In this sermon, Shawna Boren explores the letter to the church at Sardis. This letter has a direct and somewhat harsh challenge given to a complacent and overly-confident church. These words are a warning to wake up and see reality for what it is so that we might more fully invest our lives in what really matters.
Jesus, whom the book of Revelation gives divine titles, is at work in our world. This work is manifest in three ways according to this passage: he loves us, freed us, and made us. We put ourselves in a place to receive God’s ongoing love and to live out the freedom that we have been given. In addition, we have … Read More
We are meant to live with meaning, but our world seems to offer meanings that ultimately fail to measure up to their promises. Jesus came into the world to give us meaning, the kind of meaning that can only be found from knowing the destination of the journey of life.
In the Old Testament, a name is more than what someone is called. It points deeper to his or her character. In the first message of our More Than a Name Christmas series, Greg explores the context of Isaiah 9 and what it meant for Jesus to be prophesied as a Wonderful Counselor.
What do we do when Jesus is the ‘loose end’? What are those sections in the Gospel that we can have a tendency to gloss over? What words of Jesus do you hear and sort of cringe about? This starts with being honest with the text rather than avoiding, minimizing, reducing or dismissing.
In this sermon we continue our look in to scripture passages that often get dismissed because of their obscurity, seeming contradiction, or relative weirdness. This week Greg examined Exodus 4:19-28 which describes a strange encounter Moses and Zipporah had with God on their way from Midian to Egypt involving threat of death, circumcision, and the smearing of blood. This encounter, … Read More
Like a GPS, sometimes the Holy Spirit redirects our path to bring greater adventure and blessing. In celebration of Woodland Hills’ 25th anniversary Greg explores the ways the Holy Spirit has redirected the path of Woodland Hills, and what course correction means for followers of Christ.
Today Greg opens our two-part series called “There is no Them” with a message about the amazing consistency and unmistakable clarity we find in both the Old and New Testaments about our calling to welcome and embrace strangers into our lives and communities.
Each of us is unique. We each have our own story, our own calling, and our own distinct set of giftings, talents, and experiences that shape our uniqueness. However, many of us are stuck living in stories of all the reasons we are disqualified from having a life of purpose and impact in the kingdom. Shawna uses the unlikely heroes of ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ to remind us that God can nullify any of the objections our minds present that keeps us from living out our identity in Christ.
A surface level reading of the Old Testament gives the appearance that God has chosen Israel as a favorite nation, and has therefore discriminately blessed and protected them in and against other nations. Just as we discovered during the cross centered series, if one looks below the surface there actually is much more than is first apparent about the cultural understanding of God’s interactions with His people, the Israelites’ hearts, and God’s true calling and intention for their nation.