JR.'s Sermons

As we prepare for the new year, what should we be looking for God to do? How is God calling us to be faithful in the year ahead, especially as we struggle with an ongoing pandemic?

Aren’t presents the best part of Christmas? There’s something powerful about these tangible expressions of our love for each other. That points us to the power Christmas: Jesus’ incarnation. God became human, gave us the gift of his physical presence among us. But don’t take our word for it. Let’s hear from a woman named Hannah, who understood the revolutionary power of gifts more than 3,000 years...

There are ways we just can't know God when we stay in our comfort zones. Jesus invites us to follow him out of the places we call home to discover the new and surprising ways we can grow in our faith when we dare to leave.

Churches often approach serving as an opportunity to take Jesus to people who don’t know him. But Scripture insists that God is always ahead of us, already at work. How can we learn to approach serving as pilgrims, looking for where God is already at work?

Big changes, painful loss and other significant events often test our faith. How can God be good if we're suffering? But God is at work in the midst of those painful places to bring us to trust, and to grow our faith.

When we see a need, we often think, "Oh, someone should help!" One of the biggest barriers to us stepping up is our own anxiety. But what if those are opportunities to grow in our faith? What if God is inviting us to step out and serve?

Most of us groan when we hear the word 'discipline' - especially when it comes to faith. Spiritual disciplines seem so often like chores we have to do to earn God's favor. But God invites us into these disciplines to create space for us to discover the Holy Spirit at work in our lives, and grow our faith.

We have all encountered people who impacted our faith - for better and for worse. Relationships are important - and inevitable. How can we be wise about our relationships? How can we be intentional both to see how God is working and to be ready to partner with God?

Something big happens in our faith with God's story becomes our story. Practical teaching helps us see that we can trust God in our everyday lives. Because Jesus tells us there's a big difference between knowing about God and actually following God. So how do we learn to listen to God speaking in our daily lives?

What would your life look like if you had a faith that was deep and unshakable? How do we get that sort of faith? Faith isn't about obedience as much as it's about trust - and we can learn to trust God when we learn to see God at work in our lives.

Most of us feel as though we just don't have enough. But God calls us to be faithful with what we have - to use whatever influence, power, money or means we have as gifts from God to invest in the world around us. What does it look like to love God with all of our means?

We struggle to discern God's will, as though it is a deep mystery. But learning to see the world from God's perspective is how we love God with our minds. To learn to see "upside down", we immerse ourselves in the Scriptures. They provide a God's-eye view of the world, of our neighbors and of us. God's will is not difficult to discern. God wants us to see from God's point of view.

We are bad at drawing healthy boundaries. We give and give and give until we have nothing left to offer anyone. Neither God nor our neighbors get our best. The practice of Sabbath helps us learn to say No, to live within the healthy boundaries God created us for.

We're told to "Follow our hearts," but we know desires can be destructive. How do we know the difference between desires that bring life and those that lead to hurt? Jesus invites us to love God with all our hearts, and discovering what he meant by that gives us the key. When we allow the Spirit to order our desires, we find the path to a fully human life!

We think of forgiveness as something we do with another person. But what happens when the other person isn't willing - or able - to reconcile? How can we find freedom from what was done to us? Joseph's story ends with a new world made possible by forgiveness and hope.

God’s Dream is inevitable, but it’s not always easy to achieve. How do we stay faithful to God even when we’re in the pits? Joseph’s journey to Pharaoh’s court illustrates a life of integrity and faithful hope in a God who is always with us and working – even in the pit!

Dreamers are prophets - people who help us see the future God is calling us to make a reality. How do we resist God's Dream? And how can we be sure we're all-in?

It's easy to find God in the good moments. But we struggle to find God in the bad places. Why is wrestling with the rough patches worth it? And what good news is there for those of us who feel like life has us in a chokehold?

Have you ever won a battle but lost a war? Maybe you got the upper hand in an argument but lost the relationship. Or landed the deal at the expense of a colleague. Or got your way but caused an alienation that’s ongoing to this day. We’re often too short-sighted, and allow the wrong priorities to cloud our judgment. Jacob’s 20-year feud with his uncle Laban shows us the fruit of that kind of confl...

We all know what it feels like to hit rock bottom. But we struggle to imagine that God knows what it feels like too. We can’t believe that God is with us in those low times of our lives. Jacob’s encounter with God at Bethel is a powerful proclamation that we are never outside of God’s love. God is the best friend we could ask for – especially when we’re in low places.

We've all be stuck as the person who doesn't get a say. That can make it hard to be faithful to God. How do we follow God's will when we're not calling the shots? The story of Rebekah and her two sons, Jacob and Esau, is the story of a woman with no authority who found a way to be faithful to God. What can we learn from her example?

It's hard to read the stories of God's amazing miracles and not wonder, "Where's mine?" A lot of us feel less like Abraham and more like his servant - the one who never saw the action. But his story of connecting Isaac and Rebekah is a powerful reminder that when we only look for God in the miraculous, we miss God at work in the mundane.

We like to think we're not responsible for anyone but ourselves. But God has called us to be priests - we represent God to the world. That has real stakes when we do it badly, as Abraham found out when he lied to Abimelech about the identity of his wife, Sarah. How do we find grace when we've failed to represent God to the world well?

Why do strangers make us so uncomfortable? Abraham's strange encounter with God in Genesis 18 offers a picture of hospitality that's radical and challengings: our hospitality is an act of worship. God often comes to us as a stranger because we have something to learn from these strangers. How can we learn to worship through our welcome?

Change is always scary. No matter how dysfunctional our 'normal' is, it still feels like home to us. But God loves us too much to leave us in our sin and pain. Jesus invites us to go somewhere new with him. But to do that, we have to leave. We see a model of faithful leaving in the story of Abram's call. He left without a plan... only a promise of God's presence.