. Rest assured that the world WILL test your faith. When it does, you'll be on solid footing if you have already weathered questioning yourself.
"God helps those who help themselves." It's a familiar phrase, right? Would you be shocked to hear that it's actually a phrase that comes from ancient Greek theater and has been popularized by English and American philosophers? The Bible doesn't actually say anything like this, and most of the Bible would appear to advocate for the complete opposite worldview. The entire purpose of the Bible is to explain that where we could not, Christ could. Where we were insufficient, Christ was wholly sufficient. The beauty and glory of Christ's gift to this earth is that there was nothing we could do to qualify or disqualify ourselves.
Some people are absolutely in LOVE with the "end times". They talk about it, they post/share articles about it, and they can't help but see evidence of the end times in everything around them. What motivates someone to be so obsessed with seeing the end times all around them? Is it that it is truly that ever-present in their lives or maybe it's because, if they were being honest with themselves, they get something self-satisfying from feeling like "the divine messenger of God's Will"? There is value in studying the end-times, but we can't confuse "value" with the main objective. Remember, Christ did not come to use with threats and fear... he came to us with love.
The idea of "religion" is nearly synonymous with rituals and ceremonies. It's difficult to imagine a faith that doesn't have some form of orthodoxy, but where does this idea come from? So many have gotten tripped up believing that faith is about attending the right programs or services, but it's really about so much more. When too high a premium is placed on the human aspects of faith, it can become easy to slowly fall into a trap of practicing a soft form of "idol worship" rather than worshiping the thing that "idol" is meant to represent. God is not a set of customs and practices; He's so much more than that.
The Old Testament is a rich patchwork of languages, traditions, and national influences which all speak to one God, one truth, and one salvation. When we read it in pursuit of the truth God has intended for us, rather than the truth we'd like to hear, there is a tremendous value which can be afforded to our faith.
Is it possible to read the Bible wrong? Maybe not "wrong", but certainly you can read it selfishly. The Bible contains a wealth of truth just waiting to be harvested, but that can be tricky when sifting through centuries of culture and language change. Unfortunately, in pursuit of being "correct", many Christians have adopted highly legalistic perspectives of Biblical truth. When we do that, we miss the mark on what God intended for our lives. At worse, it drives us to become a church that actively pushes others away. However, by acknowledging our limited scriptural knowledge and insight, we are forced to focus on things we can hold true: that Christ is love and we are to share that love with the lost and dying world around us.
Many of us are familiar with the verse in 1 Samuel 1:27 that goes, "For this child, I have prayed"... but what is the full context of this verse? As we close our the "God and Family" series, it's worth stopping to take a deeper look at who was prayer, what they were praying for, and how they reacted when God answered their prayer. The prayer is by Hannah and the baby for which she prayed would end up being Samuel. Through her struggle, we can see our own struggles and through her response to God's blessing, we can learn what it means to be truly grateful to the God who hears us when we hurt and is there for us when we cry. He affords us compassion and contentment, and sometimes he even grants us blessing. In those blessings, we catch a glimpse of His glory!
Ever notice that father-figures in popular sitcoms just get dumber and dumber? Even 20 years ago, father figures had some level of assertiveness or wisdom while most father figures today are portrayed as out-of-touch or are totally absent. It is a disturbing trend with real impacts on children. This has been studied and the empirical evidence shows that children are impacted negatively by the lack of an active father. What does the Bible have to say about this? Well, the Bible presents the image of a father who is never absent... God. We can learn so much about the role of a father figure which show drive the men to take their job of being fatherly individuals more seriously and show women what they should be encouraging or expect of their men.
What words could you use to describe a mother? Nurturing? Caring? How about selfless and humble? The Bible gives us many images of strong mothers but there is more to the story than just motherly examples of centuries past. We can easily look at the church and see a mother figure. After all, Christ is often described as a groom in the Bible with the church being his "bride". We also know Christ is the head of the church which seems to make him a father, and therefore the church is a mother. If that is the case, how similarly would we describe the church and a loving mother? Do our churches look like nurturing, caring, selfless, and humble mothers or do they look like something else entirely? Let's celebrate our earthly mothers today, but not overlook the spiritual obligation we have, as a part of the church, to be motherly to those whom God has placed on our path.
There are 168 hours in a week. If you break down average amounts that teens spend doing different things throughout the week, about 33% of that is sleeping/resting, 20% is school, 7%-10% are hobbies (including sports), but only about 1.5 hours of that is church. Worse yet, only a fraction of that church time is dedicated towards really teaching them about their faith. What this amounts to is around 1/3 of 1% of a teen's time spent learning about God with a religious leader. Is it any wonder that the statistics of how many teens stick with church into adulthood are so low? This was never how it was supposed to be. For literally thousands of years, God has been passed on to the next generation by parents and parental figures (family, mentors, etc). What changed? At some point, families started viewing teaching faith as the responsibility of a youth pastor or YoungLife leader. It starts in the home and if we value our children, we should be excited to have the opportunity to share that the Christ we hold with the next generation of believers.
Did you know that in Exodus the Bible says that God "hardened Pharaoh's heart"? Some think this is God "picking on Pharaoh" by making him resist Moses, but Pharaoh actually hardened his own heart 4 times prior. In other words, Pharaoh had already decided that his heart was hardened... God just stopped trying to soften him up. Callousness is a dangerous thing because it challenges God's desire to use us. What we see in the Bible are several instances of people's hearts growing callous and God simply "moving around them". God doesn't seek out the biggest, the strongest, the smartest, or the most capable... he seeks out hearts that are open to the truth that He brings.
Compromise is a beautiful thing... sometimes. What if someone wants you to compromise the truth? Most things we treasure as "truth" are really just truth relative to our experience or relative to our knowledge, but one form of truth which will always hold is the truth of Christ. While compromise can lead to functioning governments and harmonious households, it can also drive us towards a perverted form of Christ-worship that starts looking pretty different from how God calls us to live. There are few things I know absolutely as truth, but one of those is that Christ is Lord and that what He has called me to do can't be compromised.
No one likes an inconvenience. We would rather not have to make difficult decisions between community events and church. We'd rather not have to sacrifice energy or sleep for prayer time or Bible study. Yet... here we are. As we look at Malachi, we can see how God feels towards his people who can't be bothered to give him the respect he's due. God is a God of love and compassion, but love and compassion at that level really insists that we show an ounce of reverence to a being capable of forgiving all our sins. As we look at how Malachi chastises the religious elite, we are faced with some hard questions: Do we give God our best? Are we willing to put him first? When we measure our actions against the calling God has placed on our lives, does it imply we serve a great and mighty God or a simple beggar who should be happy for the scraps we give him?
No sooner had the Hebrew people been redeemed from their bondage in Egypt did they begin yearning to return to slavery. The uncertainty and risk to prosperity that they faced as they traveled into the desert was too much for them to handle. They asked Moses if it wouldn't be better if they remained in their slavery. Some of us yearn for bondage. We feel the alluring call of sin and we wish we could return to that life. But... we have to stop and realize how foolish the Hebrew people look today. We have the benefit of knowing how the story ends. What seemed "reasonable" to the Hebrew people seems insane to us, knowing the glories and blessings they would receive in the Promised Land. We, too, are traveling to our Promised Land and there is no doubt that our own disobedience may look foolish in hindsight. The things of this world may look nice in a moment, but they promise only death. Christ did not die on the cross just so we could return to our graves. Stand up and get out of the grave... Christ has risen and he beckons for you to rise with him!
Happy Easter!
Love one another. It's such a simple command yet so difficult to do. We know the most important commandments Jesus gave us is to love God and love others, but why such an emphasis on love? As we dig deeper, what we find are references to our selves being "perfected" through love. What does that mean? "Perfected" means completed or make total in our purpose. In other words, we find purpose in our love. Many of us are accustomed to thinking of the famous "love chapter" in 1 Corinthians for wedding purposes, but a closer look at how love defines our purpose may bring new meaning to these frequently repeated scriptures.
When engineers are working on a system, they can do one of three different things: create a thing, modify a thing, or destroy a thing. God works in our lives in much of the same way. He creates in us a new creation, he modifies the person who remains, and the destroys the old bonds which held us down. As we look at our relationships with others, we want to strive to do the same thing. We want to celebrate and join others as they are made anew in Christ. We want to help encourage and strengthen them as they are modified into better reflections of Christ. We want to help to assure them and remind them that their old lives are long-gone. A critical part of being a family united in Christ is recognizing the change that each of us underwent and continues to undergo.
Encouragement seems so easy to offer, yet it can be so rare to find. Even the strongest among us like a nice pat on the back or an "attaboy!" as we try to do the things God has called us to do. While life is full of frustrations and criticisms, sometimes we have to make a conscious effort to reach out and offer encouragement to one another. Our sense of encouragement starts with how God first encouraged us and spreads out to all our interactions with one another. As we become encouragers, we grow closer to one another, bonding tighter within a sense of family.
This is the guided lesson video to accompany our partners worshiping in home church groups. This is for a message called "Serve One Another", part of our "Family" series during the Lenten season. Message given on March 12, 2023.Service is often equated with "volunteering" in the church, but is that all it is? Is serving the church just racking up service hours and moving on? There has to be something more to it than just charitable feelings and shared time. Once we seat our desire to serve one another in feelings of affection, opportunity, and dedication, we might find service a far more fulfilling experience.
The early church is personified by their sense of mutual support and charity. They viewed their possessions as being entirely shared and provided for everyone's needs. Elsewhere in the Bible, we see support taking many forms. In some instances it looks like an individual assisting others in ministry. In more intimate moments, it looks a lot like Jesus asking his friends to spend time with him as he prayed for the terrible events he would suffer on the cross. Regardless of how you show support in your church, it is important that we ask ourselves if we're acting more like parts of a family, here to support one another, or if our interactions with church look a lot more like members of a social club.
Are some sins worse than others? Anyone saying "all sin is the same" may be rushing to make something simple that isn't so simple. Jesus, himself, even talks about certain sin being "greater". What most people mean to say by stating "all sin is the same" is that the penalty for all sin is the same. Death is death, no matter how great the sin that earned it. The distinction between the weight of our sin and the penalty of our sin... and connecting that to what Christ did on the cross... is where things start to get cool.
Among enthusiastic Christians, some have the idea that being "bold" in your faith is the same thing as yelling at people from the street corner. When we take a look at the Bible, there isn't a lot to support this style of "ambush evangelism" where we scream about the Bible to every stranger who crosses our path. Even in the boldest examples of Christ's apostles, we see individuals who through their testimonies, and God's timing, were able to reach the masses. So many have been hurt by individuals who mean well but lack the gentle tongue talked about in 2 Timothy 2. We must live up to our obligation to spread the gospel, but being careful to do so in a way that those we seek to reach understand that we are sharing Christ with them out of our love.
Most of us have heard of the four different types of love as modeled in the New Testament: Eros, Storge, Philia, and Agape. What do they mean? How do they manifest themselves in our lives today? What are the goods and bads that can come along with some of these types of love? By understanding the type of love exhibited by Christ in the Bible, we can learn a lot about how we interact with the lost world around us.
With a faith that so many accuse of being "judgmental", it's important to stop for a second and appreciate how self-centered the lessons of the Bible are. That's not to say that the Bible advocates for us to focus on BENEFITTING ourselves, but that it provides us lessons to improve ourselves. Many Christians will read the teachings of Christ and use them as an instrument to point at others' flaws, but that's simply not how they were intended. It's clear that God wants us to focus on our own actions, our own temptations, and our own redemption. In our dealings with others, we should be focused on projecting the same care and compassion that Christ showed to those who sought him. If Christ didn't confront the lost with the magnitude of their sins, why should we use the Bible as a bludgeon? Hold one another accountable, grow in the Word, but don't flatter yourself as being equal to (or greater than) God and acting as a judge of man's morality.
Some people get the feeling that they are too far away from God or that they have something they simply can't shake which keeps them from committing their life to God. What if I told you that acknowledging that it is ONLY through God's Will that we can truly be created? There is a picture of recreation in Ezekiel 37 where we see God not only recreate the dead, but also endow them with a part of his spirit. Once we realize that God gives us rebirth only because of what He Wills, and not because of what we do or don't do, we are able to better see the depth and scale of His love.
Do you know your worth? Typically when people ask this question, they follow it up by explaining how you have so many valuable traits and characteristics inside. They use the question as a launching-point for a motivational speech. In a way our worth is... nothing. If we measure our worth according to the various pursuits and accomplishments we've experienced, then our worth will ultimately disappear. Maybe it won't disappear for many years, many decades, or well past our lifetime, but eventually our accomplishments will be lost. Our wealth will one day fade. Our fame will become forgotten. Depressed? Well, don't be. It is actually by realizing our worth on an eternal scale that we are able to see how beautiful of a gift grace truly is. God owes us nothing and yet he still came to earth in pursuit of each one of us... not because of OUR value, but because of HIS love.
So many problems in our world could be solved if people were just a tiny bit more self aware of themselves and the consequences of their actions. What happens to our relationship with God when we fail to be self-aware? Can it impact our personal ministry? Could it rob us of blessings? By being aware of who we truly are, we can confront the flaws which lay within and be more sensitive to where God is working in our lives.
Note: During this sermon, the pastor's mic was muted from recording so the audio was salvaged from other microphones on the stage. As a result, the quality is very low. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Certain phrases and philosophies have embedded themselves into our cultural ethos. Are they just harmless phrases? Do they have any intersection with our faith? Absolutely! The Bible warns us against mingling our eternal priorities with our worldly perspective, yet many struggle to set a firm hierarchy of authority for their own life. Which is more important: the practicalities and wisdom of the world or our God-given calling to love, care, and support one another? If the calling is number 1 in our lives, people should be able to see it as a result of our willingness to do things which are not culturally popular or beneficial.
God's promise is realized through the coming of Christ. Through the promise of a Messiah, we catch a glimpse into the perfect commitment God has to his creation. The promise may seem obvious to us, but it wasn't to the Pharisees and Sadducees; the religious elite of their day. Were they stupid? Were they full of hate? Or did they simply fall into the same trap so many of us fall into of thinking we understand the scriptures far better than we really do?
God has perfect timing. It may not be the timing we want or expect, but it's perfect. We can see this clearly when we look at the nativity. From the historical events taking place in the years prior to and during the birth of Christ to the contextual timing of scriptural events which laid the groundwork for Christ's ministry, we can see God working in the lives of Jews, Gentiles, believers, and "heathens" all so that His Will can be achieved.
A useful tool in understanding the importance of receiving a Savior is understanding the prophecies which foretold his coming. How did God communicate to use that we would be receiving a Messiah? What can we learn about the nature of God from how he told us about Jesus and how does that shape how we tell people about Jesus today? Prophecy is much more than simply "Biblical Psychic Readings" and when we stop to think about the context surrounding these early warnings of a coming Savior, we can appreciate the fact that God had a plan for His creation all along.
Why did God have to send a savior to save us from our sins? After all, if he's all-powerful, couldn't he just snap his fingers and make "grace" happen? There is a reason for the Messiah and understanding that reason starts with understand why this thing called "The Law" exists. "The law" is often considered nothing more than an archaic set of rules and rituals for the Hebrew people, but was there something more to it? If it was just mere "actions", then why does Christ seem to criticize the Pharisees for doing all the "right actions"? There must be something more to "the law" than just what we think of as human laws and understanding it's purpose is the beginning to helping us understand why we were sent a Savior.
Did you know that communal gatherings are about more than just good food, church friends, and sharing the latest local scuttlebutt? In actuality, communal gathers are an integral part of being a part of the body of believers. There are some who want to claim "I can be Christian without being a part of a church", but can you really? What we see in the early church are people who gathered together regularly for reasons other than ritual. The learned together, they worshipped together, and they ate together. Not everything had to be a 'sanctioned church function'. By growing closer to one another, we grow closer to God through our common faith and common purpose. What else does gathering together teach us about our savior?
There is a direct connection between "thanking" and "giving". While many Americans give, often it's based on guilt or convenience. As soon as we start rooting our sense of generosity in our thankfulness for how God has blessed us, we are moved to give on a whole new level. God has granted us so many different blessings in our lives. Understanding the satisfaction, contentment, and joy in the blessings we know makes it that much more exciting to share a taste of what we have been blessed with as we become more sensitive to the needs around us.
There are a lot of "good, devout, mature Christians" out there who can quote hundreds of verses, have memorized all the books of the Bible, hold an impressive catalog of Christian novels, and maybe even attend church regularly who are also living as dead-men-walking. They have all the knowledge and they have the desire, but their faith isn't being put into action. They're waiting for something to get them to move. Maybe that something is an open door. Maybe that something is "the right time". Maybe that something is for a moment when their own pride is reduced enough that they can take a leap of faith. God calls us to act, and sometimes to act somewhat recklessly. If we want to live lives that look more and more like those of the great church leaders of the first century and the apostles of Christ, we must be willing to be Christians who "do" rather than simply Christians who "say".
There is always a preferred way we'd rather see a situation unfold. We'd rather our team win the big game. We'd rather earn that big promotion. We'd rather make it just in time to get that special deal on Black Friday. The same is true of our ministry lives as well. We'd love it if a ministry event saw thousands falling to their knees in worship. We'd love if that big social event received hundreds of "likes" and "shares" on Facebook. We'd love for the individual we are ministering to to suddenly turn their life around. The million dollar question is whether we can keep our heads up and keep pushing forward when things don't go our way.
There are no shortages of activities, assets, and privileges that this world will try to tell you will make you feel happy, wanted, and loved. The world loves throwing "things" at us and trying to convince us that those "things" will satisfy our souls. All you need is the right social group; all you need is the right financial purpose; all you need is the right political cause. Missing in all of this is a realization that the holes in our hearts are God-shaped and can only be filled by one thing... God. It can all be summed up in one phrase: He's enough. He's enough for our wants, He's enough for our needs. He's enough for our humbling, He's enough for our salvation. He's enough for anything and everything our hearts could desire. If we have Him, how could we want for anything else?
This is the final message in our series titled "He's Enough" which is on the subject of freedom. Freedom is a major topic to God. It's actually the seminal events of God's intervention on earth in both Old and New Testaments. In the Old Testament, God delivers his chosen people from bondage from Egypt while in the New Testament God delivers all people from the bondage of sin. When we compare the freedom we have in Christ to the freedom offered by the world, or even by religious institutions, we can see that the only true freedom we have in life is freedom from the flawed elements of this world.
There are no shortages of activities, assets, and privileges that this world will try to tell you will make you feel happy, wanted, and loved. The world loves throwing "things" at us and trying to convince us that those "things" will satisfy our souls. All you need is the right social group; all you need is the right financial purpose; all you need is the right political cause. Missing in all of this is a realization that the holes in our hearts are God-shaped and can only be filled by one thing... God. It can all be summed up in one phrase: He's enough. He's enough for our wants, He's enough for our needs. He's enough for our humbling, He's enough for our salvation. He's enough for anything and everything our hearts could desire. If we have Him, how could we want for anything else?
This is the sixth message in our series titled "He's Enough" which is on the subject of acceptance. Rest assured, God is well acquainted with rejection. The entire story of creation has essentially been one where we see God providing and man rejecting. It is fitting, then, that the one God sent to redeem all mankind is his son who would be rejected by the religious authorities, yet become the savior to the lost, the burdened, and the afflicted.
There are no shortages of activities, assets, and privileges that this world will try to tell you will make you feel happy, wanted, and loved. The world loves throwing "things" at us and trying to convince us that those "things" will satisfy our souls. All you need is the right social group; all you need is the right financial purpose; all you need is the right political cause. Missing in all of this is a realization that the holes in our hearts are God-shaped and can only be filled by one thing... God. It can all be summed up in one phrase: He's enough. He's enough for our wants, He's enough for our needs. He's enough for our humbling, He's enough for our salvation. He's enough for anything and everything our hearts could desire. If we have Him, how could we want for anything else?
This is the fourth message to our sermon series "He's Enough" where we will focus on our worry and anxiety. Worry is something that is often founded in our dependency on the things of this world... wealth, approval, influence, or many other things the world will tell you is "enough" to make you feel secure. What Christ offers is a changed perspective on your situation. While he may not remove your physical need for food, water, or shelter, he WILL open your eyes to how futile fulfilling your worldly desires truly is. With this new perspective, we stop worrying about what the world has to offer and instead start focusing on what Christ has already secured on our behalf: eternal blessings and a glory eternal.
There are no shortages of activities, assets, and privileges that this world will try to tell you will make you feel happy, wanted, and loved. The world loves throwing "things" at us and trying to convince us that those "things" will satisfy our souls. All you need is the right social group; all you need is the right financial purpose; all you need is the right political cause. Missing in all of this is a realization that the holes in our hearts are God-shaped and can only be filled by one thing... God. It can all be summed up in one phrase: He's enough. He's enough for our wants, He's enough for our needs. He's enough for our humbling, He's enough for our salvation. He's enough for anything and everything our hearts could desire. If we have Him, how could we want for anything else?
This is the third message to our sermon series "He's Enough" where we will focus on our worry and anxiety. Worry is something that is often founded in our dependency on the things of this world... wealth, approval, influence, or many other things the world will tell you is "enough" to make you feel secure. What Christ offers is a changed perspective on your situation. While he may not remove your physical need for food, water, or shelter, he WILL open your eyes to how futile fulfilling your worldly desires truly is. With this new perspective, we stop worrying about what the world has to offer and instead start focusing on what Christ has already secured on our behalf: eternal blessings and a glory eternal.
There are no shortages of activities, assets, and privileges that this world will try to tell you will make you feel happy, wanted, and loved. The world loves throwing "things" at us and trying to convince us that those "things" will satisfy our souls. All you need is the right social group; all you need is the right financial purpose; all you need is the right political cause. Missing in all of this is a realization that the holes in our hearts are God-shaped and can only be filled by one thing... God. It can all be summed up in one phrase: He's enough. He's enough for our wants, He's enough for our needs. He's enough for our humbling, He's enough for our salvation. He's enough for anything and everything our hearts could desire. If we have Him, how could we want for anything else?
This is the second message to our sermon series "He's Enough" where we will focus on our pride. Our pride can lead us to think that we need more, must accomplish more, or need to become more. It leads us to believe in our own legend which will only lead to a spiritual hunger that is never satisfied. The only thing that will be enough to satiate our pride is to replace it with pride in the works of God, whether through us or through others. Pride-in-Christ will lead us to, ultimately, place others above ourselves which challenges us to embrace those whom the world says deserve no pride.
There are no shortages of activities, assets, and privileges that this world will try to tell you will make you feel happy, wanted, and loved. The world loves throwing "things" at us and trying to convince us that those "things" will satisfy our souls. All you need is the right social group; all you need is the right financial purpose; all you need is the right political cause. Missing in all of this is a realization that the holes in our hearts are God-shaped and can only be filled by one thing... God. It can all be summed up in one phrase: He's enough. He's enough for our wants, He's enough for our needs. He's enough for our humbling, He's enough for our salvation. He's enough for anything and everything our hearts could desire. If we have Him, how could we want for anything else?
This is the first message in our series which focuses on the subject of our identity. Society has many ways it can try to categorize or "bin" each person. You can do it by political persuasion, sexual preferences, race, economic status, or many other metrics you can find in a survey or census form. What does the Bible have to say about our identities? More importantly, what does it say about our relationship with God if we still require some type of worldly identity in order to feel "whole"?
There are no shortages of activities, assets, and privileges that this world will try to tell you will make you feel happy, wanted, and loved. The world loves throwing "things" at us and trying to convince us that those "things" will satisfy our souls. All you need is the right social group; all you need is the right financial purpose; all you need is the right political cause. Missing in all of this is a realization that the holes in our hearts are God-shaped and can only be filled by one thing... God. It can all be summed up in one phrase: He's enough. He's enough for our wants, He's enough for our needs. He's enough for our humbling, He's enough for our salvation. He's enough for anything and everything our hearts could desire. If we have Him, how could we want for anything else?
This is the introductory message to our sermon series "He's Enough" where we will focus on what it means to prioritize God above all. Solomon had everything this world could have to offer but ultimately he decried all of these things as "meaningless". In Ecclesiastes we learn that all the pursuits of this world eventually fade and waste away and for that reason, there is only one thing that should occupy our hearts and minds: the goodness of our God. Prioritize God above all other things, and THEN we can find true contentment and peace regardless of the blessings or trials we face.
Ever feel totally isolated from the rest of society around you, even when you're surrounded by other people? You're not alone. The nature of being a Christian means we often feel isolated. Many individuals in the Bible felt this isolation. Sometimes it was due to their calling, something due to their circumstances, or sometimes due to individuals actively oppressing them. Regardless of why it happens, it always teaches us something about ourselves. When we begin to feel like the whole world is standing against us or that no one can understand our pain, it's important to remember that God has DOMINION over our circumstances, he has DOMINION over our ministry, and he has DOMINION over anyone who would stand against us.
The solution for feelings of isolation and loneliness is not just to find another group of people to hang around or replacements for our dependency on the approval/acceptance of the world; but for us to modify our perception so that we prioritize God's control over our situation over whatever feelings of loneliness the world is projecting onto us.
The greatest, most glorious achievement a Roman general could hope to achieve is the honor of holding a Triumph. The general would parade through the city with symbols of his brave conquests and be treated figuratively (and somewhat literally) like a god-king. Peculiar enough, a slave is said to have been present on the procession chariot with the general who would repeatedly whisper "Remember, you too are mortal."
As Christians, it can be enticing to sit back and rest on our achievements. Perhaps we have a long, celebrated career in ministry. Perhaps we gave a large sum of money to a mission trip. Perhaps we executed a huge event or ministry activity that few have ever done. Regardless, its important that we not get lazy and fool ourselves into thinking "well... I've done enough". We must remember that we too are mortal... or in this case that we too are sinners. Our actions count for nothing compared to where our hearts stand. If we are relying on our actions and achievements to find favor with God, one day we may find ourselves standing before the almighty sorely disappointed in his response.
As Jesus walked the hill to Golgotha, he didn't stop halfway up and proclaim, "I've done more than anyone else and I think I can stop now." No, Jesus continued up the hill. We must seek to push ourselves up the hill with Christ, maintaining a joy and peace in our endurance as we live a life worthy of Christ's calling.
Did you know that even small imperfections in the processing of metal can cause sensitive machinery to fail? This is exactly what led to a crash known as the Sioux City Miracle where an air disaster was caused by a metallurgy imperfection in a small disk responsible for holding one of the engines on the aircraft. It was found that during the casting process, small bubbles of nitrogen were allowed to form in the metal which weakened the part, leading to a major disaster. Typically, these metal disks are forged during a specific process designed to worm out any possible imperfections.
God has a process for us as well, capable of weeding out all of the small imperfections which can cause us to fail. Sure, we may have it in our heads that we took care of the big problems in our lives, but we have to keep a watchful eye on the small things as well. We can look at many characters in the Old Testament and see how God worked on them through their devotion to prayer, meditation, and service. As God worked on all the various imperfections in their character, they were made stronger and ultimately used to achieve great, great things!
Have you ever experienced a situation where the nature of your relationship with another person changed, but the other person wasn't quite on-board with it yet? Most of us have been on the sending or receiving of this situation. Children often experience this as they transition into adulthood and see their parents struggle to treat them as young adults rather than small children. Coworkers can experience this struggle when a colleague gets promoted and now must be treated as a supervisor. We always hope these transitions will happen smoothly, but sometimes people have a hard time accepting us when we undergo a life change.
This is the situation many Christians find themselves in as they live their lives as new creations, re-born in Christ. They may not be interested in the same things or have the same priorities as before; as a result, their old friends may be confused... even angered. Why is my friend changing? What is his/her problem? It's not hate; they just don't understand. It's important that we all keep in mind who we serve when we decide to orient our lives towards God. The world, including friends and family, may be confused at the changes they see in our life, but we must remain strong and resolute in our calling. The old is gone and the new has come! Stay strong and understand that no matter who may present themselves as an adversary to your new way of life, God has called you to something better! Who knows... maybe those who look at your with a confused expression today are just going to be tomorrow's mission field.
Popular Christian movies, such as the "God's Not Dead" series, love to characterize Christians as good-hearted, innocent victims of an oppressively sinful world seeking to destroy every mention of the man named "Jesus". This portrayal of the "lost world" is not only inaccurate; it also risks indoctrinating Christians with the idea that they are playing on a team opposite of the world. What happens when we start viewing the broken and the lost as opponents rather than individual creations stuck in sin's trap? The lost are not the enemy, they are the object of our compassion. As Christians, we can acknowledge the sinful state of the world without framing the world as an existential enemy. What enemy do we have to fear? What can the world do that Christ hasn't already overcome? The world isn't a battlefield; it's a mission field.
Jesus does something incredibly weird to modern-day observers: he pushed the masses away. Why would someone do that if he's trying to save as many people as possible? Jesus has a keen understanding of how compassion and truth mix together; he welcomed all into his arms but still preached a "hard truth" that many couldn't accept. What does it look like when we "accept" this hard truth? Is it a matter of being tougher and more determined, or is it a matter of identity that keeps us on the narrow path?
God and country... it's a match made in heaven, right? Maybe not. With so many Christians attempting to mix their faith and their politics, what does the Bible have to say about the matter? As we look at the Biblical approach Christ takes towards government meddling, we see a distinct disdain for involving oneself in the matters of men. Is it because government is inherently good? Is it inherently evil? Or is it that God just simply doesn't want us to be a slave to any force of earth, including our modern-day obsession with political commentators and leaders?
"Be Rather Than Seem". That is the motto of Pastor Joseph's alma mater, NC State. As Christians we are called to "be rather than seem" in our commitment to Christ. It all starts with knowing God, then submitting to God, finally a commitment to God, and continuing on in service to God. Join us as we explore what it means to "be rather than seem" to be a follower of Christ.
This is the fourth and final episode in this sermon series.
"Be Rather Than Seem". That is the motto of Pastor Joseph's alma mater, NC State. As Christians we are called to "be rather than seem" in our commitment to Christ. It all starts with knowing God, then submitting to God, finally a commitment to God, and continuing on in service to God. Join us as we explore what it means to "be rather than seem" to be a follower of Christ.
The second episode in the series was conducted in a home-church style so a sermon is not available. This is the third episode in this sermon series.
"Be Rather Than Seem". That is the motto of Pastor Joseph's alma mater, NC State. As Christians we are called to "be rather than seem" in our commitment to Christ. It all starts with knowing God, then submitting to God, finally a commitment to God, and continuing on in service to God. Join us as we explore what it means to "be rather than seem" to be a follower of Christ.
This is the first episode in this sermon series.