Media - Wonderful Mercy Church

Waiting Like Simeon

December 27, 2020 • David Hammerslag

Almost everyone hates waiting, even when the thing we are waiting for will be well worth the wait. Waiting on God can be some of the hardest waiting there is. We can learn how to shift our perspective while waiting by studying the example of Simeon and Anna, who we meet in Luke chapter 2. They are examples of waiting with anticipation that leads to attentiveness and action.

Christmas Eve at Wonderful Mercy

December 24, 2020

A beautiful service of carols, Christmas scriptures, story reading, and celebration of the birth of Jesus.

Mary, God's Favor, & the Impossible

December 20, 2020 • Graeme Sellers

In this year, 2020, a year in which so much has gone sideways, how many of us are holding on to personal word from God that looks increasingly as impossible as the one Gabriel gave to Mary? And how many need the same assurance, “For no word from God will ever fail.”?

Taizé Worship for Advent

December 16, 2020 • Lee Meyer

Join us for a beautiful experience of Advent-themed prayer, music, and mediation.

The Everlasting Father

December 13, 2020 • Mike Bradley

When we’ve had a less than healthy relationship with our earthly father, when promises have been broken instead of kept, when our dads are absent instead of present, when they put us in harm’s way rather than keep us safe, how can we know what our Everlasting Father is really like? How can we risk believing Him and trusting Him? In John 14 we are told that our good, good Father in Heaven is revealed in the life of His Son, Jesus Christ. When we see Jesus, we see the Father.

Advent Midweek Worship: Week 2

December 9, 2020

“Advent” means “coming” or “arrival.” During the season of Advent, we celebrate Christ’s coming into the world and watch with expectant hope for his coming again. Join us in our first midweek Advent celebration, featuring seasonal songs, a powerful story, and The Lord's Supper.

God’s Presence is Sufficient to Change Everything

December 6, 2020 • Graeme Sellers

When God says, "Comfort! Comfort my people," he’s not instructing us to work up, in our own power, a level of comfort in our heart or spirit. He doesn’t offer us a commodity called comfort—He is comfort itself. When God shows up, comfort shows up, too. This is what He is—though, of course, it’s not all He is—which may help us see why the Lord’s mere presence is sufficient to change everything.

The Iceberg and the Ladder of Integrity

December 31, 2023 • Dirk D

Much like an iceberg, all of us have things in our lives that are hidden from view. This message reveals the importance of taking time and effort to dive into what's invisible. Our emotions and our feelings are meant to be observed so that we can become healthier and more like Christ. We also work through a series of questions that will help you determine your values, especially when something is troubling you.

Advent Midweek Worship

December 2, 2020

“Advent” means “coming” or “arrival.” During the season of Advent, we celebrate Christ’s coming into the world and watch with expectant hope for his coming again. Join us in our first midweek Advent celebration, featuring seasonal songs, a powerful story, and The Lord's Supper.

Wait For It

November 29, 2020 • Graeme Sellers

Wait for it. This is the message of Advent. There is One who is coming for us with healing in his wings. The prophet Isaiah tells us: the Lord’s mere presence is sufficient to change everything! So this Advent season, wait for it. Don’t take things into your own hands; don’t get out ahead of God.

Upside Down Kingdom

December 30, 2018 • Dirk Duhlstine

God says: 1. If you want to be great… be a servant 2. To find yourself…you must die to yourself 3. To get back at your enemy…you should love him 4. To become rich… give money away God's kingdom is an upside down kingdom! When we clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience and love…which is clothing ourselves with the person and nature of http://christ...we’re clothing ourselves for battle.

People Must Know!

December 26, 2021 • Dirk Duhlstine

How good is the Good News? God’s gift for us that we celebrate every December is the greatest gift of all time. Some gifts need to be nurtured, some gifts need to be shared, and some gifts keep on giving. In this year-end message, we explore Christ’s coming, a gift to change the world and our lives.

Mary, Mary, Extraordinary

December 24, 2023 • Graeme Sellers • Luke 1:46–55

Join us for an exploration of a remarkable shaper of history, Mary, the mother of Jesus. Question: when we think of her, why don’t we think of her intellect and her mindful contributions that helped shape history? We’ve had a reduced perspective of her. In early church traditions, Mary is an acknowledged evangelist, she’s involved in the leadership of the early church, and she is known for having a traveling itinerant ministry. There's more to Mary than we've been led to believe!

What Did You Get For Christmas?

December 29, 2019 • David Hammerslag

Christmas has come and gone. We may have overlooked the true value of God's gift of Love. God's gift of love through his Son has incredible value in its own right, but it is not meant for us to keep for ourselves. It is meant to transform us so that we can be transformed by it and love others with the same outrageous extravagant love given to us.

The Baby Who Threatens the World

December 19, 2021 • Graeme Sellers

The world would have no problem with Jesus if he’d just stay in the manger. That little baby poses no threat unless he gets out, gets loose, grows up, and becomes all he's destined to be. If he is who he says he is, from the very being of God with all attendant authority, he becomes a threat to every established human institution: political, economic, educational, religious. All of them are in jeopardy, for they require an allegiance only he legitimately commands.

Getting Everything in a Nothing World

December 17, 2023 • Graeme Sellers • Ephesians 1:13–14

Paul makes an outrageous claim; he says “We’ll get everything God has planned for us” [Eph. 1:14, Message]. Really? Everything? C’mon! If we find ourselves dubious, it may be because we believe that we’ve disqualified ourselves with our behaviors, choices, or attitudes. We think that if what God has for us were an ocean vessel, that ship has sailed. Getting “everything” from God involves us but it doesn’t hinge on us. Its guarantor is Holy Spirit.

Words Create Worlds

December 23, 2018 • Graeme Sellers

Our words create worlds. The words we speak shape and create world we live in. Words have always created worlds. It’s true. How was our world made? Words. Ten times in the creation account of Genesis 1 we read this: “And God said…” Their impact is captured in Genesis 2:1 “Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.” Gen. 1:28 reports that we are made in God’s image, so why should it surprise us that our words have creative power as well? God would urge us to listen to ourselves, to pay attention to the words we speak and the worlds they create.

Giving Thanks in a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Year

November 22, 2020 • Graeme Sellers

God does not propose gratitude as an ethical concept to ponder and study and value. Admiring the principle is no substitute for doing it. Gratitude is a choice. It doesn’t just come upon us when Holy Spirit is the mood to bring it. No. We choose it deliberately and consciously. And the more deliberately and regularly we choose it the more it reproduces itself in us.

Christmas Is What God Is Like

December 12, 2021 • Graeme Sellers

When we read the Christmas story, when we hear it, when we re-enact it in our worship, we are invited into an astonishing revelation of what God is really like. Christmas shows us what God is like—just as he trusted Joseph and Mary with his well-being, we can trust him with ours. Our lives, our fate, are safe with him. This is who God is—like his earthly parents, there’s nothing He won’t do, no part of Himself he won’t spend to care for us.

The Astonished Heart of Being Delighted In

December 10, 2023 • Tom Kelly • Zephaniah 3:17

One of the most astonishing moments in Scripture is found in Zephaniah, where we are told, "For the Lord your God is with you and he is mighty to save. He will take delight in you with gladness. He will quiet you with his love. He will rejoice over you with singing.” When God astonishes our hearts with who He is, it prepares us to receive all God desires to bring us. Even when...maybe especially when...we cannot imagine God ever being delighted in us.

What's the Point?

December 16, 2018 • Graeme Sellers

What’s the point of this – the Sunday morning church gathering that is, for many of us, a regular part of our lives? What if the point isn’t what we think it is, or is more than we imagined it is? God isn’t afraid of honest inquiry or the fierce conversation, and the answers to this question may surprise and delight us!