Horizon West Church Podcast

Thank you for joining us for today's worship service! We find great wisdom in how to live today in the ancient words of Psalm 27. Pastor Chris explains this timelessness, saying "the Psalms show us the touch point between the mess of life and the majesty of God." In this psalm, David shows us what it means to be a "man after God's own heart." David placed his unwavering confidence in God, kept his...

Thank you for joining us for today's worship service! Today's psalmist, who wrote Psalm 10, cried "why?" in an honest expression of pain and a sincere trust that God would answer. On this Father's Day Sunday, we recognize two strong temptations that men experience in our society as it relates to emotions: the "loose cannon" that inflicts emotional pain on others, and the "locked vault" that inflic...

Thank you for joining us for today's worship service! We are studying Psalm 46 this morning and the events that led God's people to celebrate with this song of joy for how God rescued them from this crisis. Pastor Sócrates shows us how God was faithful and God continues to be faithful in our troubles as we put our confidence in God. If you prayed to make Jesus your Lord today, we want to rejoice w...

Thank you for joining us for today's worship service! We continue our summer studies of the Psalms with Psalm 1 this morning. These ancient words about that sinful society resonate with us today, as does the guidance the psalmist gives us to grow roots, to meditate on God's Word, and to become a deeper version of ourselves. If you prayed to make Jesus your Lord today, we want to rejoice with you!...

Thank you for joining us for today's worship service! We continue our summer studies this morning with a close look at Psalm 23, focusing on how this psalm reveals God to us and points us to the coming of Jesus. We see how the poet, David, describes God as a loving provider, a rest giver, a good leader, a generous friend, and a faithful presence in his life. In our lives, whether we are in green p...

Thank you for joining us for today's worship service! Today, we start a new series studying the Psalms to see how these ancient songs expand our understanding of God and point us to the future coming of Jesus. Today, Pastor Chris leads us in contemplating Psalm 8 and it's declaration of the majesty of God. The Psalmist wrote of our place in the world, and the eternal tension of how we are made in...

Thank you for joining us for today's worship service! Today, Nikki Ogden shares her experiences in learning to wait as God works in and for us. The Bible has both good and bad examples of how people waited for God, and Nikki teaches us insights from their experiences to help us strengthen our walk with God as we wait. If you prayed to make Jesus your Lord today, we want to rejoice with you! If you...

Thank you for joining us for today's worship service! We know how important motivation is in working toward our goals, and we know how challenging it is to stay motivated. In today's message, Joe Loveless guides us to consider our spiritual motivation, which is our drive to connect with God and live in service to His kingdom purposes. Joe also teaches us that we can receive boosts to our spiritual...

Thank you for joining us for today's worship service! We live in an turbulent age with rapid social and cultural change. To be faithful followers of Jesus, we need to carefully examine the principles Jesus demonstrated during His time on earth and apply those principles to what we do. Pastor Chris provides three of these principles in today's message, based on the stories of Jesus interacting with...

Thank you for joining us for today's Easter Sunday worship service! We celebrate Jesus' resurrection every Easter, but the Easter story starts long before the Sunday morning celebration. Ever since Adam and Eve, God has been on an all-out quest to recover the hearts of people and restore the deeply satisfying experience of a relationship with God. If you prayed to make Jesus your Lord today, we wa...

Thank you for joining us for today's Palm Sunday worship service! This special Sunday recounts the story of Jesus riding a donkey as the crowds cheered His entrance into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday. We also remember the other events of that week, including the Passover meal Jesus had with his disciples, and ending with His death on the cross. For today's message, Pastor Chris teaches about...

Thank you for joining us for today's worship service! As we continue our series on the key elements of practicing our faith, Pastor Chris leads our study of prayer this morning with Jesus' parable of a persistent widow. Like the widow in the story, we have needs, even if we're reluctant to admit it. We need to share our needs in prayer with God repeatedly, and not give up when God doesn't answer i...

For many of us who grew up attending churches, we recall instructions we were given to believe certain things to be true, to perform particular rituals to demonstrate our obedience, and to abstain from specific sins. Not only has this pattern of believe / perform / abstain / repeat been prevalent in our generations, it dominated the Hebrew faith during Jesus' earthly ministry. Jesus taught a bette...

Thank you for joining us for today's worship service! Pastor Korey, who serves as the pastor of the Online Campus of First Baptist Church, cautions us that following Jesus is not a guarantee that only good things will happen to us. Korey shares with us several scriptures where we are told that we will face troubles. The important lesson is that God has prepared us for these troubles, God will be w...

Thank you for joining us for today's worship service! Since this Sunday was 3/16, this message is on the verse John 3:16. Pastor Chris walks us through this verse word by word as we contemplate God's immeasurable and perfect love for every one of us, demonstrated for us in the life of Jesus. If you prayed to make Jesus your Lord today, we want to rejoice with you! If you would want someone to pray...

Thank you for joining us for today's worship service! Today's topic is baptism, as we continue our study of the basic of our beliefs. The discussion of baptism fits well with last week's discussion of repentance, since baptism is the external demonstration of the internal commitment to let God turn our lives around. The act of baptism is both a rejection of sin and an acceptance of our life immers...

Thank you for joining us for today's worship service! We're continuing our study of the basic truths of Christianity with today's message on repentance. There are two simultaneous truths to consider: no one is immune to the need for repentance, and no one is too far for God to reach. Pastor Chris guides us through four essential steps of repentance that we can follow to strengthen our ongoing rela...

Thank you for joining us for today's worship service! Today, guest speaker Ben Markham from Discovery Church shares the story in Luke 4 when Jesus taught at the synagogue in His hometown of Nazareth. Those listening were outraged at Jesus' message and even tried to kill Him! What Jesus was teaching that so disrupted their expectations is that redemption is not just for a select few people but for...

Thank you for joining us for today's worship service! Today we're starting a new series titled "Start Here" to discuss the foundational commands from Jesus to His followers. Pastor Chris speaks today on the command to us to learn and grow as disciples of Christ and to encourage others as they grow in discipleship, too. If you prayed to make Jesus your Lord today, we want to rejoice with you! If yo...

Thank you for joining us for today's worship service! Pastor Sócrates has us consider the urgent need in our world for self-less love that originates with God, a love that the New Testament identifies with the Greek word agape. As servants of God and ambassadors for God, we need to live out this agape love in how we treat others. There are three traits we need to watch for in ourselves that tell u...

Thank you for joining us for today's worship service! With Horizon West Church getting closer to breaking ground on our church building, Pastor Chris today teaches about the spiritual importance of membership in a local church. In other areas of our lives, membership is a "transaction," where we sign up and pay a fee to access a service. Membership in a church does not follow this transactional mo...

Thank you for joining us for today's worship service! Today, Pastor Chris continues with the idea of going deeper from his earlier message with our "Word of the Year." This is not meant to compare ourselves with others, nor is it an encouragement to greater theological complexity. We are encouraged to grow deeper than we have been before in our faith, in our faith-driven actions, and in our relati...

Thank you for joining us for today's worship service! Church member Joe Loveless encourages us today to rethink our negative opinions about work. He shares four shifts in his thinking that led him to reclaim God's blessings in the process of our work and the scriptures that guide us in shifting our thinking. If you prayed to make Jesus your Lord today, we want to rejoice with you! If you would wan...

Thank you for joining us for today's worship service! Pastor Chris has a practice of sharing our church's word of the year each January. This Sunday, his message presents our word of the year: DEEPER. We are eager to bring people into our community and support them as they find Jesus to be their savior. But there's much more as we grow deeper in the abundant life that Jesus promises His followers....

Thank you for joining us for today's worship service! We have a tradition of making the first worship service of the new year a time of meditation and prayer for God's guidance and blessing on our church, our community, and on the ministries that God is calling us to do. In today's message, we consider Terah, recorded in Genesis 11 and 12, who was the father of Abram who later became Abraham. God...