Resurrection City Church - St. Paul Minnesota

It seems fitting for us to end our series on things Christians believe that make us weird with a message about the end of the world. End times fever has been common among Christians, especially over the last 50 or so years. But what did Jesus tell us about our speculation about the when or what of his return? Why might he have worried we would get too focused on it? In this message, Pastor Joel sh...

Christians talk a lot about God’s grace, but we less often talk about what is sometimes called the scandal of grace. When we really get the concept of grace, we’re going to actually be offended. It steps on the toes of what we think is right or wrong. For people who are used at deserving or achieving all they get, grace can be a real stumbling block, and our ego can even convince us to say no to i...

This might surprise you, but when Jesus talked about sex he said the conservative hardliners of his day actually didn’t go far enough. For many in his day, as long as you jusrt had sex with your spouse, you were good. Jesus said that true righteousness went a lot deeper than that. Just being good at following rules doesn’t produce the kind of goodness God’s kingdom is meant to bring. Goodness in s...

Perhaps the defining question of our age is who am I? We are asking what it means to be human now in the age of AI, and we are all asking questions like what gives me value? What is my purpose? Why am I worthy of love, of being known? How can I help bless the world? What will make me feel fulfilled, at peace, truly happy? God thinks answering this question is incredibly important. So important tha...

There’s a common idea of how it takes a village to raise or support someone. A village is a great way to think of what the church, the community of the people of Jesus, is. But what does it actually take to be part of a village? It’s harder to know than we might think, and even when we do know it can be even more difficult to actually live it. In a time when people are so lonely and desperately ne...

We value independence, a lot. And independence might give us a lot of things we want, but will independence really help us grow as people, especially the people of God? In this message, Pastor Julie explains why we only grow when we rely on God, and accountability to each other is essential to how God helps us to become the people he is crafting us into.

Albert Einstein once said you don’t understand something well enough until you can explain it simply. Something similar could be said about the gospel: you may not understand the good news of Jesus well enough if you don’t see the necessity of unity and reconciliation. The good news is all about reconciliation: Jesus bringing us back from our rebellion and sin to God through the cross. The discipl...

Vulnerability, being real, and authentic—these things are desired by many. We want to be vulnerable and live in the midst of vulnerable community. But we don’t really know how, and it’s much harder than we think. Christians believe the problem with vulnerability is our sin, which leads to shame, which breaks relationships. In this message, Pastor Julie explains how Jesus is the answer to our shame...

Jesus wants us to be salty—weird, unique, different in a good way for the good of our world, by offering it the special blessings of Jesus and the gospel. But there’s a lot of reasons we could say that Christians aren’t that weird, and one of the main ways has to do with politics. Many people have walked away from faith in Jesus at least in part because they hoped Christians would be different—and...

Have you ever noticed how many books and movies are about someone who lives what seems to be a dull life, but then discovers a world behind ours, filled with mystery, wonder, but that is also frightening and dangerous? It seems like we have a sense that the world might actually be like that, but we have been told for so long that is not the way the world actually is. Things that people used to cal...

Faith is one of the most commonly discussed concepts in the whole Bible. Almost every single book of the New Testament refers to it. It’s how we begin and continue a Christian life of discipleship. It’s so central that the author of Hebrews writes, “It is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely see...

We’ve been in a series about how what makes Christians weird is what makes them “salty”, people who can make the world much better than it is. Probably the strangest thing Christians believe is that a man convicted and executed as a criminal came back to life again and now we worship him as God and rescuer of our souls. The writer and pastor Paul says in his letter to a group of Christians in the...

We’re all pretty aware there is something off with all of us, even if we might not be able to put our finger on it. For centuries, psychologists, philosophers, sociologists, artists and more have been trying to figure out what it is. Christians have always understood the problem to be that we have become enslaved to our “flesh”—our primal, deepest and–yes–most most authentic desires for self-grati...

The stats say most people believe in some kind of afterlife. But many who believe there’s something beyond this life struggle to believe in the idea of a hell. It’s a distinct belief Christians have, one which if we’re honest makes us uncomfortable sometimes, too. In this message, Pastor Joel walks through several important passages of Scripture to share what hell is actually going to be like acco...

One of the most basic beliefs of Christians, one that is very odd when you think about it, is the doctrine that Jesus is God incarnate, fully human and fully God. This is weird because it works backwards from how we’d expect it to go: normally we’d want to get rid of our embodiedness and the limitations that come with being human, not take it on. Yet, this is exactly what God does, and he does it...

This series has been all about hearing the voice of God and how a life of regularly hearing it leads us into all God wants for us. As we close this series out, it’s important to realize God’s voice is not the only one trying to speak to and influence us. There is also Satan. Revelation 12:9 tells us that Satan is an ancient monster and foe of God, the serpent who was in the garden with Adam and Ev...

We’ve spent a lot of time in this series talking about how to hear the voice of the shepherd, which Jesus promised was a reality for his followers in John 10, but the reality is there are times we will miss it. Many people report they have a frustrating experience trying to hear God’s voice. The Bible actually has a lot to say about why we might miss hearing God’s voice, and it’s a common enough e...

This series has focused on God’s voice in six specific ways that we know he speaks to people, but we can’t ever take it for granted that God does and has spoken to us most strongly in the Bible itself. It might happen more than you think that you’re waiting for God to speak to you through one of the means we’ve discussed in the series already but you might not realize the answer you seek is alread...

God speaks to us through many styles of communication, but perhaps none is so common as what is often called the still, small voice: a voice that comes to us like a thought in our head but that we can recognize to as a thought from God. We see this voice used in the famous story of Elijah in 1 Kings 19, and Paul talks about it in 1 Corinthians 2. It signifies a closeness to us from God that indica...

When we consider how God speaks, spectacular methods like dreams, visions, angels and more might come to mind. And while God does speaking in those ways—as we’ve studied already in this series—more often he speaks to us in “ordinary” ways, such as the topic of this message: a human voice. In this message, Pastor Joel explains what is happening when God speaks through people, some common ways it ha...

It can be hard to hear God’s voice when we don’t know how he speaks. Lots of times people wonder if God is speaking through this or that voice or experience, but can’t know for sure. In this message, Pastor Joel begins to talk about the six ways we see God speak in our Bibles, beginning with the first four, which we could call “supernatural” or “spectacular” means: Dreams/visions, an audible voice...

Hearing God’s voice is something Jesus tells us is possible for all of his sheep. But if we go into it with the wrong ideas about it, it can cause us to miss the voice of God and become frustrated and quit listening for it. In this message Pastor Joel walks through some guidelines (five of them, to be exact) to consider what will put us in a position to hear the voice of God well in our day to day...

In John 10 Jesus says that, “The shepherd of the sheep…calls his own sheep by name and leads them out…He goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice…I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me…My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” He’s saying the normal expectation of being one of his sheep is that we hear and recognize his voice. The p...

In this message, Pastor Julie reads the story of Mary and talks about how she relied on God’s faithfulness throughout her journey to Jesus’ birth. *Note: Due to some technical difficulties the first few minutes of the sermon are missing from this recording.

In the letter of 1 Peter, Peter writes that the prophets announced something glorious that is for our benefit and not theirs. They were speaking, of course, of the coming of Jesus. Do we really take it seriously that something glorious that other generations longed for is here? The prophets, if they were alive today, would tell us to “wake up!” They would tell us to not take it for granted. They w...