Oak Hills Church, Folsom

And  so  in our life of faith in Jesus,   we  have a similar choice to make as we did with the hypothetical violin. And if  you're not into music, then picture getting a brand new  set of golf  clubs or  a pair of snow skis or a new air fryer or whatever it is that captures that sense of new that goes, "Oh, wow. That'd be cool."  Right ? But we have the choice to make whether we are going to just...

There's just something about love that feels too overwhelming, feels too vulnerable. It feels too simple, too easy. It feels even too good to be true. But if we do let it in, even just a little, it becomes the truth that gives us hope, that brings us peace, that fills us with mega joy.    Just the fact that God loves us makes even the hardest things in life filled with light. But we, you and I, ha...

What comes to mind when you hear the   phrase  t he God of the Bible?   What's  the demeanor of the God who lives in your head? How  does he feel about this world?   Maybe more  personally, how does he feel about you?  Don't  polish it up.  Don't  pretty it up when you think, "What does   God think about me? How does God feel about me? Does God think about me? Does   God feel anything for me?" If...

Jesus incarnated the way of shalom. He taught us about it. He showed us what it does and how it drastically differs from the ways of this world. See, in the way of shalom, in the way of peace, people love their enemies. They confront violence with love. In the way of shalom, the strong care for the weak. The forgotten are included. The marginalized are valued. The poor are fed. Power is used for g...

May this God of hope help us be lanterns of hope, in the world that we live, in the circumstances we are in, with the people we interact with as we go through Advent, that we may be lanterns of hope. That we may be people whose words and lives and attitudes and actions convey to a hurting world that there is hope and his name is Jesus. And this hope is there no matter what we're facing, no matter...

The step to take here is not  to try to forget. The step here is not to try not to remember the event. To not remember what that person said  or did to you. The step here is to simply forgive, again. You see forgiveness is  more than just a sing ular  event.  A  one-time  thing we got through. Forgiveness is more of a posture. More of a perspective  that  we take  on a particular event or  towards...

So you're in the pool and you got a beach ball and it's full of air and you know, so obviously, in in our little example here, the air is our anger, right? So, you’re trying to keep anger under the water. You all can kind of picture what that would feel like. And we spend so much time in life like trying to keep the beach ball under the water, trying to keep our anger from, you know, popping up an...

“Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior.” Ephesians 4:31   Today’s verse is about pivoting away from whatever degree of anger is in us, whatever form it takes, whatever level it’s at, toward a new Kingdom way of being, responding, reacting that is far more beautiful and good. Today is about the action that you and I can take to open...

Life in the kingdom of God is not a life of just not saying un wholesome things, but of saying things that spread God's grace out into the world.  

Ultimately, work is not about how much money it brings into us. It is about how much of us we put into what we do. See, ultimately our work is not about earning our own living. Our work is not about us being able to achieve comfort and self-sufficiency for us and for our family. Our work is not a way to establish our status in society. Our work, us doing something useful with our own hands , a cco...

When you think of anger, where is it in you? How does it show itself? And maybe the most important question of all, what is the story behind your anger? Do you know it? Does anyone who loves Jesus and is near you know it?  

One reason why the people of God are called to be mature is because our vocation, yours and mine in this world , is to be Jesus's representatives. To demonstrate the goodness of his way to proclaim the gospel, through our deeds and words, to show the world what it looks like to love God and to love others.  

Jesus is our model for attitude, and behavior, and perspective, and concepts. You see, only Jesus, is the whole package. Only Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. If we want to have life, real life, where we don’t just pick and choose aspects of Jesus to incorporate. We don’t pick his death for our sins so that we can get to heaven when we die. We don’t just pick his teachings as pithy words...

The Bible describes a hard-hearted person in Matthew 13:1 5 , This is Jesus speaking, “For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes." I have just an observation, you can decide it's not true , but to me it has been. T he longer we are Christians, the more certain we become, the more we nurture anger and think it righteous , the hig...

Did God really say you can't do this, or you can't do that? This kind of thought gets in our minds and then we nurture the thought. We cultivate the thought and so begins the process of eventually firing God and replacing him with me, ourselves, and off the rails we go to live happily ever after, or maybe not. So let me just bring this down to us again. I want to keep warning us to not let this st...

The politics of the world matters; right, left, Democrat, Republican, conservative, progressive. But the church is a community of those whose first identity is who they are in the Trinity and to the Trinity. So, our first passion and first agenda and first focus is not right, left, progressive, conservative, Democrat, Republican. It is kingdom. It is the way of Jesus. Ephesians 4 and verse 15, “In...

Immaturity is one of the glaring problems facing the church in our country right now. Immaturity. Christian immaturity. Christians acting immature. There are far too many who claim to be Christian, standing in their highchairs with nothing on but a diaper, demanding dessert right here and right now. Christians who have not and are not, allowing the gospel to penetrate their pathologies and transfo...

You see, whether we realize it or not, we are all living a story. I know some of you in your mind, are in your head just saying, "No, I'm not. I live in the real world.” But you see the real world is a story. The real the real world is a series of connected events and actions by significant characters that are leading to a particular end. You are living a story. The question is, which story are yo...

Jesus comes though not to abolish the tedium of God's laws, but to actually live them out, to show us what a life lived by God's system under God's government looks like. And not only that, he teaches us the details of how with God's ongoing help, we can live that way.  

I f I were to give you two words for the role of the prophets , they would b e, WAKE UP!  Remember, they were a people who were to represen t the way of God, the alternative to the systems and cultures of the world, but they like us, continue to believe that their ways were somehow better than God's ways. And as we see not just in the Bible, but in both the world without and our worlds within, the...

Maybe the choices that you've made have screwed up your life. Maybe they've screwed up the lives of others. But regardless of which mistakes that you are carrying today or maybe even running from today, the mistakes that we're trying to ignore, the the mistakes that we're trying to avoid, the good news of the story of the kings of Israel is that no matter how bad the mistake, no matter how poor th...

The story continues to unfold today as it has for thousands of years. God is creating a community that identifies as God's people and they and he interact, relate, and work together toward the fulfillment of his purposes; land, people, God, place, heaven, earth, co-mingling, interacting, intersecting, roots being set down, and all of this adding up to this demonstration to the world. This is who G...

Our service on Sunday was a deep breath from the day-to-day crazy of our lives. Pastor Mike encouraged us to sit in this idea that God's invitation to you to follow him, to trust him, to live in his ways, is immense. It covers quite literally everything.”   “The one who loves fulfills the law.” - Romans 13:18   Please use this link from The Bible Project to add context to The Never Ending Story: L...

In Exodus 14:13, Moses answered the people, "Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance that the Lord will bring you today. These Egyptians you see today, you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still. You need only to be still. ”  

Was it Abraham and Sarah's choices that made a nation, a people, a world where a poor teenage Judean girl could answer an angel? Yes, I am the Lord's slave. May it be to me according to your w ord . Or was it all God acting, directing, intervening? Yes. And yes, God has willed and designed his creation to be partnership . T hat is something we have to reckon with every day. A covenant includes two...