Beach Church

This week's message was centered around Ephesians 4 and Paul writing to the church in Ephesus about both individual callings and the gifts that a church body can bring. Paul's letter is no doubt pointing to the idea that Christianity is more than a faith of consumerism; it's a faith of action. When we're living a life of obedience and following Jesus, we’re allowing the Holy Spirit to guide and le...

This week’s message focuses on Chapter 3 in the book of Ephesians, where Paul described God’s love as something that’s available for all, using himself as an example. Through Paul, we see an example of the transformational love of God. In verses 14-18, Paul prayed a prayer for the Ephesians that God would strengthen their power through the Spirit and that they would be rooted and established in lo...

Paul’s writings in Chapter 2 of Ephesians point out that we are dead spiritually, on the wrong path in life, and deserving of wrath when we follow the ways of the world. However, through God’s grace and mercy, we are saved and alive in Christ. We can get caught in a mentality of doing good things to earn our salvation. Thankfully, salvation can’t be earned. It’s given to us freely. The good works...

Our Road Trip series has us getting on a new “highway” of sorts, as we leave the book of Daniel and begin the book of Ephesians this week. Ephesians served as a letter from Paul to the believers at Ephesus, a port city of major importance in the ancient world. Paul reminded those early believers that even though they had once walked in sexual immorality, occultism, and idolatry; they could now wal...

While the vast majority of discussion revolving around this infamous story of Daniel in the den of lions revolves around Daniel’s steadfast faith and God’s protective hand over his life, much can be learned about how we should live our lives in the workplace from Daniel. The majority of the story, in fact, doesn’t talk about lions at all, but Daniel’s service to the government as a faithful employ...

Being oblivious to the obvious. As humans, how often do we fall into this trap? In Daniel chapter 5, we see Belshazzar, the King of the Babylonians, fall victim to his own pride and arrogance, even after witnessing his grandfather do the same thing! He called Daniel in to decipher God’s writing on the wall. Daniel determined that Belshazzar’s fate was final, that the writing served as a confirmati...

This week’s journey through the Scriptures takes us to the story in Daniel 4 where King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream, and then Daniel interpreted that dream. Although Nebuchadnezzar had done some amazing things during his time on earth, he mistakenly thought that he had accomplished all of those things on his own. He placed himself as the Most High and forgot that God is King. How often do we do tha...

As followers of Jesus, we will be faced with difficult decisions based on our faith. In Daniel 3, we read the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. While they faced death and persecution because of their faith, they remained steadfast in their pursuit of God anyway. Following God won’t always be easy. It will challenge our culture, and require surrender. But at the end of the day, we’re left w...

This Father’s Day, Pastor Jerry spent the morning talking with a panel of fathers about what it means to bring children up in a Christ-like home. This conversation revolved around navigating difficult situations in life and how to build people up in fatherhood, even when that means pushing against the ways of the world. Much of the questions and conversation were derived from the book, Parenting B...

We’re so excited to begin this summer series where we’re diving into the Scriptures. This week’s message begins our journey through the Bible with the story of Daniel. When Daniel and his friends are exiled into King Nebuchadnezzar’s court, they are thrown into a new country with a new language with a new educational system and given new names. They also had to eat the food assigned to them from t...

How is the Bible foundational to our faith? This final installment of our Foundations series examines what we believe about the Bible and identifies a couple of the challenges we face when reading the Bible. The Holy Spirit empowered people to write God’s living Word so that we can communicate with God on a deeper level. However, that communication requires us to read the Bible, dig into God’s Wor...

Many people think the Church is a building, organization, or system. The Church, however, is the people who gather in these places on a weekly basis. These followers of Jesus aren't called to just be the Church on a Sunday though. They're called to leave from these places and go into the world to tell others about Jesus. The Church is foundational because it's the movement responsible for spreadin...

This week we wanted to take a moment to recognize the high school seniors in our church, that next generation of Jesus followers, who will be embarking on new, post-high school adventures. Beach Church exists to reach, raise up, and release followers of Jesus who change the world, and as this week’s message points out, it’s up to us, the Church to raise up that next generation so that we can relea...

The foundations of our faith begin with the relationships we have with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. In week 1 we talked about God the Father being for us. In week 2, we talked about the Son of God redeeming us. This week’s message is about what it means to seek a relationship with the Holy Spirit. A foundational element to our faith is that we believe the Holy Spirit is in us. He is a guide, a...

This special standalone Mother’s Day message features Pastor Jerry and a panel of four incredible mothers from our Beach Church community. These ladies spent time talking through topics of what it means to raise children in a Christ-centered home. Derived from Parenting Beyond Your Capacity, the topics focused on things like making faith personal, widening the circle of Godly influence, and creati...

Who is Jesus? Many feel that he is a great teacher, or even a prophet, but struggle with the idea that he was God in human form. They struggle with the thought that for a brief moment Jesus was one of us and then rose from the grave to fulfill his mission here on earth. However, as CS Lewis points out, “Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse.” Followers of...

As we embark on this new series, Foundations: What We Believe, we begin with a couple of paramount questions in what we believe in our faith: Who are we? And who is God? When we look to the Bible, we see that man and woman are made equal and in the image of God. We can also see our immense value to God. We also see God as a giving, gracious, and faithful father. While we may not experience this ty...

This Easter Sunday, we’re not only reminded of the resurrecting hope that comes from a relationship with Jesus, but we’re also reminded to not underestimate the disabling power of failure in our lives. When looking at Chapter 21 of John’s gospel, we see Peter return to his old life, even after the resurrection, because he felt inadequate and undeserving to carry on the gospel of Jesus. But just li...

Why do we as Jesus followers choose to make the place where Jesus suffered so greatly the sign of our faith? Although it may be difficult to think of the mocking, insults, and torture when it comes to Jesus’ last hours on earth, Jesus’ mission was fully realized on the cross that day. In this way, the cross is just the beginning. It shows us the ultimate example of what it means to lay down our li...

As this series of what it means to share the Good News of Jesus with a sense of urgency comes to close, we’re reminded that a big part of our faith is actually telling people about Jesus. This message revisits the story in 2 Kings where the lepers stumble upon the enemy’s unoccupied camp and find food and things of monetary value when their people needed it desperately. Even these outcasts of soci...

How much has Jesus done for you? Sometimes it can be intimidating to share the love of Jesus with others. It can be easy to get caught up in the idea that we need to be qualified to tell others about Jesus, but we don’t need a special degree or qualification to share Jesus with others. We just need to tell people what Jesus has done for us. Through these stories of life-changing moments, people ca...

Nothing creates a sense of urgency like when something of great value is lost. Jesus teaches three different parables in the book of Luke that revolve around this very idea, and these parables teach us that lost people are front and center on the heart of God. Jesus also shows us that we should be talking with the lost and having relationships with people who are looking for a Savior. Nothing in h...

Have you ever noticed that when people find out they have a limited amount of time left on this earth, they seem to live life more urgently? They go and do all the things they planned on doing throughout their lives when they realize there’s not much time left. What would it look like for us to live a life of evangelism like this--like there’s not much time left, with a real sense of urgency, prio...

God’s commands can feel like He’s trying to control us and restrict our freedom, but in reality it’s the exact opposite. God’s commands in the area of sex are meant to protect us, not control us, and with this protection we’re given incredible freedom. Yet, it’s human nature to lust and be tempted, so what do we do? The Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians to flee from sexual immorality and move away f...

We often hear things like “follow your heart” when it comes to matters of sex. However, we see in Proverbs 3:5 that the Bible tells us to “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” These words of wisdom apply to sex in that we can understand that the creator designed intimacy with us in mind, and when we follow our hearts, we’re following desires that can be ro...