Christ Community Church - Olathe Campus - SUNDAY MESSAGES

You’ve taken your unfulfilled longings -- your grief and your desire. Whatever it is. And you’ve brought them to Jesus. You’ve asked Him to intervene. And whether or not He’s answered you in the way you wanted Him to. You’ve met Him.  Now here we are. Every one of us. Somewhere between meeting Jesus. And the fulfillment of all of His promises to us. Every Christian is on that path. Between saying...

Just like the Samaritan woman, you may feel overwhelmed by the weight of your sin. And just like her, while you might think that Jesus is holding your past over you he is tenderly saying that even this will not keep him from holding you. He is saying “I know everything you have ever done. I have seen you at your worst. And I am not leaving.”  Why did Jesus have to pass through Samaria? Because his...

The only true and lasting way to wage war against the sins of comparing and complaining is to delight in and declare the truth of Jesus. The road sign on the path of repentance is not a Stop Sign but a U-Turn. It is not simply about ceasing from sin, but also seeking a better joy. I believe that so much of our despair, discontent, and disdain in life stems from a failure to delight in and declare...

We know the world is often a tragic and ugly place, but sometimes it’s hard for us to see because we don't know what to do with it and we don’t want to face it—in fact, we try to ignore or cover it up—but the world is often a dark place. A place that has so much potential for light and truth and goodness and beauty and life and joy—the world as it ought to be—but it has come to be characterized by...

We all know and feel the dissonance in our bodies and souls between who we are and who we long to be. And that’s because we know and feel the need to be born again of water and Spirit. And we know and feel that we must be born again because we must be born again. With a wide-open heart, pledge your full allegiance to King Jesus above all else and surrender to his good, true, and beautiful reign ov...

When we see Jesus, who is meek and mild, entering the temple as Jesus mean and wild, we must see him acting as such because of his unstoppable love for you and for me. For the zeal he has for you and for me and for all to know, see, behold, delight, and enter the holy presence of his father now and forever is what moves him to be so lovingly angry. There is so much that keeps us from coming to God...

When the wine runs out we must turn to the one who brings the very best joy and the very best life. Instead of desperately scraping our fingers at the bottom of the wine barrel for more, we need to turn and see that the very best has arrived in Jesus. When we see that the very best joy and life has arrived in Jesus, then it is only natural and right and good for us to listen to the timeless words...

So whether we are a skeptic with objections, or a Christian trying to respond to someone with objections, often the best thing we can do is take these words to heart: come and see. We need to enter in first, and then invite others to enter in, to see how Jesus makes sense of it all. This is who we encounter when we meet Jesus for ourselves. The Lord of all of heaven and earth, come to dwell among...

Friends, you may not be asking the question “where is the lamb” in those words. But all of us are asking it in some way. “Where can I find hope? Where can I find meaning? Where can I find change? Where can I find rescue?” Without knowing it we are all asking “Where is the lamb” because we all know that we are not who we ought to be. That the world is not the way it ought to be. Is there anyone or...

Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/48825729 22.01.16

When we behold and believe the fullness of the Word made flesh we come to find a way of living as his followers in this world.  For in it we find the power to emulate the sympathetic and compassionate nature of God who drew near to social outcasts and sinners. Who came not simply declaring the good news of the kingdom but displaying it through his compassion and care for the needs of others. What...

If you are a follower of Jesus, my prayer is that you would more fully, faithfully, and fruitfully believe and behold Jesus as the Word of God. Be open to Jesus as the Word who speaks into every part of your life. If you are not a follower of Jesus yet, be open to the Word of God. Be open with your questions and doubts. But also be open to doubting your doubts and questioning your questions and th...

This abundant life that Jesus speaks of is the Psalm 23 kind of life. Feasting joy, free from danger. We can have a taste of this now, and will one day have it in full if we have Jesus as our Shepherd. This does not mean that we will never go through dark valleys or have Psalm 22-like experiences. But Psalm 23 shows us that on the other side of the valley of the shadow of death there is abundant l...

The promise of the name Immanuel is validated and confirmed in the power of the name Jesus! The reason we know God is with us and that we are never alone is because he has come to us. So close in fact that he became our very nature in order to identify with us, suffer alongside us, and be the atoning sacrifice for us. Immanuel puts to death our fear of loneliness because in Christ God has come to...

The powerful story of Christmas is that Jesus, who is the God who sees, has come into our world looking for us. And he sees us looking around looking for him. And he declares to us “There you are…I have been looking for you…I have come to see you…to be with you…to love you…to redeem you!” But he finds us turning our gaze away from him. He finds us distracted and looking past him as though he isn’t...

As the Lord of Hosts, God is working in our world and fighting for us by bringing order to the chaos in us and around us. He actively guards, protects, and fights for his good creation. He does so by sending a son. Friends, we all have battles, challenges, and threats in our lives. But we must never lose sight of the truth that we also have a God who is our Lord of Hosts who fights for us, stands...

Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/48801496 21.11.28

If you are a follower of Jesus, you are here today because somebody in your life was obedient to Jesus’ command to make disciples. What a gift that is. Church, may we offer that same gift to others. We do not merely exist for ourselves and for those inside these walls. We exist for the complete and holistic flourishing of our neighbors and for those who do not know Jesus yet. This is who Jesus has...

21.11.14

We give generously because we have generously been given so much from God. When we receive and rejoice in the depth of God’s grace toward us in richly blessing us with his son whom he sent to die for our sins, our response of giving generously is not one of obligation but adoration. It is a delight and joy to give and live generously because we are responding to the joy and generosity of our lovin...

Boastful arrogance has no air to breathe in a room filled with gratitude toward God. The less grateful we are to God, even for the small things, the more blind we will be to his goodness and presence, and more boastful and arrogant we can become. Real faith is prepared for what we can’t control...which is a lot of stuff. But are we a people who cling to Jesus tighter than our own plans? Or are we...

Lament is a way of getting what we want in line with what God wants. Because lament adopts God’s view of a broken situation so that it can begin to be made whole. It begins to develop within us a distaste for certain things so that we will turn away from them. It begins to reshape our wants and develop a taste within us for what God wants. I don’t know exactly what it is you need to turn from. It’...

Learning to listen and thinking before we speak can help train our tongues, but it cannot save our souls. These practices only address symptoms and surface level issues. They will not and indeed cannot remedy the source from which our words set things on hellish fire.  Real faith changes how we speak. Real faith shapes and forms our words. Only because real faith comes from the one who is the word...

God’s radical grace toward us is what compels us to respond to him with a real faith that really works. Our works are not what move God toward us. Our works are not what convince God to accept us. Our works are not what persuade God to forgive us.  God doesn’t need our works in order to rescue us from sin and death, because the work of Christ on the cross for us was fully sufficient for that.  But...

Remember: mercy triumphed over judgment in your life. If you are a Jesus follower; if you are here because you believe God himself came to earth to live, die, and rise again because of you, then mercy triumphed over judgment in your life.  If that is true, where does your mercy need to triumph over judgment for someone else? Who do you not want to serve. Not want to forgive. Not want to acknowledg...