Cheyenne Hills Podcast

If you looked back at the hardest parts of your life, how have those seasons equipped you to serve God? Who might you be specially qualified to minister to because of that suffering?

Associate Pastor Jon Simpson gives the final sermon of our series on the Book of Acts with one of the toughest things a preacher gets to tell a congregation: Your suffering can serve God. By the time he was imprisoned in Rome, Paul knew this better than anybody.

When Paul finally returns home to friends after a long... LONG missionary journey, he faces accusations and has to make a choice: do I tell them to get lost, or do I take an incovenient extra step to help them get over an obstacle?

Paul faces decisions of when to engage with people, and when to disengage and move on. He also encounters people who, like us today, needed to face the truth about spiritual battles that go on around us and can be a danger to us. In the end, Paul is challenged to re-affirm himself before his friends, and his reaction may suprise you.

There are people right here, around you, who YOU are specially qualified to speak to because you "speak their language." How can we remind ourselves that we are always on mission for Jesus to tell the world about Him so we take opportunities to speak to those people?!

The account of Paul's second missionary journey shows examples of unexpected changes, and finding a way to speak to people in a very different culture who knew nothing of God.

Twelve years after Jesus' ascension and the beginning of the Apostles' mission, the first bit of serious internal trouble showed up in the Church. Spoiler alert: people weren't getting along.

Pastor Jon joins us again this week as we ask the questions: Where in your spiritual life have you run into opposition where you expected support? Have you ever had people you thought were on your side turn on you? It's not a great feeling, so how do we recover and stay on-mission as Christians?

We continue our study of the book of Acts as the early church movement takes it's first official foray into the Roman Empire. They start with Cyprus. That should be an easy one, right?...

Pastor Jon Simpson joins us on the podcast this week to really look at what Peter went through that night God miraculously sprung him from jail, where he may well have awaited his execution! How do we react when God springs us out of a situation we did'nt think we could be saved from? And how often is the way he answers our prayers so unlike our expectations we could almost miss it?!

We continue our journey through acts, and things are really heating up for the fledgling church. James (one of the big three!) is put to death and Peter finds himself arrested again with no way out... and he needs a miracle.

Peter had to learn to let go of the cultural traditions and rules that could stand in the way of fulfilling Christ's commission to spread the Gospel. Cultural Christianity can be just as big of an obstacle to us, today, when it keep us from being fully-formed servants of Jesus.

God speaks to Peter through a dream to prepare him to put aside his old cultural biases so his mind won't be too blown when he hears that God also sent a message to a Roman centurion — a leader of oppressive army occupying Peter's country.

Have you ever been written off as a lost cause? Paul had, but Jesus called him and he became instrumental in the early spread of Christ's Church. Which leads us to ask... who have you written off that you should still be pursuing?

Guest speaker Keith Kautz shares a few important (and a little convicting) questions that he takes from the story of Jesus confronting Saul/Paul and calling him to a new ministry for Him, rather than against Him.

We apologize for publishing the past two episodes so late. We're working to have our episodes come out more reliably, so they can be a better asset for Grow Group leaders and our congregation. This week we talk about how things that make us uncomfortable are often God's way of pushing us to the next stage in our growth.

Sometimes discomfort is the thing that stimulates the biggest growth, and so it was with the persecution of Christians in Jerusalem and the Church's growth into the world we see in Acts.

In part 4 of our Tetelestai series, Pastor Jon talks about "stepping into a moment." On the podcast we talk about what that moment looks like, the nature of being a Witness for Christ, and how exactly we might show that little bit of courage in our lives.

Stephen was the first martyr of the church after Jesus' accension. He had an opportunity to back down, or step into a moment and be courageous. When his life was threatened, he began to preach. What would our world look like if every Christian had even a little more of such courage?

Galen ended this week's sermon with the idea that "Living things grow, and growing things change." We'll talk about how this affected the early church, modern church, and the call to action on Acts 6 for each of us.

Living things grow. Growing things change. Galen visits the growing structure of the early church and what we can learn from it in the modern one.

Today we start a little "in the weeds" stepping further into the oikonomia idea Galen presented and how it fits into the theological model called Dispensationalism. BUT THEN we get back to more applicable questions of how well we follow the examples of the first Christians in the days after the Pentacost.

We in Wyoming don't have difficulty imagining the mighty roaring wind that came through the room the day the Holy Spirit arrived. But what about the way the people who it fell upon changed; the boldness and courage? That is something we should also be able to attest to, but how often do we feel the Spirit burning inside us?

The first chapter of Acts covered by Pastor Galen in our new series contains Luke's account of the Great Commission, in which Jesus called his disciples to go and spread the news. But how does this affect us, today? We share the commission given the early church leaders, so who are our personal versions of these groups? Who is your Jerusalem? Your Judea? And what about your Samaria?

Just as Jesus' final word on the cross "Tetelestai" marked both the completion and beginning of stages in God's plan, so does the phrase both end our Easter series and begin our 3-month journey into the Book of Acts.