Everyday Church Sunday Messages

Stories are hardwired into our brains — they are how we make sense of the world around us and our experiences within it. From ancient cave paintings and oral histories, to classic novels and plays, to blockbuster movies and TV shows, our culture is both understood and shaped by stories. It should come as no surprise then that Jesus came as a master storyteller. God created us as narrative beings a...

Most people spend their lives pursuing, but coming up short on finding happiness. The whole entertainment industry in the West has been built upon this pursuit, but this search leaves so many feeling feeling unfulfilled because we are hardwired by our creator for a similar but yet deeper experience that scriptures call "joy". Advent 2025 The build up to Christmas is a time of intense pre...

Instead of being simply the absence of conflict, the biblical idea of peace runs so much deeper. Peace is wholeness and completeness — it is the opposite of brokenness. There is so much brokenness in our lives and the world at large, but at Advent we look forward to Jesus' coming and return — the Prince of Peace who will one day heal brokenness at every level of society once and for all. Adven...

If you want to see the power of hope in operation, just take a look at a child as they long for the day that they get to find an unwrap the perfect gift under the Christmas tree. Hope can sustain us, but the flip side of hope is waiting, and we aren't very good at waiting. Waiting reminds us that we are not in control of our lives — it's an affront to our pride — but it's in the waitin...

Even the most die-hard lovers of the holiday season would admit feeling stressed at some point at this time of year. Taking our already busy lives and adding an additional layer of shopping, parties, school performances, and food preparation often pushes us over from busyness (having a lot to do) into hurry (having too much to do). If we want to experience this time of year as the season of hope,...

Stories are hardwired into our brains — they are how we make sense of the world around us and our experiences within it. From ancient cave paintings and oral histories, to classic novels and plays, to blockbuster movies and TV shows, our culture is both understood and shaped by stories. It should come as no surprise then that Jesus came as a master storyteller. God created us as narrative beings a...

Everyone has the own idea about what the "good life" is and how to find it. It's what every advertisement is trying to sell us, but the good life can't be found in a new car or phone. Jesus' take on the good life shocked his first hearers. He taught that the good news of the coming kingdom of God is that the subjects of the kingdom get to experience the good life, but that it wouldn't look anythin...

Everyone has the own idea about what the "good life" is and how to find it. It's what every advertisement is trying to sell us, but the good life can't be found in a new car or phone. Jesus' take on the good life shocked his first hearers. He taught that the good news of the coming kingdom of God is that the subjects of the kingdom get to experience the good life, but that it...

The idea of miraculous healing provokes so many different reactions among people. Some believe in it, some don't. Some run after it, some are afraid of it. Some want to experience it but are not sure where to start, and some are tired of praying for it with little to show for it. Join us for a conversation about this complex topic as we share stories of both healing and suffering, and get real abo...

With so much pain and suffering in the world it's easy to wonder if God even cares. And if he does care, why he doesn't do something about it? The Bible's answer is that God does care, and that he has done something about it—he sent his Son, Jesus, not just to save the world, but to heal it. Healing is a sign of the now, but not yet kingdom of heaven—a preview of new creation in the pr...

Just like many of our favorite TV shows have a story arc that weaves its way through multiple episodes, so the first four chapters of Matthew's Gospel have an overarching meta narrative. It's easy to miss because we rarely read large chunks of scripture at a time and many of us are not that familiar with the Old Testament, but if we look closely we can see that Jesus is retelling and recre...

For many Western Christians, Sunday has become what Eugene Peterson called a “bastard Sabbath”—the illegitimate offspring of the Sabbath and a secular day off. Whether you practice Sabbath on Sundays, Saturdays, or another day of the week, it’s essential to remember God commands us to “remember the Sabbath by keeping it holy.” To keep it “holy” means to sanctify it, set it apart, and dedicate it t...

Timothy Keller has said, “Because the world is full of ugly things, we need the Sabbath to feed our soul with beauty.” Jesus himself said plainly, “In this world, you will have trouble,” but he also said his desire for his disciples was “that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.” Sorrow is inevitable in this life, but joy is not. In the Way of Jesus, joy is a gift, but it’s one that...

The idea of rest sounds wonderful, but in reality, rest is a radical, countercultural act of resistance to the powers and principalities of a world at war with God and his kingdom of peace. To practice Sabbath is to draw a line in the sand against all external (and internal) forces that would encroach upon your apprenticeship to Jesus and formation into his image. It’s to say, “This far you shall...

Low-grade physical, mental and emotional exhaustion is the new normal for most people, but it’s not the way of Jesus — he offers us an alternative way to live. Jesus offers us “rest for our souls.” God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. In doing so, he wove a rhythm of work and rest into the fabric of creation; rest that the Bible calls "Sabbath." This rest is not s...

When Jesus called his first disciples he invited them to join him in sharing what he called the "good news of the kingdom." To this day, what has come to be called "evangelism" is a key part of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. But this is becoming an increasingly daunting prospect as our post-truth society has more and more issues with being told what to believe. Is the...

Despite the human propensity for conflict, we can easily see war as something that happens to other people in other places—certainly not here on the Central Coast of California. So why do often end the day feeling battered and bruised, if not in body then in spirit? Why is it such a struggle to follow Jesus? The answer of the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 6 is that we are actually in a war, we just do...

As the culmination of the story of the Hebrew Bible, the Gospel of Matthew contains many "hyperlinks"—imagery that directs us again and again to stories in the Old Testament that find their fulfillment in Jesus. The story of Jesus' baptism in Matthew 3 brings together the two most important narratives in the history of God's people—the Genesis story of creation and the Exodus sto...

Jesus was born into a world of all kinds of kings and kingdoms, but the heart of Matthew's gospel account is the good news that God's kingdom has arrived, and that Jesus is the true king of the world. That begs the question for both his original readers and for us today — what does it mean for Jesus to be king of our lives and of our world? Gospel of Matthew To respond to Jesus’ invitation...

As we begin our journey through this biography of Jesus, Matthew takes the time to set his story in context by taking us through a genealogical list of names, tracing Jesus ancestry back to Abraham. It's easy to gloss over this introduction as boring and irrelevant, but if we do we'll miss some important ideas that our modern Western minds can easily miss. Gospel of Matthew To respond to J...

The metaphor of the dove to describe the Holy Spirit is only found once in scripture — at the baptism of Jesus. But this key moment in Jesus' life gives us valuable insight into how the Spirit empowered him to fulfill his mission on earth, and how the Spirit works through us us we continue the work of Jesus in the world today. Join us for this teaching series as we encounter and explore the pe...

Water is essential for life, so it's not surprising that one of Jesus most well known teachings on the Holy Spirit in John 7 uses the metaphor of water to describe his work. But this metaphor of water goes all the way back to the first page of scripture as we see the Spirit hovering over the deep and bringing creation out of chaos, a work that he continues to do to this day. Join us for this t...

Every day we take 23,000 breaths, using the 1,500 miles of airways that we have in our bodies. Breathing is fundamental to life, but yet most of the time we don't even realize we are doing it. It's telling that breath is the key metaphor for the Spirit of God in both the Old and New Testaments—it's apt way of describing the life-giving nature of the Spirit's work in God's world...

Fire is perhaps the first metaphor that comes to mind when we think of the Spirit of God — it's right there when we think about the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost. But what does it mean for us to experience the fire of the Spirit as we walk out the realities of everyday life? Join us for this Holy Spirit teaching series as we encounter and explore his person, presence, and power through...

Despite the centrality of the Holy Spirit to the Christian faith, 60% of committed Christians believe that the Holy Spirit is a force to be wielded and not a person. In this introduction to our new teaching series we explore the work of the Spirit throughout the history of God's people in order to build up a biblical picture of his role in our apprenticeship to Jesus today. Join us for this Holy S...