Countryside Church | Sermon Podcast

It's hard to know who to trust when so many voices are telling you what's true, and some of the loudest ones are the ones that have been in your head for decades. In 2 Timothy 3, Paul warns that the last days are difficult because people love themselves more than God, and are always learning but never arriving at the truth. His answer is that all Scripture is breathed out by God, and it's inspired...

Some of us have spent years trying to earn love, approval, or a place with God, and we're still tired and still feeling like we fall short. It's a heavy way to live. In Luke 10, seventy disciples come back thrilled about the ministry they've done, and Jesus points them somewhere else: rejoice that your names are written in heaven. This message looks at what it means to be a gospel-centered church,...

What would it look like if every blessing in your life came with a purpose bigger than your own comfort? This message walks through Romans 15, where Paul traces God's heart for all nations through quotes spanning the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings — showing that this has never been a new idea. From there it turns to Paul's own calling and the pattern of his life: blessing brings a burden of...

What would it look like if our church stopped measuring success by how many people show up and started measuring it by how many people we send out? This morning kicks off a new series at Countryside Church, rethinking our mission and values around one idea: seeking first the Kingdom of God. In Luke 10, Jesus appoints 72 ordinary disciples and sends them out ahead of him, choosing multiplication ov...

Do you ever feel like you've prayed the same prayer for weeks with nothing changing, and start to wonder if it's even worth it? This message walks through 1 Kings 18, where Elijah rebuilds a broken altar stone by stone, calls down fire from heaven, and then prays seven times for rain after three years of drought — even when his servant kept reporting back that the sky was empty. The point isn't th...

Ever feel like you're doing all the right things in your faith, but something still feels hollow? This message looks at Acts 19 and the revival that swept through Ephesus — a movement so powerful it disrupted the city's economy, yet decades later Jesus tells that same church they've lost the love they had at first. The difference wasn't doctrine or discipline; it was devotion, and it eroded the wa...

If you're waiting to see God do something real in your life, your family, or your city, it can be hard to know whether that hope is naive or worth holding onto. This message walks through Acts 1, where Jesus spends his last 40 days convincing the disciples the resurrection really happened and casting a vision for the kingdom reaching every corner of the earth. Rather than a strategy, he leaves the...

Have you ever wondered if God is done working the way He used to, or if that season has passed you by? This message looks at Nehemiah 8, where a people who had drifted from God for generations suddenly grew hungry for His word, listening to it read aloud for hours and weeping over what they heard. Pastor Sam traces how that hunger led to real joy and obedience, and points to Psalm 126, a prayer fo...

Have you settled for just trying not to lose, instead of actually seeking God with everything you've got? This message walks through 2 Chronicles 34 and the story of King Josiah, a boy who became king at eight after generations of his family's wickedness and violence, yet chose at sixteen to seek God for himself. As a young man he tore down the idols in the land, and when the long-lost Book of the...

Do you ever feel like your heart is dry even though everyone around you thinks you have it all together? This week Pastor Sam opens Jonah 3, where a reluctant prophet preaches a five-word sermon with no scripture, no gospel, not even God's name mentioned — and the whole city of Nineveh repents anyway. It's a picture of a God who isn't limited by our failures or unwillingness, who can bring new lif...

What do you do when life falls apart faster than you can process it? This message sits with that question honestly, without rushing past the hard parts. Elder Brad Collier traces Joseph's story through betrayal, slavery, and prison, where Scripture keeps saying simply, "the Lord was with him." He connects that to his own family's experience losing their home in the fires, and to James 4's call to...

Some seasons make sense right away. Others knock the wind out of you before you can ask why. Elder Kelly Cox traces this through Exodus, watching Israel move from a miracle at the Red Sea straight into a wilderness with no food or water — because dependence on God, not comfort, was the point. He connects it to Paul's words from prison in Philippians 4, learning contentment in plenty and in want be...

Do you ever wonder whether the darkness you're carrying is something you're supposed to fight on your own, or whether there's something bigger already working against it? Elder Stephen Houser looks at John 1:1-8, where Jesus is described as the true light and life of the world, shining into a dark world without being overcome. He also looks at John the Baptist as a witness who kept pointing away f...

If you're exhausted. If you feel trapped, invisible, or like you're one bad day from falling apart — this message is for you. Elder Shannon Ferrell isn't speaking from a distance. At 13 years old, he was making a plan to end his life, caught in a mental spiral he didn't have words for yet — undiagnosed anxiety, ADHD, and OCD all working against him at once. One passage, Psalm 103, became the thing...

What if God's plan to change a city — and maybe the world — was always going to happen through ordinary, unknown people like you? In Acts 11, we meet a group of unnamed, unremarkable people who showed up to one of the most influential cities in the ancient world and quietly started something that would ripple through history for centuries. No famous leaders. No platform. Just ordinary people who d...

What if the person God wants to use to change the world is someone nobody else would pick? Not the most polished. Not the most put-together. Not the one with the most to offer. What if God's plan has always been to use the people everyone else overlooks — including you? In Acts 9, Pastor Sam Weitman unpacks one of the most dramatic reversals in the Bible — and the two ordinary, unassuming people a...

What if the most powerful thing you can do for your neighborhood… is just open your door? You don't need a perfectly clean house. You don't need an Instagram-worthy meal. You don't need to have all the right words. What if God has already been working in the lives of the people around you — long before you ever showed up? In Acts 10, Pastor Sam Weitman unpacks one of the most pivotal moments in th...

Note: We had some audio issues at the start of this recording — it picks back up at 5:58. Thanks for your patience! --------- Have you ever gone through the motions of something — and felt completely empty doing it? This message hits on something most of us have experienced but might avoid talking about: the difference between performing devotion and actually being devoted. In this week's message,...

What if one conversation could change everything? Not a sermon. Not a sales pitch. Just a real talk about how ordinary people — people like you and like us — can be part of something much bigger than ourselves. In this message, guest speaker Rusty Gunn opens up Acts 8:26–40 and walks us through one of the most surprising stories in the Bible: a chance encounter on a desert road that sparked a chai...

Nobody wants to talk about suffering. But it's something we all go through — hard seasons, loss, relationships that fall apart, or just a low-level ache that won't go away. In Acts 6–8, Care Pastor Bryan Intemann walks through the story of Stephen to answer one of life's hardest questions: why do we suffer, and what do we do when we do? Here's some of what Bryan covers: 🙏Why suffering is unavoida...

Most of us know we should pray more. But most of us don't. Not because we don't care — but because if we're honest, we've prayed before and it felt like nothing happened. So we quietly stopped. In this week's message, Pastor Sam Weitman walks us through Acts 4:23-31 and gets refreshingly real about that exact feeling — including his own dry season in prayer. What comes out of it isn't a guilt trip...

What does it actually look like when a group of people go all in for God? Not in a churchy, performative way. In a real, costly, life-looks-different-after-this kind of way. In Acts 2:41–47, Pastor Sam Weitman looks at the very first church — 3,000 people who had just encountered Jesus and decided to do life completely differently together. What they built wasn't a program or a system. It was some...

Two thousand years ago, a small, overlooked group of ordinary people received the Holy Spirit — and it changed the entire world. According to Acts 2, that same Spirit is available to everyone who puts their trust in Jesus. In this message, Pastor Sam Weitman walks us through one of the most pivotal chapters in all of Scripture — Acts 2:1-41 — and what it means for your everyday life today. Here's...

The most important message in history was not meant to stay inside church walls — it was meant to travel through you, into the lives of the people around you. In this message, Pastor Sam Weitman unpacks Acts 1:4-14 and issues a personal challenges: 💔 The people closest to you — your friends, your family, your coworkers — may be waiting for something only you will bring them 💔 What do you do with...

Most of us walk around with this quiet feeling that we're just... not enough. Not qualified enough. Not put-together enough. Too much baggage. Too many mistakes. And somewhere along the way, we decided that means God probably can't do much with us. But what if that's 100% wrong? This week, Pastor Sam Weitman preaches from Acts 1:6-8, and what he unpacks might stop you in your tracks. Because it tu...