Crossroads - Weekend Messages

Words have creative power. God spoke, and a universe was born! Jesus spoke, and the sick were healed, demons were cast out and the dead rose. Made in God’s image, our words have tremendous power too, both to build up and to tear down. That’s why it hurts so bad when someone uses words against us. In our new series, The Way Up, we’ll see the wordsmiths of the Bible using the artistic and creative p...

When things have been tough for a while, following the Lord can start to feel like we’re just trudging through life. It’s tempting to take matters into our own hands in these moments. Or, if we’re set on being faithful and obedient, we might feel like God has only our duty, and not our delight, in mind. The beautiful thing about God is his best plans for us, although not always easy, always result...

Jesus taught us to count the cost. But let’s be honest, sometimes we just want what we want, consequences be what they may. Unfortunately, we have all made what had the potential to be catastrophic mistakes. In some cases, the consequences were absolutely awful. Yet, if our hearts are open and humble before the Lord, He can teach us the most profound lessons in these types of situations.

Life can be such a mixed bag. I know it’s hard that way. But there are times of great joy and overwhelming sorrow. There are times of tremendous trust and crippling fear. And sometimes, all of these different things can happen in a very short span of time, leaving us feeling like a boat being tossed about by a tremendous storm. This is not only true for us. It was also true in Elijah’s life. This...

In every season of our lives, we look forward to events. Concerts, tournaments, games, parties, weddings, births, you name it –– it often seems like we spend our lives moving from one season of anticipation to the next. Most events have the potential to become defining points in our lives. Anytime something out of the ordinary happens, we have opportunities to choose, sometimes in insignificant wa...

“Speak the truth, even if you voice shakes.” That’s a popular quotation with a very important reality attached to it. Sometimes speaking the truth is hard. Sometimes telling the truth comes with severe consequences. It is especially hard to speak truth to power. In this week’s study, we will see the prophet Elijah confronting the evil king of Israel. This study is packed full of important applicat...

There’s something about tough times that really brings out the best and the worst in us. Our true character shines (for better or for worse) in the midst of suffering...but so does God’s. When we choose to trust the Lord in the midst of the messiness of life, He does His most cherished work. We will see this on display as we watch how God works through Elijah in the life of the widow of Zarephath....

So everything is going all kinds of wrong –– right? It’s falling apart in every imaginable direction…We’ve all been there. And when that happens, it's easy to blame God or wonder where he is and why he didn’t do anything to stop this from happening to us. The prophet Elijah had some of the same questions, and as we journey with him we’ll learn God is always multitasking: working in miraculous ways...

We all want everything to be “up and to the right.” We always want things to be smooth sailing and getting better. We want to take the shortest distance between points A and B. But that’s not real life. Life is full of ups and downs, ins and outs. Even though we try hard to make things nice and clean, the journey of life is a jagged one. And so is our walk of faith as we hope in Jesus. Do not miss...

Suffering is part of life –– that’s a tough reality to embrace! But the crazy thing is, with Jesus, suffering is often the context for our hope...In suffering, we come face-to-face with what we really believe in our hearts about who God is. Few stories depict this reality more beautifully than the story of Job. Even in the midst of tremendous suffering, Job walked in unstoppable hope –– something...

From the political tension we feel in our country, to the daily stresses of life at home with our families, or the internal struggles we face individually, there’s any number of things we can feel overwhelmed by, every single day. And the more overwhelmed we get, the more we run after the things or people that bring us a sense of comfort...even if those comforts are ultimately bad for us. The beau...

It’s unavoidable, but sometimes hard to accept –– the reality that suffering is not optional. And the thing about suffering is so often it feels pointless...We find ourselves asking, “Why is this happening? And where is God?” But no matter how it may appear to us at the moment, nothing is wasted with God. And even in the experiences that bring us the most pain, he is at work, imagining outcomes we...

In the midst of troubling circumstances, hope can sometimes feel just out of reach, like it’s impossible to really hang onto...but what if hope is hanging onto us? The crazy thing is, hope isn’t some sort of abstract concept, or a “thing” we can grasp –– hope is a Person. Hope has a name: Jesus. And only with Jesus do we find that hope is unstoppable because he hangs onto us, even when we feel lik...

God is in the business of making all things new. This newness exists on every level of our lives. As a church family we have called 2020 a year of renewal. But with all that is going on in the world, how can we be renewed? We believe that God wants to do a work of renewal in all of us in this present cultural moment.

The beautiful exchange of the finished work of Jesus is simply that he died the death that we deserved. He gave Himself in our place. Then the beautiful exchange is that death becomes new life. Although Jesus died a public death, death could not hold Jesus. And Jesus rose from the grave. Come and celebrate this beautiful exchange with us at Crossroads.

You’d have to be crazy to want to be humbled. We live in a society where, whether blatantly or not, every Instagram post is telling you who’s the best. It’s not natural to want to take a backseat in a society like that –– plus, “being humbled” usually involves pain or loss of some kind. That means, the fact that Almighty God exchanged all the majesty due his name for humility –– for us –– is a cra...

If you’ve spent any time watching the news recently, you’ve undoubtedly heard the same subliminal message from a million sources: “Be afraid.” Sure, most people aren’t telling you directly to be scared, but the way they’re presenting the facts makes everything seem...hopeless. Thankfully, God offers us a gift –– (and does anyone not love to receive gifts)? –– that gives us a way to replace our fea...

At the best of times, there are so many things we find ourselves afraid of. In uncertain times, it’s easy for our fear to rage off the charts! The beautiful thing for the follower of Jesus is, even though we still feel afraid, we don’t have to let it drive our lives. God offers us a cure for fear! Join us this weekend as we learn how we can live by faith instead of fear.

We all know it –– we live in times of uncertainty, and it can feel totally overwhelming sometimes. The beautiful thing is, nothing surprises God, and no matter what goes on, he invites us all to walk in a unique hope that’s unstoppable. God leverages the worst situations to bring about the most extraordinary things! Because we know that’s part of who God is, we can expect good things from his hand...

We call them “storms” for a reason –– difficult seasons of life shake us up and rock us to our core. Ultimately, suffering has one of two effects for each of us: to break us down, or to grow us up, and we get to choose which outcome is ours. Join us for a special message about how to weather the storms of life...and come out the other side, not uprooted, but rooted more deeply than ever before in...

When Jesus adopts us into his family, we all come from totally different family and cultural backgrounds, with different values and priorities –– and then add in the fact that God calls and gifts us all uniquely too, and you’ve got one diverse family! In the midst of our intense differences, sometimes unity in our relationships feels out of reach...but God has a plan to unify us in the midst of di...

As we navigate decisions in life, we so often bump up against our own limitations and weaknesses. The good news for us? When we follow Jesus, he gives us his Holy Spirit who is unlimited in power and ability. God works as he wants to in our lives, not necessarily as we want him to, but his plans, though different from ours, are always better. As we dive further into the book of Acts this weekend,...

We call life “the daily grind” because that’s how it feels sometimes, right? We go through seasons where nothing significantly changes, and there’s nothing to break up the monotony. In the middle of our 9-to-5s, our families, our daily lives, God wants to shake us up and make us new, and there’s no more powerful way he does this than by empowering us with the baptism of his Holy Spirit. This Sunda...

We all love a promise...and we hate it, too, right? When someone promises us something, it creates a longing, a hopeful expectation for the fulfillment of something special. Promises give us something to look forward to –– and something to wait for. What’s beautiful is, while we often break our promises to each other, God promises us better things than we could ever imagine, and he never breaks hi...

What if you had a strategy to maximize your life, a way to unlock your full potential and make the most of your days? It would probably change a lot. For many of us, the dissatisfaction we encounter in life comes from the feeling that something is “missing,” and we don’t know how to fix it. But letting God unleash the gifts of His Spirit in our lives frees us to live into the full potential He mad...