Arbor Church

You might not admit to being overwhelmed by money or fear, but many of us are somehow proud of being overwhelmed by the pace at which we live. We take pride in being busy and filling our time with activities and responsibilities. We’re certainly doing a lot – but is that really the life Jesus is inviting us into?

Money is one of the biggest things we fight about, one of the most frequently discussed topics in the New Testament, and yet still somehow a taboo subject. You’ve probably felt overwhelmed by finances at least once in your life – and odds are you find them overwhelming now. So, today: straight talk about money, from a spiritual perspective (via Pastor Jake) and from a practical perspective (via ou...

If you ask someone how they’re really feeling as we enter the holiday season, “overwhelmed” is likely to be an honest answer. Why does it feel sometimes like we’re drowning when we’re just trying to make it through the day? In this series we’re looking at what overwhelms us – and today Jake talks about fear .

And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” – Isaiah 6:8. It’s easy enough to say these words, but when it comes down to it, most of us have a lot of excuses and qualifications around this prayer. Guest speaker Pat Swanson breaks these down and shows us what it means to pray this prayer and mean it.

“Break me.” – another prayer that should come with a warning label. When Jesus showed us how to pray this prayer, it was at what we now call the Last Supper. What can we learn from His prayer in this hour?

Our new series is about some of the prayers in Scripture that … well, let’s say they shouldn’t be prayed lightly. We’re starting with David’s dangerous prayer in Psalm 139: Search me, O God, and know my heart…

We’re wrapping up our series on the Bible with the tough questions you sent in over the last few weeks. What do we mean when we say the Bible is inerrant –isn’t it full of inconsistencies? How do we know the right books made it into the Bible? How can we reconcile the wrathful, genocidal tribal God of the Old Testament with the loving Father of the New Testament? Wally Kowalski joins us for a chat...

If the Bible’s a text message from God, it’s certainly an awfully long and daunting one – and anyone who’s tried to read it cover to cover knows that isn’t the best way to do it! This week, Bob gives us some simple tools for reading and learning from Scripture. You might say it’s as easy as using soap .

The veracity and authenticity of the Bible may have been unquestioned in earlier years, but lately there are lots more skeptics challenging the idea that we can trust it completely. Unfortunately, many of us only have faith-based answers to their fact-based questions, so today we’re going to the facts! Jake blazes through those facts today, laying down the overwhelming case for the Book.

This week we start a new series called Text . It’s about the Bible, and today and Jake exhorts us to actually open it up and read it, addressing one by one the 7 most common excuses people give for letting the dust gather on their Bibles. (#6 will shock you!)

Garrett wraps up our series on splitting logs with a look at what we’re doing – together – for the grieving, addicted, and lost.

What if the teams serving in our church … didn’t ? Well, on this special Sunday .. they don’t . We set up our own chairs, there’s no band up front, we’re looking everywhere for coffee that was never brewed, and Garrett interviews the leads of each team about what they do.

“He who splits logs is endangered by them. If the iron is blunt, and one does not sharpen the edge, he must use more strength, but wisdom helps one to succeed.” – Ecclesiastes 10:9b-10 (ESV). This week we start a new sermon series based on this verse. For starters we’re talking about splitting the log of serving , and Jake shares some wisdom from Scripture (and his father) on focus and burnout.

Bob Lee tells us the story of Saul/Paul’s conversion as an example of how God treats outsiders that are hostile towards Christianity.

Neely McQueen from Overlake drops by to talk in our latest message from the Outsiders series about the woman at the well and how Jesus showed great love and compassion to her.

Garrett talks about how Jesus fully embodies grace and truth when confronted with the dillemma of a woman who was caught in the act of adultery: uphold the grace He speaks of in His teachings and save her, or uphold the law of Moses and stone her.

Continuing with the Outsiders series, Jake speaks on a group of people not usually thought of when the term “outsiders” is used: Children. He shows us what Jesus had to say about children and how we can act like Jesus by focusing on and blessing children both near and far.

Lepers were quit literally outsiders in Jesus’ day, feared and banished from society. That Jesus guy, though… well, he didn’t treat this leper the way everyone else did.

In our new sermon series, we’re focusing outward rather than inward, not at ourselves but at those Jesus has called us to serve and reach. Zacchaeus was unquestionably an outsider –a short, unethical man despised even among his own people. Bob walks us through the short story of Zacchaeus’s encounter with Jesus and explains the 6 thing Jesus did to invite him in.

In Jesus’s last hours, he asked his disciples to stay awake and pray with him… but it wasn’t easy! How can we, too, stay woke?

Jesus asked a whole lot of questions, and we’ve studied some of the more important ones together over the last few weeks. In the penultimate sermon in this series, Jesus asks the most important question: who do you say I am?

“A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Jesus asks Simon Peter this simple question with an obvious answer. Like the questions of Jesus we’ve been looking at in this series, though, there’s more beneath the surface…

Maybe you’ve heard the parable of the Good Samaritan, the humble man who stopped to help a fellow traveler others passed by. Do you remember, though, that his parable was in response to a question, and that Jesus finished it with a rhetorical question of his own? Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?

Jake talks on how none of us are past the point of restoration as long as we have love for Jesus.

Bob talks on what Jesus says we will (or won’t) gain by pursuing things of this world vs. pursuing Him.