Foothills Alliance Church | Audio

Livin' the Life - 1 Timothy 6:11-19: I’m moving my father into an extended care home today. While I’m grateful he’s finally leaving hospital, I’m more than a little sad he’s not coming home. Life is filled with events that confuse and astound us. The attack in Manchester this week – the killing of 26 Coptic Christians in Egypt - how do we even begin to try to make sense of such things? How do we l...

Livin' the Life - Col 2:6-7; Matt 7:24-29: The good life. We probably all have both a desire for it and definition to describe it. We probably often feel we’re coming up a little short in experiencing it too! What does God have to say about “the good life?” We’re going to have a great time considering God’s plan and purpose for our lives. This will be a profoundly encouraging weekend as we conside...

The Story - Revelation 1-5; 19-22: We live in a world where all good things eventually come to an end. The sermon series we started back in September is no exception. This weekend we come to the final chapter of The Story, but like any great author God saves the best for last. In the book of Revelation, the apostle John is given a peek at what's waiting for us on the other side of human history. D...

The Story - Acts 20-23; 27-28; Ephesians 1-6; 2 Tim 1-4;: The Raid Gauloises is held every year in some obscure part of the world. Five person teams navigate the equivalent of 24 marathons back to back over two weeks and over the most unforgiving terrain on the planet. It is the world's toughest race, period. In the New Testament, the Christian life is described as a marathon to be run with patien...

The Story - Acts 13-14; 16-20; Romans 1; 3-6; 8-12; 15; 1 Cor 1; 3; 5-6; 10; 12-13; 15-16; Gal 1; 3; 5-6; 1 Thess 1-5;: Churches (the people, not the building!) have walls. Walls can be a gift of protection and security: we saw this earlier in the story when the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt. But walls can also keep things contained that should be let out. Acts 1:8 reminds us that we are to be w...

The Story - Acts 1-10; 12: At the heart of The Story is a simple truth: God is at work. We've seen this reality displayed over and over again over the past 7 months. He works by His Spirit…through His people… through divinely ordained circumstances…through Jesus of course! Another thing we've been learning is that this work God is about is always a good work. Not a work free of complexities or unc...

The Story - Matthew 27-28; Mark 16; Luke 24; John 19-21;19-21;: There are very few events or moments in life that we would consider game-changers. Marriage. The birth of a child. Graduation. The loss of a parent. A bankruptcy or personal failure. But even those events impact only a small group of people in our lives. The life and death of Jesus certainly impacted the land of Israel deeply… but rel...

The Story - Luke 19:28-42; Isaiah 53:1-6: The Passion Week begins this weekend with Palm Sunday—a day where a whole city threw a parade for Jesus, throwing palm branches in honor of him, the King of the Jews. The air is carbonated with anticipation and excitement. So why is Jesus crying (Luke 19:41) as he surveys what should be an all-out gala celebration? Clearly Jesus was a different kind of kin...

The Story - Matthew 17; Mark 8-12; 14; Luke 9; 22; John 7-8; 11-12;: Over lunch with a friend this week, we talked about how the story of our lives is always being written. Not until heaven will we ever have a sense of having arrived! Each story is shaped by family and friends and community and circumstance … all under the gracious hand of our gracious God. Some chapters are beautiful and meaningf...

The Story - Matthew 5-7; 9; 14; Mark 4-6; Luke 10; 15; John 6: No ordinary man. C.S. Lewis has become legendary with his comment that you can't conclude that Jesus was just a great teacher or a good moral man … He was either who he said He was (Lord) or a deceptive man (liar) or a crazy man (lunatic). This weekend we'll look closer at the extraordinary nature of who Jesus was and what He came to a...

The Story - Matthew 11; Mark 1-3; Luke 8; John 1-4: One of the interesting themes that has surfaced over and over again throughout The Story is that God longs to get up close and personal with those He made in His image. In fact, ever since things went sideways way back in Eden, God has made all kinds of attempts to do just that. He sent angelic messengers to Abraham and Sarah; He appeared to Mose...

The Story - Matthew 3 & 4: I'm so excited about this weekend as we move into the New Testament in our journey through The Story! All of the Old Testament has been pointing towards God's redemptive plan for the world, and now we will begin to discover more perfectly the heart of this plan. For God so loved the world (you and I) that he gave His one and only Son … Even while we were still sinners (l...

The Story - Ezra 7; Nehemiah 1-2; 4; 6-8; Malachi 1-4;: It's my favorite book in the Bible (assuming we're allowed to have favorite books!), Nehemiah. Everything we face in life shows up here. Conflict - fear - disappointment - discouragement. But overlapping all those realities is hope and grace and joy! This weekend, we complete the Old Testament portion of The Story and be reminded of God's fai...

The Story - Esther 1-9: Right place … right time. We all have stories about divine encounters that shape our stories. We probably have a few wrong place - wrong time tales to tell too! What is the role of circumstance in our lives? What role did it play in the unfolding wonder of God's divine story? From the life of the beautiful Queen Esther and then from the Lord's amazing table, we will be remi...

The Story - Ezra 1-6; Haggai 1-2; Zechariah 1; 8: Sovereignty. It's a big word. It can be a confusing word. Is God really sovereign over all my life? Can He be trusted all the time? What about when things go sideways? What about life in the land of exile? This weekend in The Story we pick up with the Israelites, God's sovereign hand upon them, and the journey to re-connect with the Holy Land that...

The Story - Daniel 1-3; 6; Jeremiah 29-31: Legendary UCLA basketball John Wooden is arguably remembered as the greatest coach in the history of sports. He was always about teaching his players more than just basketball skills. He mentored those he coached. Perhaps my favorite Wooden truth are his words: Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you...

The Story - 2 Kings 21; 23-25; 2 Chron 33; 36; Jer 1-2; 4-5; 13; 21; Lam 1-3; 5; Ezek 1-2; 6-7; 36-37; Rom 2:1-10: Our neighbors to the south are experiencing a very different kind of leader and all the implications of this change. As The Story progresses, we move from a godly leader to a series of very different leaders. With one exception, each of them fell down. Ultimately, the nation of Judah...

The Story - 2 Kings 17-19; Isaiah 3; 6; 13-14; 49; 53;: Ebbs and flows … ups and downs … we're all familiar with but who, really, prefers down to up! Downward … downtrodden … downturns … no one likes those words! Upward and onward is so much more appealing! Israel's history is filled with all kinds of highs and lows but there was a common factor in all of them: The loving presence and intervention...

The Story - 1 Kings 17-19; 2 Kings 2; 4; 6; Hosea 4-5; 8-9; 14; Amos 1; 3-5; 9: Every once in a while, life has a way of overwhelming us. We get busy. We get distracted. We feel inadequate. We lose hope. Sometimes, we even feel like we’ve lost God in the journey. What do we do then? This weekend, from chapter 15 of The Story, we encounter the reality that we are a pretty distractible people living...

The Story - 1 Kings 12 - 16: United we stand, divided we fall. The English version of the phrase is first attributed to John Dickinson – one of the founding fathers of the U.S. He used it in his pre-Revolutionary War anthem The Liberty Song, as part of a campaign to unite the various new states as one nation. From what we’ve seen on the news in recent months, it seems that our neighbours to the so...

The Story - 1 Kings 1-8; 10-11; 2 Chron 5-7; Prov 1-3; 6; 20-21: As we continue to make our way through the pages of The Story of God and his people we meet Solomon, the son of David and Bathsheba. King Solomon steps onto the scene at a time of peace and security in the land of Israel. Gifted with God’s wisdom and blessing he leads the Kingdom into a season of unprecedented prosperity. At the peak...

Christmas 2016 - Happy New Year!: Many people come to a new year and make resolutions or set goals that will move them towards some form of transformation in their life. Whether or not you set resolutions, New Years is a great time to reflect and refocus on where you have been and where you are going. This Sunday we will be considering different intertwining pathways that we can journey on to expe...

Christmas 2016: Turn on your radio … walk through a mall and you’re almost guaranteed to hear, “It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!” Most of us, sing along with a strong degree of affirmation. Christmas is filled with food, gifts, lights, food, family, time off, food, services, friends … did I mention food?!?! But as great as those things are … they pale in comparison to the greatest gift ev...

The Story - Matthew 2: Most of us put up a nativity scene in our home during the Christmas season. There are thousands of variations but the characters are pretty much the same - a few shepherds, some sheep, 3 Magi bearing gifts, a couple of cows or camels, and of course Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus. What’s not to like? These things reminds us of the beautiful story of that first Christmas. There i...

The Story: Hopes and fears. Most of us have a boatload of both. It's just that the fears seem to win the day at times. This year's Christmas production gives us a brilliant window into both in the lives of Mary and Joseph as they try to navigate the journey of immaculate conception and all its implications! I'm pretty sure that fear threatened to win the day but there was just something incredibly...