Christ Church IL Podcast

How often do you pray? Do you ever feel distant, ritualistic, or purpose-less when you pray? Listen today as Mike Woodruff brings to focus a life of prayer…and some of the ways that we tend to go off course when we “try” to engage in making prayer part of our life as well as some perspective on bringing prayer into your intentional focus.

Today we begin a new series. It's called, "The Way Forward" and it's designed to look at the things we can do to more fully yield our lives to God. You might remember that during the summer Mike did a series called "Unstuck" - in which we looked at things that hold us back. In this series, we are looking at the thinks that pull us forward.

Why did Jesus Christ come to earth? Listen as our special guest Luis Palau breaks down so many of the important reasons why this is so crucial in the foundations of Christianity, but for our salvation. Luis Palau and his ministry have shared the Gospel with more than 1 billion people through evangelistic events and media.  He has spoken in person to 30 million people in 75 countries, with more tha...

What is our purpose in engaging in church, if we are not engaging others in Christ’s good news? Listen as Mike Woodruff talks about how we are called to reach out to others and proclaim the good news, and invite others to discover life with God.

It’s common these days to complain about the pace of life. Everything is moving too fast. Those who study these things report that our problem is a combination of the fact that there is a lot going on, and a 24 hour news cycle that, well, goes on 24 hours a day. The latter means we are aware of problems and issues and needs that go in every direction. How do we cope with this? How do we keep up? W...

In Matthew 22 Jesus said, “love the Lord your God will all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.” We are going to be considering what that means today in the second week of our series Discovering Life With God, titled: "Love God". Listen as Mike Woodruff talks about how worship plays into loving God, and what this looks like...

Today we begin a new series entitled: "Discovering Life with God" over the next four weeks we are exploring the question: what does it look like to win? What’s the goal? What is the point of life? Listen as Mike Woodruff starts off with the tone set by Ecclesiastes. 1:1-18, and begins to set the perspective of what a closer walk with God looks like.

With today's life we are inundated with demands that pull us and monopolize our every waking moment, if we aren't careful. We can serve here, attend this class, bring our kids to soccer...but how do we figure out what really needs our attention? Listen as Mike Woodruff brings us through a second look at the church, and how we can posture ourselves to be an active joyful member of the bod...

The church has been a steady rock throughout centuries of loss, crisis, gain and advancement. Where does the church fit in the world? What role can Christians expect to take as the chaos of the times unfold? Listen as Mike Woodruff looks at the church, and how perspectives and other influences...political and social...attempt to pigeonhole Christianity.

Ever wonder if God is listening? Does it feel like sometimes our trials continue to pile up…and we wonder “where is God?” We are in the last week of our 4 week series called #THATSLIFE, and this week Anson Hanbury will talk from Romans 8 and bring a focus on how we relate to God, and how does that fall in line with God’s timetable for us. Without God we are powerless to overcome our weakness, but...

In our 3rd week of our 4 week series #THATSLIFE, Pastor Anson Hanbury will talk from Romans 7, highlighting the fact that without God we are alone with our inner conflict. But, with God...we have Somebody who can Help.

Have you ever found yourself dealing with a problem that just won’t go away? Sometimes there’s nothing left to do but shrug your shoulders and say, “that’s life.” But with God it doesn’t always have to be that way. We are in the 2nd week of a 4-week series called #THATSLIFE, listen as Pastor Anson Hanbury talks from Romans 6 and brings a focus on the that without God we are controlled by old patte...

Have you ever found yourself dealing with a problem that just won’t go away? Sometimes there’s nothing left to do but shrug your shoulders and say, “that’s life.” But with God it doesn’t always have to be that way. In this new 4-week series called #THATSLIFE, we will see how God has the power to help us win against our most persistent struggles. Listen as Pastor Anson Hanbury talks from Romans 5 t...

In this final week of Unstuck, listen as Mike Woodruff brings the focus back toward the ways that we get "stuck"...and the reasons behind our reticent actions. He also highlights a bit of a path forward to loosen the bonds of our natural inclination of being stuck and living a life in a rut.

Today is the fourth week of our series called Unstuck. It’s based on the idea that we want to get better, but we often do not. We are looking at the ways we can be held back. We have explored a few of these ways, self-deceit and self-righteous attitudes, today we look at addictions – you might call it self-destructive behavior. Listen as Paul Fowler tells of the good news that is brought with the...

One of the companions of self deception which we explored last week, is self righteousness. Listen as Mike Woodruff highlights how Jonah was stuck...as well as some of the grueling things he went through while God was prodding him to "get past himself" to do His mission. Are there areas in your life where you are stuck? How about I phrase that in a different way...can you truly say that...

If you poll all your friends and family, and you ask them to describe who you are, would they all completely agree with the way you see yourself? Does your view differ from what people would say about you? In our second week of the Unstuck series, listen as Mike Woodruff visits a story from I Samuel 15, and reflects upon how we see ourselves, as well as how our we deceive ourselves.

Listen as we begin a five-week series called “Unstuck” – during which we’ll be exploring insights from God about how to avoid the things that hold us back.  God’s desire is that we flourish – but that doesn’t always happen.    In this first week of Unstuck, Mike will be turning to Jeremiah for the first glimpse at the kind of ways we may be sabotaging ourselves.

As we continue in our third and final week of the Invest and Invite series, we have a special guest preacher, Rick Richardson to give us a great way that we can expand our evangelism. Rick is here to tell us about BLESS and is here to help us continue our discussion on how we can help people discover life with God.

In this second week of our Invest and Invite Series,  we dive into the importance of building relationships with non-christians so that over time,  people may begin to want to know more about Jesus. We all have a story of Jesus’ transformation of our lives, and it’s that story we want to tell our friends, families and neighbors. Listen as Dan Syvertsen unpacks Mark 5:15-20 and the lessons on how J...

Join us as we kick of a new three-week series called “Invest and Invite”. In this series, we will step out of our comfort zone to explore how we can build relationships, meet neighbors and reach new people with the love of Christ in today’s fast paced world. Listen as Mike Woodruff talks about the Good Samaritan in his message “Love Your Neighbor”.

Every stage in life is unique, with many challenges that are very new to us, yet so very familiar to those who have gone through these stages of growth, relationships and family status. God has given us a great example in the Bible of how to handle these hurdles, through God, Faith, and community. Listen as Mike Woodruff talks about these stages of life, and how God equips us to thrive.

Please join us as we bring you week three of a four week series called “We are Family.” Last week Mike Woodruff introduced the topic of Marriage and this week he brings the topic home and narrows the focus on what the bible says about relationships and marriage.

Listen as Mike Woodruff brings us week two of a four week series called “We are Family.” We are thinking a lot about relationships and as we draw close to God – as we lean into the great news of his love and grace for us – we find the kind of energy we need to love others as we should.

Join us as we start this new series called “We are Family” a look into relationships and the biblical perspective that we are given. Mike Woodruff opens the series and explains that the title is meant to advertise that this is not simply a marriage series, It’s also a play on both the Sisters Sledge song from the late 70s, and the fact that we are a family – that God uses family language to descri...