Aletheia Church, Providence RI

What do you do when there’s a big gap between the person you think you should be and the person you are? That gap is called shame, and handling the wrong way will lead us to self-hatred or arrogance. But there’s a better way, a way to be healed of our shame.

You might not think of yourself as an angry person, but we’ve all been angry at someone. Relational anger is a big deal, and if we mishandle it, Paul says we give “an opportunity to the devil.” But there's a better way—a way made possible by the gospel.

Anxiety is something we all experience. Yet just because it’s a normal experience, the Bible says we don’t need to remain consistently anxious. In this sermon we look at where anxiety comes from and how to ensure that it doesn’t stick around.

In this week between teaching series, we look at an interesting question: Why do people seek after things they don’t need? When talking to a group of philosophers in Acts 17, Paul says that God made everything but doesn’t need anything. This amazing biblical truth can change everything you think you know about God.

As a church we want to see our city and New England changing to look more and more like the kingdom of God. But how does that happen? And what’s our part to play? In this sermon, we look at what it means to walk in the good deeds God has prepared for his people.

What makes Christianity different to every other faith system in the world? In a word… grace. In this sermon, Pastor Justin explores how grace subverts all our expectations, and how we can bring the good news of grace to others.

The gospel is good news because it’s a solution to a problem. If you don’t understand the problem, the solution won’t sound like good news. In this sermon we take a deep dive into the problem the gospel addresses. What we discover is that the problem is worse than we ever imagined.

The songs we sing say will shape the lives we live, because songs carry wisdom. But not all wisdom is worth its salt. God has given his people the gift of wisdom songs so that his wisdom shapes their lives most.

Why would the psalmists write songs about stories from Israel’s history for people to sing? Today we’re looking at psalms that recount Israel’s history. These psalms of memory show us the importance of singing about God’s faithfulness to his people over the generations.

Some psalms in the Bible are characterized by exuberant praise. Others are characterized by lament. These songs are surprising, raw, and make you wonder if they should even be in the Bible. These songs teach us how to respond to pain, that we can turn to God in these moments rather than away from him.

Praise is singing characterized by joy and exuberance. It’s also accompanied by hand-raising, hand-clapping, and dancing. What is praise all about, and why do God’s people do it?

Marriage can be a coin with two very different sides — joy on the one side and pain on the other. The biblical teaching about marriage isn’t ignorant of the pain but rather goes to the source of the pain and redeems it.

All parents have a picture of a preferred future for their children. How do we know we’ve got the right picture in mind? In Deuteronomy, Moses preaches to the Israelites, showing them how to pursue God’s picture for their children.

In Galatians 5:6, Paul says that what matters most is faith working through love. In this sermon, we look at what that means and how we actually live that way.

This is our final sermon in our Acts series. The details Luke chooses to focus on in the final chapters of Acts show us where his emphasis lies. In this sermon, Jonathan Cothron points to what that focus is and what it means for this generation of Spirit-empowered witnesses.

After two years in prison, Paul finally got a chance to appeal for his freedom. But what did he do? He preached the gospel. When we get squeezed, what will come out of our lives?

Paul made many close friends through his work of spreading the good news about Jesus. There’s something about the mission of Jesus that makes us a strong, flourishing community.

Philippi had a special place in Paul’s memory. He’d been especially mistreated there. But the discomfort Paul felt in Philippi was like good soil for unbelievable fruit.

Phil Bonasso is a co-founder of Every Nation Churches & Ministries, and in this sermon he explores the importance God has placed on relationships. Whether or not we’re willing to accept it, we can’t be who God wants us to be unless we embrace the relationships he wants us to embrace.

The Jerusalem council is pivotal in Acts but uninteresting for modern readers at first. In this sermon, Pastor Justin looks at how the challenge facing the Jerusalem council can make or break the mission of the church in any generation.

We love stories, and the truth is that we see our lives as part of a story. But is it the right story? In Acts 13, Paul preaches the gospel to a city of Jews and Gentiles, and he tells them the story they’re meant to be living.

Behind the moments when God seems slow, silent, absent, or confusing is the feeling that God seems… wrong. When Jesus decided to wait for Lazarus to die, everyone thought he was wrong. This moment from the ministry of Jesus helps us know what to do when we feel like God is wrong.

We like things to move fast… like 2-day shipping with Amazon. But God doesn’t always work quickly, even though he has more power than Amazon. What do we do when God seems slow? In this sermon, we look at two people who knew a slow process, Abraham and Sarah.

This is the first sermon in a new series, When God Seems Gone. Everyone who follows Jesus can feel at one point or other that God seems distant. How do we handle those moments? What should we do?

It’s resurrection Sunday and our theme today is “Everything can change.” We’re told so often about how to change for the better, but many of those changes don’t stick. The resurrection, however, is news of a different kind of change… one that sticks.