Foothills Church (Audio)

I bet we have all disappointed someone at some point. I bet we all haven't lived up to the expectations others have placed on us, and as a result we left them stranded in disappointment. Maybe that person was our spouse, our brother, our sister, our kids, co-worker or worse yet our boss. I think we can relate to the Seattle Seahawks... at some point all of us had let someone down whether we meant...

Over the next several weeks we're going to be spending our sermon time in the second of Paul's letters to the Corinthians. And from the passages that contain Paul's defense of his life and methods, as well as the passages that attempt to correct the unhealthy and unhelpful hurts and hang-ups of the Corinthians I believe we can find a number of applications for our lives that will serve to help us...

Today in our final session of this series I want us to look at an illustration the Apostle Paul uses to help us grab on to, and lock in on everything we have been talking about in this series. Turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 Leading up to this illustration he uses in these verses, Paul has basically been explaining to the Corinthian believers how he unleashes his potential as a Christ...

Welcome to week 3 of our series, "Unleashing the Future." This series is about the choices we make now; that will enable us to experience our full redemptive potential in the future. The principles we're talking about apply to your individual choices as well as our choices as a church. And what I want you to see today is that these principles are not new or born out of the latest research. They a...

This week I want to talk about a different dimension of this. Again the principles we're going to talk about today apply to our personal lives as well as our life together as a church. In order for your future as an individual or our future as a church to be unleashed and for you & for our church to realize our full potential we have to pay attention to how we're managing our freedom. The freedom...

There's something fresh about a New Year. Our hope for better days is at it's brightest. We tend to reflect a bit about the past year, and imagine or dream about the New Year coming. It's a chance to hit the "restart" button. It's a chance to take another run at something. It's a chance to make a fresh resolve to stay a course or improve course a bit. Today I am beginning a new series of messages...

We live in some dark, cold and bitter days. We turn on the news and see the atrocities happening in our world. But often the atrocities in our own lives weigh us down even more. What at encouragement we can receive from the author of Hebrews as he reminds us in Chapter 12. "we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, e...

The significance of Christmas that we've been focusing on all month long here at Church of the Foothills is HOPE. Hope is a super familiar idea, but it's not one we normally think about all that deeply. In fact, we use the word hope in all sorts of everyday conversation. "I hope I get something really cool for Christmas." "I hope I make my numbers at work today." "I hope what I want is on sale." I...

In the midst of all her pain and struggle, the ultimate Hope of The World is born at Christmas. This is what we have been talking about over the last couple of weeks in our series, Christmas: Winter's Hope. We've been talking about the "winters" of our personal lives where we face cold challenges, shorter days of opportunity and resources to meet those challenges, and dark nights of the soul when...

Like the season of winter, some winters are harder than others, and some last longer than others. The challenging, "winter seasons" of our lives can generate discouragement and despair, fear and anxiety or just plain emptiness. Some stretch us to the breaking point emotionally and spiritually. Directly into the "winters" of our lives, hope is born. Directly into the "winters" of our hearts, God de...

The rush and stress of the Christmas season can feel like a strong arm in the back shoving us along through extra events, shopping, office parties, and family gatherings. All the well-intentioned "whobilation" can put us at risk of missing the soul refreshing, faith-deepening connection, worship and appreciation of the One born at Christmas. So, my heart is always that these Christmas messages, wi...

I can't believe we're at the end of the series I'm calling Jesus, my Everything. The truth is, friends, without Him I've got nothing. I can't save myself. I can make myself holy. I don't have the power to restore my brokenness, whether spiritual, physical or mental. But with Him I am saved, I am sanctified & I am healed. Only Jesus is our Savior, Sanctifier and Healer. Today I want to talk with yo...

How many of you like to go to Costco and enjoy the little samples that they hand out? My youngest son, Noah, loves the samples. That kid will ask to participate in a three-hour errand run if he knows that Costco is one of the stops. Stores that do the little tastes are geniuses, aren't they? They give you a little bite and then tell you where the whole product or meal can be purchased. I know some...

I have been part of the Christian and Missionary Alliance from that first Sunday at church with my buddy right up to now. It's been a no-brainer for me because the Alliance is anchored in Jesus and an unswerving belief that everything we need is found in the provision of Christ. A.B. Simpson, the founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, used the phrase "Fourfold Gospel" to describe who Ch...

Welcome to the conclusion of our series Angels and Demons. In our last session together we affirmed that God and his holy angels have an enemy. He is the devil and he has some number of angels with him who also rebelled against God's authority. The devil and his angels are created beings so they are always and forever under the authority of the Creator. In their supreme pride and arrogance, the de...

Welcome to week 4 of our series Angels and Demons. Today we begin our exploration of the dark side of the angel world-the devil and his angels. Since we know from the Bible that God created absolutely everything we can see and can't see, and we know that it was all very good, we deduce that Satan, who fell sometime between the end of creation (when all was pronounced good) and the temptation of Ad...

In the opening 2 sessions of our series we examined the types of angels we read about in the Bible and we surveyed the kinds of things they do in the heavenly realms. This week I want us to take a look at what angels can do in our lives. When we survey the Bible we learn that God uses angels in our earthly experience of life in a number of ways. For example...

As I mentioned last week one of the more unique, and interesting angel-type appearances which occurs several times in Genesis and other times throughout the Old Testament, is the appearance of "The angel of the LORD." Literally the angel of "Yahweh." But this angel is also referred to as "The Lord," "God," simply "angel," and even "a man." So, who is he really? What is he really? Let's look togeth...

There are many misconceptions put forth regarding the evil spirit world. Some people give the Devil and his minions too much credit. In the midst of these realities in the culture around us, we cannot skeptically ignore everything related to angels and demons nor can we gullibly believe everything we see or read about in the popular media. To accurately understand angels and demons we can't gain a...

Our big take away from this synagogue synopsis of Jesus' anointing was that Jesus' anointing is our calling. We, as the church- those touched and being transformed by Jesus-are called to carry on his ministry with those around us. It's a positive refreshing message of grace, and hope...shared (splashed) on others one life at a time...in the power of the Spirit. It has been said that there are no p...

On May 10, 1869, crews from the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads converged at Promontory Summit in northwest Utah. Their purpose was to connect their two railroads into the first transcontinental railroad. You might think the key to their success was skilled engineering, cartography, and a detailed blueprint. But you'd be wrong. They certainly had incredibly skilled engineering. They ha...

Today we are bringing a close to our series Malachi: Debating with God. Over the course of these last 5 weeks we have gotten a front row seat to 5 debates between the nation of Israel and God. Right from the get go we learned that the nation of Israel was struggling. They have just been released from their exile in Babylon, they have rebuilt the temple and they were expecting the Messiah. They wer...

Friends there may be some of you who are sitting in this worship center or in the venues that are in the same predicament of Israel. You have been beaten, crushed, by the waves of life. Addiction and past habits tossed and turned you and this whole time you've been pulled by the current of this culture and have been spit out onto the shore, and you have just come to the realization that you are ya...

The people of God in Malachis day had watched God do a miracle in allowing them to come back to rebuild the Temple and work miracles to help them rebuild the walls around Jerusalem. They people renewed their covenant with their God, as the sacrificial system was restored. When those things happened their expectations and hopes for the miraculous appearing of the messiah were stirred to a fever pit...

What God is pointing out in our debate today is that the way we treat people matters to him. There is a connection between our relationship with him and our relationships with others. We cannot compartmentalize. This means that our faithfulness or lack thereof, in our relationships with others directly impacts our faithfulness to God. So, when we love the people around us well, it reveals that we...