Horizon West Church Podcast

Thank you for joining us this Christmas Eve! Being such a popular holiday, most people know the "what," "when," "where," and "who" of Christmas, but the most important question to ask is "why?" Why did God send His only son Jesus to be the baby in the manger, the preacher on the hillside, and the man who was executed on a cross and rose again, defeating death? One reason why is seen in the meaning...

Thank you for joining us for this week's message! On this last Sunday before Christmas, our focus is on love, and the Christmas story overflows with love. When we examine Joseph's part of the Christmas story, we see his love for Jesus in the role model he set, in the sacrifices he made to protect his family, and in the devotion to God shown by his obedient actions. If you prayed to make Jesus your...

Thank you for joining us for this week's message! Today's message in our journey to Christmas concerns joy. Paul knew the essential nature of joy as part of our walk with Christ, so he encouraged us in Philippians 4:4 to "rejoice in the Lord always." In this message, Pastor Chris leads us deeper into understanding and incorporating joy in our lives by asking and answering three questions about joy...

Thank you for joining us for this week's message! As we continue our journey to Christmas, we focus on peace this Sunday. In this focus, Pastor Chris leads us to consider four types of conflict: internal conflict, relational conflict, global conflict, and cosmic conflict. Our Prince of Peace is greater than all these conflicts, defeating the Enemy who sows conflict and drawing us into salvation an...

Thank you for joining us for this week's message! The services for the four weeks will be preparing our hearts for Christmas, a period also known as Advent. Today, Pastor Chris brings us a message about hope, drawn from the story of Ruth and Naomi in the Old Testament. Hope in the lives of Believers is not wishful thinking, but an anchor in our storms and an assurance of a future reality, because...

In this episode of the Horizon West Church podcast, Pastor Chris and Nikki answer questions from the congregation related to love and marriage. This “bonus episode” comes on the heels of the church’s marriage series, The Perfect Tension, delivered earlier this fall. Each message in that series can be found right here at the Horizon West Church podcast. Additional resources with links are provided...

Thank you for joining us for this week's message! Pastor Chris Bacon, who leads the NextGen ministry at the John Young campus, gives us this message of encouragement: God has placed us where we are and has given us a purpose. We often question whether we are up to the tasks facing us, but it is God's strength, wisdom, and love that will do great things as we serve God where we are. If you prayed t...

Thank you for joining us for this week's message! We are continuing to give thanks for how God is leading our church as seen in the pledges made for next three years, and today, we consider how we are led to live lives of gratitude. When we examine the life of King David as a guide for cultivating a thankful heart, we learn to slow down, to stay grounded, and to recognize the giver. If you prayed...

Thank you for joining us for this week's message! This week's special worship service reveals how God has worked in us to pledge financial support for the next 34 months, and much more. God has given us a vision we have seen, and opportunity we have seized, and a moment for celebration of how good God has been to us as followers and as a church. If you prayed to make Jesus your Lord today, we want...

Thank you for joining us for this week's message! This week's worship service provides time for prayer and reflection as we consider the election tumult in our nation and the peace in which God is calling us to live. The world wants to entangle us in flawed and temporary matters, but God calls us to be at work on what is far more important: serving the God who loves all of us more than we can comp...

Thank you for joining us for this week's message! We are concluding our series called "Greater" with encouragement for all of us to show greater generosity in response to the divine grace in our lives. We aren't giving so that God will give us something in return. God has already blessed us and continues to bless us immeasurably, and because God has given to us, we give, ready and sincere in our t...

Thank you for joining us for this week's message! We're continuing our series with anticipation of the Greater Reach that God will have in our area and beyond because of our faithfulness in being followers of God. In John 14, Jesus promised that His disciples would do greater things than He did. Knowing all the miracles that Jesus did, we can't imagine how we as individuals could possibly compare...

Thank you for joining us for this week's message! We're continuing our series with anticipation of the Greater Good that God will do through us at Horizon West Church. God has already done great things through us, building a fellowship that reflects what we call our Culture Statement: We are a diverse community of good friends together doing good works and sharing the good news of Jesus. As we liv...

Thank you for joining us for this week's message! We're starting a new series that focuses on the Greater Vision that God has given us for Horizon West Church. We are committing these next four weeks to study and worship so that we can carry out this vision to build a permanent presence in Horizon West on the Schofield Road property that God has provided for us. Today, Pastor Chris presents us wit...

Thank you for joining us for this week's message! As we complete our series on marriages, Pastor Chris urges us to go beyond the present and examine how we think about our marriages and how our thoughts and actions can lead to healthier marriages. We should be thinking beyond our role and our spouse's role in the marriage, for we are much more than merely a role, and our value in a relationship is...

Thank you for joining us for this week's message! As we continue our series focused on marriages, Pastor Chris gives us seven important questions that people in relationships are thinking, if not verbalizing. Some of these questions come up when a couple start dating, some as the marriage matures, but none of these questions go away, because both people in the relationship are continually growing...

Thank you for joining us for this week's message! In this continuation of our series focused on marriages, Pastor Chris examines how God's plan for marriages, including physicality, was established in the Garden of Eden as Adam and Eve were unclothed and "not ashamed." While sin has distorted physical relationships, God's plan for marriage still creates and sustains couples who follow it. Pastor C...

Thank you for joining us for this week's message! In this continuation of our series focused on marriages, Pastor Chris reviews four challenges that every marriage faces and how couples can navigate those challenges together following God's guidance. What God wants for each of us is that we grow more holy through all of life's experiences. If you prayed to make Jesus your Lord today, we want to re...

Thank you for joining us for this week's message! In this continuation of our series focused on marriages, Pastor Jeff explains how God has designed the marriage couple to function as a team. He gives some practical points for how couples can stay married, growing stronger together through life's experiences and focusing on successes. Philippians 4:8 instructs us to develop and sustain a positive...

Thank you for joining us for this week's message! In this continuation of our series focused on marriages, Pastor Chris digs deeper into God's ideals for marriage as given in the first chapters of Genesis. One of these ideals is that we grow through close relationships. These relationships can be found in marriages and families, and Psalm 68:6 rejoices that "God sets the lonely in families" so tha...

Thank you for joining us for this week's message! We are starting a new series focused on marriages, and this first message uses Genesis 1 to explore God's plan for humanity, and more specifically, God's plan for marriage. As Nikki Ogden puts it, "Maybe marriage is less about finding the person who makes you perfectly happy and more about finding the one whom God uses to help you become holy; to l...

Thank you for joining us for this week's message! Today's message takes from the teachings of Jesus and Paul to discuss what greatness looks like in the Kingdom of God. As we consider these teachings and God's call for us to pursue greatness, Pastor Chris gives us guidance on making choices for spiritual greatness and on following through on the commitments we make. If you prayed to make Jesus you...

Thank you for joining us for this week's message! In today's Bible passage, Moses is tending his father-in-law's sheep in the desert after running away in fear from Egypt. While in the desert, God grabs Moses' attention in a bush that was burning but not burning up. In the resulting conversation with Moses, God tells Moses he will lead Abraham's descendants from slavery in Egypt into a land that G...

Thank you for joining us for this week's message! We are wrapping up our series on the story of Joseph, looking at the passage where Joseph reflects on his life and how God was always faithful and present in good and bad times. Joseph learned the truth that God's way is best, and we can learn the same from Joseph's experience. We can say these words with confidence: We don't know when, where, or h...

Thank you for joining us for this week's message! We are continuing the story of Joseph, and the internal struggles Joseph experienced when he met with his brothers who had sold him into slavery. The "soap opera" of Joseph's life included frequent deceptions and half-truths, paralleling stories from the lives of his father and grandfather. God is at work, even with these questionable actions of Jo...