New Story Church

I've forgotten almost everything about fifth grade. Except one word. One word spoken by someone whose name I can't even remember. And decades later, I'm still living with its effects. Why do words have so much power over us? In James 3, we're warned that our words can bless or curse, heal or destroy, even set entire lives on fire. But James is after something deeper than just w...

Who's said, "let me know if you need anything" in the last month? In James 2:14 -26, James asks one blunt question: what good is a faith that only talks? He pictures a sister with no coat and no food who gets a blessing (go in peace) and nothing else. Then he writes the line that made Luther nervous: "a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.&quot...

Nobody likes feeling used. But what happens when we realize we do the same thing to other people... often without even noticing? James 2. Two men walk into a church. One wears a gold ring and a toga bleached brilliant white (with urine, it turns out). The other owns one outfit, and it’s filthy. James asks a simple question: who gets the good seat? In the Roman world, giving the rich man the best s...

There's a kind of not-knowing-yourself that's harmless, even sweet. And there's a kind that can rip your life apart. James writes to people who say "Jesus is Lord" but whose lives tell a different story. He calls them double-souled. Divided. And the worst part is, they can't see it. They're self-deceived. So how do you find the gaps in your life when you're...

When something hard happens, your instinct says: I'm being set up. In James 1:12 -18, Jesus' own brother, the one who once thought Jesus had lost his mind, takes that suspicion head-on. In this sermon, we walk through what to do when life presses on you, where the pull toward our worst choices actually comes from, and what God has to do with any of it. Along the way, there's a pear...

Hardships will come. Choose joy. Easy to say. Terrible advice if you don't understand what James actually means. James isn't telling you to feel happy when your life falls apart. He's saying something far greater: that the very thing you hate might be the thing God is using to make you whole. In this message, we continue our study of the Letter of James — likely the earliest writing...

That tension. James has a word for it: double-souled. And if you don't do something about it, it's going to tear you apart. In this message, we begin our study of what scholars believe to be the earliest New Testament writing: the Letter of James. But this letter has quite an edge to it. His message can be summed up in three words: "You adulterous people." So that needs some ex...

I spent years studying the Bible, and it almost killed my faith. Turns out you can master every word and still miss the whole point. In Luke 10, an expert in the Scriptures tries to get Jesus to enter into his convoluted debates over the meaning of the text. Instead, Jesus invites him to enter into the Word of God. It's a whole different way of reading the Scriptures as prayer.  It's som...

The first time I got a $20 tip, I felt amazing. A year later, anything less felt like an insult. How did I become so ungrateful? Luke 17 tells us. Ten men with leprosy cry out to Jesus. And all ten are healed. But only one comes back to say thank you. And Jesus wants to know: What happened to the other nine? As we follow Jesus’s question and pull on this thread through the Scriptures, we discover...

The first time I prayed for my enemy, I said the words, but I felt hollow.  In Matthew 5, Jesus dropped the line early Christians quoted more than any other — love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you. It's the sentence that made them recognizable in a world that had never seen anything like it. It's also the one we skip. So, we go back to what Jesus was actually quoting and wh...

You can do everything right and still come apart. That's Martha in Luke 10 — busy, resentful, and missing that God is standing in her living room. Most of us aren't falling apart because we're doing something wrong. We're falling apart because we're doing too many things right — and somewhere in all of it we've lost track of why we started. Luke has a word for that. S...

Which, if you've ever tried to pray, kind of sounds ridiculous. But it's true. You should pray. In this series, we'll look at four prayer practices that will change your life and our world. But before we can go there, we have to make sure we're talking about the same thing. What kind of prayer actually changes us and our world? Three words: Hear. Awe. Behold. We'll sit wit...

Someone throws the party of a lifetime. Everyone is invited, then only a few show up — and their excuses are completely reasonable. In Luke 14, Jesus is at a dinner table where everyone's working the room, angling for a better seat. So he tells them about a banquet where the guest list gets thrown out, and the host sends his servant to the streets — then out past the city — until the house is...

In California, there's a vineyard that pays every worker the same — first hour and last. Jesus told a story like that. It still makes people furious.  In Matthew 20, a landowner hires workers at dawn. Then at noon. On and on, until 5 o'clock, an hour before quitting time. And he pays every one of them the same. The crew that worked twelve hours in the sun is livid. And here's the un...

What do you do with the people who make you feel unsafe? In Luke 10, a religious expert asks Jesus a simple question — 'Who is my neighbor?' — hoping to draw the line somewhere comfortable. Jesus answers with a story so scandalous that we've spent two thousand years softening it: it's the 'first misnamed parable' (Copan). But, to the original audience, "good&quot...

You've heard this story so many times you can't hear it anymore. In Luke 15, Jesus tells a story about two sons — one who runs into self-destruction and one who stays home and turns to stone. Most of us know it as "the Prodigal Son." Most of us have heard it wrong.  In this first week of The Parables of Jesus, Pastor Greg unpacks why Jesus told parables designed to break open y...

God does not heal the brokenhearted by erasing their pain or scars, but by binding up our wounds through Christ. He explicitly took up our plight in His mission (Isaiah 61:1), bore our sorrows, and calls us to wait in honest hope at His table until He restores the years the locusts have eaten.

You prayed. Something happened. Then you wondered if that was really God... or coincidence... or just in your head. It's the same question Esther forces us to ask. And refuses to answer. It's the one book in the Bible that never mentions God. No miracles, no prayers, no voice from heaven — just a hidden queen, a cousin named Mordecai climbing a pagan empire, a genocide plotted with a rol...

There's something in all of us that wants to destroy us. And the terrifying part is — it usually looks like a strength. The Book of Esther introduces us to a man named Haman — one of the most psychologically precise portraits of pride in all of Scripture. He has everything: wealth, power, access, honor. And none of it is enough. Because one man won't bow. What follows is not just a story...

Most of us never find out who we really are. Not until something forces the question. This week we hit the turning point of Esther. For years she's hidden who she really is, her faith, her people, to survive at the top of a world that runs on power and appearances. Then the crisis comes, and she can't hide anymore. Speak up and she might die. Stay silent and she'll lose something wo...

Some people just seem to be born lucky. And some people don't. Everything seemed to be falling into place for Esther and Mordecai. She "just happened" to be in the right place at the right time — and became queen. He "just happened" to overhear an assassination plot and saved the king's life. Lucky. Lucky. Lucky. Until it wasn't. Old wounds resurface. Old enemies...

There's a book in the middle of the Bible where God never shows up. Not once. No miracles. No prayer. No divine intervention. Just a young woman hiding who she really is — her identity, her faith, her people — in order to survive in a world run by powerful, fragile, drunk men. And somehow that made it into our Bible. This week we open the Book of Esther. It's strange, morally complicated...

Most of us are lonelier than we’re willing to admit — and we’re not telling anyone about it. This sermon is about the most ordinary thing in the world: a table. A meal. It turns out that simple thing might be the answer to something much larger. Drawing from the story of Jesus eating with the people no one else would eat with (Luke 5), Acts 2, the neuroscience of bonding, and a Van Gogh painting a...

Most of us think we choose our friends. We don't think much about what our friends are choosing for us. In this sermon, we wrestle with the hidden ways friendship shapes us, why so many adult friendships feel thin or transactional, and why it's so hard to truly know and be known. Along the way, we explore Proverbs, David & Jonathan, the psychology of imitation, the "false self,&...

You're not a bad friend. You're just making Orpah's choice — over and over — without knowing it. This sermon walks through one of the most quietly devastating scenes in the Bible: three women on a road, a friendship at a crossroads, and two very different choices about what makes life worth living. Ruth 1 turns out to be less about loyalty and more about something harder — the momen...