Center Church | Gilbert Sermons

For every Christian, it is YOUR turn to run the race of life! Run individually and run together. Run as freely as you can - throwing off weights and sin. And always run with your eyes on JESUS!

You need the church and the church needs you! Trey encourages us to pursue deeper commitment to the body of Christ through fellowship and serving.

We don't first look at the world and all that is going on to inform our opinion, we first look at God's word. We must be people of the book. And people of the book KNOW God is with them because they meditate on his words.

Jim Hubek encourages us to pray like our life depends on it! Using an unlikely passage of scripture, we can look to the story of Jonah and see many practical helps to grow our prayer life in 2020.

The story of the angels singing to the shepherds is so much more than fantastical pronouncement. When we look a little closer we see a contrast of 2 different conquerors who offer 2 very different kinds of peace.

This Christmas season we will be looking at 3 "songs" from the book of Luke with the goal of refreshing our sense of awe at advent. This morning's sermon was the song of Zechariah that turns our eyes to the One who visited earth and why His visit matters to us today.

p>At the end of Paul's letter to the Colossians we find reminders for the church today - to pray, to share the gospel and to appreciate each other.

All Christians must submit to their master, Jesus. And there are three specific human relationships that define our home life and in which we submit to the authority of Jesus Christ.

Every man and woman here who bears the name of Christian is called to become more like Jesus. It is a good thing to believe in Jesus, and it is a great thing to become like him over a lifetime.

This passage of Scripture presents a description of a Christian - do you see yourself in it? Christians can and must see themselves first as holy and beloved by God in Jesus. Only then can our lives resemble Jesus in compassion, kindness, patience and forgiveness.

In Christ we are new people, being renewed. This gives us the grace, strength and hope to fight (kill) sin, purge ungodly behaviors, and continue to live the new life we have now bound to Christ and others.

We are all on a journey through life, the success of which depends upon Whom we are seeking and how much we savor Him along the way.

Don't give into false outward religion - focus on Jesus. He himself is the substance of our faith and our hope. Nothing and no one else. There are no deeper journeys into biblical faithfulness beyond Jesus.

God's forgiveness doesn't mean that he just hid or overlooked our sins. He knew them all and canceled them once and for all.

Walk closely with Jesus by receiving the great gift of HIMSELF to you, knowing that He loves you more than you can imagine, has rooted you in Himself and is building you more into Himself each day.

We can be tempted to think that all our work is for nothing, that it is futile and fruitless. We must understand that the kingdom of God advances through suffering and proclamation and brings us all to greater maturity in Christ.

We can be tempted to think that our peace with God is little more than words on paper. Brother and sister Christian we must lay hold of the peace that is already ours with God. You have reason to be confident that God is at peace with you because of what he did in Christ.

Some things are too good to be true. But this is never the case with Jesus. He is always better than we think. He is the exact representation of God, the most important One, the purpose and sustainer of creation, the reason the church will never be destroyed and the One who died so that we might truly live.

We need nothing less than to be filled with the knowledge of God's will just to make it day to day. The only way we can be joyful and endure with longsuffering is by taking our eyes off our circumstances and fix them on Jesus. Because Jesus is better beyond all compare.

Understanding the endless love of God as displayed in creation, in His redeeming of His people and in His remembrance of His people (us) should bring confidence in trials.

There is no one like Jesus. When he died and rose, the definition of death changed. For the very first time, death became not an end but a beginning. He offers new beginnings.

For the Christian, the crucifixion means that we will never pay for our sins ever. The crucifixion purchased forgiveness and access to God forever and always. In dying, Jesus won. In HIS dying, WE won.

Jesus does not promise that when he enters your life it will get easier. Jesus is about much more than just making our life easier. He is about killing death and destroying our sin. That is not just a little improvement - his substitution changes everything!

Do you know what grace is? We can throw that word but how often do we think about what it means and how lavishly expensive it was. The glorious thing about grace for the Christian is that it is a wondrously, astoundingly free gift. But it was not without a purchase price. Let's go back to that courtroom 2,000 years ago to see how costly grace was.

Jesus faced something far more menacing, something far more horrendous, something far more horrifying, and something far more threatening than merely death. He faced God&rsquo's fury for the sins of the world, alone. For you and for me. He loved and obeyed the father for us. We have a savior who didn't suffer with us, but suffered FOR us.