Central Community Church | Sermon Audio

1 Corinthians 13: 1-3 After the first encounter between Jesus and Peter after Peter’s epic failure of denial, Jesus bypasses a discussion on the actual denial (or action) and asks a penetrating heart question: “Do You Love Me?” It’s a strange question because Peter had already been following Jesus for three years and given up many comforts to serve with Jesus. Now he was fa...

1 Timothy 2:1-8 Corporate prayer is a means of grace because it is a God-given way for the church to seek Him together, experience His presence, express unity, and receive spiritual blessing through shared dependence and intercession. While personal prayer is vital, praying together uniquely builds up the church, invites God’s power and presence in a collective way, and unifies us with Jesus...

1 Timothy 2:1-8 Corporate prayer is a means of grace because it is a God-given way for the Church to seek Him together, experience His presence, express unity, and receive spiritual blessing through shared dependence and intercession. While personal prayer is vital, praying together uniquely builds up the Church, invites God’s power and presence in a collective way, and unifies us around Chr...

1 Timothy 2:1-8 Corporate prayer is an important means of grace because through it God grows our relationship with Him through Christ, He grows our relationships with other Christians, and He leads people to salvation in the name of Jesus.

Matthew 6:5-8 Most of us were never taught how to communicate, whether with a spouse, a parent, or even with God, and have spent our lives learning by trial and error. Before the disciples asked Jesus, “Teach us to pray,” there was no clear instruction on how to speak with God: Should we pray aloud or silently? Eyes open or closed? Kneeling or standing? The questions are endless. Yet p...

Matthew 6:5-8 For the atheist prayer is a meaningless religious chore with no positive benefit or purpose. However, for the follower of Christ, prayer is an incredible privilege that has benefits both in this life and the one to come! Prayer is an incredible opportunity because through Jesus we have access to a good God whose ear is always attentive to His children’s petitions and praises.

Matthew 6:5–8 This morning we look at Jesus’ teaching on personal prayer from Matthew 6:5–8. Far from being a performance, prayer is a seemingly ordinary practice that draws us into an honest, dependent, and life changing relationship with God. Jesus teaches us how to pray sincerely, trust God’s guidance, and experience the transforming grace that comes from simply showing...

1 Peter 4:8-11 We can easily take for granted the power the Christian community around us helps us persevere and flourish along the path of sanctification. As we experience the love of Christ through mutual forgiveness, the inclusion of Christ through intentional hospitality, and the hands of Christ in self-sacrificial service we are transformed. The ordinary means of grace in Christian community...

1 Peter 4:8-11 We live in a world starved for community. As believers we often take for granted the extraordinary grace that God has provided in and through Christian community - our fellowship. Like vital signs that indicate a healthy body, love, hospitality, and selfless service are indicators of a body that manifests and witnesses grace to one another and a watching world. In the end, the goal...

1 Peter 4:8-11 Fellowship is considered an ordinary means of grace because God uses the relationships within the body of Christ to strengthen, encourage, and sanctify believers through the gospel. The Christian life demands community. We need each other. “One another” appears 100 times in the New Testament and approximately 60 of those occurrences are specific commands teaching us how...

Ephesians 4:11-16 The primary context for discipleship is the local church. It is the primary place that God desires to shape and form His people more and more into the image of His Son Jesus. For this reason, the local church is an ordinary yet extraordinary means of grace.

Ephesians 4:11-16 The church is designed to be a body made up of many members who build one another up into maturity and the fullness of Christ. We are also called to imitate others who are following Christ and disciple others in such a way that they also can disciple others.

In our continuing series ‘The Ordinary Path to Extraordinary Grace’ we discover a beautiful purpose of the local church; The Purpose of Discipleship.  The church is not a building with a street address but rather the group of people who meet together to worship, learn, love and serve.  All the ordinances and practices within the local church are part of the discipleship proce...

Colossians 3:15-17 The church gathering is the place where God has determined to regularly and routinely meets His people through the ordinary means of grace of preaching, the ordinances, singing, prayer, and Christian fellowship. Not only is God honoured when we gather to worship Him, our souls desperately need the weekly rhythm of corporate worship and He gladly nourishes our souls with His grac...

Colossians 3:15-17 When we consider all the means of grace Jesus has given to His Church, corporate worship may be the most significant. Through it, we participate together in every other means of grace as the gathered body of Christ. As a result, our spiritual health is deeply shaped by how fully or how little we engage in corporate worship.

Colossians 3:15-17 lists 3 different ways that God pours out his grace upon followers of Christ as the church gathers corporately. Each one of these is an opportunity for thankfulness and a means of grace that should point us closer to Christ.

In 2 Timothy 4:1-5, Paul reminds us of the simple but powerful call to “preach the Word.” When we gather to hear God’s Word proclaimed, something real happens: faith is awakened, our souls are fed, our lives are shaped in holiness, and Christ is lifted high. This sermon is an invitation to see preaching not as routine, but as one of the ways God personally meets us with His grace...

2 Timothy 4:1-5 Of all the means of grace, preaching may be the most mundane. Who likes to sit for 40 minutes and listen to someone talk? Today, explore why God values preaching so much, and how you can experience the transformative glory of Jesus through the preaching of Scripture.

2 Timothy 4:1-5 Preaching the Word of the Living God is the pinnacle of the means of grace because it is through God’s Word that Christ is most visibly displayed to the Church. In biblical preaching, a congregation encounters the living Christ and what glorious grace that is! We find in Scripture both the explanation of what true preaching is and the effects that faithful preaching produces...

1 Corinthians 11:17-34 The Lord’s Supper is one of the most widely practiced but least understood aspects of the Christian faith. Too often, it’s treated as a quick ritual before the bread and cup are passed, rather than the profound means of grace God intends. Throughout church history, believers and skeptics alike have debated its significance, practice, and meaning, and even today,...

1 Corinthians 11:23-26 Communion can easily become a repeated ritual where the Christian shares a small meal of bread and juice, but doesn’t think much more of it. However, Scripture reveals that there is so much more to the Lord’s Supper! Communion is a very real, physical, participatory reminder of the Gospel and the union God desires us to have with Christ and His church.

1 Corinthians 11:17-34 Communion (the Lord’s Supper), instituted by Jesus, is an ordinary means of grace because it is a regular, God-ordained, tangible practice through which Christ spiritually nourishes, strengthens, and assures His people by the power of the Holy Spirit. By participating, our faith is deepened, we are sustained, and our hope in Christ solidifies as we get a foretaste of g...

Acts 2:37-41 You would be hard-pressed to find a more beautiful and powerful practice in the Christian Church than the act of baptism. The ordinance is a means of grace because it is a tangible sign of the gospel (plunged under the cleansing waters signifies burial and death to sin and coming up out of the water signifies resurrection life) and displays obedience and surrender to Jesus who modelle...

Acts 2:37-41 From the start of the church in Acts 2 faith and baptism have been intertwined. A tangible evidence of God’s grace, Baptism serves as an outward witness of an inner transformation by God through Christ. Not only does it serve as a means whereby commitment to Christ is fortified, it also serves as a witness to both the Body of Christ and the world of the powerful work of Christ.

Acts 2:37-41 Since the very first days of church baptism has been a highly important and incredibly powerful public demonstration of your death, burial, and resurrection with Jesus. What makes baptism so powerful is simple. It serves as an expression of your faith, physically demonstrates your union with Jesus, and is sign of your newness of life in Christ.