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In this season of Advent we contemplate two things at once - the first coming of Christ and the second.
Throughout Scripture we see that both come as a surprise. And in fact - all of God's activity in the world has been surprising. The Christian life isn't a life of calculating but a life of wonder at the comedy of grace.
God wants to take us on a trust journey of partnership to see his outrageous goodness manifested in our world.
May this season of Advent let the "yes" of Mary rise up in your heart, and may the love of Christ overflow in you and produce the kingdom around you.
Link to Sermon Guide & Activations:
12.15.24 Sermon Guide
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This last Sunday, Andoni wrapped up the vision series with a teaching on our last core value: we have the privilege of leaving a legacy of heaven. Throughout the Scriptures we see the divine principle of inheritance at play: what is done in faith has consequences for the generations that are yet to come. We have a glorious inheritance in Christ. When we live into all that He paid for - a life of knowing Him, loving Him and trusting Him - the generation after us will be able to start where we finished. This is how the kingdom of God is designed to spread and grow. Link to Sermon Guide & Activations:12.08.24 Sermon Guide
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On Sunday, one of our elders, Austin Smith, taught on our core value: we are a people filled with hope and joy.We as the Church do not define hope and joy like the rest of the world. For us, hope and joy are realities that were made available to us through Jesus’ great sacrifice on the Cross.Austin used Psalm 16 as a template for gaining the biblical perspectives of hope and joy in any life circumstance.Upon making our requests known to God, remembering who He is, and reassuring ourselves in what He will do, confidence arises in our hearts - not due to answered prayer, but due to His Presence. His Presence is the blessing, the reward, and our greatest treasure - now and forever. Link to Sermon Guide & Activations:12.01.24 Sermon Guide
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This last Sunday Bria outlined how and why our primary metaphor for the Church is family.
The family of God is a people led by the Spirit, who experience the fruit of belonging.
The family of God is made up of children - defined by the freedom of dependence and teachability.
The family of God will share in Christ’s sufferings and in His glory - a people willing to go as low as He did to lay down our lives for one another.
From the beginning God’s plan has been to draw people to Himself through the covenant love of family. In Christ we see this mission accomplished and we accept the invitation to participate in this family.
Link to Sermon Guide & Activations:
11.24.24 Sermon Guide
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As we continue in our vision series, Alex shared how the principle of honor is the gospel enacted relationally. We are defining honor as: thinking about people the way God thinks about people. The truth is, you cannot honor if you don’t understand the degree to which God honored you through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. When you begin to understand the value that God places on your life, and your righteous identity in Christ, you are then able to give value and honor away to others freely. Listen back this teaching and follow along with the Sermon Guide to explore three ways you can apply the gospel to your relationships and honor those around you. Link to Sermon Guide & Activations:11.17.24 Sermon Guide
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The Scriptures are authoritative and tell us the truth that leads to freedom.
As we continue in our vision series we want to expand on this value in a way that will help you determine how you engage with the Scriptures.
The Bible is not a textbook for Christians, nor is it merely moral inspiration. Its complexity should not be seen as a threat, but a feature of the richness of it.
In this teaching Alex gives four tools to help us understand how to read the Bible and one key principle that guides the entire journey: relationship with Jesus.
May love be the fruit of our engagement with the Scriptures!
Link to Sermon Guide & Activations:
11.10.24 Sermon Guide
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On Sunday, one of our elders, Andoni Montaño, taught on our core value: nothing is impossible.
Through Andoni’s passage from Mark 11:12-25 we see that Jesus has specific desires for His Church.
He desires for us to understand that we live between two kingdoms - heaven and earth. He desires for us to bear fruit in every season by making His house about dependence on Him for the impossible to happen. He desires for us to carry on the ministry of reconciliation as He did.
This value is one we cannot lose sight of in our time. Let our faith be unhindered and let us release forgiveness freely.
Sermon Guide & Activations:
11.03.24 Sermon Guide
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This last Sunday we continued in our Vision Series with a teaching on our core value: We are the righteousness of God.
Alex highlighted Jesus’ parable in Luke 18v9-14 where we learn that if you can go low and recognize the truth - your need for God’s mercy - you will be made righteous. If you cannot go low and you insist on obtaining your value, meaning, and reason for life by looking to others, then you will be humbled by God.
We need to be made righteous to be made one. Jesus’ desire was union with us (John 17v24), that we could know Him and love Him, and be known by Him and loved by Him.
When this is your reality you will be able to live in confident honesty towards God and as an ambassador for Christ on earth.
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The second identity that helps us host God’s Presence well is the ache of the Bride. All throughout Scripture the Bible gives us marriage as a picture of God’s desire for humanity and humanity’s need for God. The ache of the Bride is a strategic gift from the Holy Spirit to reveal our need for Jesus in a way that causes us to cry out for Him. We must empty ourselves of all other loves and illusions so that we may be filled with His love and His fire. God goes where He’s wanted. We’re praying that this desire for Him will become a service to our town and that people will be drawn into real life with Him as a result. Link to Sermon Guide & Activations:10.20.24 Sermon Guide
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This last Sunday Alex gave part one of his teaching on our fourth core value: we have the privilege of hosting the Father’s Presence.
We believe the Scriptures teach that the Church is supposed to be a home for God’s Presence, an access point between heaven and earth. (1 Pet 2v4-5, Gen 28v11-17)
The first identity that we want to take on as a church to host the Presence of God well, is the ministry of a priest.
Priests in the Old Covenant offered up physical sacrifices, but since Jesus offered himself as the ultimate physical sacrifice, our ministry as New Covenant priests is to offer up spiritual sacrifices. Like David, we are to center our entire lives around praise, thanksgiving, song, and gazing upon the Lord.
This is one of the primary ways we participate in heaven coming to earth. You are a priest!
Link to Sermon Guide & Activations:
10.13.24 Sermon Guide
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We come together as the church because for us there is but one God, one Lord - Jesus Christ who is worthy of our worship.This last Sunday, Bria taught on our third core value: Jesus is Lord. Lives that speak “Jesus is Lord” are anchored in eternity with eternal priorities. Those who are anchored in eternity fear God alone - acknowledging their need for Him and refusing to live life apart from Him. They do not live for Self, but under the leadership and authority of Jesus, they become all that God created them to be. They are marked by singular love for Jesus. Let Him find in us a pure and spotless bride - not distracted with loves of this world, but drawn to His heart and in pursuit of His way. Link to Sermon Guide & Activations:10.06.24 Sermon Guide
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This past weekend we had our very first all church camp out at the Oregon coast. Our senior leader, Alex Rettmann, spoke from 1 Peter 4:7-11 about the two priorities we have as we live in the last days: People and Prayer.
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This last Sunday Alex kicked off our annual Fall Vision Series with a teaching on our first core value - God is good. In the Old Testament, God declares that He is compassionate, forgiving, just, and patient. In the New Testament, we get the fullest representation of God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Though our beliefs about God don’t change who He is, they radically affect how we interact with Him and who we become in this life. When we agree with the truth about who God is, we get to experience life the way we were designed to. It’s not a life absent of suffering, but it’s a life full of His unconditional love, His gentle leadership, and His satisfying Presence. Link to Sermon Guide & Activations:09.15.24 Sermon Guide
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On Sunday we spent some time looking at the incredible story in Luke 17v11-19. What we can ascertain from this story is that God’s intention behind signs and wonders is always relational. Jesus’ ultimate goal on earth was to restore connection and right relationship between God and the people He created. Every healing, every miracle you experience in this life is designed to draw you to the feet of Jesus and bring you into deeper connection with Him. We received our ultimate healing, salvation, and deliverance through Jesus’ perfect sacrifice on the cross. May your heart be stirred up again to respond in praise and thanksgiving for all that His blood has done for you. Link to Sermon Guide and Activations:09.08.24 Sermon Guide
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On Sunday, we got to hear from one our deacons, Chris Sharp. Chris continued in our Luke Series with a teaching on Luke 17v1-10.
All throughout the gospels, Jesus reveals to us that to follow Him and to live in His kingdom looks like something. This teaching in Luke highlights how radical it will be to live as a child, to offer forgiveness, and to exercise our faith.
This lifestyle of complete trust and obedience to God requires us to repent of lesser pursuits and be strengthened and comforted by His unending love and provision for us through His body and his blood.
Link to Sermon Guide & Activations:
09.01.24 Sermon Guide
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This last Sunday we continued in our Luke series with a parable from Luke 16v19-31 about the relationship between worldly wealth and eternal wealth.
In this story, the rich man is the example of someone so consumed with lack, that they cannot use the material of their life to tell the truth of compassion and friendship.
God is, and always has been, after a people who are so aware of His love for them that they can’t help but join in and use the physical world to tell the truth of God’s love to others.
As New Covenant believers, our inheritance is Jesus! His Presence is our portion, and don’t have to settle for lesser things.
Link to Sermon Guide & Activations:
08.25.24 Sermon Guide
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On Sunday Alex led us through Jesus’ teaching in Luke 16v14-18.
In this teaching, Jesus is highlighting the shift from the era of the law and the prophets, to the era of His kingdom. To live in His kingdom is to submit to the internal rule of God within your heart.
Jesus’s critique of the Pharisees is that they spend all their time trying to justify themselves by the law, yet their hearts grow cold to the things that God loves. This new kingdom requires radical trust and submission to Jesus.
We can only do this to the degree that we receive His overwhelming love and depend on Him for the grace needed in every situation.
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On Sunday we looked at an interesting parable in Luke 16v1-15 about a dishonest manager.
Through this parable, Jesus teaches us that there is a way of using possessions and money that tells a heavenly truth but an earthly lie.
In the same way that Jesus used His possessions to gain our friendship, our lives on earth are to declare heavenly truth. Friendship, love, and generosity are eternal things that will last in the age to come. May we be the kind of people who pursue these eternal things over and above the perishing things that the world finds value in.
Link to Sermon Guide & Activations:
08.11.24 Sermon Guide
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This last Sunday, Bria taught on the parable of the lost coin in Luke 15v8-10.
This parable is situated between two other parables like it, each one centered around God’s great love and pursuit of the lost. This parable in particular emphasizes the thoroughness of God’s pursuit of the lost. It acts as an invitation to receive the heart of God in order to love people the way He loves them.
We receive the heart of God by receiving Jesus - His body broken for us and His blood poured out. The reality of His overwhelming love will change the way we see everything.
Link to Sermon Guide & Activations:
08.04.24 Sermon Guide
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On Sunday we had the privilege of hearing from one of our Saints’ Hill missionaries, Mariah Fredericks. In teaching through Luke 15v1-7, Mariah was able to share how she’s seen God’s heart for the world on display in Spain. She told stories of many young un-churched people coming to saving faith in Jesus! Her encouragement to us through this passage of Scripture, is to encounter God’s heart for the world so that we can open up our lives in generosity. As we do so, we will be able to respond rightly when the lost come home - with celebration and rejoicing! Link to Sermon Guide & Activations:07.28.24 Sermon Guide
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