God wants us to be free from stress—free for love, service, and joy. But this means understanding the things that produce stress in our lives and changing our ways of dealing with them. Over the next six weeks we will do this through our sermon series, “Stress Tests” and our accompanying devotional. Feel free to text, call, email, or chat if you have reactions or ideas!
This August we begin a five week sermon series that examines the challenge of keeping our promises in marriage covenants. It is called Best. Marriage. Ever. We will learn from some of the scriptures most famous couples, including Adam and Eve, Abraham, and Sarah, Jacob, Leah, and Rachel, Moses and Zipporah, and Joseph and Mary. The world's most famous single advisor on marriage, of course, is Jesus. He will figure prominently as well.
How do we authenticate a genuine Christian life? What are the marks that distinguish a true disciple from an imitation? How does real faith mark our lives and our characters?
These are questions that we will be exploring during Lenten sermon series, Marked. Each week we'll explore one mark in our Sunday sermons and then have an opportunity to engage with it through our devotionals and discuss it during our Wednesday night adult classes.
Welcome to 2022! We are going to focus on each week on a different grace practice. The goal of the Christian life is to become, every day, more like Jesus: holier, happier, and deeper. This requires a set of habits we can employ each day. That is the way to become "Everyday Saints."
What do Alvin and the Chipmunks, Elvis Presley, Paul McCartney, Bing Crosby, Mariah Carey, and Bruce Springsteen all have in common? They all recorded songs that are part of our new Series! We will contrast one classic secular tune with a corresponding biblical theme.
Our individual experience of the season, like our individual experience of the season, like our individual experience of our faith, can be shallow and profound, intensely meaningful and utterly trivial. Often deep human longings and persistent questions reflected in the songs we sing and in the art we create. With the arrival of Jesus, God enters into our story to reshape those longings and answer those questions.
The greatest metaphor for the church is the “Body of Christ.” This fall, we will explore how we can build-up that body in a time when there is such a high level of division and conflict in our society and culture. Together we can bring the reconciliation God intends to the communities where we live, work, and play!
We will examine four biblical passages that help us learn to listen for His voice and to discover what is most distinctive about the way He communicates His love and direction. In a noisy world, learning to listen to God is a most valuable and necessary skill.
The book of Revelation is unique in its appeal primarily to our imagination- not a freewheeling imagination, but a disciplined imagination.
Addressed to seven fledging church communities in the west part of Asia Minor, its focus is the return of Jesus Christ and the final establishing of God's Kingdom at the end of time.
Filled with verses of great comfort and images of absolute horror, Revelation has fascinated and repulsed readers for generations. It has given rise to exotic and elaborate theories about final things and also been ignored by many believers. We will seek to recover its original context and discover the crucial message it contains about providence and history.
God speaks in parables and stories, commands and proverbs, poetry and songs, and in natural and historical events. He also speaks through images and symbols, disclosing deep purposes. May God bless us, as together we enter the vivid and vital world of apocalyptic.
The disciples experienced the love of God through Jesus. They harnessed a new word, “agape.”
They came to believe that this new word signified the most potent force in history and the nature of God Himself.
Agape love had the power to redeem and transform people and relationships.
During April and May, we will agape love, using the Bible’s most famous chapter on the subject, 1 Corinthians 13.
If we are to fulfill the great command, to love God and neighbor, we must have a clear sense of its dimensions and its depth. It should be a life goal of every person to become a better lover!
Seven last words, gasped out with labored breath. Seven sentences spoken before dying. Sometimes too many words can fail to convey a truth worth telling. But here on the cross, each word is profound, each sentence delves deeply into the heart of God and the nature of reality. These words change the way we see God, life, death, and suffering. This Lent, we will spend our weeks at the foot of the cross, listening to Jesus' seven last words.