I think a lot of us experience the desert. Some of us are in a middle of it. Sometimes, we experience the desert as a result of something we did.…
We often think that being a Christian is all about submitting to all the do's and don’ts. Some of us think that we are free before we become a Christian…
The Bible tells us that Jesus is the first fruit of the Resurrection; but that someday, we will also be resurrected. There is a tremendous hope in that. But, the…
What I want to do today is to try to break you out of a shallow understanding of God’s love. A lot of people think that God loves us when…
I think a lot of people want an encounter with God but don’t know how to have one. I want us to journey with Moses and encounter God as Moses…
The title of today’s sermon is “The Struggle to Forgive.” It’s the story of Joseph's struggle to forgive his brothers. Like reality, it’s complicated and it’s tough. We are going…
I think one of the reasons people object to Christianity is because of their own suffering in life. How can God allow these things to happen? Where is God when…
The title of today’s sermon is “Wrestling with God.” It’s a story of Jacob going to the mat with God. It’s an odd story. And for some of us, the…
We’re in the middle of a series called “The Gospel According to the Old Testament. The title of today’s sermon is “Stairway from Heaven.” It’s the story of Jacob’s encounter…
This message is about Jacob and the fight for his father Isaac’s blessing. It’s a story of intrigue and drama.
The thesis of the series is that the Old Testament can only be understood when we understand the New Testament. The Bible is a progressive revelation of God’s redemptive plan,…
Now, right from the beginning, after God created man and woman, He commanded us to (Genesis 1:28) “be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it.” Again,…
Today, we are going to talk about the story of Noah. Many of us have heard the story as a children’s story, but there is so much more to the…
Do you know what Abel means? Meaningless. Nothingness. Vanity. Fleeting. You know that passage in Ecclesiastes, “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity”? That word for vanity is “Abel.” What a name to…
Sometimes our lives get so messy that we don’t know where or how to start cleaning up. Some of you got addicted to a substance that you were just experimenting…
Now, sometimes when people read the Old Testament, it can seem confusing. Some people start to talk as though there are two gods. One God of the Old Testament and…
Whether we are struggling or thriving, we all want to be successful. We want respect. We want others to recognize us. It doesn’t matter what the arena of success is…
Merry Christmas! If you are expecting a quaint, sweet, nicely wrapped Christmas message about baby Jesus, you ain’t going to get it today. It’s going to be a raw message. Today’s…
We started on the book of Ephesians on the first Sunday of this year and today, we will be finishing the book, and the last series from the book on…
If you look at the overall structure of the letter: it starts out by saying this is what God has done for you! Understand it. Be mesmerized by it! See…
The armor we are told to put on is the sandals of readiness. If you look at the text, it is not saying we should be ready to share the…
The process of change takes a lot of hard work. It is a process. It is the hard work of transforming our minds, our hearts. When we do that, we…
I think when we think about doing spiritual warfare, we primarily think about things that are dramatic, kind of like the way Jesus delivered people who were demon possessed. But,…
One mistaken view is that work is a curse. Our goal often is to work as little as possible and spend as much time as possible on leisure. We think…
If you look at the history of the church, Jesus was the first church planter. He planted the Jerusalem church by developing the core team. That’s how you plant a…
When Paul says in verse 32, “This is a profound mystery,” he is not saying that it is something we don’t understand. He is saying that it is something that…
We’ve been going through the book of Ephesians, and we’ve been on a series on marriage. We are going to be dealing with one of the most controversial issues in…
This passage tells us a great deal about God’s design for marriage. We are to leave our parents and “be united” to each other. The two are to become one…
Last Sunday, we looked at the problem of marriage. Verse 21 says “Submit to one another out of reverence to Christ.” To submit is to release your control; it is…
We now come to the longest text on marriage in the Bible. These 13 verses contain treasures about marriage. We are going to dig into them and see what God…
We will talk about: (1) the experience of being filled with the Holy Spirit; (2) the results of being filled with the Holy Spirit; and (3) how to be filled…
In order to understand what it means to be filled with the Spirit, we need to understand what it means to live by the Spirit. If you know how to…
We’ve been studying the book of Ephesians. We are in a middle of a series called Gospel Driven Change. Today’s message is on wisdom. Have you ever done anything stupid? I…
Last week we talked about God’s agape love. Agape means unconditional self-sacrificial love. We talked about the reality that God not only agapes, but he is Agape. He is unconditional…
This passage is calling us to be imitators of God. The word for imitator is this word mimitai where we get the word mimic. It means to mimic God. It…
We are going to look at a movement in the life of a Christian: from stealing to working to sharing, a movement from life of doing injustice to a life…
Last week, we talked about anger. It was more focused on day to day anger that we face. Today, we are going to talk about more deep seated anger—bitterness and…
The gospel is that we are more messed up than I know yet God loves us in Christ more than I can ever imagine. He loved us so much that…
God calls us where ever we are. He calls us to come as we are. Then, he tells us how much he loves us, how he chose us, how us…