Cross Community Church

On Palm Sunday, we enter into the Passion Week where the events leading up to Jesus' time on the cross unfold. As he enters the city, Jesus' words to the Pharisees echo the words of the Psalmist, "The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone..." As Jesus reminds the Pharisees of their failure to comprehend and engage the kingdom that God intended to create, Jesus revea...

The life that has been renewed through the work of Jesus Christ should echo a different sound than a life that is built and shaped by the world. For believers in Jesus, the meditations of our hearts and the thoughts that engage our mind each day should be evidence of the presence and the work of the Holy Spirit. In Luke 6:37-49, Jesus uses the example of judging others to help us underst...

In our Lenten Series, Right and Wrong, we talk about how criticism of other people does not lead to the community that Jesus calls us to. Last time we looked at Romans 14 where Paul tells the church to be careful that they are not measuring up people by their own perspective. This week we look at Luke 6:37-49 where Jesus addresses the issue of judging. Not judging like in court or holding one acco...

Pastor Dennis Ellzey from the Arkansas State Wesley Foundation joins us this week to share with us the message of hope. Hope is meaningless if it is not given a body through the acts of God's people. When Jesus heals the paralytic man, the faithfulness, love and compassion of his four friends made his hope become a reality. As God's people, we carry the reality of hope that other people desperatel...

In Romans 14, the Apostle Paul tells the church that community is an essential part of the life of faith. Community is something that God had in the plans from the very beginning and it is something that each of us need in order to grow and maintain a strong faith. But sometimes our natural self gets in the way. Paul warns the church in his letter to be careful that they do not measure people's wo...

Paul writes his letter to the Ephesian church from the viewpoint of someone who has personally experienced grace and what it means to be found in Jesus Christ. Long before we even knew it, God had a plan through Jesus to redeem us through sin. When we come to faith in Jesus, our desire for repentance allows Jesus to reclaim us from sin's hold and brings us into the family of God. But thats not all...

LeRoy Lawson once stated, "Nothing has done greater damage to our Christian testimony than our trying to be right and demanding right of others. We become preoccupied with what it and what is not right. We ask ourselves, Have we been justly or unjustly treated? and we think thus to vindicate our actions. But that is not our standard. The whole question for us is one of cross-bearing."  This w...

Faith begins and ends with the realization of what God has done in us through Jesus Christ. It is not about character development or the ability to change our actions, it is about understanding the call to abandon ourselves in order that our lives proclaim the salvation given through Jesus Christ. Salvation is not a right or privilege for a righteous person, it is completely a gift for the guilty....

In the book of Ephesians, Paul tells the church to, "Be better in your faith!" In a time and culture where it was very easy to let the ways of the world influence your faith practices, Paul tells the church to be diligent in growing and to not settle for being a person of empty devotion. Satan loves to make a Christian think they are being devout in their faith while in reality they are being devo...

The law of God reveals the power of sin in individuals. Through the blood of Christ we have been reconciled to God and have been called to unity among the body of believers. Ephesians 4:1-10 reveals that we often miss this aspect of salvation because we stay caught up in worldly priorities. When we fail to give control of our faith to Jesus, we miss out on the strength and support that He offers t...

It is through faith that we are able to live through all the tribulations of this life. When we join together with Jesus Christ in faith, it unites us with Him to where His peace dwells within us. Being brought near to God through the blood of Christ, we have been reconciled to Him. Because of this, we live in repentance as we seek to know God through the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives. T...

All that we have in regard to our faith is from God, as a result of His great love for us. Our natural self is inclined to sin and selfishness and unable to recognize or accept the things of God apart from His working in our lives. As we walk through the book of Ephesians we will see the way that faith is where our salvation begins, and it is where our being transformed into a new creation starts....

In the birth of Christ, God's mercy and love was shown for us in that we have been rescued from living in death and even despite or sins and situation, we have been given the chance for unity with Christ. In this unity we experience the victory over sin and the ways of the world. We are traveling through the book of Ephesians as we look at the different aspects of faith and how we are to live and...

Joy isn't something based on our circumstances. It is something that comes from God that He has planned & freely given despite our place in this fallen world. When we live in an "Almost Joy" we claim to have the joy that comes from faith in Jesus, yet in reality, our perspective is still focused on the chaos around us. Experiencing an "Altogether Joy" is when we keep the perspective of what Je...

Almost Love welcomes only the parts of a person that are desirable to us, only the things that are easily accepted. An Altogether Love, one like Jesus offers, crosses cultural boundaries and racial lines. It is a love that is irrational in that it welcomes the person, however they are, because it realizes that God made our welcome possible through Jesus. Join us as we walk through the Advent Study...

A voice of one calling out in the wilderness, "Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths!" The words of the prophet Isaiah ring out again, this time from a different messenger. John the Baptist declares the coming of the Messiah, the one who would deliver God's people once and for all. the message of hope reverberated through the towns and cities as people came to hear this messenger de...

John Wesley preached a sermon to an assembly at Oxford University where he addressed the understanding of an, “Almost Christian.” The Almost Christian is someone who, by all outward appearances seems to have everything in perfect order when it comes to being a devoted disciple of Christ. Just one thing keeps them from becoming an, “Altogether Christian.” Wesley would say that the one thing that ke...

Over the year 2020, despite the pandemic and a season of a different type of church life, God has been doing a lot of things in the life of the church. From new members joining is and becoming vital to the life and discipleship of our ministries, to several young students making a profession of faith in Jesus Christ. Because of the different season of ministry, much of the mundane, “church work” h...

One day God’s final judgement will take place. Everything that Her has said is not of Him will be done away with once and for all. As believers, this is something that can serve as a refuge in times of distress. For those without Christ, this serves as a reminder that Jesus has come to take away the judgment of our sin as we experience new life in Him. God protects and preserves their people. Our...

We get in a bad habit of thinking that it is always up to us to fix ourselves or our situations. We tell ourselves that now that we have found Jesus it is our responsibility to be perfect and get everything right....and most times we end up feeling like failures, realizing that we are worse now than we thought we were before. But have we ever thought about it that feeling inside of knowing that we...

Anything we have today has already been done through the work of Jesus Christ. Even though we were once sinful and apart from God, He still loved us enough to send His Son Jesus to take our place of judgement for sin. It was never up to us to "get it right", God already did that. It's up to us to believe. It is through our faith that we experience salvation and rightness with God. Not through our...

What do we do when our world is crashing in around us? How do we continue to move forward when it seems that everything is holding us back? What do we do when our soul is dry, when we don't want to pray, when we can't seem to find the strength to open our Bibles? These are all questions that everyone, even believers struggle with. There is no such thing as a perfect faith journey, we still struggl...

This week, Missionary and Evangelist Charlie Brown with Open Hearts Ministries shares with us his own testimony of how God can do miracles and change lives when Christians answer the call to take the message of Jesus Christ to the least, the last and the lost around the world. As we grow in our faith as a disciple of Christ, the Holy Spirit reveals within us the desire to follow Jesus with a new f...

What can God do in my trusting of Him? What could God do through us if we let every part of who we are be for the purpose of the things that God calls us to? This week, the last week of our Stewardship Series for 2020, we look at the account of Moses, who trusted God to do great and wonderful things. Things that no person would ever consider or be successful in apart from a divine lead and power....

What is a Biblical Understanding of Stewardship? Is stewardship all about our financial understanding of supporting the church? As Disciples we grow and discover each day where we need to give God control of our lives. The deeper source of our understanding of stewardship begins in our heart. The world tells us that we are number one, but the Bible tells us that because of the sacrifice of Jesus,...