Hope Christian Fellowship

For the past few years, Father’s Day has been a special service at Hope. We turn the morning over to our HopeKids ministry and enjoy watching and participating in what God is doing in our children. Kids have always been a big deal to our church family, so we show up and support them, we serve them and teach them, and most of all, we love them. VBS is only a few short weeks away, and we’ll need all...

Think for a minute about someone you love. We probably think of feelings first when we try to identify love. While love definitely includes feelings, it is much more. In fact, when we read the description of love in 1 Corinthians 13, we find a very different picture of love. Love is choices, and probably not ones you ‘feel’ like making. As we continue to talk about the practice it takes to be a Ch...

Did you ever wish you could win the lottery? Maybe you dream of all the bills you’ll pay off or all the stuff you’ll buy. In your best moments, you think about all the people you’ll help. But did you ever think that giving away what you get for free doesn’t mean as much to your soul as giving away what you earn yourself? It’s even possible that a large amount of money that suddenly appears in your...

One of the best parts of your birthday as a kid is the presents you get. A close second is the cake. No one seems to get tired of getting presents and eating cake. Underneath the rituals, a birthday celebration has deeper meaning. We gather to celebrate the blessing of life and God’s gift of another year of living. People need patterns like this as we navigate the ups and downs of our days. As our...

Have you ever thought that someone was ‘holding on too long’? Maybe it was an athlete who couldn’t recognize that their time was over, or someone who found a look they liked years ago and held onto it decades more than they should have. The reality of time for all of us is that we grow older and eventually our time on this earth is done. What should we do with that? In this story about Moses, we s...

If you grew up with siblings, you may have experienced this dynamic. In a specific situation, you made a deal together meant to sidestep the bickering and fighting that naturally happens between siblings. Whether it was who got to sit in the front seat, or who got to pick the restaurant, or even who got to play first with a favorite toy, you all agreed. And then someone decided it was unfair! This...

The idea behind Judo is to use your enemy’s strength against them. You take their energy and redirect it to their own damage. There are few things more demoralizing than fighting or working really hard, but only causing damage to yourself. As Balaam’s story comes to a close, it does so with an amazing twist. God has stopped him from speaking any kind of curse on God’s people. So Balaam gives advic...

If you are ever in the position to train someone for any reason, you’ll find yourself making promises. You tell that that if they do certain things, they will like the outcome, and if they do other things, they will not. If you are the trainer, you probably have experience with both types of outcomes and you’re trying your best to pass along a roadmap to what works and what doesn’t. The prophecies...

As we celebrate together today, we are overwhelmed with the grace of God. He has come to save us and we, by faith, have been raised spiritually to new life. For each person who has experienced this, it is the greatest gift we’ve ever been given. Before we know Jesus, we understand that life is the most precious gift we ever get. And after we put our faith in Jesus, we know that eternal life is imm...

Remember that daytime game show ‘Let’s Make A Deal’? Aside from the fact that everyone comes in a costume, the premise of the show is that contestants have to ‘make a deal’. The problem is that they most often don’t know the deal they are making. They are invited to give away something of known value for something of unknown value. Only after they make a choice do they get to see what they’ve chos...

OMMUNION Fictional stories of spies can be truly exciting. An agent pretends to be the target’s friend and gets close to them, but all of their words and actions are just a disguise because their true intention is to bring harm to the one they are getting close to. The story often revolves around the tension of whether the spy will be successful and avert whatever danger is trying to be avoided. O...

Have you ever felt like someone wanted to use you? For whatever reason, you got the sense that they wanted what you could do for them, but weren’t interested in you or your well-being at all. Maybe you didn’t notice it at first, or you stayed oblivious until after they got what they wanted and were on their way. But it always hurts. Along those lines, we’re going to see a story today begin with so...

Over the next few weeks, we’re going to be taking an abbreviated look at a famous story in the history of Israel: the story of Balaam. If you haven’t heard of Balaam, you might recognize one of the most shocking parts of this story. Balaam’s donkey actually talks to him. We’ll see why God used this almost unbelievable method of communicating with a prophet. And we’ll take a journey through this st...

Learning a new skill can be frustrating. You don’t seem to quite have the feel for whatever it is you are trying to do. There are so many things you naturally and easily do better, so it can be quite tempting to discard the new endeavor in favor of something more likely to bring a sense of full success and accomplishment. But there is value to the struggle. Eventually, you start to figure out how...

I keep hearing the phrase “we are living through unprecedented times” more and more throughout the last couple of years. The 24 hour news cycle continues to bombard us with story after story outlining present and future danger. Now more than ever, it’s good to be reminded of the sovereignty of God. Through taking a look at the life of Joseph, let’s look how God walks with us through being on the w...

This Sunday Pastor Dan and our teens will explore this tough question and give a roadmap to finding an answer that is life giving and fulfilling, whether you’re a teen asking it for the first time, or an adult who has grown unsatisfied with their answer.

Do you have any struggles in your life that just keep showing up again and again? Maybe you’ve tried to overcome some kind of habit or pattern because you know you’re making a mess, but you just can’t seem to break free. Israel had a national pattern of complaining. Their impatience drove them to once again speak and act like God had not been good (or good enough) to them. This time, God supernatu...

Sometimes life is just plain hard. For God’s people, this can be just a reflection of the brokenness of this world and the fallen nature of humanity. But there are times when God brings struggle to believers for a purpose. That purpose is always good, even when the experience is awful. For Israel, God brings a roadblock and a loss into their story for His work in them. As a newly formed nation und...

The instinct among people to look like they know what they are doing and have it all together is powerful and drives so much of how people interact. When you’re in charge or think a lot of people are looking at you, it can really make you want to seem full of power and confidence. But whether we’re talking about parenting or teaching or being the boss, in any leadership role for a believer, we hav...

Does it feel like you can never figure out what God wants you to do? Many times, it seems like God is playing hide and seek with us as we search for His will. But is that actually the truth? We’ll see in this story from Israel that God desires to make His direction for us clear and memorable. And He is the One responsible for making it so. Our problem is not so much that God doesn’t show us as it...

Some stories in the Old Testament can feel like they are showing us a God of anger and violence. Certainly, the Living God is not someone who cannot be reduced to something less than who He is, and part of His existence is righteous justice. When we read stories like the one we’ll read this morning, we can get stuck on how high the price is for sin. But today, we’re also going to see that most sto...

Have you ever noticed someone’s accent? Isn’t it interesting how our patterns of speech are distinctly affected by where we live? Even if you move away from your hometown, you still hold onto some of that accent. But you also start picking up some of the way your new hometown talks as well! We are more influenced than we realize by the people around us. If you work with negative people all day lon...

Restarting Numbers – Facing Dysfunction The story we’ve seen so far led Israel to a rebellion that stopped the Lord from taking them into the Promised Land immediately. If you thought that this would be enough for Israel to learn to trust God and stop turning away from His instructions, you’d be wrong. As we continue looking at the stories of Numbers, we’ll see that Israel’s years of slavery stay...

Whether you’re an introvert, extrovert, or somewhere in between you may be all “peopled” out after the holidays. Dialing back the social calendar can offer some respite, but it is never a long term solution. In fact, we need each other. Our need for community and God’s plan to bring us all together are themes that run all the way from Genesis to Revelation. This morning we’ll track that theme and...

Most of our morning this day will be filled with music from our choir. We are going to have ‘Bonus Christmas’ because the whole Christmas thing probably ends a day too soon. And then we’ll take a few minutes at the end and look at a part of the story of Jesus’ childhood that’s hard to read. There are refugees running from death in fear. But in all of it, we see the reality that Joseph follows the...