Toronto Alliance Church

A win, win situation is one where everybody is a winner. When you run a race, or in a tournament, there's only one winner, it's not a win win. But if your boss were to say to you, "from now on, you can do your job from home", it's a win win. The boss somehow feels that the job can still be done, and you can do it all day in your pyjamas. When we choose to be generous, it'...

There are certain laws that govern our existence. I haven't thought much about it since I was in University, but there's these four laws of thermodynamics. But whether or not I think about them, they still govern my existence. For example, the law of gravity. I wasn't anxious about it when I woke up this morning, whether when I hit the floor, I would float up to the ceiling. I don'...

I once travelled to a place where there's not enough power for everyone. They do rotating power outages every day but never at the same time of day. If the power is on, you charge your phone or computer, you run your dishwasher and hope it doesn't stop mid cycle. I've also lived in houses where there's not enough power coming to the house. The lights go dim, the fan slows down. We...

We have a lot of desires. In 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul writes, "Earnestly desire spiritual gifts". Is this desire on our radar? Is this something that we hold in our hearts? How we feel about spiritual gifts can be all over the map. We might not stand in the way but we might not seek them either. Another response is, why bother with what can be the source of such division in the ch...

I was thinking, if you want to really bring hope to a person, start talking about divine healing and pray for them, so that even a measure of the burden of illness or affliction or heaviness is lifted and light comes to the eyes. It is the afflictions that come to our bodies or to our minds that weigh us down so much, and has all through human history. So when Jesus comes and is known as one who h...

In today's message I want to speak to a few questions we might have: what assignment does God have for me? Not for me, but for each of us. What assignment does God have for us? What's our place in the church? Where do we fit in? Sometimes we wonder about these things and they're practical questions. These days we are talking about how to make the most of our spiritual gifts. When we&#3...

When doing a task at home, there's usually a tool to make the job easier. For baking, there's measuring cups, mixers, knives, that make the job easier and more precise. For building, there are drills, saws, measuring devices, etc. When the church was born, God distributed to the church lots of tools previously unheard of, to each one who believes. The scriptures call these tools spiritual...

One thing I don't think we ever tire of is getting gifts. We like getting gifts, thoughtful gifts, carefully chosen gifts. We love it. And the greatest gift giver of all is God because his gifts are so, so well chosen, so well suited. His gifts are delightful. When Jesus was raised from the dead and went to heaven, the Father sent his Spirit to live in the hearts of all who would believe him....

As children, we dared each other to do rather unwise things. Things that were beyond what we felt we had capacity for. It was a means to push a person beyond what they felt comfortable. When it comes to faith in God, when some people come to faith in Jesus, they have been longing for years for an opportunity. But for others the way to faith is fraught with difficulties. Doubts rise, or really comp...

How does one lean into uncertainty and maybe even unpleasantness with confidence and with joy? On Palm Sunday we celebrate Jesus joyfully entering the city of Jerusalem on the praises of all kinds of people for all they have seen him do and the fresh things they have heard him speak. They're full of joy because they've never experienced anything like it. As Jesus rides in, they are probabl...

Sometimes you will find small dogs, puny even, weighing maybe 2lbs, that have a massive bark and intimidate deeply. Much bigger dogs back away just at the size of the bark. We too are easily intimidated by things that shouldn't. We don't realize the punch we have as people bound to Christ and the effect our prayers have. We don't realize that the very thing that strikes intimidation in...

Growing up, on the farm immediately adjacent to ours, a man raised and trained racing horses. I would wander to the back of our farm and watch these horses just go around the track he built. He always put blinders on the horses. As a kid I wondered why. Now I see they do it in the big races too and it's probably a good thing for horses because it keeps them focused. But I think we do that when...

G Campbell Morgan, a great Bible scholar and preacher from generations past, has a book called Great Chapters of the Bible. We like to think any chapter in the Bible is a good chapter, but he picked about two dozen great chapters of the Bible. And he writes this about the letter to the Philippians. "The letter to the Philippians is unique among the writings of Paul in the personal note which...

I wonder what you'd say if you were given the opportunity to see the coming years of the future of the world, right to the very end in detail. I think most of us would probably say "no thanks", a natural reaction. Many folks conjecture about days to come, but there's only one that knows. That's God. And though we're reticent to go down that path, God wants us to know, and he shares his secrets wit...

On steep mountain roads they add these runaway ramps. These are are especially for big trucks going down hill in case they lose their brakes. The only way to avoid perishing with all that momentum is to drive up these ramps where the truck gets quickly bogged down in soft gravel and slows them down. When we look at world events, do we feel that way, like a truck going down? Do we wonder whether an...

The goal of an interviewer in a job interview is not to know what you think or hope you can do or what one day with education and experience you will do. They want to know, like right now what can you do? I think we struggle when considering what God is able to do. There's a kids song that goes, "God can do anything, anything, anything, but fail." He can't fail, he can do anything. But when you lo...

I want you to think for a minute. What right now is your greatest anxiety? Is it for finances? Maybe your children? Maybe politics? Maybe you're lonely? Are you dealing with mental health or physical health, finances, overwhelm. We certainly have a lot of choice for what we could be very anxious about today, don't we? If you can think of something, well, you're not alone, I sure can think of a lot...

What do you know about bulldogs? They have short stubby legs, they go back and forth, they're built like a rock, they've got funny scrunched up faces and they're unmistakable. But what bulldogs are known for in particular is their tenacity and courage. It's like they know no fear and when they latch onto something, they don't let go. I was thinking about that when it comes to faith. To have a bull...

God loves people too much to leave them in their state. That's true with all of us. What great things God will do to win a person. The Bible says that nothing is impossible with God. But maybe what seems most impossible is that people set in their ways, people quite close to us, who give God no time of day, would ever repent and turn and yield themselves fully before God and give him glory. Maybe...

We say God is in control and so we should, because the Bible shows clearly that God sets the direction for something, he says it in advance and he goes about accomplishing it. Even in the present day. But sometimes our faith gets rattled because we look at the news or our own personal lives, and we read between the lines and andother mantra seems to takes over. But I think we're looking at the wro...

I wanna talk today about how to have power with God. Power generally is a very desirable thing here on Earth. People scramble after it. And we need it because we feel weakness and dependence in practically everything we do. We need power from God. But power is a tricky thing because as much as people hanker after power it can be very destructive. We see it in the news, reminders of the destructive...

I think current events make people feel a lot of uncertainty. It can manifest as anger or despair; I definitely hear of fear which goes further into emotional struggles, where there are tremors in our soul. Even still we say that God is in control, and so we should, because he is in control. He's working things according to his purposes and plan as Scripture says. He's always been doing that and h...

I'm going to say a phrase and I want you to take note of the first thing that comes to mind. What do you think of when you think of God as your father? What is the first thing that comes to your mind? In our advent series this year we have been going through what is in a name and specifically what is in the names that were given to Jesus when he was prophesied years and years and years before what...

What's in a name. The more we know a person, their name becomes rich, multicolored, multi-faceted. When the name comes up, it evokes many memories, thoughts. I've been married to my wife many years. When I hear her name, immediately I have thoughts that make me smile or laugh straight out, some evoke admiration and gratitude. Even our differences have given way to richness. All that right within a...

What's in a name?" In Shakespeare's play "Romeo and Juliet", Juliet is separated from Romeo because of a blood feud and he bears the wrong family name. In her mind, if he had a different name, he'd be the same person but the wall separating them would be gone. "What's in a name" - the name is nothing. But in the Christmas story, for the person of the Christ, the name is everything. During advent,...