Hillside Community Church

As followers of Jesus we all need community. Made in the image of a relational God, we are wired for deep relationship. But why else is community so important and vital in the life of the Christian? In this episode, we discuss the importance of gospel community and how we try to do accomplish that at Hillside Church.

In Psalm 73, Asaph affirms that God is good, but struggles to see the goodness of God in his daily life. "Why are all the others prospering?" he asks. In order to make it through the ups and downs of life, we need to keep the end in sight and trust the God holds us by our right hand.

In Psalm 27, David finds himself in a terrifying reality that leads to fear and anxiety. His response is honest, but yet he directs his emotions to come under the truth of God. Often we let anxiety rule our lives because we forget the promises of God. God doesn't promise us the absence of hardship but his presence within hardship.

In Psalm 32, David pens a beautiful Hebrew poem about how blessed a person is who is forgiven by God. He says there is freedom in acknowledging and confessing our sin to God, rather than trying to hide it.

In Psalm 8 we read about the grandeur of our God. From the majesty of the skies to the details on the bodies of infants, it all screams at the glory of God. Despite God's greatness in all the earth, he is still mindful of every aspect of us as human beings.

In Psalm 46 we see the ever-present help of God in our lives. He is our faithful fortress even in times of trouble and suffering. Carl Gutzman shares how this Psalm has encouraged his family through tremendous loss and suffering. No matter what we face, we can stand firm because God our ever-present help in times of trouble.

Psalm 139 is one of the most beautiful pieces of Hebrew poetry. David writes of the fully present and all-knowing God. How can we be fully known by God yet still accepted? In this message we explore how the gospel of Jesus offers us the comfort of an ever-present Father who knows us deeply and loves us as sons and daughters.

This Sunday one of Hillside's elders and pilot, Chad Heckathorn, leads the church in his modern day parable regarding Christian living. Using flying as the example he helps us develop personal minimums to protect us and lead us into joy and the abundant life with Christ.

In Psalm 127, we learn that our work is dependent on God, that without him ultimately controlling the outcomes, we toil in vain. Not only is our work dependent on God, but it also matters to God as he uses humans as the means to accomplish his work. Lastly, we explore what it means to rest from work and not let it consume us or our identity.

In these verses Jesus calls us to live a holy life without hypocrisy by not doing things for show, but rather from a love for God. We aren't to give to the needy or pray with a motivation of gaining people's approval and praise, but rather to live in a way that brings glory not to us, but to God.

In this section of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls his followers to not only love those who love them in return but to love our enemies. To love those who hate us is to take on the character of God himself who died for us who were enemies of him before the cross. To love those who hate us is to be Unworldly for the World.

In Matthew 5:38-42 Jesus challenges his disciples and us with a countercultural response to evil towards us. He calls them to not retaliate in revenge, but to go above and beyond with our enemies. This is how we live Unworldly for the World.

How important is truth? In our day we expect people to lie to us and have difficulty nailing down what is actually pure truth. Jesus proclaims the importance of radical truthfulness amongst believers. Our world is hungry for truth, and we have the opportunity to live it out everyday in our lives and words.

Divorce is rampant in our culture and is both celebrated by some as "doing what's best for you" while warned by others that "divorce is like death". But what does Jesus have to say about this matter? We continue our series looking at Jesus's teachings from the Sermon on the Mount. This week we hear his thoughts and commands on marriage and divorce.

Reading Psalm 78, we are looking at what it means to raise up the next generation in our church to love God, have their hope in him, and obey his commands. What does it look like for us to do everything we can to build a church that outlasts us?

This is week 4 of our series as a church: Unworldly For The World. This week we are examining Jesus’s teaching on adultery and the heart. He helps us understand the law by again bringing it to a heart level. We aren’t just to obey the law with our external actions alone, but with our hearts as well. Jesus calls us to fight for holiness by ridding ourselves of anything that may cause our heart to w...

This is week 3 of our new series as a church: Unworldly For The World and we are looking at Jesus’s interpretation of the law regarding murder. He gets to the root cause of murder by examining the heart behind it. Jesus touches on the physical action of murder, the verbal action of insulting a brother, and finally the root cause of unresolved anger in the heart.

In this sermon we explore the next teaching of Jesus and his relationship to the Law and Prophets. He claims that he did not come to abolish but to fulfill the law and all of its requirements and how we can live a life of both grace and obedience to God's commands.

We are starting a new series called Unworldly For The World , and simply what does it look like to standout as a follower of Jesus in a way that actually helps our world? We begin this series by looking at Jesus's call for his disciples to be salt and light to the world around them. In this message, we unpack what that means and what it might look like for the people of Hillside to live it out in...

This Sunday we celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We look at the gospel message by Paul in Ephesians 2:1-9. In this sermon we unpack the reality of what it means to be spiritually dead but then raised with Christ.

We are closing out our series on the Beatitudes, finishing with Jesus' last statement saying, "Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account." Living out the beatitudes causes friction with the value system of our world, and the result is harassment or mockery of those who claim Christ. But Jesus calls us to rejoice when this...

We are continuing our series on the Beatitudes, this week we dive into verse 9 which says, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." In this message, we explore what it means to be a peacemaker and how it differs from peace-keeping. 

We continue our Beatitude series by looking at the next one where Jesus says, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." To see God both now and forever we need a pure heart, but that only comes through the grace of God through Christ who offers us a new heart.

In this next Beatitude, Jesus says, "Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy." But what is mercy and how do we become merciful? In this sermon we look at how mercy is compassion in action and they we are only able to be merciful toward others when we realize how merciful and forgiving God has been to us.

As we continue in the Beatitudes, Jesus promises satisfaction for those who hunger and thirst for this one thing. While we desire and long for a variety of things in our lives (money, career, love, etc.), Jesus points us in a different direction to find our satisfaction in the pursuit of righteousness.