Practical messages that will encourage you and help you grow in your faith.
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[The below text has been machine translated and may contain errors. Please listen to audio for original and integral translation] Let’s pray. Oh Father, we love you. We stand amazed time and time again that you would love us amidst everything we are and the foolish at times, foolish choices we make and you’re always standing there with arms wide open, ready to receive us because the love you have for us never, ever ends.It’s higher than the highest heavens. It’s deeper than the deepest sea and I stand amazed once again that you love to be with us, your children. So we welcome you into this hou
Last week, we learned of God’s heart to shepherd His people. After all, He is not only a good shepherd, He’s the ultimate, best shepherd! A good shepherd lays down their lives to care for their sheep. There is no greater example of anyone ever doing this than Jesus. Stepping out of eternity, wrapping Himself in flesh, living with our weaknesses and temptations, humbled as one of us. Jesus lived His life in full surrender and trust in His Heavenly Father’s hands, sinless, laying down His life continually long before His ultimate sacrifice on the cross. In a likely familiar Psalm, David wrote: P
This morning, we’re going to learn what is on the Father’s heart for His people. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever; unchanging! His love is not only unconditional and inescapable, He is love! He created us in His image and has a perfect plan for us. In His boundless wisdom, He chose to give us something that love requires; free will. He created us with the ability to choose. Will we choose to selflessly reciprocate God’s great love back to Him and to others? Or, will we choose to selfishly reject His love and serve our own selves? Jesus said: Matthew 25:31-46 31 “When the Son of Man
Recently, we’ve been learning about how to produce the good fruits of the Spirit in our lives and the freedom that comes with them! That’s right, where the Spirit of the Lord is there is… Freedom and Fruits! Jesus taught us that these are evidence that someone is one of His disciples. Freedom and fruits should be clearly evident in the life of every believer in ever-increasing measures as we grow and mature in our faith. Today, God is reminding us from Ecclesiastes 3 that for everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. There is a purpose in everything that God does.
[The below text has been machine translated and may contain errors. Please listen to audio for original and integral translation] Summer is in full swing and going super fast. I know the last Thursday and Friday were terrible with the Canadian wildfires, and I just pray, please pray for those people, because if it was that bad here, and we really shouldn’t have went outside, can you imagine how it is up there? I just feel bad. So July often includes like 4th of July, watching fireworks, doing outdoor picnics, just the nation’s independence.You know, we have freedom of speech and freedom of wor
The past few weeks, we’ve been learning about how to bear good fruit; the fruits of the Spirit! Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. These are things that everyone desires to both receive from and also give to others. These fruits are unstoppable life attributes that only result in good things! In order to bear these good fruits, we must stay connected to Jesus like branches to a vine. We also need to trust our Heavenly Father as He prunes away anything in our lives that prevent us from being fruitful. Less is more! In the previous two scen
Last week, we were reminded that God created us to bear good fruit; the fruits of the Spirit! Jesus taught us that He is the vine and we, non-Jews who have accepted His salvation, are branches grafted into Him. Our role as His disciples is to separate ourselves from the sinful vines that ensnare us and to firmly place and position and graft ourselves into Him. Jesus has promised to withhold no good thing and to richly provide in an abundance all that we need to live a fruitful life. In fact, Jesus did not only offer it, He requires that we bear good fruit! Our role as a branch is simply to sta
The last few weeks, we’ve been learning how to deal with sin. How do we overcome sin and temptation and take the way out that God always faithfully provides? One of the keys that enable us to do this is to choose to focus not on the lesser things that we are giving up, but to focus on the good things that we were created for. It’s tough for many of us to say, “No.” However, when we keep in mind the awesome things that we are saying “Yes!” to, it’s easier to say, “No!” to everything else. Saving money works this way. If we say that we want to save money just for the sake of having some extra, w
Happy Father’s Day! Today, we celebrate you! Being a father is one of the most challenging, exhausting, and fulfilling roles that a man can have. God entrusts you to be the primary person to provide for, teach, train, equip, support, encourage, and guide the life of your children. For better or worse, a father’s impact on their children is undeniable and inescapable. Even to be completely absent is still to shape the life of your children. For better or worse, our children learn more by what is caught than what is taught. In other words, they learn more from our actions, the example that we li
Last week, we learned that ignorance is rarely bliss. Although it can be very painful at the time to have certain truths revealed to us, it is ultimately for our good that we become aware of our reality. Sin is essentially misusing our lives. God created us for one purpose, but we are using our lives for another. It never feels good to any of us to have our sin revealed to us. Especially when what is revealed is sin committed in ignorance. When we truly think that we are right, it’s challenging for us to agree with God and admit that we are actually wrong. Proverbs 27:5-6 (AMP) 5 Better is an
In opening, I feel that it is important to set the tone for the morning. What we’re covering today really requires us to lean not into our own understanding, but to see things from God’s perspective. We call this repenting. What God is going to call us to do is not easy for any of us. It doesn’t feel good at the time. It doesn’t seem encouraging. However, if we trust God’s ways and place our faith in His process, it will end in goodness and healing and deliverance! Alright, so we’re all in this together, right? Are we ready? Eyes to see? Ears to hear? Hearts ready to receive? It has been said
Today is Pentecost Sunday! It’s the day when one of the greatest promises of God was fulfilled, when the gift that Jesus said to wait for came, when God took on flesh once again, when weakness became clothed in power, when the saved were sealed, when the baptism of fire fell, when God’s Presence flowed past the torn veil right to where it always belonged, oh and sooo much more! It is the day when God poured out the Holy Spirit into the lives of all believers. We are so spoiled because the wait is over! As soon as we surrender our lives by faith to Jesus and receive His salvation, we receive th
It seems that warmer weather might finally be here to stay! Shorts and sandals, mowing and trimming, tilling and planting. Spring is soon going to turn into summer! It’s not uncommon right now see a car heading down the road with their windows down and a dog sticking its head out with a big ole’ smile on its face into the breeze. Every time I see this, I can’t help but say, “Look at them just living their best life!” Life is full of highs and lows. Of course, we find joy in the big moments as we celebrate accomplishments. It’s definitely the season for many of them, too! Graduations, weddings,
[The below text has been machine translated and may contain errors. Please listen to audio for original and integral translation] Okay, so we’re going to get into a little bit of something more. Steve took kind of my intro. I wanted to really make an acknowledgment of the moms.So first of all, surprise, I’m speaking today. Hope it’s a pleasant surprise, but here I am. So every year we kind of do something a little bit different.Mother’s Day last week, I said, do you want me to talk this week? Are you doing something? And he’s like, I don’t know. So I prayed about it. I feel like I have a reall
We’ve recently been learning about our identity. God purposefully left much about our own selves a mystery for us to discover and to have revealed. Life is an adventure discovering ourselves and, hopefully, pursuing Jesus. We learned last week of one way that we discover ourselves; through relationships. After all, we can’t truly know ourselves by ourselves. We also learned of our identity as servants. The question being whom or what we will choose to serve. Anyone who has ever fought through addiction, or knows someone who has, knows just how deeply devoted we are all capable of being. We hav
Last week, God encouraged us to have fun on the life-long adventure of discovering our true identities. Something that we must possess as we pursue our purpose in life is hope. Hope is an eager desire and a confident expectation of receiving something good. Hope is what keeps us pressing forward and onward and upward in life. Hope is a placeholder in our lives that prevents discouragement and fear from seeping in and weighing us down. Hope is a pathway for joy to exist in our lives despite our current circumstances. Hope enables us to endure hardships and stand up under pressures and keep our
One life-long process that all of us experience, but few of us take the time to stop and consider, is our subconscious endeavor to discover and to define our identity. Who am I? What is my purpose? What do I like? What don’t I like? Who do other people think that I am? A lot of life decisions that we make, good, bad or indifferent, are attempts by us to try and answer these questions. We have an innate desire to know ourselves. The truth, however, is that we were created by a Creator. He didn’t just create us accidentally or as a side thought or as a trial run to see how things go. We were ver
We left off Friday as Jesus, the sinless Son of God, chose to give His life on the cross for you and I paying the price for our sins. His body was then laid in a tomb, sealed, and guarded by Roman soldiers during the Sabbath day. Then… Matthew 28/Mark 16/Luke 24/John 20 When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb. There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to
This morning is Palm Sunday, the day when we celebrate the day when Jesus rode into Jerusalem for the Passover to fulfill this prophecy of Zechariah. Zechariah 9:9-12 9 Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. 10 I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the warhorses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken. He will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth. 11 As for you, bec
The last few weeks, we have been learning about the church element of God’s provision. Provision is truly the heart of God. Beyond just the material necessities of life, God provides healing, comfort, deliverance, joy, peace, restoration, wisdom, guidance, and so much more! God abundantly and freely provides all of these things, even to wicked and evil people still in their sin. If this is the case, then why is it that we still find ourselves in need; especially when we live in faithful pursuit of God? Well, let’s spend some time today going over some possibilities. 1. We do not ask James 4:2b
