Newmarket Alliance Sermon Podcast

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet. - Frederick Buechner As we said, all-y'all have been blessed through the Holy Spirit with unique spiritual gifts. For the purposes of this series, we've divided them up into 3 categories. This Sunday we start with the LOVE GIFTS These are the wonderful and necessary gifts in the Church...

A New Summer Series! It is not the critic who counts; not the one who points out how the strong one stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the one who is actually in the arena. - Theodore Rosevelt There will always be those who sit on the sidelines. Those who fancy themselves as armchair quarterbacks. They offer critiques or appreciation but they ar...

Hey Jude! Here we are with ANOTHER letter that seems to be addressing yet another messed-up Church. In fact it seems A LOT of the New Testament is responding to messed-up churches... It makes you wonder if the whole enterprise is worth the effort, or if it should be abandoned (as many people that you probably know have decided). But in fact, that's WHY so much ink in the Bible is given to mai...

Walking in the Truth John continues to lay out the three things that form the core of the identity of a true believer, obedience-truth-love, in his third letter to his friend Gaius. In the midst of a culture hostile to the early Christian churches, John stresses over and over how important it is for followers of Jesus to know and walk out the Truth. He compares and contrasts the behaviour of those...

In his first letter, John emphasizes LOVE and in this second one he expounds on it. Love is a measurable action - not sentimental emotion or some theological theory. But there's something that goes hand in hand with love, and that's TRUTH. It's why - maybe more so than ever - we need to be vigilant in knowing Jesus and not being influenced by false teachers

"My Sharona"... "Funkytown"... "Achy Breaky Heart" We all know what a "one-hit wonder" song is but the Bible has some "one-hit wonders" as well. Five, to be exact. There are five books in the Bible that consist of only one chapter. But they are still so good, so important, so full of significance, that even that single chapter of writing was given...

Up until now, in this series, we've studied the Biblical laughs we would likely aspire to.... the laugh of fearless confidence, the laugh of heaven etc. On this final message of the series, it's important that we look at the laugh you DON'T want to hear. It's a sobering gut-check on something we are ALL susceptible to.

When God Makes Us Laugh (part 4) When you hear the phrase "getting the last laugh" or the old axiom "he who laughs last, laughs best" there's something that sounds a little nefarious about it all. Is this the laugh of revenge? The laugh of comeuppance? Can you picture Snidely Whiplash twisting his moustache or Dr. Evil with his pinky to his mouth giving a "muwhahaha&q...

April 28, 2024 THE LAUGH OF FEARLESS CONFIDENCE (** Podcast begins after the sermon had already started, simply setting up the Biblical context of David and Goliath **) When God Makes Us Laugh (part 3) Want to know what bullies absolutely cannot stand? Laughing at them. Bullies thrive off fear and intimidation. Do you realize how Satan wants to bully you with lies and fear? With the God of angel a...

A sincere laugh, by its very nature, is from something that catches us off guard. A punchline should be surprising in that way. But sometimes the laugh comes not from having your funny bone tickled, but from sheer audacity. Those "you gotta be kidding me" moments. The laugh when someone predicts or even pulls off the seemingly impossible. Turns out God LOVES pulling off those "you g...

We don't typically associate "laughter" with God, Jesus and the Bible. Maybe that's our first blindspot - ascribing maximum solemnity to the God who created joy, humour and ROFL moments. We'll look at the humour of Jesus (even when you might not have known He was telling jokes). It might radically change the way you view Jesus and His teaching. We’ll dive into every instan...

We may notice subtle shifts in the acceptance of Christianity in Canada, but it's not the same category of what the majority-world Christian faces. 317 million Christians worldwide currently face "very high" or "extreme" levels of persecution. Tomorrow we have a unique service planned for you as our friends from Open Doors Canada, the organization begun by Brother Lawrence...

Welcome to the Family. As we come to the finale of this series, there's one more piece that might just be game-changer for you. Indeed "God sets the lonely in families" (Psalm 68:6) and He does this in various ways, but the most significant is the adoption of His Children into a new Spiritual Family. You are not an orphan. You are not alone. You are not un-parented. You. Are. Adopte...

THE POWER OF A BLESSING The subtitle of this series has been "Breaking generational patterns of dysfunction" but another way of putting it might be "Breaking the generational curse" I'm not necessarily talking about witchcraft or that sort of thing, but many of you have in essence had curses spoken over you in your upbringing. Lies about your identity and destiny. What is...

The Way Forward It's time in this series to get serious about breaking the patterns of generational dysfunction. I believe God is asking us to play a role in our own healing. There are steps forward - steps AWAY from our unhealthy past that we can take, but it will require some courage. Courage to LEAVE, to OWN, and to CREATE

"I can forgive my Mom for what she did, but I will NEVER forget the hurt she caused" That sentiment sounds about right to me. It sounds righteous and just. There are even times in our history when it has been noble to say "Never Forget" What IF there are times when it is MOST healing... MOST righteous to actually forget? Are there times when even the God of the universe - the o...

The Bible speaks about the "sins of the fathers" being visited upon their children. What has our family of origin done to us? Are we doomed to repeat those same "sins"? How can we break generational patterns of dysfunction? This week begins the HOW part of the series.. You may not like the prescription the Bible offers, but it's one we all need to hear! #siblings #parentin...

A New Series Begins! You're talking to your son and realize you just said that triggering thing your mom always said to you as a child... When thinking about getting married, fear paralyzes you because you see how your parents ended up... The words spoken to you as a child continue to echo through your spirit, affecting your self-esteem and relationships with others... The dark, unspoken abus...

We promised a Part 2 that included some practical, wise steps to begin getting our finances under control - and those will certainly be part of this Sunday's presentation - but practical steps without a realignment of mindset... without a restructuring of our PRIORITIES won't be enough for the kind of financial freedom we're talking about. So be prepared to be challenged, and God-wi...

The most recent Canadian stats say that 47% of you who open this email are living paycheque to paycheque AND a great deal of your disposable income is going to consumer debt. That means for half of you, if for some reason you lose your job, you're facing real trouble. Whether we got this way from our bad decisions or circumstances beyond our control, we want you to know there is hope and ther...

We all have ups and downs in life and this is also true of our love for Jesus. There are times we love Him with all our heart, soul, and mind, and other times we love Him as an afterthought. How can we cultivate a habit of the heart where we regularly and joyfully live in obedience and worship of Jesus? I believe we can learn from the saints and spiritual fathers in the contemplative tradition. We...

If you’re a follower of Jesus and have kids or grandkids, or even nieces and nephews, I bet that one of your biggest hopes for these kids’ lives is that they too would choose to give their life to Jesus. Unfortunately the stats are revealing the opposite – that more and more of the next generation are choosing to walk AWAY from their faith as they become adults. Is there anything we can do to reve...

As we wrap up this series on the differences between the major religions it only makes sense that we would give the final say to the case for Christianity. There are so many ways we could present this; Showing how historically, scientifically and logically that (in my humble opinion) Christianity is the faith that just makes sense. We could present a Biblical overview and show God's redeeming...

Some of the nicest, kindest, most right-living people you've ever met might be Jehovah's Witnesses (Watchtower) or Mormons (LDS: Church of the latter day Saints). They may have the unique ability to show up at your door at the most inopportune time, but it's hard to slam the door on them when they're so darn nice. So why do they seem so intent on making converts? Isn't tha...

For some of you reading this, your "love language" is giving and receiving gifts. This is a beautiful and legitimate expression of love that actually reflects a God who LOVES giving good gifts. Christmas itself is really the story of God giving the ULTIMATE gift - the gift of HIMSELF to the world. So this won't be some message on making anyone feel shame about the Christmas traditio...