CrossPointe Church

Have you ever looked at the spectacular reality of a God who stepped out of heaven to rescue you, and found yourself yawning? It is a terrifying reality for ordinary believers: the slow, quiet drift where your theological vocabulary stays perfectly intact, but your spiritual affections have flatlined. You know the words, you know the songs, but the wonder has completely faded and the heart has sto...

Most of us live somewhere between two quiet fears: that God is too far above us to notice, or too small to actually help. Psalm 34 was written from a cave — David on the run, unwashed, surrounded by misfits, having just faked his own insanity to survive. And yet somehow, he writes one of the most stunning declarations of praise in all of Scripture. Stephen Bean sits with that tension and doesn't l...

There's a particular kind of exhaustion that comes not from one hard thing, but from a lifetime of hard things stacking up. If you've ever felt that weight, Psalm 18 was written for you. In this message, Pastor Steve McKenzie walks through the retrospective of an old, scarred David who looked back on decades of constriction and remembered what happened the moment he ran out of words and could only...

You can be singing at the top of your lungs one moment — hands raised, completely convinced of God's victory — and on your knees in the dark the next, begging Him not to abandon you. That's not a spiritual failure. That's Psalm 27. And that's the human experience. In this message from CrossPointe's summer series on the Psalms, Pastor Steve McKenzie walks through one of the most raw and layered pas...

Episode Summary We've domesticated Psalm 23. We've turned it into background noise for grief and decoration for walls. But David wrote this psalm with dirt under his fingernails — as a shepherd who knew exactly what it cost to keep sheep alive. This week, Steve McKenzie opens "The God Who Is…" — an 8-week summer series through the Psalms — by recovering what Psalm 23 actually says. It is not a poe...

What Can Separate Us From the Love of God? — Romans 8:31–39 You already know the answer. Nothing. But knowing it and feeling it are two very different things. This week, Stephen Bean closes out Romans 1–8 with Paul's thundering conclusion — a string of rhetorical questions that aren't really questions at all. What can be brought against you? Nothing. Who can condemn you? No one. What can separate...

You know the verses. You believe them. But Monday afternoon still feels heavy, and the gap between what you know and what you experience can be isolating. In this message from Romans 8:18-30, Steve McKenzie walks through one of the most hope-filled passages in all of Scripture, not as a quick fix for pain, but as an anchor for people who are tired of pretending everything is fine. If you've ever w...

What do you do when you're a Christian who's done everything right and still feels like it isn't enough? Steve McKenzie opens Romans 8 with a declaration meant for the weary believer: the war with God is over. Through the story of a soldier who hid in the jungle for 30 years after his war had ended, we see what it looks like to finally lay down a fight Jesus already finished — and to live as sons...

You know the feeling: you promised yourself you'd do better, be more patient, more present, more faithful. And then you didn't. Romans 7 is Paul at his most raw, naming the civil war every honest person recognizes inside themselves. In this sermon, Steve McKenzie walks through why the struggle isn't a sign that something is wrong with you. It's actually evidence that something has gone right. If y...

You finally land the job you've been chasing. You finally pay off the debt. You finally move out of your parents' house. And somewhere in the middle of celebrating, it hits you. The new job came with a new boss. The new place came with a stack of bills. The freedom you wanted came wearing a different uniform. So what if real freedom was never about getting rid of every master in your life? What if...

Do you feel defeated by sin? Not in some abstract theological sense, but the Tuesday afternoon kind, where you feel like you've broken the same promise for the thousandth time? Or maybe you've swung the other direction, quietly convinced that grace is a blank check and the fire for holiness has just gone cold. In this message from Romans 6:1–14, Pastor Steve McKenzie shows that both postures are l...

Hope is a strange thing to lose quietly. You don't decide to stop believing it — it just goes cold. A diagnosis comes. A relationship falls apart. A child walks away. And the world tells you to stay positive, find your peace, keep your chin up. You try that. The peace doesn't come. And somewhere you don't show many people, you start to wonder if hope was ever real — or just something Christians sa...

Easter was powerful. The worship, the baptisms, the celebration of a risen Savior. But then Monday came. The alarm went off and nothing had changed. The diagnosis was still there. The marriage was still hard. The grief didn't lift just because we sang about an empty tomb. So what difference does the resurrection actually make when life is still heavy? In Romans 5, Paul answers that question, and h...

Imagine the sinking feeling of standing outside a locked car while your only set of keys rests mockingly on the driver's seat. That thin sheet of glass suddenly feels like a thick brick wall, separating you from everything you need to move forward. Many of us live our daily lives behind similar barriers that are far more impenetrable than steel and glass. We find ourselves locked away by a grief t...

Have you ever felt like your life is a quiet room where the wonder of God has slowly leaked out? We often treat the miracles of Jesus like dusty fairy tales we have heard a thousand times, forgetting that He is the King who speaks directly to the howling winds and commands the very molecular structure of a dead man to vibrate back into life. In this Palm Sunday message, we walk the dusty road into...

Have you ever looked in the mirror and felt the crushing weight of your own inadequacy? Many of us carry a satchel of religious guilt that feels like lead, constantly checking our spiritual temperature and wondering why the fever of our failures won't break. In this episode, Associate Pastor Stephen Bean walks us through Romans 4:13-25 to show us that the law acts like a thermometer which can diag...

We all know the heavy weight of the mirror. When we look at our own lives, we often see a fractured reflection of missed marks, hidden shames, and the exhausting effort of trying to prove we are enough. In this episode, we dive into Romans 4 to witness a radical courtroom scene where God calls a stargazer and a murderer to the witness stand. Whether you are hiding behind a mask of performance or f...

For five weeks, we've been sitting in the dark. Paul has spent three chapters building a case so airtight that no one can escape it. The pagan, the philosopher, the priest... every mouth silenced. Every defense stripped away. If Romans ended at chapter 3, verse 20, you'd be holding the most devastating document ever written. A perfect diagnosis with no cure. A courtroom with no advocate. But Paul...

Ever feel like you’re running a race on a treadmill? You’re working harder, doing more, and trying to be "better," yet you’re still haunted by the nagging feeling that it’s just not enough. In this message, we step into the courtroom of Romans 3, where the Apostle Paul strips away our excuses and religious "maps" to show us the truth. It’s not a comfortable diagnosis, but it is a necessary one.  ...

It’s easier to curate a photograph than to face a mirror. In Romans 2, Paul holds up a mirror to religious people who know the truth, teach the truth, and carry the symbols of belonging, yet may lack inward transformation.   In this message, Pastor Steve explores the danger of religious privilege, the exhaustion of performance, and the gap between claim and conduct. God is not impressed with our c...

Most of us know how to prosecute someone else’s sin. We are far less comfortable defending our own. In Romans 2, Paul turns the spotlight from the obvious sinner to the respectable, moral, churchgoing person. The finger we were pointing outward suddenly points back at us.   In this message, Pastor Steve walks through the courtroom of the conscience and exposes the illusion of being a “good person....

Is our world falling apart, or is it falling into place? When we look at the shifting moral landscape of our culture, it’s easy to feel like God is distant or that His judgment is something far off in the future. But the sobering truth of Romans 1:26-32 is that the very things we lament are often signs that God is giving us exactly what we’ve asked for. Stephen Bean walks us through the "anatomy o...

The Strong Man and the Niagara: Understanding God’s Wrath and Grace We live in a world that wants to taste the sweetness of God's love without the bitterness of His holiness. We often view "wrath" as a divine temper tantrum, but what if God’s wrath is actually the greatest proof of His love for us?.   In this episode, we explore Romans 1:17-25 and the "Anatomy of Unbelief." Pastor Steve McKenzie u...

The Hurricane and the Candle: Finding Power in the Belly of the Beast Have you ever felt like your faith is just a small, flickering candle trying to stay lit in the middle of a hurricane?. Whether it’s the pressure of your career, the weight of your past, or the chaos of the world around you, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and powerless. In this episode, we dive into Romans 1:8-17 to see how Paul...

Some passages of Scripture do more than teach us. They steady us. Romans opens by lifting our eyes to the grace of God that stands at the horizon of history and shines into our present lives. Before Paul explains what we must believe or how we should live, he shows us who we belong to and what God has already done.   In this message, Pastor Steve introduces Romans as a journey into deep waters, no...