Ethos Church

Much has been said and written about the differences between each generation in our nation. Unfortunately, there is a generational divide that inhibits God’s people from working together on God’s agenda, but it doesn’t have to be that way. In this teaching, we are exploring what it would take and what it could look like for a community of Jesus followers to be so committed to passing the baton of...

You may not realize this, but God desires to speak directly to you, and He wants to be in constant and continual conversation with us. We must let the simple understanding that God wants real communication with us, sink in and grab hold of our hearts. Once we do that, understanding and recognizing His voice becomes natural and easy. And we begin to see that communication with God is just as much o...

Archbishop William Temple was famously quoted as saying, “When I pray, coincidences happen, when I stop praying, the coincidences stop happening.” When we reflect on our lives and the times when we have prayed or neglected prayer, many of us would say the same thing. Prayer means many things to many people, but at its simplest and most immediate, it means asking God for help. In fact, God not only...

Have you ever felt like prayer is for everyone, except for you, a normal person? Often when we pray, we expect God’s voice to boom like thunder...but mostly, He whispers. We expect Him to wear tap dancing shoes that we can hear coming down the hall, but He tiptoes and hides from the crowd. We expect Him to be strange, but He comes to us disguised as our life. Prayer is far more normal than we real...

Prayer is a vast subject, of which there are no experts (besides Jesus, of course). As a community, we are spending the next four weeks on prayer while recognizing that we could easily spend forty weeks on this subject. Therefore, we want to narrow this down a bit. This series is aimed at new Christians and ordinary followers of Jesus who may not have studied theology and do not consider themselve...

Ethos is a life-giving community committed to keeping Jesus at its Center. We are on a mission to love all people in Jesus' name so that we may all Know God, Find Freedom, Discover Purpose, & Make a Difference. EthosOH.com Small Groups: EthosOH.com/Community ServeColumbus.org

“but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth” - Acts 1:8 NASB Ethos is a life-giving community committed to keeping Jesus at its Center. We are on a mission to love all people in Jesus' name so that we may all Know God, Find Freedom, Discover Purpose, &am...

When thinking on purpose in life, we tend to immediately think on, “my purpose.” When truly, pursuing purpose in life is all in pursuing God’s purpose for our lives, not our own. We tend to want to know the big grandiose picture of what our purpose is supposed to be while we are here on this earth. And all God asks of us is to say yes to His daily instructions and to trust Him, and He will be fait...

As James wraps up his letter, he emphasizes the importance of prayer and faith. Throughout the Book of James series, we have received practical teaching and instruction to help us grow and live purpose-filled lives for God’s glory, but we cannot walk it out in our own strength. We need the power and presence of God, so we must pray! And we need faith in order to break through the natural into the...

In the church at Jerusalem who James was writing to, there was some major fighting, problems, conflict, and drama. Unfortunately, not unlike what churches across the world still experience today. This is why a lot of people never give church a chance. Many people are open to God, they’re just turned off by His church. Not only do we fight with people within the church – we fight with people outsid...

In James 3, James teaches us how powerful our tongues are. Like a rudder that steers a large ship, or a spark that turns into a forest fire, our tongues have the power to impact lives around us. Not only are they powerful, but they are also difficult to control. We’ve seen how destructive words can be, but the power of our tongues can also be used to give life and build people up. However, we know...

James 2 says we must not show favoritism, but, instead, love our neighbor as ourselves. We cater to certain groups of people in hopes of getting something from them - Jesus served all people to give something to them. The enemy wants to divide the Church, and we need to be intentional and diligent to preserve our unity. We have to fight together against division. James examines five basic Christia...

The Book of James was written to a church that was scattered and couldn’t meet all together due to circumstances beyond their control. We’re still experiencing a similar separation as a church today. In difficult times like these, trials and temptations are inevitable, but God will empower us to persevere as we live out our faith and grow spiritually mature. This is what the book of James is all a...

If you grew up in church, you’ve probably heard that, in the “end times”, the earth and everything in it is going to be destroyed. If you believe that the whole world is just going to burn up in the end, all this talk about work and rest really won’t make a ton of sense. However, this view of ultimate world destruction doesn’t seem to be consistent with the rest of scripture, nor does it seem to f...

Workaholism is one of the ten commandments we brag about breaking. We work more than ever before. We have more than ever before. And yet, we are more miserable than ever before. Michael Zigaralle, from Charleston University School of Business, surveyed more than twenty thousand Christians in North America and found that busyness is the number one major distraction to Christian’s lives with God. Th...

Over the past few weeks, we have been unpacking God’s vision for your work. However, we need to address the danger to this vision of work because if you embrace the vision of God for work, odds are, you will make money. And when we make money, when we receive a paycheck, it’s really easy to get sucked into this cycle: Work more, buy more, repeat. But the end result is a stressed out, anxiety laden...

Many of us constantly battle with trying to live up to the expectations of others or trying to live up to my own unrealistic expectations. For others, we find ourselves wrestling with the lie of the expectations we think God has for us. If you battle with the pursuit of perfectionism you may even find yourself “almost” lying in order to show an image of yourself that’s not real. Or maybe you avoid...

For so many of us, work is a means to an end. Maybe that end is significance, power and authority, notoriety, money, opportunity, the weekend or vacation, rest, or play and leisure. Work can so easily become the thing we do to get what we really want. Work was never intended to be a means to an end, in fact, work is a part of the “end” in and of itself. Think about this; If Jesus came today, He co...

There are over 7.9 billion people on earth. Which is a number that most of us have a hard time wrapping our heads around but one of the striking things about humanity is how different we all are. Everyone is unique and diverse and yet, we are all called to rule, subdue, work, and take care of the earth but we each do that in a unique way. The term “vocation” comes from the Latin word, “vocatio”, w...

It seems that we often have to remind ourselves that the purpose of working is not about serving ourselves but rather serving God and others. There is a higher purpose to our labor, and that is to make Jesus known and reflect His character in all the work that we do. God created man with the ability and purpose to work. And when we view work through the lens of a gift from God; we will start to se...

What’s the first question we usually ask somebody when we meet them? “So, what do you do?” Which is essentially the same question as, “What are you giving your life to?” and “Do you like it?” The vast majority of our lives is spent working. The next largest slice of the pie is spent resting – the stuff we look forward to and savor. In church, we often spend most of our time teaching people how to...

A lot of us have trouble understanding why Jesus had to die for our sins not because we don’t understand God’s holiness, but we misunderstand our own level of depravity. In a world where so much sin is accepted and celebrated, it’s easy to believe that we aren’t “that bad.” Without the sacrifice of Jesus, we would be without hope and without forgiveness. Isaiah 64:6 says, “We are all infected and...

Our goal in life is not simply to follow Jesus but to become like Him. Therefore, He must increase and we must decrease (John 3:30). There are three promises we can make to help us be more like Jesus in our relationships. First, we can promise to respond with patience and love rather than to react out of emotion and impulse. Next, we can promise to focus on the good in people instead of focusing o...

In order for relationships to work, we must let the One who designed them define them. God wants our relationships to be healthy. Contrary to what we often see in the world, relationships are not disposable. They require commitment in order to work well. Making promises can assist us in staying committed to our relationships. There are four specific promises we can make to strengthen our relations...

Ethos is a life-giving community committed to keeping Jesus at its Center. We are on a mission to love all people in Jesus' name so that we may all Know God, Find Freedom, Discover Purpose, & Make a Difference. EthosOH.com Small Groups: EthosOH.com/Community ServeColumbus.org