2020 Messages
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.
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.
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 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."
Presence Makes A Way When There’s No Way Forward
November 1, 2020 • Graeme Sellers
Maybe all the facts are telling you it’s impossible for things to be different for you. But God is saying today, “You need to get ready. Where you are is not permanent. Where you’ve been isn’t where you’re going.” That’s what favor does: it brings a sudden touch of God that is stronger than whatever is holding you back. Call it the Elizabeth Effect: out of nowhere, suddenly!, the unchangeable changes.
Presence Makes A Way When There’s No Way Forward
November 1, 2020 • Graeme Sellers
Maybe all the facts are telling you it’s impossible for things to be different for you. Perhaps the difficult thing you're in feels like a forever thing. But God is saying today, “You need to get ready. Where you are is not permanent. Where you’ve been isn’t where you’re going.” That’s what God's presence and favor do: they bring a sudden touch of God that is stronger than whatever is holding you back.
Presence Makes A Way for Favor
October 25, 2020 • Graeme Sellers
God's presence makes a way for God's favor. Divinely-given favor with people will grant us influence in terms of what God has assigned us to do with our lives. Favor causes other people to be caught up in God’s activity, to partner with the kingdom agenda He’s working through our lives.