Port City Community Church Podcast

There are no perfect moments. However, moments of failure are opportunities for formation in disguise - every step matters in our walk with God. When we shortcut the formation process, there is a cost. Our stability is affected, and our ability to experience grace is hindered. It's hard to extend grace if you are unable to experience it. We must learn to lean into the discomfort and try not to rus...

We all have religious baggage that frames our perspective. If we encounter Jesus and only know what we've always known, perhaps we haven't drawn close enough. How we approach God matters. When we encounter Jesus, He invites us to consider something different. He hasn't called us to execute on His commands but to live in His love. We trust Him with our hardened heart and allow Him to replace it wit...

The questions of "who am I?", "do I matter?", and "where do I belong?" swirl around in our heads all of the time. Almost from birth, we're told that we must perform to gain approval and produce to be loved. Our performance bags leave us questioning our worth, developing a pattern of constant competition, living with not-step pressure, and shrinking back while losing self-confidence. Faith isn't ab...

Relational baggage gets packed when something from our past negatively impacts our relationships in the present. When we travel through life carrying relational baggage, we lose the opportunity to experience God's true freedom. If we ignore our bags, those negative emotions begin to take root in our hearts and bleed into other connections. We need to do the best we can to live in and from God's gr...

When we make ourselves real to Him in our prayers, God has a way of making Himself real to us. God possesses infinite creativity and imagination, and when we stay open to what He alone can do, we’re more likely to see it every day. God usually moves through subtle ways, including our questions. Our questioning can be the building blocks of a beautiful faith. Asking well starts with Jesus. Even a l...

No one is too far gone or out of reach from His grace. God can overcome even the most difficult circumstances from our past. We may not be in a place where we can see it or feel it, but He can bring beauty from ashes. He doesn't hold us at arm's length until we get our act together; He wants to love us into a new beginning with Him. It's through this encounter that the way we approach, interact an...

An encounter with Christ changes EVERYTHING about us. It alters how we see ourselves and those around us while changing how we perceive our past and respond to our future. When we are in Christ, we possess a new identity that brings healing, hope, and the redemption of the past. God takes all of it - the good, bad, and ugly - and He uses it for His glory and purposes. The old is gone; the new has...

Chronic affirmation eliminates accountability. Acceptance is a base point - not the goal; it’s the formation of our character and hearts. When we confine our relationships to places where our viewpoints, motives, emotions, and actions find themselves constantly affirmed, there is no need to change. Remaining silent when others struggle speaks volumes about how much we care for that individual. Yet...

Vulnerability is a crucial component of our growth and transformation because others can only love us to the extent that we are known. We have to share who we are, not who we think people want us to be. Vulnerability isn't weakness; it's strength. Removing off our masks takes courage and boldness. Yet, the current version of vulnerability we applaud, which champions "that's just who I am," is twis...

In today’s world, empathy is in short supply. We live our lives as if there is only one way to see the world, and it’s from our perspective. We’re quick to project rather than protect. We fill in the gaps instead of being curious and standing in the gap of someone else’s struggle. The person we see at first glance is often a poor representation of who that person is. Relationships require question...

Even though life is getting back to somewhat “normal,” our relationships don’t need to follow the same route. Instead, we can work toward something different. We have a unique opportunity to revamp and reevaluate our connections - the time has come to define the relationship. By doing so, we can toss aside our misconceptions on trust, empathy, vulnerability, and accountability and exchange them fo...

Everyone has some insecurity or shame that we think if anyone knew we struggled with this, our life would be over. We think that the worst thing would be for someone to find out about struggles. But, the worst thing would be that no one knows, and we fight our weaknesses alone. Shame, anxiety, and despair multiply in isolation. Struggling in the right direction isn’t about trying harder but a chan...

Our struggles become our story, but we get a say in determining its contents. We either let our struggles define us or shape us. We can overstate the struggle, let it overpower us, and tell a tale of regret and shame. Or, we can allow God to shape and form us through the process and write a story that declares our trust in God's faithfulness and redemption. The challenge facing all of us is to str...

The burden of perfectionism views endurance as a nuisance, punishment, and another example of failure. Perfectionism despises the process while failing to see it's the only way to perfection. Our purpose has a process, and it requires us to be present. The most critical moment to be faithful is in the moment we don't want to be. God's not interested in our perfection; He is concerned with our purs...

Driven by our perfectionist thinking, we believe that we can avoid the haunting shadow of shame and the fear of unworthiness if we can perform perfectly. In our futile quest for perfection, we either give our struggles more power than they deserve and allow them to become our identity, or we give up hope, settle for the status quo, or pretend like we have it all together. Our push for perfection f...

The cross stands as the greatest demonstration of God’s love. On those wooden beams, a collision and compression of human sin and divine grace took place. Two systems collided and compressed together in a moment where the Creator touched His separated and estranged creation. The cross is what God endured as He forgave. We typically consider the call to repent as a threat of bad news when viewed th...

When we collide with the cross, we find the fullness of life our heart has been yearning for. Forgiveness is humanity’s greatest need. Forgiveness through the cross is God’s greatest gift. God’s ultimate act of love was an act of giving himself away. Jesus came to do for us what we couldn’t do on our own. He entered into this world to bring us value and communicate our worthwhile reconciling us to...

Living in a broken world has distorted our viewpoint and understanding of love. In turn, we settle for cheap substitutes, pursue twisted alternatives, or give up on being loved altogether. God had to demonstrate true love because we have a hard time recognizing it. God not only saved us from our sin, He rescued us from spending our days living unloved. Love is not something we agree with or disagr...

Not only does the breakthrough and transformation we crave lie on the other side of surrender, but so does our ability to rest. Humble submission paves the road that leads to freedom, where we find real rest. Everything starts with rest. When we seek Him first and find our delight resides in Him, God forms our heart to match His desires and then fulfills them. He promises not only to fill the spac...

When we meet resistance, encounter doubt, or our circumstances don’t change, the temptation to return to our former life and ways of doing things rises. Regardless of how futile, frustrating, or fruitless they may be, we resort to it because it’s “what we know.” Why? Because our past doesn't go away slowly. We avoid the responsibility to change whenever we believe we can’t, which is an assault on...

When you offer your bodies as a living sacrifice and step out in faith, you can expect a collision and test. If you believe you've got god "figured out," your god is way too small. We do not understand the depth of life found in God, and also, we do not understand the depth of death found apart from Him. If every part of creation responds to God, every aspect of us should as well. To fear God is n...

We tend to think of being acceptable as measuring up to an agreed-upon standard. We either work feverishly trying to live up to that standard or give up hope of ever fitting the bill. Neither way leads to freedom, which makes what Christ did on our behalf so liberating. The bar isn't what we do or don't do; it's about being rightly related to God. Where there is forgiveness, there is no more sacri...

Making a sacrifice to appease God feels misguided, outdated, and irrational. But, if we take a step back and look a little closer at our own lives, we can't help but notice we're still erecting altars and presenting sacrifices in an attempt to pacify God and relieve our conscience; they just look a little different. We run ourselves ragged trying to appease God, failing to realize, or in some case...

The world is well aware of what the Church is against; they need to see what the Church is for. To be for something requires us to walk with someone. Getting local reframes our perspective on the issues facing our world. Stories help us understand; a name helps us humanize. Redemption is always relational. The way we relate to one another is our witness to the world.

The world isn’t problematic; it’s broken. Brokenness requires redemption, and redemption is always relational. Togetherness becomes what we are willing to be responsible for and own. If we want to be the church God intended us to be, we’ve got to be willing to enter the messy places. We pursue togetherness to bring dignity and worth to a person, not a resolution of a problem.