Foothills Alliance Church | Video

Joshua - Joshua 1:1-9: The wellbeing of our lives, home, church, city often hinges on the power of promises kept or broken. The impact of making, keeping, receiving promises is enormous. God has been famously faithful to us over Foothills' history, and will yet be as we move into new territory in the next era. God promises, ‘As I have been with Moses (your last leader), so I will also be with you...

Gospel of Mark - Mark 1:16-20: There are two main "calls" within the human experience: self-indulgence and self-denial. The former being impulsive and the latter being an investment. The first an easy sell, the second a tremendously difficult thing to do. Jesus' call to his followers is an invitation. Humanity can say, "no thank you". But what is the cost of both of those options? It's worth a loo...

Gospel of Mark - Mark 1:1-11: Lent, popularly understood as a season of joyless custom and duty, carries almost too much religious baggage for some people. How then do we keep the gospel front and center in this season of shadows? The cross keeps our gospel focus clear. Lent is a season to journey with Jesus in his passion, to survey the cross, taking the measure of Christ's love in his suffering...

Identity in Christ: God sent the prophet Jeremiah to the potter’s house for a lesson on living a life submitted to a purposeful Potter’s hands.  The clay cries, “I have been slammed on to a hard spinning wheel. I’m flying out of control. I am being squashed and squeezed and I know a fire lies ahead”. And Potter (God) says, “Carefully I threw you on to just the right spot. Your imperfections are be...

Identity in Christ: Henri Nouwen (beloved theologian & writer) wrote: “One of the tragedies of our lives [as Christians] is that we keep forgetting who we are”. He is probably more right than wrong … which is a main reason we have spent the last several weeks in Colossians teaching and reminding ourselves about the overwhelming, life-changing treasure of the believer’s “Identity in Christ”. We hav...

Identity in Christ: Is it hard to sift through the crowd of voices speaking or yelling their own convictions these days? Now what about those in the church? Theology aside today, what about political allegiances? Beliefs on how Christians should act and navigate these times? Feel weary? This week we're going to put in our best efforts to sift through some of the competing voices and get to the roo...

Identity in Christ: Did you know that an oak tree’s roots spread out beneath it four to seven times the width of it’s crown? These roots provide nourishment that transforms a tiny acorn into a towering tree and create an anchor that holds against the fiercest storm. The apostle Paul tells us that we are rooted in Christ. What does being rooted in Christ look like in your life? As we continue on ou...

Identity in Christ - Colossians 1:24-2:5: What if for twenty-four hours Jesus wakes up in your bed, walks in your shoes, lives in your house, assumes your schedule. Your boss becomes his boss, your mother becomes his mother, your pains become his pains? With one exception, nothing about your life changes. Your health doesn’t change. Your circumstances don’t change. Your schedule isn’t altered. You...

Identity in Christ: This week we focus on the Identity of Jesus as the ‘Head of His Church’ and the implications for us as his followers. It is interesting to note that Jesus never asked US to build HIS church, nor did he suggest he was intending to build OURS! Jesus was adamant that He would build His Church… so what is the part we are to play related to our identity in Christ? While Jesus is des...

Identity in Christ - Colossians 1:15-23: Years ago I visited Grand Canyon in Arizona. I will never forget the overwhelming experience. As I walked to the edge of the canyon my jaw dropped in the enormity and magnitude of what my senses were trying to absorb. I get this sme sensation and response when I read Paul's description of God's Son in Colossians 1:15-23. Too often we limit our understanding...

Identity in Christ - Colossians 1:9-14: Carl Jung once said, 'The World will ask you who are you, and if you don't know, the World will tell you.' The search for identity is at the core of our being. Our message series, 'Identity in Christ', invites us to dig deeper in owning our identity from the very heart of God. Paul desired the Colossian church would learn to discern God's will be desiring hu...

Identity in Christ - Colossians 1v1-8: Have you ever looked at an old photo of yourself and wondered why you were wearing what you did? If you were to go look at yourself in the mirror now who would you see? Who are you? What are you about? Why do you do what you do? As Charles Taylor (1992, 25) influentially put it, “A person or group of people can suffer real damage, real distortion, if the peop...

Expectant: As the well-loved carol declares, Joy to the world, the Lord is come. Let earth receive their King.  Jesus, the One we have been waiting for, has finally come!  The gifts are unwrapped, the turkey is eaten, the stockings are empty, and the One who prompted the whole thing is now waiting on us. How will we receive this newborn King? The wise men travelled far to worship him, Herod scheme...

Expectant: It seems to me that shepherds don’t get much “press” in the Christmas narrative. It's interesting, because there is only one invitation given to come and see the Christ child and only one request to go and tell everybody what they found. And it is given to the shepherds. If you know anything about shepherds, they were probably thinking, “Of all the people God could single out for such a...

Expectant - Matthew 1:18-24, Luke 1:39-56: Mary and Joseph are often portrayed with the baby Jesus on the front of Hallmark Christmas cards or emblazoned in stain glass windows around the world. Many of us like keeping them in that setting because they seem to represent a reality in which, as the Christmas carol sings, ‘all is calm, all is bright.’  If truth be known, their real life experiences w...

Expectant - Luke 1:5-24: It’s been said that ‘hope springs eternal.’ But sometimes it is hard to hope, isn’t it? Sometimes the things we hope for can feel impossible. Zachariah and Elizabeth know what that feels like. Yet they also know what it is feels like to see God do the impossible, to stir up new things, to fulfill old promises. In this Advent season, this old couple remind us how human it i...

Expectant - Isaiah 64:1-9; Jeremiah 33:14,15: Have you noticed how dark it is these days?  At supper time it feels like midnight, and I can’t say I like it. It makes me long for those long summer evenings of sunshine and blue skies. But we’ll have to wait another 6 months for those to return!  I love how, in our northern hemisphere, our physical and spiritual worlds cooperate, stirring up longing...

#blessed: From persecution to partnership in the Gospel. “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matt 5:10 What does persecution look like in the world today? What should our response be? In 2018, the C&MA Canada decided together to re-engage in a large country in South Asia with a population that will outnumber China by 2025. A place wh...

#blessed - Matt 5:7: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.” (Matthew 5:7) Jesus had a unique way of challenging people’s thinking and giving them new perspectives as they looked at the world. To those who looked at themselves and were proud of the fact that they had never murdered anyone, Jesus told them to look a little closer. He wanted them to see the anger in their hearts and...

#blessed - Matt 5:9: There's a famous story of George Bush Sr. making a trip to Australia and greeting the onlookers with making a "V" for Victory with his fingers. I'm sure he meant it in a good way, unfortunately for him, that's not what that sign means in Australia. Interesting how humanity interprets words and meaning differently. I would argue that peace is another one of those multi-faceted...

#blessed - Matt. 5:5: “Everybody hurts sometimes” (REM). We all suffer and will suffer loss. Add the ongoing woes of a global pandemic to the ordinary losses of life and no one is a stranger to grief these days. This weekend we land on the 2nd  beatitude from Matthew 5; the one which pairs “good” and “grief” in the same sentence. “Blessed are the those who mourn, for you shall be comforted in ways...

#blessed: Jesus begins his first-ever talk by announcing a great surprise — that the people who have nothing but empty hands and a broken heart, are precisely the ones who receive the honour to be first called into the Kingdom of God. By culture’s standards, it makes no sense. But Jesus is adamant: “O the bliss of the person who has realized her own utter helplessness, and through her brokenness,...

#blessed: A browser search for #blessed looks a lot different today than it would have 2000 years ago! Jesus, in his first sermon (Mathew 5), shocked everyone with eight uncommon, mind-bending #blessings that sent huge ripples through the crowd, ripples of an unsuspecting and unusual road to happiness. Jesus caught everyone off guard, contradicting everything culture was saying about how to achiev...

Blessed Beyond Belief - Matthew 25:14-29: This is the weekend we historically pause and give thanks to God for his goodness to us personally and nationally. As believers, we talk about living with an ‘attitude of gratitude’ and insist that thanksgiving means ‘thanks living.’ This weekend, as we look into God’s Word, we will dig deep into the heart of God and find a source of endless blessing of wh...

Belonging: Do you ever consider yourself as being ‘gifted’ by God? It’s true! When we come to faith in Jesus, our sinful past is wiped clean and God’s Spirit comes to take up permanent residence within us. Like any celebration of ‘new birth,’ the Spirit brings a spiritual gift from God that he chose specifically for you! Like any gift, there is the expectation it will not only be received, but it...