Awaken City Church

Gabe, Awaken City Church's Youth director brings a message from James challenging us with the truth that if we love God, we will obey what He says. Our obedience is a marker that we love Him and have been transformed by the message of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. 

Those who follow Jesus walk in the light as Jesus is in the light. They are continually reshaped by Jesus' character and work in their lives. Those who say they follow Jesus but live lives in a totally opposite direction fool themselves and actually walk in the darkness. To walk in the light is to follow Jesus and do what He says. We come to the light when we trust in what Jesus did for us as...

Join us as one of our national partners shares their story of partnering with Awaken City and how that encourages and challenges us as individuals and as a church. 

Those who would be disciples of Jesus must understand the cost to follow Jesus. Trusting Jesus for salvation is not simply a thought, feeling, or action, it is directing our entire lives toward the reality that Jesus is Lord over our lives. Because of that, we will have to pay the cost of comfort, family commitments, and safety. Those who want an easy, predictable, comfortable life should not foll...

Pastor Derek continued sharing the vision of where God is taking us into the future. Specifically, he taught on how the Bible teaches us to view our money. Money doesn’t truly give us satisfaction or security that it promises us. Jesus is after our hearts, not our money and stuff. We find our treasure by looking at where we spend our time and money. That’s what we treasure and that’s what we truly...

Following Jesus was never meant to stop with us. In this message, we explore the call to make disciples and the real cost that comes with it—our comfort, time, and lives. Yet when viewed through eternity, we discover that the cost of not making disciples is far greater. As we take initiative, invest in others, and love people deeply, God works through ordinary obedience to accomplish “above &...

Jesus closes out the Sermon on the Mount with the challenge that in everything, especially with money to surrender to Jesus' commands and obey them. Jesus alone satisfies, and when we build our lives on Him we realize that truth. The foundation on which we build our lives matters. When our lives are built on the foundation of His Word, it is solid, unshakable, no matter what comes against it....

As Jesus wraps up the Sermon on the Mount, He proposes that there are only two options to respond to His teachings. People must choose the Narrow gate or the Wide gate. The Narrow Gate is difficult and few will choose it, while the wide gate is easy and many people will travel that way. To travel the narrow gate is to trust that we need Jesus' righteousness and our righteousness is not enough...

All through the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus established the standard for those in His Kingdom as higher than the culture around them. He revealed that the hearts of disciples must be right, not merely their external actions. With this section, Jesus confronts judgments people make toward one another. He does not prohibit disciples from judging others, only He directs them to look at their own heart...

Jesus addresses the question, 'who or what is worthy of our trust?' The Resurrection answers that Jesus is the only lasting treasure worthy of our trust. Everything else will fade away and come to ruin. Possessions, money, people will all fail us, but because Christ rose from the dead, He proved that He will not fail us when we base our lives on Him. 

In this section of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus unpacks an important principle: disciple's in the King's Kingdom seek God's praise, not people's praise. He uses three examples to teach this principle: giving, praying, fasting. When disciples do these things, they do them because of their connection to God, not to perform on a stage. Jesus teaches that all righteousness is to...

Jesus continues His teachings about how disciples who live in His kingdom should live. He preaches on retaliation and loving one's enemies. Disciples in Jesus' Kingdom will go above and beyond what is required, being gracious when people insult them, and generous when fulfilling what is expected of them. Jesus also raises the bar with regard to how disciples treat their enemies. Because...

Disciples do not obey to live in the Kingdom, Living in the Kingdom changes the disciple's way of life. Disciples are those people who understand their need for Jesus' righteousness (moral perfection) and accept it through faith. Then, disciples change the way they live as those who follow Jesus. In the areas of Anger, Adultery, Divorce, and Oaths, we learn what the lives of those who li...

Jesus continues His Sermon on the Mount teaching on how believers act in their world. The commands Jesus gives are not simply a list of to-dos but demonstrations of His work in our lives. When we encounter Jesus, He makes us salt and light to everyone watching. He drives home the point that we cannot make ourselves do these things. We are incapable of doing enough good things to be salt and light....

"Blessed are those who..." is how Jesus begins the most influential sermon ever preached. This section of the sermon is called the 'Beatitudes,' and is a description of Jesus' kingdom. It is the opposite of the kingdom of this world. In Jesus' kingdom, the people who understand their position before God are those who are blessed. Those who choose God's ways and c...

Jesus invites us to fish for people, and we do that by doing what Jesus did. Jesus proclaimed hope to the broken places of the world. Everything is not alright, but  hope for the world has dawned. That hope is found in the message of Repentance. Jesus went where the people are and he took them as He found them. He did not sit around and expect people to come to Him but the opposite: wherever peopl...

Jesus' Temptation in the Wilderness in Matthew 4:1-11 gives us a peek at Satan's playbook. Satan allures us with the desires of the flesh (I want to FEEL that), the desires of the eyes (I want to HAVE that), and the pride of life (I want to be KNOWN for that). This is how Satan tempted Jesus, and this is how the enemy attacks us. We respond by running to the cross in faith, knowing we be...

Matthew 2:13-23 continues the story of the Wise Men from earlier the chapter. They find themselves in the middle of a political assassination plot as the king they visit allows fear and power to dictate his decisions. He decides to eliminate all of the two-year-old-boys in Bethlehem, the city where Jesus was born. While that story transpires, God is writing a different story. In the night, an ange...

Have you ever felt like your prayers hit against Heaven like a wall? This past Sunday, we looked at 9 reasons why we may be unavailable to hear from or speak to God. Often, we talk to God with our own selfish agenda, thinking we know better for our lives. Other times, we hold onto our sin. We can also ignore the needs of others and that diminishes our connection with God.  There is hope for us whe...

In this message, we see through Lazarus, Paul’s thorn, and even Jesus in Gethsemane that God’s silence and delays are never indifference, but loving purposes meant to draw us closer and shape us more like Christ. This sermon invites us to trust a good Father who withholds lesser things to give us something greater—not just relief, but himself. Why does God sometimes feel silent, or answer our pray...

What do we do when God doesn’t answer our prayers the way we hoped? This message reminds us that God is a good Father who only gives good gifts, and sometimes that means saying “no” or “not right now” out of love. We’re invited to trust his wisdom, resist the lie that he’s holding out on us, and believe that what he gives (or withholds) is always for our good.

Prayer isn’t about saying the right words, it’s about coming to a gracious Father through Jesus. This sermon explores what prayer really is, why God sometimes answers differently than we expect, and how God uses prayer to transform our hearts, not just our circumstances.

In the midst of confusion, fear, and uncertainty, God steps in. Matthew shows us that Jesus is not only the promised King, but Immanuel—God with us—who enters our broken reality to save, lead, and redeem.