Life at Pathway

The relationships we choose today have a significant bearing on who we become tomorrow. And if our future self could pay us a visit today, it would beg us to make the best choices possible so that Future You would be able to thrive, unencumbered by unnecessary baggage the wrong relationship can create. Today, as we continue our consideration of "Future You" in this sermon series, we are...

This weekend we began a new series called Future You . Future You is going to take a look at several components of our spiritual lives and consider what the future can be. We are confident that you have desires for what your spiritual future would be, but its possible we aren’t working on an intentional plan to get there. So, we’re going to consider a number of topics in this series concerning wha...

What is the "Kingdom of God" and how do we get there? Once we're there, how do we live as Kingdom People? Today, Pastor Ben takes us on a journey through the Kingdom of God, talking about what it is, how we get there, and what it means to live according to the values of the Kingdom of God. We invite you to listen in and to share with a friend as we talk about the Kingdom of God.

Over the last 8 months, we’ve been taking a very close look at the Gospel of Mark in the New Testament. A gospel is an account of the life of Jesus. And in our study, we’ve been considering what it looks like to be a genuine follower of Jesus. Today, we are concluding our series as we look at the last topic Mark addresses: the resurrection of Jesus.  You’ve heard of Christmas in July?  This is Eas...

We all go through things in life where we have the best of intentions and wind up feeling the heat, when it seems that no one is there to join us or even have our back, and we realize we have stepped into something that really stinks and we don’t want to do it anymore. We find ourselves suffering and we lack the endurance to keep going. It can be parenting, it can be a job, it can be a conversatio...

Last week we saw Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane with the disciples while He was praying earnestly, and the disciples were sleeping. It was there that Judas came out and betrayed Jesus with a kiss, which led to Jesus being captured. Jesus is then carted off, and even though it is the middle of the night, Jesus is immediately put on trial. And that’s where our passage begins this week, in Mark 14...

This week we look at Mark 14:32-52 and the drama of Gethsemane. The setting for this drama is a place called the Garden of Gethsemane, which was a place right just across the valley from the temple and the city of Jerusalem on what is known as the Mount of Olives. This drama is described for us in a few scenes and through them, we’re going to see the final events leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion r...

As we continue on in our FOLLOW series through the Gospel of Mark, preaching through Mark 14:12-31, we have now come to Thursday of that final week of Jesus's life. We are now just about 24 hours away from Jesus’ death. It’s at this time that Jesus has a very special meal with His disciples. It’s usually called “The Last Supper.” And it would be the last supper, the last meal, Jesus would have...

The love we’re going to see expressed in Mark 14:1-11 is from a woman who comes up a few times in the New Testament, and each time we see an unusual and powerful sort of love. Hers is an Exemplary Love . If you look at a dictionary definition of exemplary, it says, “Serving as a desirable model; representing the best of its kind.” We are going to see both of those things. This love we’ll see repre...

If you stop to think about it, we spend a lot of time watching. We watch for all sorts of things. We watch for who the Steelers are going to draft, or who the Pirates will draft this weekend with the #1 overall pick in the MLB draft. We watch for news of Supreme Court decisions, or the rescue of a soccer team trapped in a flooded cave a few years ago.  We certainly spend a lot of time watching, an...

What really matters to you? A lot of surveys have asked that question. One was done by Pew Research and theirs revealed that what really matters to about 75% of people is spending time with family.  The next highest response was practicing your faith…but less than 1/3 of people said it really mattered.   Now, long before Pew Research was asking what really matters, an important leader was asking t...

In Mark 11:27-12:27 we’re going to see Jesus being tested. In fact, this message is called “Testing Jesus” because of what we'll see. We are going to see three different groups of people, all of whom are putting Jesus to the test and seeing if they might be able to trap Him in His words and thus fail the test put to Him.  And, in each case, the response of Jesus is stunning and shows remarkabl...

Today, we’re going to consider some things that are very important that we’d see clearly, but the things we’re going to consider today can be difficult to see…and understand. Those things we’re going to consider are highlighted at the end of Mark 10:32-52. We’ve been making our way through this whole book, one passage at a time, and today we come to one that helps us take a look at Jesus and His p...

Today, we’re going to meet someone we could say believed his heart was in the right place, but *spoiler alert*, in the end it doesn’t turn out so well.  The place where we find this guy is in Mark 10:13-31. In this passage, we’re going to find that Jesus has a lot to say about the heart.  And thankfully, we see much more than an example of someone who gets it wrong.  In fact, the passage begins an...

Today we continue our sermon series FOLLOW through the Gospel of Mark. Jesus is tested with a dishonest question from the Pharisees that is meant to trap Him and get Him into trouble. Instead, we see the way Jesus responds gives us a glimpse into the heart of God for His people, especially those who are hurting and brokenhearted. We invite you to listen in to today's sermon, A Glimpse Into the...

What’s on your list of things that would make you great?  It might feel pretty awkward to think about what would make you great, because it seems sort of prideful. But Jesus gave us some advice about how to do it and we’re going to consider what He had to say. Today we’re going to look at The Path to Greatness as we continue our FOLLOW series through the Gospel of Mark.  In recent weeks, we’ve see...

The truth is that we live our lives within a context and a culture. Both of them have influences on us, and the more dominant the context and culture, the more we can be influenced…and we live in a very dominant culture. We need to recognize that it has the power to shape how we see ourselves and how we even assess how our lives are going. Sometimes those comparisons are helpful, but what if we’re...

Mountaintop experiences are usually clarifying. They inspire and move us to commitment and action. That’s where the disciples in Mark 9:2-13 are too. However, spiritual excitement doesn’t necessarily result in clarity. And that’s something we need to open our eyes to. You see, just because we feel something strongly doesn’t mean it’s right or accurate or the direction God would have us to go. Ther...

Jesus said, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.” (Mark 8:35). That verse comes right in the heart of our passage for today. This passage at the end of Mark 8 is probably one of the least popular of all the things Jesus taught. However, if you want to be an authentic Christ follower, you have to come to grips with thes...

Why do we sigh? Sighing is interesting. There has been very little research done on the topic, but the research that has been done has attempted to discover why we sigh, what we’re feeling while we’re sighing, and what happens/how we feel after sighing. Though they found different sorts of sighs during different emotional feelings, Karl Teigen, in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology summed up t...

Have you ever been told to just “get over it”? A parent might say it to a whiny child who has just dropped the scoop of ice cream off their cone…get over it…though I might whine about that too. An employer might say it to a complaining employee. And a judge might say it to a greedy plaintiff. Get over it. And today we’re going to see that there are some things going on with some people and Jesus w...

When certain conditions are present, you can expect certain outcomes. It’s predictable. This is something we can see very plainly in several encounters we are going to look at today. We’re going to see some Predictable Truths . Now, the specific circumstances we’re going to consider took place in the 1st century, but the outcomes are as predictable today as they were then. That makes them especial...

There are so many things that are changing all around us, that when you find something that is both good AND lasting, it should stand out to us. It should cause us to sit up and take notice. Well, today, we want to show you exactly that. We want to show you something very powerful that is Once and For All. To find this Once and For All circumstances, we’re going to look at some words that were ori...

As we enter into Holy Week & reflect on the journey of Jesus to the cross, we can find great hope in the reality unveiled in the scriptures that reminds us that like Jesus, though we may face suffering in this life and though we may at times feel forsaken, the love of God is unfailing. Our passages this week include Philippians 2:5-11, Matthew 27, Isaiah 50:4-9, and Psalm 31:9-16. We pray this...

Today, we’re going to see the resolute Jesus in Mark 11:1-25. We’re going to see that Jesus is working to accomplish a clear purpose. It starts out nice and friendly enough, but it quickly turns, and we’ll see why it does and what Jesus is trying to accomplish in it all. Spoiler alert: He is trying to move people from a place where they were mistakenly confident in their spiritual status, to a pla...