First Fruits

The First Fruits Festival celebrated in ancient Israel is a beautiful foreshadowing of the resurrected life of Jesus. Jesus, the first fruit of humankind, is the model of who we are created and destined to be. Like Jesus, we can rely on the Holy Spirit, and see God do amazing things through the gifts and abilities He gives us. Our responsibility is to take up those things the Father is doing in us and be obedient to get started on the work before us and offer the first of our blessings to him with thanks for the rest of the harvest we know He will bring to completion in His time.

Generosity, Giving and Financial Review

Both as a church and as individuals and families, we need to set our values and priorities in regard to giving and have those be what informs our practices instead of having our giving ebb and flow as a reaction to our current financial situation. It’s important to our discipleship that we have hearts of gratitude, love and justice from which generosity flows instead of giving out of legalism, obligation or guilt. Hearts with a healthy attitude toward finances and giving will be able to be wise and purposeful even in times of abundance and generous even in times of scarcity. This teaching ends with a review of the current financial picture of the church.

Imago Dei

When the author of Genesis writes that we are made in God’s image, he is referring not to a physical likeless but one of function and purpose. This same idea is found in Romans and we see that the work of God over time conforms us. There are things in our lives that do not conform to the pattern of Jesus and those things must be left behind.

Pursuing the Presence of God: The Fruit

People who spend time in God’s presence have evidence of that experience manifest in their lives. The fruit of spending time in God’s presence is humility, change, mission, diligence and blessing.

Pursuing the Presence of God: The Depths

To have the fullness of God that Paul talks about in Ephesians, we cannot remain on the surface. We have to understand what makes us Kingdom people and let those truths soak deep into us, not trivial devotions that change daily.

Pursuing The Presence of God: The Practice

When we want to *practice* the presence of God, we have to understand that the practice is much more about seeing, hearing and understanding, rather than earning or achieving. Developing these ways of perceiving the Presence of God may seem simple yet prove to be challenging to our normal ways of perceiving the world.

Pursuing the Presence of God: The Passage

This week in our Pursuing the Presence of God series, Pastor Josh discusses the passage, or the path to the presence of God. In contrast to the process, ritual, and restrictions associated with entering the temple in ancient Israel, the curtain was torn at Jesus’ death and the way in to God’s presence has been made clear and accessible to all who come through Jesus. However, it is not a path to be taken lightly. As explained in Hebrews, we must not trample the sacrifice of Christ but must honor Him and pursue holiness. We don’t “trample the Son of God underfoot” by continuing in our sin because grace and holiness go hand in hand.

Pursuing the Presence of God: The Desire

Pastor Josh begins a new sermon series this week, Pursuing the Presence of God, by looking at what it is that we’re actually pursuing about God. In truly pursuing His presence, we must long for the essence of God, not the peripheral things.

The Kingdom of God

Eric Geelen, of Amadeo Vineyard Church in Phoenix, Arizona joins us to teach about the power and reality of The Kingdom of God.

Christmas Eve Candlelight Service

Christmas Presence: Love

Part of the miracle of Christmas is that Love, God’s perfect Divine Love, came to the earth in human form. This week after our Everyone Gets To Nativity Play, we wrapped up Advent with a brief sermon about the power of the presence of Love itself at Christmas, in community, and through us.

Christmas Presence: Joy

You’ve probably heard the phrase “happiness depends on circumstances, joy does not”. Joy accentuates the pleasurable, good things of life. Joy shared in community brings something of the Kingdom of God. Joy with God is not one directional or transactional. The joy of the Lord is reciprocal in its nature - we give and He gives. In Advent, there is joy in God’s coming and closeness. The key to lasting joy isn’t in seeking joy itself, but in pursuing the joy bringer.

Christmas Presence: Hope

Advent places the church, every year, in longing for the fullness of the throne of God to be realized. We need Advent, even if we never reach Christmas morning. What we long for is not a nostalgic look back or presents, what we’re longing for is the presence of the Holy Spirit. Hope is what grounds us now in the expectation and preparation for God’s future. In order to get from our past to God’s future, we must go through some pivot point, something that will connect those two disjointed realities: Jesus is the connection.

Identity In Christ: Royal Priesthood

Pastor Josh wraps up this Identity In Christ Royal Priesthood by looking at the calling on God’s people to be a Royal Priesthood that has both authority and responsibility to serve as kingly priests and to spend ourselves serving those on the outside who do not yet know Jesus.

Identity in Christ: Free Bondservants

The description of a “free bondservant” is seemingly a contradiction, but scripture tells us that we are freed as slaves to sin to become slaves of righteousness and that the yolk of God is easy and His burden is light. So what does it look like to be set free to serve another Master?

Identity in Christ: Saints

Most of us probably don’t feel like we qualify to be called saints, but Paul wrote to the Corinthians, a church that had all sorts of problems, and told them that they were God’s saints. By the power of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, we are indeed, made righteous - saints. And this type of sainthood isn’t something reserved as a posthumous honor, it’s meant to describe our lives on this earth as we reflect God’s glory and do the works He created for us to do.

Identity in Christ: His Handiwork

This week, Pastor Josh begins a new series, The Names God Calls Us, by looking at how we are referred to as God’s handiwork in Ephesians. We often find ways to identify ourselves by so many factors that aren’t who we really are. Our identity comes from who God says we are. We have a specific identity and purpose in Christ that matter.

The Names of God: Jehovah Tsidqenu

Guest speaker Jeremy Geelen discusses the significance of Jehovah Tsidqenu, God Our Righteousness.

The Names of God: Abba

This week, one of our teen group youth, Jennifer Bruton, shares her perspective on relating to God as Abba while looking at the various roles of fathers in our lives.

The Names of God: El Shaddai

Guest speaker Emanuel Williams preaches on the power, might and abundance of the Lord revealed in the name El Shaddai.