Capital Church Messages

As Dallas Willard has said, Jesus came not just to get people into heaven, but to get heaven into people. As God’s people, we are called to a new life—a life of joy, peace, patience and gentleness. A life free of sin, shame, and selfishness. In this study through Colossians 3:1-17, may your eyes be open to the life you could live, and then may your heart be open to actually living it.

At first glance, there are some strange stories in the Bible! Leviticus is one such book that sounds strange and foreign when you first read it. Without understanding its full meaning, reading Leviticus could perpetuate the false narrative that the God of the Old Testament was always angry and hung up on legalistic rituals and laws—or the false narrative that you and I are too unholy to experience...

Isaiah 40 contains some of the most beautiful poetry in the Old Testament—where the weak become strong, where the tired soar on wings like eagles, where runners finish the race strong, and where the fragile keep walking forward with confidence. The passage reminds us of God’s greatness. His strength and power is beyond description, and cannot be limited by our worldly perspective. And you, as his...

Does it sometimes feel like God isn’t speaking to you, or he’s not showing you his will? Why is he quiet? Why does it seem like he withholds perspective from us, even when we ask? Well, perhaps it’s us with the hearing or vision problem. Maybe you’ve been journeying through your life with a sleep mask on your eyes and ear plugs in your ears. Through Jesus’s teaching in the parable of the soils he...

What are you doing with what God’s given you? Throughout his teaching, Jesus calls his disciples to selflessness—in doing so, he’s giving you an opportunity to participate in something eternal. He wants to leverage who you are to make this world more like heaven. It will be a sacrifice to think outside of yourself and put the needs of another before you. But there is nothing like the feeling of be...

For some of us, church has simply become a place to get our souls fed and our personal spiritual needs met. After church, perhaps you make a beeline for the door without any regard for a shared spiritual journey. If your experience of Christian community is lonely, then you haven’t fully experienced Christian community! But it’s not too late. Don’t let your past experiences with people prevent you...

How close you follow Jesus is up to you. You’re probably working to make money, working to stay healthy, working on your house, and working on your parenting. But what are you doing to stay close to Jesus? You’re busy doing important things, but it’s critical that you prioritize your relationship with Jesus among the long list of things to do. Do something that brings you close to God, and do it e...

The final name given to Jesus in Isaiah 9:6 is Prince of Peace. God’s very essence is to provide peace—peace when life doesn’t go according to plan; peace that’s stronger than stress and louder than fear; peace that leaps beyond a Christian cliché. But if you want to experience that peace personally, you’ll need to come into close contact with its source. Peace is a person, so put yourself in his...

One of the greatest attributes of our Everlasting Father is his never-ending love. You might be new to faith and only just catching a glimpse of God’s love, or maybe you’ve journeyed with him for decades and think you’ve wrapped your head around his love. Either way, God loves you even more than you can think or imagine. God’s love is who he is, and being loved by him is who you are. God never sto...

Scripture reassures us over and over of God’s might. God is mighty in mercy; God is mighty in the face of our fragilities; God is mighty to immerse himself in our lives. We’re all broken human beings, and thankfully Jesus isn’t waiting for you to get your act together before he comes to save you. In his might, God did the impossible—he entered the world as a child and as our savior. May your faith...

Much like the Israelites, we often exclude God from our daily lives. Even as we exclude him, we then are prone to blame him for the messes we make and get angry at him for not intervening as we’d like. A passage in Isaiah 8 reveals God’s response to a world that rejects him and is subsequently angry with him—he sends us a Messiah. Despite our mess collectively and your mess individually, Jesus, ou...

We need hope like we need food or water—hope empowers us to keep trying, keep loving, keep smiling, and keep getting out of bed in the morning. And while it’s a good thing to hope for good things, you desperately need a greater hope to fall back on if life hands you disappointment. A hope that’s bigger than health or wealth; a hope that’s bigger than success, affirmation, or admiration; hope that’...

It’s not a hard concept to realize that God is omnipresent—he’s so big and so powerful, and he’s everywhere, all the time. But one aspect of God’s omnipresence that you may not have considered is that he wants to make every area of your life his home as well. He wants to take up residence in your heart and be involved in your life, working for your good and for his glory. May you live out the real...

For many people, creation itself is an obvious sign of God’s existence. Yet, Isaiah 45:15 reveals that God hides. If God is real, and wants to be known, then why would he hide? Why is it that some people aren’t convinced about his existence? God gives you the freedom to decide for yourself whether you’ll acknowledge him. Practically speaking, if you want to find God, you have to want to find him....

One of the most obvious and most maddening aspects of God’s character is that he’s invisible. But even when he’s hard to see, his word assures us that he is with us. Seek him where you can’t see him. When you don’t have the money you think you should have, when you get the troubling diagnosis, when you get passed up for the promotion, or when your friends reject you… In spite of your circumstances...

Isaiah 43:25 reveals an important and perhaps surprising aspect of God’s character—he’s forgetful. God’s forgetfulness is not a flaw, it’s a feature. He's deliberate and active in willingly ignoring our sins. And when we truly comprehend the depths of God’s mercy & forgiveness, we can’t help but respond with holy awe and wonder. As Alexander Pope has said, “To err is human; to forgive is divine.”

When you think about God, what comes to mind? Distant? Disinterested? Judgmental? Unfortunately, the picture we have of God in our minds is sometimes one of a God we’d rather ignore. But we can be assured that this picture of God is far from the truth! Throughout scripture, we see God’s goodness—notably, in Romans 8:28 In all things, God works for the good of those who love him. At times this feel...

You may have a personal relationship with God, but do you have a shared relationship with God? Faith begins with an individual commitment, but it doesn’t end there—it is lived out through relationships with others. In the short book of Philemon, Paul gives insight on the impact of spiritual friends as he writes to his dear friend. “Your love has given me great joy and encouragement, because you ha...

Throughout the New Testament, the Apostle Paul paints a picture of spiritual friendship that involves both encouragement and accountability. We’re not given a license to be a jerk for Jesus, and we're not called to pile guilt & shame  onto each other’s sin—but we do have an obligation to lovingly hold each other accountable when we wander. It can be uncomfortable, awkward, and even painful to offe...

The people around you are not always your dream team… When you were younger, you may have pictured a future with notably more success and surrounded by people with fewer flaws. Yet, God has placed you right where you are. The bible teaches us not only the importance of spiritual friendships, but the work required to cultivate them. The healthiest relationships are healthy because someone has put i...

We’re wired for relationship and were created for community. The kind of friends we need are ones who love God and love us—and who help us to love God more. Rarely does a person drift into spiritual friendship. It takes determination & deliberation to form a habit of cultivating spiritual friendships. This series is all about the what, how, and why behind fostering spiritual friendships in your li...

As we journey with Jesus, God’s faithful love digs into the source of what’s hurting us and hurting our relationship with him but hope always gets the last word. The Bible, and the prophet Jeremiah might criticize but also will energize, digging in to deal with hurt so that hope can be planted. On your journey with Jesus, may you trust that whatever hurt God digs up he will replace with the hope f...

Today, with pet peeves and politics, we are so easily offended by what people say or don’t say, eat or don’t eat, what they are reading or what they are watching, it’s no longer seen as a weakness to be easily offended but it’s seen as right. It’s almost as if the world says it’s a good thing to be touchy or easily provoked. But the Bible says the exact opposite. It says love is patient not prickl...

One of the most foundational questions for every person to ask in any situation or circumstance is, is there hope? In his prayer for us in Ephesians, Paul prays that the church may know the hope to which we are called. Hope, not hype. Hope that will last. Hope that is real. As we face questions that beg for hope while we wait on the test results, or wonder if we’ll be able to make ends meet this m...

People face big decisions—do I put my kid in daycare; can my body handle one more round of treatment; should I have that conversation with my teenager; which of these jobs should I take… And we desperately want clarity, peace, and affirmation from God in our choices. The bible provides commands on some issues, but it doesn’t necessarily provide a step-by-step road map for our lives. The gift of fr...