Text: Various | Listen to Message How Do We Get There? In Part I: Where Are We Going? we shared 4 pillars of our vision for advancing the Gospel in our city. This isn’t something a few leaders can do for you; this is something we must all do together. In fact, the success of this vision lies with ordinary people doing extraordinary things, in faith, day after day after day. No strategy can change the heart of a city; only God can do that – and God works through people! #1: Worship Christ with all your heart, soul, mind, and...
Texts: Various | Listen to Message Where Are We Going? It’s a great time to be a part of Grace City Denver! God has blessed us with a season of extraordinary unity, lives are being transformed, volunteers are living out what it means to be the church, and we see new people coming every week. So the vision that follows is not intended to replace all the good things that are happening, but rather to celebrate, amplify, and build upon them. There’s a lot we don’t know about how exactly all this will be fleshed out in the days ahead, but...
Text: Luke 18:15-34 | Listen to Message Entering The Kingdom Jesus, who is in the midst of teaching on the imminent coming of the kingdom of God and prayer, has a brief encounter with two groups of people. The first is a group of infants and children whose parents are bringing them to Jesus, who is in the midst of teaching. Instead of dismissing the children, Jesus uses this encounter to illustrate how he wants his followers to enter the Kingdom of God: with childlike faith. Jesus wants his followers to be totally dependent on Him for their faith — just...
Father, with shattered hearts and tear-stained faces We again grieve over the deadly violence of our land. Our brokenness cannot bring back the dead, And yet…we are broken. We have turned away from you to do things our way, And we have not honored you as God. We have built our identities on shifting sand, We have chased momentary, selfish pleasures, And we have worshiped anything but our Creator. You are the Redeemer, But we have told you we will save ourselves. You are the fountain of Living Water, But we have sought freedom from you in the desert. You...
Text: Luke 18:1-14 | Listen to Message The Paradox of Christian Prayer Everyone knows what it feels like when your prayers never seem to make any difference at all and you just want to quit. What’s the point of praying when the answer is always “no”? Maybe God hears other people when they cry out to him, but he doesn’t hear you. He doesn’t care about your problems. At least that’s the way it feels. In seasons of unanswered prayer, “disappointed” or “discouraged” is woefully inadequate to describe the agony you feel. You’re heartbroken. Exhausted. Crushed. Devastated. Luke seems to mock...
Text: Luke 17:20-37 | Listen to Message If That…Then What? Jesus claimed that he would return one day – suddenly and unmistakably – to judge the whole earth. On that day, a separation will be made: the faithless will go into everlasting punishment and the faithful (those who trust in Jesus as Lord and Savior) will go into eternal life in the kingdom of God. About 2,000 years have passed since Jesus made these promises, and obviously he still hasn’t returned. So people tend to have one of two reactions: 1) A microscopic percentage of people engage in endless speculation over...
Text: Luke 17:11-19 | Listen to Message Is Jesus Your Sugar Daddy? It’s a familiar enough children’s Bible story: Ten lepers were healed but only one bothered to return and actually thank Jesus. The standard lesson is something like, “Don’t be like the nine; be like the one and live with a heart of gratitude.” Sure, that. But do you really think the other nine weren’t grateful? Lepers were “the walking dead.” Physically, they were gruesomely disfigured by an infectious disease that also made them ceremonially unclean – and thus unable to participate in the worshiping community. They were ostracized and...
Text: Luke 17:1-10 | Listen to Message Helping Others with Their Sin In stark contrast to the religious culture of his day, Jesus envisioned a culture in which everyone made it easier on everyone else not to sin – and easier to find true forgiveness when they did. This isn’t wishful thinking or pie-in-the-sky theology. Jesus wasn’t saying sin wouldn’t happen. He said it would – but that we could help one another before, during, and after it happens. He said we could work together doing these four things to break the power of sin over us. 1. You break sin’s...
Text: Luke 16:19-31 | Listen to Message Is Hell Fair? “How could a loving God send people to hell?” This is perhaps our culture’s greatest objection to Christianity: it’s impossible for many to fathom why anyone would choose to believe in a God who punishes sinners…forever. Ironically, the hell most people don’t believe in bears little resemblance to the hell Jesus described in Luke 16 and elsewhere. The “traditional” hell is a pit of fire where God is hurling sinners as they beg for mercy. Everyone is scrambling to escape eternal damnation but God slams the door on them with a...
Text: Luke 16:14-18 | Listen to Message A Primer on Self-Justification “You justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts.” —Luke 16:14 What does it mean to justify ourselves – and how and why do we all do it? What? “To justify” literally means “to declare righteous.” Thus, self-justification refers to our attempts to acquit ourselves of wrongdoing, to vindicate our reputation, or to make ourselves appear more acceptable in the eyes of others. It’s one thing to defend your honor against false accusations, but that’s clearly not what Jesus is referring to here. He’s talking about all those times...