Port City Community Church Podcast

When Jesus came, He brought freedom and peace, He brought order and goodness, His light didn’t bring ease, it made us right with God. Often, we look for Jesus when things are hard and when we feel like we’ve done everything we can. What if today we looked for the light that He provides in the everyday moments of our life.

Yesterday, we considered how our spiritual hunger, those deep longings for meaning, purpose, and value, find their ultimate satisfaction in Christ Jesus - the Bread of Life. Today, we want to remind ourselves that we all need the intentional and compassionate care of a Savior, and we need look no further than Jesus, the One known as the Good Shepherd.

Today, we encounter Jesus right after He pulled off a culinary miracle by feeding 5,000 people with just five loaves of bread and two fish. With their hunger pains gone, the crowd marveled at what transpired. Having a captivated audience, Jesus took the opportunity to speak about a different type of hunger and thirst - this time a spiritual one.

The Christmas season often centers on Jesus' birth. A baby in a manger is safe and adorable and doesn't require much from us. We can celebrate the story and go about our business - no disruption, no changes. But there is so much more to Advent than "there being no room in the inn." His arrival has implications. Advent means "coming." where we not only celebrate Jesus' first coming but also anticip...

Love isn’t passive at all; it is a force that acts on the world profoundly, often disrupting the patterns that protect the status quo. It is the force that breathes worth and value into the soul of another. Jesus invites us to a radically different way of life under the rule of a fundamentally different authority. God’s love is the source of goodness, expressed in reconciliation. Goodness is the f...

Jesus continually elevated love as the highest call, yet, embracing this love when it requires us to extend it to someone else is easier said than done. Love needs relationships and cultivated spaces where relationships can flourish. We pursue reconciliation and redemption in all places. It's the message we carry with us wherever we go. An encounter with Christ's love influences how we interact, r...

Formation is the process of becoming, which enables God’s Kingdom to become more normal and less foreign. Yet, old habits die hard - there are still other voices and values that still hold weight. Forced good creates “good” habits devoid of the deep goodness in your heart. To remain and stay aware of His work and intention is to walk in the Spirit. We take our cues by capturing our thoughts while...

What makes something or someone "good"? What do you think of when you hear the word “goodness”? For most of us our minds naturally drift toward the concepts of virtue, morality, or being well behaved. But the picture Scripture paints goes much deeper than behavior. From the creation story, to the ancient confessions, to the life of Jesus, to the early church we see a weaving of good that is both a...

The reason you struggle isn't that you're broken - it's because you're human. However, the direction in which you struggle matters. You struggle in the right direction when you struggle toward Jesus Christ and His Lordship and head toward being known, challenged, and loved in community. You have to have people around you who long for your formation. Care is cultivating space to live freely to live...

The world exposes us to many competing and inconsistent philosophies about who we are and how we should live. Unfortunately, if we listen to them long enough, we allow these lies to morph into our story. These default narratives become well-worn roads we travel down; following them sends us down paths we never intended to travel. The hope of the Gospel is the start of a new story. We no longer nee...

In authentic connection, we trust others enough to struggle together. To live safely within the care of a community does not mean that we are left unchallenged or always agreed with.  Instead, living safely actually requires bravery!  We must be brave enough to trust.  We must be brave enough to share our stories, and brave enough to enter into someone else's story. Instead of tryin...

We often view the need for care as a sign of weakness on our part. If we were strong enough, we'd be self-sufficient; so when we encounter something we can't handle on our own, we reason there must be something wrong with us. However, care is not a result of being needy but rather part of the human experience. Rather than preventing healthy connections, accepting care and tending to others causes...

God designed our relationships to form us, not merely affirm us. He made us for connection, but we often settle for acceptance. To live safely in the care of another requires risk. It's easy to grow disenchanted when we recognize the difficulty and tenacity necessary to partake and participate in relationships that form and shape us. The source of our connections determines the strength and depth...

We will always have an excuse for why we aren’t different. Whenever we struggle alone, we only increase the pressure of our temptation. The more we struggle alone, the more likely we believe that secrets are safe and acceptable. For deep, meaningful formative connections to flourish, trust is required. What we share allows us to be known and available to know another. Connection is to exchange lif...

In our broken world, distrust is justified and seems the only way to protect ourselves. But our self-protection keeps us from embracing the kind of life God created us to experience together. The source of our connection will determine the strength and depth of the relationship.  Humanity will only share the oneness we long for within the wholeness we are made for. Our wholeness is determined...

Created in the image of a relational God, the desire for relational connections is wired into our DNA. Unfortunately, we often resist this depth of connection out of a fear of rejection and of what authentic connection may require of us. Yet, the collective reach of our church begins with the health of our connections, displayed in a willingness to include, to avail ourselves to others, and to all...

We all play a part in shaping the culture of our community. Culture is the spontaneous, recurring patterns that shape who we become. As our individual hearts expand, so does our collective expression. We bear the integrity of His image and bring the influence of His love. If we're to become a redemptive community that brings profound healing, it takes everyone. We can't mistake trivia, knowing abo...

Our mission as a church has always been “To reach people and help them walk with God.” But what do we mean by REACH? How do we know when we’ve done it? How can we do it better? This Fall, we want to rethink and redefine what we mean by REACH. Reach is not about building our brand or some attempt to boost attendance. Reach is not a strategy. It can't be measured by the number of people attending ou...

Many of us stand on the water’s edge, wondering why God won’t do anything extraordinary to show us the way. And the reason is that we haven’t yet done what He has asked us to do. God invites us to take a step, and when we follow Him, He shows us the next step and calls us to trust. Clarity does not come with knowing the path; it comes with taking the step. God is always leading us to have faith—an...

All good things come to an end, including this podcast series. It seems like we started this journey only yesterday with a question: what if we treated the summer like a Sabbath? For the past ten weeks, we've embraced the disruption summer brings by slowing down and letting the words from the book of Psalms wash over us. By doing so, we gained insight into the profoundness of the human heart and t...

Throughout his long life, the author of Psalm 71 faced adversity, misfortune, and times of trouble. But, as he reflected on God's faithfulness every step of the way, he remained confident God would be by his side during his present trials. Today, as we dig deeper into this passage, we'll see the transformational power in our difficult seasons.

Our time together this week has us in Psalm 71, contemplating the words of an aging writer in trouble; his enemies look to capitalize on his fragile condition. While reflecting on a lifetime of faithful devotion, he declares his continued trust in God. He asks God to save him again - not so he can enjoy retirement, bask in his glory days, kick up his feet, and live the good life, but to do somethi...

Returning to Psalm 71, we encounter our author looking backward to garner the strength to move forward in his later years. As he reflects on his life, both the good and the bad, he considers the source of his hope. The legacy left behind were decades of dependency and countless examples of God's protection and presence, and for that, he offers up praise.

Persevering faith and steadfast endurance characterize Psalm 71, our passage for this week's study. Its confident words come from an aging author reflecting on his current distress through the lens of a lifelong faith, declaring God's heart is to provide refuge and rescue to those who call on His name.

In a unanimously tired culture, why aren’t we better at rest? There are a lot of things that come easy to us, but faith takes work. Every day we face tension for control. The busier we become, the more control we desire. Our obsession with control generates more worry than certainty. When control becomes our goal, faith is no longer our strategy; instability becomes our reality. Stillness and rest...