Everyone is known for something and we all know ourselves as something. What if we could ignore all the external identities that we, and the world, give ourselves and begin to truly identify ourselves by Jesus!
"The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.” John 10:10
Jesus’ offer is to THRIVE not just SURVIVE! As a church, we are looking forward to a future where people all around us are thriving in life. They are growing in their relationship with Jesus, they are building life-long friendships with people here, and they are finding their purpose in life.
"May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God." Ephesians 4:19 Pastor Joseph McMurry explains that, "God is crazy about YOU!"
The love of God is timesless and is always available for us. Pastor Joseph McMurry walks us through what it is like to be rooted in God's love.
Fear of failure doesn't prevent us from failing. It robs us of the joy of living. It robs us of the joy of our relationship with God. It robs us of the joy of relationships in our life right now. In the story of Moses there are some lessons we can learn that will help us deal with the fear of failure.
What is God’s will for my life? This question, has created a great deal of stress and a great deal of fear for a lot of people. Because in general, we have been taught that God has a secret plan for you. And it's your job, as a Christian, to figure out what this secret plan is. So that you can live the life that God wants you to live. But what if there is another way of looking at God’s will?
Whatever fears you're having to battle through, whatever limits have been placed on your life because of your fear of the unknown, you can trust God no matter what's in flux in your life. Because He is constant. His love for you it's constant. He is with you.
A battle to fight. An adventure to live. A beauty to rescue.
These are the core desires panting deep in the heart of every man. They are essential in order to live life as a man; they provide the power for his life. Misplaced, forgotten, or misdirected, they do not go away. But what happens to those desires as life passes? Is it possible to rediscover them? What does God have to say about all this?
We've all struggled with fear. It strikes the weak and the powerful; it haunts the young, the old, the rich and the poor. Fear is a thief. It erodes our faith, steals our freedom and runs away with our hope and joy. But Scripture tells us that if you have fear in your life, it's not that you have a fear problem. The issue is that you have a faith problem. SO, our focus should not be on how can I fear less, rather, how can I trust God more.
One of the pictures the Bible gives of you and I is that we are containers. We are meant to be filled with something. Jesus tells us that real power comes when you’re filled with the Holy Spirit and that we’re meant to be filled with God’s presence. God wants to be part of our everyday lives. So how is that done?
Joseph McMurry explains to us that we, as followers of Jesus, are the church. And we are better together. 1 Corinthians. 12:18-20 "But our bodies have many parts, and God has put each part just where he wants it. How strange a body would be if it had only one part! Yes, there are many parts, but only one body. 21 The eye can never say to the hand, “I don’t need you.” The head can’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you.”
Matt Hastings teaches us that the way we live now is shaped by what we believe is coming in the future. And because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have hope in this life and the life to come. “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” 1 Corinthians. 15:19
Every woman longs to be swept up into a romance, to play an irreplaceable role in a great adventure, to be the beauty of the story, to be fully alive. And yet―how many women do you know who ever find that life? As the years pass by, the heart of a woman gets pushed aside, wounded, buried.
This Mother’s Day, we want to awaken the hearts of women all over our community. And in that process we are going to talk to men about women; share the secrets to the feminine heart, and show, from scripture, how we can fight for her heart.
"I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord. He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary." Knowing about Jesus is education. Knowing Jesus is transformation.
Human beings are not primarily thinking creatures, we are primarily creatures driven by our loves. Although we do think, no amount of intellectual information necessarily transforms or moves you. But rather we are moved toward action when the heart believes, when the loves are aligned. Romans 10:9 "For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved."
Easter harnesses our faith to something that happened rather than to something we merely believe. The foundation of Christianity is not a belief. Christians don’t simply believe something is true. We don’t believe we are to behave a certain way. We believe something happened, something that addresses our greatest fear and consequently diminishes our fear of loss.
Joseph McMurry shows us the secret that Paul describes in Colossians chapter 1 and that is, "Christ in us, the hope of glory". Therefor without Christ, there is no hope.
The church is not a room with four and a ceiling. That is a building where the church gathers. The church is not a building; The church is a group of people that understand they've been redeemed, bought out of a dominion of darkness, out of the slave market of sin and have been placed in this unique new body, of which Jesus Christ is the head. You were created in the very image of God, and then when you get saved, you get recreated, more specifically into the image of Jesus Christ.
One common problem 21st century American Christians face is that we don't understand how much we have in Jesus; therefore we try to add things to Jesus in order to bring satisfaction. The same type of thing was going on in the early church. So, when Paul wrote the book to the Colossians, it was because people were trying to add things to Jesus. But he doesn't just blast them and go after these other issues. Instead, he reminds them of how much they have in Christ so that they realize, "Wow, we don't need anything else. I have more than enough."
