CrossPointe Church

What do you hold onto when the darkness feels permanent, and how do you keep loving people while you wait for morning? In Romans 13:8-14, Paul says the whole law is summed up in love and that the night is nearly over. Guest preacher David Mudge walks through the passage in three parts, from the purpose of the law, to why our salvation is near, to what it means to put on the Lord Jesus. Along the w...

How do you keep a calm heart when your phone, your mailbox, and your news feed are all telling you to either pledge your allegiance or panic? In Romans 13:1-7, Paul writes to a small, vulnerable church in the capital of an empire ruled by Nero, and he still calls them to honor the governing authorities. Steve walks through what that does and does not mean, why God’s sovereignty (not any leader’s c...

Most of us know what it feels like to smile on Sunday morning while something harder sits underneath. Romans 12:9-21 reads like a long list of impossible commands, and if we try to run it in our own strength, we collapse. In this message from our Romans series, Steve shows why Paul opens with God’s mercies before he says a word about love, and what changes when we stop performing and start clingin...

What happens to your heart when nobody notices what you do? David Mudge knows that question personally. In this message from Romans 12:1-8, he opens up about a season when the recognition fell away and he had to ask whether the love of Jesus was really enough. What he discovered changed the way he serves, and it might change the way you see your own place in the church. Paul calls it a living sacr...

What happens when you spend years mastering the manual and miss the sunrise? Steve opens this message with a camera that comes with a 500-page owner’s manual, and uses it to ask what all of Romans 9 through 11 is actually for. He walks through the mystery of Romans 11:25-36, including what Paul means by “all Israel will be saved,” and then shows where Paul lands after eleven chapters of deep theol...

What do you do when a dream falls apart and bitterness quietly takes root? David Mudge shares how a hillside in the Scottish Highlands taught him what humility actually feels like: small, and deeply loved. From there he walks through Romans 11:1-24, where Paul asks whether God has given up on his people, and shows how the olive tree of God's grace leaves no room for pride. Listen in for a message...

What if the way to God was never as far off as you assumed? Not locked away in heaven, not buried in some far country, but as close as the next thing you say and believe. In this message from Romans 10:5-21, Associate Pastor Stephen Bean unpacks Paul's answer to one of the oldest questions in the Bible: how does anyone actually get right with God? Along the way, he traces the responsibility every...

Imagine two runners: one trained for twenty years, sacrificing everything for this exact moment, and the other never ran a single lap, sitting in the stands with cheese powder on his fingers. Now imagine the untrained man wins. That's the picture Paul paints for a religious, disciplined people who worked hard for God their whole lives and somehow missed him. This week Steve unpacks Romans 9:30–10:...

What do you do when God does not fit inside the neat little box of your expectations? When his choices feel jarring and your heart burns with heavy, unanswered questions about fairness, it can feel dangerous to speak them out loud. In this episode, Pastor Steve McKenzie opens up Romans 9:14–29 to tackle one of the most overwhelming passages in all of Scripture. We step straight into the fiery tens...

We have all looked at a room filled with empty chairs and felt a sudden, heavy ache. Maybe it is the ache of a prodigal child who turned their back on faith, a family member who shares your blood but not your hope, or even your own quiet fear that you simply do not belong at God's table. When the people we love walk away, or when our own lives feel fractured, a terrifying whisper creeps into the d...

Have you ever felt like your past mistakes precede you into every room you enter? Most of us know the heavy, suffocating weight of being the outcast, standing on the outside of a crowd while carrying a burden of regret we crafted with our own hands. We spend our weeks trying to cover up our flaws, desperate to stay hidden yet starving to be known. In this message on Luke 19:1-10, Associate Pastor...

Have you ever packed up your life and run away from the very place that was supposed to be a sanctuary? Across North America, tens of millions of souls have walked out of church doors with blood dripping from unseen wounds, crushed by spiritual manipulation, silent abandonment in crisis, or the hypocritical cruelty of people who claimed to speak for God. When religious institutions trade the quiet...

We have all felt the heavy, suffocating weight of a mistake that seems too grand to undo. We lie awake bargaining with the night, convinced we have finally wandered past the boundary of redemption, or we look at someone who deeply wounded us and secretly decide they are beyond saving. In 2 Chronicles 33, King Manasseh traded his integrity for control, plunged a nation into spiritual ruin, and fill...

We spend our lives playing a silent game of hide-and-seek, wearing carefully crafted masks to cover our deepest shame and building thick walls around our fragile egos. Deep down, we harbor the quiet terror that if God or anyone else saw who we truly are, we would be instantly cast aside as completely disqualified. In week two of our Black Sheep series, Pastor Steve McKenzie uncovers the staggering...

We know that quiet, cold panic in the gut. You wake up in the dead of night, feeling completely unwound while exhaustion leeches every drop of strength from your bones. You have been running hard, trying to stay three steps ahead of a past that threatens to crash over you like a dark, suffocating wave. Maybe the wreckage behind you wasn't caused by someone else, but by your own bad decisions, your...

Have you ever looked around at people who play by their own rules, cheat their way to the top, and mock everything holy, only to watch them coast through life in luxury while you sweat blood just to keep food on the table? That crushing thought sneaks into the quietest hours of Monday morning, whispering that your faithfulness has been a bad investment and your sacrifices have yielded nothing but...

You started the journey with so much hope. You signed the marriage covenant, held the newborn child, or walked into the office on day one of your new career, and it felt like a grand adventure. But then the miles started to add up, the terrain hit like a brick wall, and suddenly you found yourself stuck in the ravine of your actual life, staring at the daunting wall of tomorrow. In this episode, P...

Most of us are master builders who have spent a lifetime constructing invisible walls to protect ourselves from being fully seen. We hide our deep insecurities, past hurts, and secret flaws behind a highly polished, curated version of ourselves that handles our relationships and manages our careers. But maintaining this defensive facade leaves our souls utterly exhausted from the constant hiding....

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...