This morning Ron Bouthillette offers a straightforward, encouraging message: God is able. When life seems bleak or hopeless, and when we’re at the end of our rope, Ron encourages us to look not to our own strength, but to God. Because God is able.
One Thing I Ask
This morning Rev. Doug Birdsall challenges us with a simple question: what one thing do you want, more than anything else? In Psalm 27 King David sings, “One thing I ask of the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. To gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, and to seek him in his temple.”
Faith Like a Child
Jesus didn’t only tolerate children; he welcomed them and sought them out. And to those who thought they were too busy for children, he had some sharp words: “The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”
What does Jesus call us to, when he calls us to receive the kingdom of God like a child?
What is that in your hand?
When God calls Moses to be his emissary to Egypt, Moses knows how completely unqualified he is for the job. God responds and asks Moses, “What is that in your hand?”
God doesn’t call us to serve him after we’ve got everything perfectly in place; he calls us and gives us the tools we need, which are usually right in front of us. The secret lies in receiving God’s call with open hands instead of with clenched fists.
How Not to Build a Kingdom
When you examine how Jesus begins to build his kingdom after he is raised from the dead, you quickly notice that he does not follow the expected paths or best practices. In fact, he seems to stack the deck against himself. Why would he assign himself such a competitive disadvantage? As we celebrate the resurrection, we see just how unexpectedly perfect God’s plans are.
Hope is Not Wishful Thinking
When we talk about hope, we often mean something too anemic. Hope is not man-made, wishful thinking. Hope is not a sense of denial or passivity. Christian hope is something deeper—stronger—far more durable that we understand. This morning Doran Morford helps us explore a more resilient hope.
The Lord Will Provide
It’s one of the most chilling stories in the Bible: God tests Abraham and asks him to sacrifice his own son. How does Abraham respond, and what does it demonstrate about Abraham’s relationship with God?
Grace Changes You
In Luke 5 Jesus causes Simon, a fisherman, to haul in the catch of a lifetime. So many fish that his boat begins to sink. Then Simon leaves the catch of fish on the shore to follow Jesus.
If you had just landed the catch of a lifetime, what would motivate you to leave it behind?
Related
Rejoice—with joy! Very large! Very much!
The story of the magi (wise men) is often told as part of the Christmas story, although it probably occurs at least a year after Jesus was born. Far from being distant and irrelevant, we see in their story our own story—of people far from God, who almost unintentionally find God and can’t help but worship.
Something Good Is Going On Inside
At one point Luke describes a group of friends who are willing to cut a hole in the roof of a house where Jesus is staying, just to lower their paralyzed friend through the ceiling to Jesus can heal him. To what lengths would you go to encounter Jesus? Listen as Ryan Tankersley, a pastor from our sister church, New Hope Baptist Church, challenges us to seek God no matter what.
The Courage to Wait
Psalm 27 strikes us with an unresolved ending, like a dissonant jazz chord: Wait for the Lord. Be strong, and let your heart take courage. Wait for the Lord. This morning we explore what it may look like to wait for the Lord, and how remembering his faithfulness in the past gives us courage to wait well.
Love One Another
Love is at the heart of the Christian faith. Jesus tells us the greatest commandment is to love God with our whole self, and the second is like it: to love our neighbor as ourselves. But it’s very easy to leave love in the abstract.
This morning Doran helps us to see more of the specifics. What does love actually look like, not just as an abstract idea, but as a concrete reality? How does love change your life?
Relationship and Right
How should Christians disagree? Disagreement is inevitable, especially in gray areas where right and wrong isn’t clear.
Paul gives us a window into two disagreements that early Christians faced: whether it was ok to eat meat, and whether they should still observe a Sabbath.
When we sacrifice our relationships on the altar of our rights or being right, Paul says we get it wrong. How will we relate to one another, and potentially disagree, as we think about our response to the coronavirus?
The Week After Easter
The week after Jesus rose from the dead his followers were in disbelief. Some had seen him, but most hadn’t. They were tentative. Afraid. Unsure what to think. Thomas famously insisted, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”
“Doubting Thomas” often gets a bad rap, but don’t we often feel the same way? When we have to see something to believe it, what happens when Jesus shows up? Can doubt and belief coexist?
In the Political Sphere Without the Political Spirit
God calls each of us to practice our faith in a way that promotes righteousness, justice, and mercy in the world—for Christians and non-Christians alike. It is an audacious goal.
Listen as guest preacher Neil Hubacker expands on how we can faithfully join God in such a bold calling.
How do we Respond to Evil?
In the past several weeks we have read news of three mass shootings in America. How are we, as Christians, to respond? What good can we possibly do, and what hope can there possibly be?
Sermon ends and pastoral prayer begins at 31:30.
Holy Confusion
Christians believe in the Holy Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit often gets the silent treatment. Whether we don’t understand the Spirit or fear what submitting to the Spirit might look like, we all have objections.
What happens when we acknowledge and face those objections? What happens when we let the Holy Spirit into our lives?
Are You Still Thirsty?
When we’re thirsty, we have to take something outside of us (water) and put it inside of us, in order to satisfy our thirst.
“Are you still thirsty?” Jesus asks.
God intentionally us to be thirsty beings. We are made to thirst for him, since Jesus, the living water, will fill us to overflowing.
Been Poolside Lately?
In John 5 Jesus asks a blind man a startling question: “Do you want to be healed?”
Still more startling is what Jesus does not ask the man: “What do you believe?”
Is it possible that God operates on his own terms and not ours? Is it possible that Jesus touches whomever he pleases regardless of whether we deem them worthy?
Believing is Seeing
After Jesus is raised from the dead John gives four quick sketches of some of Jesus’ closest followers. Eventually they all believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, but in very different ways. Yet Jesus meets each of them right where they are. He doesn’t demand that they reach up to him; he reaches down to them. As you listen to the four sketches, which is most like you?