Newmarket Alliance Sermon Podcast

What tastes better than it smells? Your tongue! They can’t be seen with the naked eye, but you have up to 4,000 taste buds by the time you’re an adult, each with up to 150 taste receptors. You have less when you’re a child which are more sensitive to sweet tastes which might explain why you preferred candy to cabbage. Your tongue is as unique to you as your fingerprints. It’s a combination of eigh...

Well, this passage tomorrow is really the thesis statement of the entire book of James. A theme that he keeps circling back to. Are you Spiritual? Great. But is it spirituality with substance? You've got lots of "God-talk". Sure. But how about your "God-Acts"? I can almost hear a slight tinge of sarcasm as James says; "You say believe there is one God? Good for you! Even the demons believe this an...

The Book of James continues... Let me ask you something. Be honest. What kind of snob are you? Because we're all snobs somewhere. Maybe you're a wine snob. You're like the guy from the movie "Sideways": "If anyone orders Merlot, I'm leaving" You may be a coffee snob. Even Starbucks is too pedestrian. You need Kenyan AA beans using purified water. Movie snobs, Music snobs, burger snobs, car snobs,...

You know how you can buy vinyl flooring that looks a lot like walnut? Thing is, even to the non-carpenters and arborists in the group, when you get up close you can tell it's not real. I suppose the same thing could be said about people who claim to be "spiritual" or "a person of faith" or those who are Christian-in-name-only. Once you get up real close to their lives... well... it's a little like...

There is no other book in the Bible quite like the Letter of James, written by the half-brother of Jesus. In direct, even blunt style, James details what it means to not simply listen to what God says but to actually act on it. If you want a primer on living out the "Christ life" in the midst of living out your real life, this is it: trials, patience, getting along with others, self-control, God's...

Easter Sunday! It's Christianity's "Superbowl"... Our faith's 7th game of the Stanley Cup... I'm actually UNDERSTATING the impact of this day! That first Easter was an historical, spiritual, eternal game-changer and the world has never been the same since. If you're not sure what Easter even means, we invite you to come. If you have heard it all before but need a reminder of the difference Easter...

Interestingly, the New Testament gives us some good examples of churches who didn't quite "get" grace yet. The Church in Galatia, you could say were “Jesus-plus” people. This is where they say "All you need is Jesus (PLUS these 193 other rules) That’s legalism. Not Grace On the other hand, the people of Corinth, you could say, were “Jesus-minus” people. They were like; “All you need is Jesus” (MIN...

Grace. It’s what I crave most when my own guilt is exposed. Ironically it's also the very thing I’m hesitant to extend when I’m confronted with the guilt of others (especially if I'm hurt or offended in some way) Interestingly, when you read the New Testament, the main thing Jesus stood against consistently was graceless religion. The only group he was consistently indignant with were graceless re...

If it’s the most distinctive idea of the Christian faith... If the word itself appears in the New Testament more times than “forgiveness” or “prayer” (which it does...) If it is true that we are indeed saved by grace and grace alone, meaning our very eternity is resting on this... If this is a core value of our church... Then we need to get it right

Wasn’t it the great poet Tom Petty who said: “The waiting is the hardest part” Ain’t that the truth. We typically don’t do well with waiting. Less and less it seems. For those who think God is ignoring your prayers (He isn’t) or saying ‘no’ to your prayers (He might be) there is also a possibility He’s delaying answering your prayers and there may be all kinds of good reasons, that in His love and...

Is there anything that strikes fear into many Christians more than being asked to pray out loud? To pray in a group? Even in the refuge of marriage, it can be deeply vulnerable. So we'd like to present a case, theologically and intellectually, that something transcendent, supernatural and powerful happens when God's people gather and pray together (interestingly, something that has to be experienc...

This may sound like the last thing you would expect to hear from a series on prayer, but I wonder if there is a time when God might say "OK, now it's time to STOP praying" Maybe in fact there is a time for prayer and a time for action. There's a time to cry out to God and a time to claim his victory. A time to seek his intervention and a time to accept his answer. There is a time to ask for His wi...

The religious system in Jesus’ day was built on rules and regulations. Following them determined whether you were accepted into the community. There were some ‘untouchables’ that the church and the world stayed away from. When Jesus came, He was not afraid of them making him unclean, instead He leaned in and made them clean. As we look at the encounter of Jesus with the lepers, what do we learn ab...

One of the more challenging experiences that Christians have to process is walking through Unanswered Prayers or at least what seems to us like unanswered prayers. In James we read that, “You do not have, because you do not ask God”, and so it can feel like the rug has been pulled out from under us when we DO ASK God, and He doesn’t answer us. What gives?

As Christians we see all kinds of terrible things going on in the world and even in our own lives and we might be tempted to ask: “Why isn’t God doing something about all this?” Could it be though that it is actually God who is astonished and asking ME…asking YOU… asking his church… “Where are the Christians? Why aren’t they praying?!” Scripture makes a case that God moves in the affairs of mankin...

Prayer is often seen as a monologue in which we ASK for God to help, fix or provide stuff. What if we have missed one of the most significant aspects of an "abiding" life with God in prayer... that of Prayer as Thanksgiving and Praise? As George Herbert once wrote: "God, You have given me so much. Give me one more thing – a grateful heart"

Prayer is the first and most important task of a Christ follower. Prayer is an invitation to intimacy. It's a response to grace. Prayer is a collective cry for God to move in our midst, heal our brokenness, save the lost, restore the wayward, forgive our sins and unify our hearts. Prayer is our declaration of dependence! In this multi-week series we long not just to learn about prayer but to grow...

There are natural rhythms and seasons where it is wise to reflect on what has come and plan for what is ahead. The beginning of January is one of those obvious times. But instead of making resolutions (which are good intentions that statistically speaking are more likely to fail than not), consider making some GOD intentions... listening to the Spirit for just ONE THING that might make all the dif...

Why is there Christmas? It's simple: God loves us deeply and wanted to offer us a way to be reconciled with him. This journey begins with the celebration of the birth of Jesus, who is the Son of God and the saviour of humanity. Jesus was sent to earth to live as a human and ultimately to die on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins. Through this act of selfless love, we are forgiven and have etern...

The last three weeks of challenging us this Christmas to UNhurry... to be UNdistracted... to UNplug from all our screens and devices... all of it, has led to this. Answering the "WHY" question. WHY should we be present this Christmas (and beyond)? You'll see that it leaves room in your schedule... space in your heart... room in your mind... to respond to Jesus the way he deserves to be responded t...

Humans have always had hurry. We've always had distractions. We've always had to adjust to new technologies and innovations ("curse this wretched sun-dial). But the last 10 years or so have truly been a seismic change in how we relate to the world and to each other. We carry all the world's knowable information in our pockets. That seems like a good thing... doesn't it? What's most notable though...

It's interesting to scan the predictions of so-called "futurists" from the past to see how they got things wrong. In the 1960s as "time-saving devices" ramped up, there was a genuine concern that by the time we got to 2022, we would have a crisis of too much time on our hands... a crisis of leisure time you could say. Does anyone feel that you have too much time? I didn't think so. I suspect your...

November 27, 2022 We are afflicted as a culture with a disease! An actual diagnosis called "Hurry Sickness" And is there any time of year when this is more acutely felt than the Christmas Season? This Advent season may we give the BEST gift to our families, to Jesus, and to our own souls: The gift of our unhurried, unplugged & undistracted PRESENCE!

The first couple of weeks of our shame series focused on the causes of shame. Many of you have resonated with some of these sources... toxic churches, toxic upbringings, the lies of our spiritual accuser, among others. Perhaps the biggest impact for some of you might just be the recognition of the shame you carry. You have made the first and most critical step of bringing into the light what was f...

Academic, popular speaker and expert on the subject Brené Brown, defines shame this way: "Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging." Maybe in our context, we might say: How could God ever love someone like me? How heartbreaking it is in fact that the two biggest sources or roots of our shame often come from pl...