Resurrection City Church - St. Paul Minnesota

Christmas has a lot to do with power, and especially with the idea of power and love combining, but that’s maybe not how we think of it. In this message, Pastor Joel explains how Christmas shows us an absurd kind of power: the power of love, and we see it expressed in the nativity scene. When this power truly touches us, we aren’t the same. Join us for this final Sunday in Advent as we meditate on...

Christmas is all about an amazingly generous gift from God to us—himself. And so advent has always included an encouragement to being generous ourselves. In this message, Pastor Julie explains what generosity looks like, how it’s rooted in God himself and how we take that serious at Res City.

Advent comes to us in what is the darkest time of year; the sun comes up late and sets early. It’s fitting that so much of the imagery of the season also has to do with light that dawns in the darkness of Jesus being born: “A people living in darkness have seen a great light” (Isaiah 9:2). We live in a world where things often feel dark. What response might we have to the darkness we feel that can...

How much time do people spend preparing for a wedding vs. how much they spend preparing for a marriage? The stats show people spend a lot more time preparing for the wedding than what comes after—the much more important thing. The same question could be applied to us and Christmas? How much time do we spend preparing for the holiday part of Christmas vs. how much time do we spend preparing our hea...

If you’re a Harry Potter fan, you might remember Barry Bot’s every flavored beans.  The idea is that some “beans” are good flavors- strawberry, toasted marshmallow, while others are vomit or ear wax flavored. The tricky thing is you can’t tell by looking at the beans which one you are going to get- you have to taste and see- to your horror or delight. The idea of a mixed bag of good and bad jelly...

The God of the Bible is described as an author, one who tells the greatest story the world has ever known, and one we’re invited to join into with our own individual stories. In Psalm 105 we read about one chapter in this great story, and Pastor Julie shares what it looks like for us to see our own story line up with the one told here.

It’s natural for us to praise or celebrate that which feels worthy. It can even feel delightful to do it sometimes. In Psalm 147, we are invited to see God as delightful to worship, and we see why as we read through its twenty verses. In this message, Pastor Joel unpacks the Psalm and shares three suggestions for how to build a sense of worth in our hearts for God.

In the Psalms, different parts of God’s nature and character are drawn out for us and when we really think about them, fill us with awe and wonder. In Psalm 90, the key idea is God’s timelessness, the way in which he is not bound by time in the way we are. It’s harder to wrap our heads around this idea than others, but very relevant and wonderful for us when we do. In this message, Res City worshi...

It’s easy to get cynical in today’s world. It’s easy to believe that doing the right thing leads you nowhere. But Scripture wants to challenge us away from falling into this bleak way of viewing the world, and offer us one of hope and stability. In Psalm 18, we see that God’s character is righteousness, which speaks to his faithfulness to bless us when we walk in his way and wisdom. In this messag...

In Psalm 18:1-19, God is depicted in a way we haven’t yet seen in this series: A fierce deliverer. He is a terrifying force, but his power is used for the purpose of delivering his servant, David. While we might see someone described like God is here as intimidating, it’s all about perspective. We are the ones God rushes to deliver. But what does God deliver us from? And do we want to be rescued?...

It seems like when we see the news, it’s always bad. Psychology tells us that humans are just more interested in bad news than good news, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of good news out there. In Psalm 65 we consider that God is like a king who travels the whole earth, leaving tracks like from a chariot behind him that “drip fatness”—his goodness and blessing pooled up in the track marks...

We all want control. We try to control our lives and everything around us, but we can't, and in fact all we end up dong is making ourselves anxious. But we find in Scripture reassurance, or wisdom, that reminds us God is in control, and we can trust in him because of it. In this message, Pastor Julie explains why this is good news for us.

We naturally admire people who aren’t helpless when the world doesn’t work like it should, and we should have the same admiration with God. In Psalm 82, we read about what God does for those who are helpless in the world, though he does it in a way we might not expect. In this message, we’ll be taken into a mysterious and often avoided concept in Scripture: the divine council, a group of spiritual...

Do you ever wonder why Earth is not like other planets? On other planets the conditions are so extreme that no life can ever live, but on Earth life is everywhere and we don’t just have to try and survive; we can thrive. We might just chalk it up to random chance, but in the Bible there’s another answer: God’s active care of creation. In Psalm 104, as the writer surveys all of creation, from the s...

One essential piece of discipleship is awe. We need awe, but awe is not something that comes naturally to us. One way we can cultivate awe within us is by reading the Psalms, which is what we’ll be doing in this series: reading selected Psalms that tell us about who God is in order to inspire awe within us. In the first message in this series, Pastor Joel leads us through Psalm 139, which presents...

In the final chapter of Jonah, we finally get the conversation between God and Jonah we’ve been waiting for. This is a chance for both to speak honestly to one another and for us to finally find out exactly what made Jonah run from God in the first place. What Jonah tells God—and us—is a stunning admission that God is not the God he wants to worship. Jonah is offended by God’s grace. In this final...

The story of Jonah is not really about a man who spends some time in the belly of a fish. Instead, it’s the story about a man who runs from God. In this message, we finally get into why Jonah ran from God—and it might not be the reason you expect. Jonah, from what we can discern of him, was an intensely patriotic Jew, one who put his love of country ahead of God. This is the gap that existed betwe...

In the first chapter of Jonah, we read about Jonah’s flight from God. Jonah is so relatable because we all run from God, but when we choose to stop, we have to complete the process and return to God. In chapter two, we see Jonah return to God from the belly of a great fish, which the Bible often calls repentance. What does it look like to return to God? In this message, Pastor Joel explains three...

The Old Testament sacrificial system can be confusing if you don't understand the meaning behind the rituals. In this sermon, Pastor Julie explains what's going on in the biggest sacrifice ritual: The Day of Atonement found in Leviticus 16. This sacrifice points ahead to the ultimate sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross to pave the way for all of us to be in right relationship with God again. Ev...

Leviticus can be a difficult book to understand, and people who skim through it might find it to be one of those irrelevant parts of the Bible they hear about. But if we hear what the book is saying to us over and over to help make sense of it, all the hard to understand parts make a lot more sense. The phrase “Be holy for I’m holy” and variations of it recur eleven times in the book, and it’s her...

In this special message, Res City Leadership Team Member Miles Trump offers some reflections on hospitality.

Leviticus is one of the hardest books for a modern Western person to understand. Full of ancient rituals, rules, and regulations, it’s hard to understand, especially when we so firmly believe in the simplicity of the gospel of Jesus: where faith and grace are the foundations of our relationship. But despite the fact that it seems opposed to those foundations, Leviticus has a lot to say to us about...

Sometimes, the most extraordinary thing is right under our noses. In this final message of the series, Pastor Joel talks about the ordinary is good, but we must be careful to not let ourselves believe the good news we believe and the Savior and King we give our allegiance to is ordinary. He walks through the story of the transfiguration of Jesus to talk about how we need these reminders from time...

Sometimes, we find ourselves in seasons of deep goodness—refreshed, our needs met, nothing burdening us, vibing. As Dallas Willard writes, “God has yet to meet anyone except for where they actually are,” which means even in these seasons, just like any other, God is looking to meet us. How can we be intentional to give those times of goodness over to God? In this message, Pastor Joel walks through...