Port City Community Church Podcast

God created a way for us to take hold of unshakeable joy and lasting contentment - something the author of Psalm 1 refers to as being “blessed.” Today, we want to take a closer look at what the “blessed” person does to feed and fuel their soul and how it makes their heart come alive with delight.

In today’s episode, we’ll continue exploring Psalm 1, looking at the first two verses and exploring the age-old question: Does God want me to be happy? Or is there something greater He wants us to experience?

Today is the beginning of our weekday Summer Sabbath podcast series! Rather than rushing through this summer, our hope is to find new rhythms of sabbath rest together - and one way we can do that is through the podcast you're listening to right now! This week we are reading from Psalm 1 and letting its beautiful and powerful words wash over us while providing space for God to speak to us. You can...

For many of us, we view an invitation to rest as a nice thought but hardly available or realistic. Rest feels like a luxury that busy people can scarcely afford. We excuse it away by saying, “You don’t know my schedule or the demands on my time.” Ultimately, we will rest when we believe things are under control or under our control, to be more specific. We tend to think of rest as a means to an en...

The challenge in our world isn't that we cannot agree; we refuse to agree. Creating an endless variety of "them" serves to justify us. We try to get the most power with the least amount of responsibility. But what if there is no "them" and only "us"? Rather than divide and separate, the message of Christ brings people together. Christ demolished the dividing wall by entering the space that separat...

This summer, we invite you to join us on a journey to find rest… but we’re not talking about a vacation or an escape from responsibilities. For the next ten weeks, we are exploring what it would look like to treat this summer as a Sabbath. “Sabbath” is a time set apart to experience rest as we deliberately stop working and trust in God’s provision.  To help us find new rhythms of sabbath rest...

The teachings of Jesus provide wisdom on how to live in and contribute to God's Kingdom while the grind of redemption continues to happen. We do not belong to the world, but we have a responsibility for it. We represent God's presence and are responsible for God's intention. Scripture nourishes, sustains, and breathes life. We read, and we receive. Responsive hearing gets displayed in our obedienc...

Our call is to bear God's image, not simply keep His rules. Understanding this drastically transforms the way we approach Scripture. It's not about compliance but connection - not about following rules but fostering a relationship. In Scripture, we encounter God's love for us - ultimately revealed in Jesus. We witness God's pursuit of us - God didn't just show up; He entered in. And, we see God's...

We bring our perspective to everything, including reading Scripture. What we see frames our understanding of it. We need to see something beyond what we are already looking for. To discover what God has to say requires us to do more than read the Bible; we need to hear from God. So we enter in and listen. Reading Scripture helps us understand our salvation and experience our life of redemption. As...

Discovering what God has to say requires us to do more than read the Bible; we need to hear from God. His voice is soft and subtle, so we must tune our ears and posture our hearts to hear it. The story of the Bible helps us understand and experience our salvation. We need to sort and wrestle this out with each other. We're created to be image-bearers which is a far more beautiful call than being r...

We all have a way we approach the Bible, a lens through which we read and interpret it. Most of the time, we read the Bible with questions in mind without considering them since they are so innate and assumed. When we open the Bible, we find what we are already looking for while overlooking what we are afraid of. We do this because our minds instinctively work to eliminate contradictory eleme...

We've grown up with a Gospel picture that is inadequate and insufficient to compel us toward a full life. The good news of Jesus is so much more than simply a choice between heaven and hell. We are so used to hearing the Gospel presented with the question: If we were to die, do we know where we would go? Instead, we need to ask ourselves a better question: What if we didn't die? Do we know what it...

When Jesus arrived in Jerusalem, the people waving palm branches and shouting, "Hosanna!" were expecting a revolution. Jesus freed them from a corrupt, oppressive system - just not the one they expected. The donkey Jesus rode on served to represent a peaceful rule by a humble king. He was ushering in a new way for us to live as His new humanity. We live in the space where God is working to redeem...

We love slapping labels on ourselves and others. The problem is: that labels are lazy - not loving. They allow safe distance and require no effort on our part. We create lines to define how people participate in society, shaping the way we see and interact with one another. The lines we draw to preserve our way and exclude others, Jesus keeps erasing. We witness this in the story of Zacchaeus. Jes...

We need more information to be convinced of Christ's love; we need an encounter. To truly encounter Jesus is to be compelled by Jesus. That is why we want to take a step back and see Jesus with fresh eyes. The stories we read in the Gospels aren't simply moral lessons designed to make us better people; they are moments in which we get to see God revealing Himself to us through Jesus. And what we s...

We cannot be formed into the image of Jesus by ourselves; it's our relationships that shape our formation. God causes our growth while inviting us to play a role in the growth of others. But, we can't waste our time focusing on the fruit our lives produce; we need to pay attention to the soil around us. Our responsibility is to manage our growing conditions by abiding in Jesus and letting Him form...

Carrying for each other doesn't turn us inward, shrink our perspective, or inhibit our reach; The care we display to one another is the starting point for caring for the world around us. Our willingness to tend to our walk with Christ and concern for others' formation shapes the church's growth. One catches the vision when they feel the responsibility. We hope those that call Port City home would...

Port City Community Church is not a place; it's a people who gather together, serve together, and live life together for the sake of the world around us. An others-focused, servant-hearted, and humbly-driven community doesn't just happen by chance. Remaining connected to Jesus and each other will require strength, endurance, and patience. It takes commitment to remain and a willingness to stay roo...

Submission is not a response to power and authority—it is a response to trust. When we submit to one another out of our love for Christ, we acknowledge the legitimacy of the other person. One can't experience change without being challenged deeply, especially in our relationships. To yield to the value of another is an act of dependency. There is an inherent submission in living under grace. Depen...

Dependence feels like a temporary necessity until we can do things ourselves. However, dependence isn't a means to an end but rather how God intends us to live. The skill of self-control is dependence. Exhibiting self-control puts us in a position to discern God's activity and trust it. Disciplined dependence is about paying attention to what we think and see. Participating in a new humanity requi...

Social isn't a game not measured by our status, but how we participate and represent the new humanity created by and defined by Jesus. The way we leverage authority over our heart, mind, hands, and feet matter. Everything He has done for us should affect everything about us. There are needed skills to navigate this new culture and embrace our new identity. When we get unsettled with unfamiliar thi...

The Gospel is a radical reorientation of what it means to be social. One relationship defines all others. More than anything else, our relationship with Christ should shape how we interact, relate, and respond to the world around us. Jesus didn't just make us into a new person; He made us into a new people. A relationship with Christ is personal but never intended to be private. Our new corporate...

There is plenty of fuel for a vision to retreat, escape, control, or build our comfortable kingdom with our familiar tribe. But participating and contributing to the renewal of all that God intends requires something far more profound. We need a vision for the Gospel compelling enough for the sacrifice that it will require. Redemption grinds through time and history, with starts and stalls. The pr...

Scripture urges us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling - this isn't a call for more effort and earning, but instead speaks to the posture we must display as we confront our sin and struggles as well the world's brokenness. We expose those places where doubt, pride, anger, and fear have taken hold and fight back with greater hope. We sit in stunned silence not only by the significance...

When we take our sin seriously, we learn to see the beauty of forgiveness and experience the power of love. Healing is happening in places we can't see. Recognizing that we live in forgiveness as one who stands forgiven dramatically alters how we navigate the brokenness in our lives and the world around us. We break the cycle of struggles by allowing them to see the light of day. Confession is ref...