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.
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.”?
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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!
The Supernatural & the Scent of Rain
December 22, 2019 • Graeme Sellers
The scent of rain and Advent itself are impossible to understand apart from the reality of the supernatural. Scent of rain doesn’t just happen — it is caused by Someone, caused supernaturally. Two supernatural aspects of the Jesus' birth narrative integral and normative to the Christian life are prophecy and angelic activity, and both them can bring the scent of rain. Once you start looking for it, the supernatural is almost impossible to miss in the Christmas story – it’s everywhere: dreams, words, angels, visions, prophecy.
That's Not the Way We'd Do It
November 15, 2020 • Graeme Sellers
When it comes to our troubles—in some cases trouble so tenacious it’s become our identity—only the Lord can deliver us from trouble we’re in. And he will. Recall this encouragement from two weeks ago: “You need to get ready. Where you are is not permanent. Where you’ve been isn’t where you’re going.” God may not do it in the way we’d do it, but he hasn’t forgotten us and he is going to do it. Thus the psalmist sings (Ps. 130:7b), “…keep waiting on the Lord, for he is tenderhearted, kind, and forgiving. He has a thousand ways to set you free!”
The Girl Who Caught the Scent of Rain
December 15, 2019 • Graeme Sellers
Mary is the girl who caught the scent of rain. And she changed the world as a result. Before anyone else, she sees and announces Jesus’ mission. If any person ever fit the description of being the dangerous kind, Mary does; she’s dangerous because she knows the identity of her son and because she begins to tell his story—and no one is more dangerous than those who tell his story.
The Face of God
November 8, 2020 • Lindsay Elizabeth
In Mark 5:21-34 we find the story of a woman with a longstanding issue of blood. We don't know this woman's name; she is known by her problem. This points us to a significant truth: sometimes a problem becomes so big in our lives that it swallows up our identity. But in the story, when she sees Jesus--when she sees the face of God--she learns who she really is: not a woman with an issue of blood, but "Daughter."