Text: Acts 16:25-40 | Listen to Message Purpose in Your Pain Paul and Silas found themselves in prison, the victims of gross injustice. Their only “crime” was delivering a demon-possessed girl from the exploitation of her masters. But predators are too devious to be troubled with facts, so they’ve had the missionaries beaten and imprisoned on false charges. This is the cost of doing God’s business in Philippi. But the missionaries’ response to pain, adversity, and injustice is remarkable. As everything is caving in around them, they choose to pray, and sing, and witness to their captive audience! Even...
Text: Acts 16:11-24 | Listen to Message We all need grace On the surface, people’s lives are as different from one another as night and day – and as different from one another as the two women Luke highlights in this section of Scripture. The first is a devoutly religious and successful businesswoman who’s made a small fortune selling beautiful things to beautiful people. The second, at the opposite end of the socio-religious spectrum, is a demon-possessed, exploited slave girl who’s been stripped of her dignity and name. But underneath their radically different situations in life, are they really...
Text: Acts 15:36-16:10 | Listen to Message How is God leading me? People often expect God’s leadership in their lives to be both spectacular and specific. They want a voice from heaven that speaks their name and provides fresh, detailed instructions regarding that upcoming decision. But more often than not, God’s leadership comes through other means. 1. Are you led by the priorities of Jesus? When Jesus walked this earth he was all about proclaiming the Gospel of the kingdom: forgiveness, healing, and restoration were all happening because the King had returned to lavish grace on his broken people. Then...
Text: Acts 15:1-35 | Listen to Message What must I do to be saved? It was a controversy that threatened to divide and even kill the Early Church. Was salvation by the free grace of God or by grace plus works? Was faith in the Gospel sufficient or did you also need to keep the Law of Moses? Picture a long metal suspension bridge spanning across a canyon with a river snaking through the valley 1,000 feet below. Legalists would have you believe that Jesus built 99% of that bridge out of high-strength steel, but left 1% of it for...
Text: Philippians 3:4-15 | Listen to Message How Do You Feel About Change? Some change is inevitable and even unpreventable. You’re going to get older, the weather’s going to turn warmer next Spring, and the cutting edge inventions of today will be obsolete in a few short years. These and millions of other changes are going to happen whether you like it or not. But what about the kind of changes that you can control? Are you the kind of person who likes change just for the sake of change? Or are you resistant to change? Are you guilty...
Text: Psalm 132 | Listen to Message Coming Home In his book Rediscovering Jesus, British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge wrote, “The only ultimate disaster that can befall us, I have come to realize, is to feel ourselves to be at home here on earth.” These sobering words remind us that we are never more than mere aliens or strangers here. However, if we are only aliens and strangers here, it follows that there is a place in which we are not aliens and strangers – a place that we can truly call home. John 14:1-4 affirms that Jesus has built...
Text: Psalm 126 | Listen To Message I Just Want to Be Happy The French mathematician Blaise Pascal once wrote, “All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end…. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.” (Pensees, VII, “Morality And Doctrine,” #425) Whether you agree with Pascal’s superlatives or not, surely you agree that everyone wants to be happy. Oddly enough, some Christians react as if this desire is a bad thing. And so they make statements like this: “God wants...
Text: The Psalms of Ascent | Listen to Message Fighting for Hope in the Midst of Despair We live in a broken and grief-filled world. Even as I sat down to write this week’s message, the news broke that 14 people had been killed by gunfire at a holiday party in San Bernardino, California. And so it goes, day after day, week after week, month after month. We continually experience pain that causes us to ask, “Where is God? And why isn’t He doing something to stop this madness?” We want to believe that someday things will be different,...
Text: The Psalms of Ascent | Listen to Message Longing for Peace in The Midst of Conflict The desire for peace is one of the most universal longings of the human heart. Most of us want goodwill instead of violence, tranquility rather than turmoil. But the peace and quiet we seek can prove to be quite elusive in the real world, which is filled with conflict on a global, local, and personal scale. Furthermore, even if we could escape the agitations that press in from the outside, we would still find ourselves agitated from within. When it comes to peace,...
Text: Acts 14:21-28 | Listen to Message How to build a strong, healthy spiritual life If you want to build a stronger, healthier physical body, you’re going to need more than just a workout routine! You’re going to need several things that work together synergistically to produce real strength and endurance. Let’s look at 6 of them and consider how each has a parallel to spiritual growth and strength. 1. Nutrition. You’ve got to fuel your body with lots of good calories, protein, vitamins, and water. In the same way, you’ve got fuel your heart and soul with the...