Encounter Youth

No one influences you more than your friends. Jake talks about how important it is to have friends who are flowing in the same direction you are. Do you friends fill you up? At the end, Jake talks about to take good friendships to the next level by making them godly friendships.

In this message Jake talks about something that is needed in every relationship, forgiveness. He talks about how unforgiveness only really hurts you and not the person you won't choose to forgive, and how forgiving means canceling the debt that you feel someone owes you.

In this message, Jake talks about how love is the most important thing in being unified, and actually in life! He also talks about love as finding the gold in others and laying your life down for them. The message ends with us recognizing how God acts toward us because he is love.

In this second message on why we need each other, Jake describes how God empowers us to love each other and build each other up through what the Bible calls spiritual gifts. He describes each of the gifts named in the Bible and tells stories of supernatural things God does when we love each other with the Spirit's power.

This message starts a new series on why we can't do life alone and we need each other. God made us to need each other and we all represent a piece of his heart and who he is in our own unique way. (There is a long illustration at the end of this message that you may want to skip through).

This week we talk about how to have good boundaries in a relationship. We cover everything from purity, to physical boundaries, to guarding your heart, and get practical about what to do and what not to do in order to keep your boundaries. PARENTAL WARNING: At the end of this message we talk about sexual boundaries in an appropriate way.

Have you ever asked what you should be looking for in a girl or guy to date? What does God say about how to be datable and how is it different from all of the external, skin deep stuff everyone seems to care about so much? Confidence, Character, Joy, and Love are good places to start.

This first message of our dating series talks about what dating is all leading up to, the beautiful covenant of marriage. Knowing what marriage I all about lays the foundation for understanding what dating is all about.

This week we dive into Romans 1. Jake starts by sharing on what Romans 1 says about the root of our sin, worshiping created things rather than God. Then we dive in to another topic that gets brought up in this chapter, homosexuality. Jake shares about how we can show the love of God and still speak the truth to our friends and acquaintances who may be attracted to the same sex or identify as gay.

This week the amazing Will Hershberger shares his testimony!