MARANATHA CHURCH

Many people have used Philippians 4:13 to summon the strength to accomplish what they wanted. Paul wrote it from a prison cell about learning contentment in plenty and in hunger. The actual promise is not that Christ will help you win. It is that Christ will strengthen you to be at peace no matter what life throws at you.

Most of us are not refusing Jesus. We are filtering Him. We hear the parts that confirm what we already believed and quietly set aside the parts that would cost us something. We have made Him one voice among many in a life that is already crowded with louder voices. Matthew 17 is the day The Father settled who Jesus is and how He is to be heard. On the mountain, the Father did not say listen to th...

Most of us have softened the call of Jesus until it fits inside the life we had already designed. Most of us have softened the call of Jesus until it fits inside the life we had already designed. We reference the cross, we sing about it, we wear it, but we have not actually taken it up. Matthew 16:24-28 confronts the comfortable middle ground and asks what we are really telling Jesus about His wor...

When Jesus announces His coming suffering, death, and resurrection, Peter pulls Him aside and rebukes Him, only to receive a startling rebuke in return. This sermon examines Jesus' confession of what lies ahead, the nature of Peter's correction, Jesus' counter-rebuke, and the diagnosis and remedy Peter needed to set his mind back on the things of God.

Everyone has an opinion about Jesus. The crowds in His day had their answers, and the world today has no shortage of its own. But Jesus doesn't ask what everyone else thinks. He turns and asks you directly: Who do you say that I am? That question has never been more loaded, and it has never mattered more to get right. What you believe about Jesus shapes everything about how you live, what you surr...

Most of us are living with a quiet dissatisfaction, the sense that what God has given us is somehow not enough. We pray for new signs, new clarity, new proof, as we walk past the cross, the empty tomb, and the long history of His faithfulness in our lives. Matthew 16:1-12 confronts two ways the human heart drifts away from Jesus and shows us that the cure for both is the same. Remember Him. He is...

Most of us are quietly hungry for more of God than we are currently experiencing, tired of trying harder and failing, and suspecting there has to be something more than this. At Sinai, God descended in fire on a mountain, and the people stood at a distance, terrified. Centuries later, in an upper room in Jerusalem, the same God descended in fire on ordinary people and made His home inside them. In...

The world tells us to stand tall, assert our worth, and never kneel. The world tells us to stand tall, assert our worth, and never kneel. Matthew 15:21-39 shows us a Canaanite woman who did the opposite and discovered that the lowly posture the world treats as weakness is actually the only posture that has ever been able to receive what God freely gives. This sermon walks through the King who cros...

Two groups of people meet Jesus in this passage. One reaches for the corner of His garment with the trembling dependence of people who know they are broken, and He is holy. The other travels nearly a hundred miles to ask Him about handwashing. Matthew 14:34-15:20 puts them side by side and asks us which one we actually are. Have we made Jesus common? Have we built traditions and preferences that w...

This passage is not about Peter sinking. It is about the Creator walking on His own creation, speaking the name that belongs to God alone, and what happens to us when we take our eyes off Him and start taking inventory of the chaos around us. When we stop beholding the King, the wind gets louder. Matthew 14:22-33 ends, as it possibly can, with a boat full of men who have run out of every other cat...

Most people don't think of themselves as people pleasers. But most people are making decisions every day based on an audience they may not even be able to name. Matthew 14 puts two kings side by side and asks you to see the difference between a king who rules for himself and a King who gives Himself away, and then asks the harder question: which one are you actually following?

Jesus returns to his hometown, and the people who watched him grow up can't get past what they already know about him. The wisdom is real. The works are real. But familiarity has already made up its mind. Matthew 13:53–58 is not just a story about Nazareth. It's a mirror for the towns we build inside ourselves, the places we've settled that are too small for what God wants to do. This sermon walks...

At the end of seven parables, Jesus asks one question: " Have you understood all these things? They say yes. And he gives them one final image that reframes what understanding even means. The scribes of Jesus' day knew the Law, memorized vast portions of it, and taught it faithfully. But the word had passed through them without pressing into them or changing them. Jesus is after something differen...

The women who came to the tomb on Easter morning brought spices to honor someone they loved who was gone. The angel's first words were not comforting. They were a question: whom do you seek? In this Easter sermon from Mark 16, we ask the same question because it is possible to show up at church on Easter Sunday with genuine devotion and still be oriented toward a Jesus who is no longer in the tomb...

Gethsemane means oil press. In this Good Friday sermon from Luke 22, we move through three pressings, tracing Jesus from the garden to the trials to the cross, each stage applying more weight than the last until there was nothing left to give. The ancient olive press produced different qualities of oil at each pressing. So did the suffering of Christ. This is a service that moves slowly, pauses be...

Palm Sunday looks like a triumph. But in the middle of the procession, while the crowd is shouting and the cloaks are on the road, Jesus is weeping. In this sermon from Luke 19, we slow down to ask why and what it means that the king who sees everything you have been avoiding is riding toward the cross anyway, because the grief is not going to stop Him.

The man who found the treasure sold everything, and he did it in his joy. In this sermon from Matthew 13, we ask the question these two parables will not let us avoid: what are you not willing to sell? Most of us believe the treasure is real. The problem is we keep finding reasons to hold something back. This sermon is for anyone who has been circling the field for a long time without buying it. T...

Why does genuine transformation feel so slow? In this sermon from Matthew 13, Jesus answers that question with two surprising parables: a mustard seed nobody wanted in their field, and leaven hidden in three measures of flour. Instead of the cedar tree and conquering king his audience expected, Jesus describes a kingdom that begins small, works secretly, and transforms everything it touches from t...

We examine the core doctrinal differences between LDS theology and historic Christianity. While we use the same vocabulary, God, Jesus, salvation, etc, the meanings are fundamentally different. Topics covered: the nature of God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, salvation, human destiny, and much more. Our goal: equip Christians to engage these critical differences with both truth and love.

In this sermon from Matthew 13, we look at how the enemy sows, through people, through distorted doctrine, and through an atmosphere of spiritual inattention, and why God's patience with the field is not the same as his approval of what's growing in it. We also ask the question the parable will not let us avoid: not who around you might be a weed, but what you are.

Are Mormons Christian? They use the same words, God, Jesus, salvation, but mean completely different things. In Part 1, we examine Mormonism's origins: Joseph Smith's visions, the golden plates, the Book of Mormon, and the doctrine of living prophets. We also explore controversial revelations that kept changing when circumstances demanded it. Every claim is sourced directly from official LDS mater...

Hearing the gospel is not the same as believing it. In the Parable of the Sower, Jesus exposes the dangerous assumption that proximity to the truth equals possession of it, and shows us that the only evidence of genuine faith is fruit. Three soils hear the word but end in disaster; only one bears the fruit that proves saving faith.

Most of us have collapsed the distinction between knowing Jesus and belonging to Him; we assume proximity, heritage, and familiarity are enough. In Matthew 12:46-50, Jesus uses a real-time moment to issue a verdict on the Pharisees (and us): the family of God is not defined by bloodline or religious credentials, but by doing the will of the Father.

Most Christians have experienced a moment of the Spirit's presence, but few are living in the sustained, daily fullness God intended for every believer. In this final message of our Holy Spirit series, we walk through Romans 12:1-2 to discover how surrender produces revival, conformity kills the fire, and the Spirit renews everything from the inside out. We are challenged to stop settling for a lo...

Spiritual gifts are one of the most divisive topics in the modern church. In this message, we examine Acts 2 and 1 Corinthians 12-14 to answer: What does the Bible actually say about the baptism of the Spirit and the gifts? Discover how the outpouring is still active today, why the gifts have caused division, and how to pursue and steward them biblically, with love, order, and accountability.