Rise Community Podcast

What does it truly mean when we say God is love? This profound exploration of 1 John 4:7-11 takes us beyond sentimental notions into the transformative reality of divine love. We discover that authentic Christian love isn't something we manufacture through effort or willpower—it flows directly from experiencing God's love ourselves. The passage reminds us that we are beloved before we are called t...

Our exploration of 1 John 2:28-3:10 confronts us with one of faith's most fundamental questions: how can we truly know we belong to God? In a world filled with conflicting messages about Christianity and countless voices claiming to define authentic faith, we're invited to discover what real belonging looks like. The message centers on the beautiful concept of abiding in Christ - not as a one-time...

John reminds us of a powerful truth: our identity is not found in the world but in Christ. We are forgiven, loved by the Father, and strengthened by God's Word. Yet every day we face competing influences that seek to pull our hearts away from Him. In this message from 1 John 2:12–17, we explore the three great temptations John identifies—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride o...

This week's message takes us deep into 1 John 2:3-11, confronting us with an uncomfortable but essential truth: knowing God isn't just about intellectual belief or past spiritual experiences—it shows up in our daily obedience. The challenge here isn't perfection, but direction. Are we actively keeping God's commands, or have we settled into a comfortable Christianity that exists only in memory? Th...

This week's challenges us to reconsider what it truly means to walk in the light. The early church faced a crisis when false teachers claimed they were without sin, creating confusion and robbing believers of their joy. We discover that joy isn't the same as happiness—happiness depends on circumstances, but joy is rooted in something deeper and more stable: God himself. The sermon confronts a unco...

Our study of 1 John begins with a stunning reality: the eternal God who existed before time itself chose to make Himself tangible and accessible through Jesus Christ. We're challenged to move beyond viewing Christianity as mere intellectual knowledge or religious rules, and instead embrace it as an intimate, transformative relationship with the living God. The message cuts through the false teachi...

We're embarking on a journey through 1 John that challenges us to move beyond surface-level faith into authentic spiritual living. This powerful sermon isn't just another letter—it's a poetic, emotional call to cut through the fakeness that permeates our world and even our churches. The core message confronts a crisis that's as relevant today as it was in 90 AD: false teachers were fracturing the...

This week Brenden challenges us to rediscover what church truly means in our modern world. Drawing from Acts 2:42, we're reminded that the early believers devoted themselves to teaching, fellowship, sharing meals, and prayer - not as a checklist, but as a way of being present and belonging to one another. The word 'devoted' here actually means 'to be present, to belong,' which shifts our understan...

This week's message takes us deep into 1 Peter, where we discover what it means to live as exiles and sojourners in a world that is not our final home. Peter writes to believers scattered throughout ancient Turkey, addressing them as God's chosen people who are temporarily residing in a foreign land. The central revelation here is stunning: our identity as followers of Christ is fundamentally shap...

In our conclusion to the Sermon on the Mount we are presented with the most fundamental choice of our spiritual lives: will we build our house on rock or sand? The message cuts through our comfortable Christianity to reveal a challenging truth - it's not enough to simply hear Jesus' words, we must actively live them out. Jesus uses three vivid images to illustrate this choice: two gates leading to...

Our exploration of the Road to Emmaus story from Luke 24 challenges us to confront an uncomfortable truth: we all approach Jesus with assumptions that can blind us to who He truly is. Just as those two disciples walked alongside the resurrected Christ without recognizing Him, we too can spend years in church, serving faithfully, yet remain spiritually blind to the real Jesus. The message exposes h...

This week's message on Holy Week invites us to journey beyond the familiar narrative of Palm Sunday and Easter to examine the raw, uncomfortable reality of betrayal and failure in the lives of Jesus' closest disciples. We're confronted with two parallel stories: Judas, who allowed Satan to consume him and chose isolation after his betrayal, and Peter, who denied Christ three times yet chose the pa...

This powerful exploration of Matthew 7:15-23 challenges us to reconsider what true spiritual authenticity looks like. We often think we can easily spot false prophets—the obvious cult leaders and charlatans. But Jesus warns us about something far more subtle: those who appear righteous, who say 'Lord, Lord,' who cast out demons and perform miracles, yet remain unknown to Christ. The sermon unpacks...

In our exploration of Matthew's Sermon on the Mount, we encounter a challenging truth: knowing Scripture and living it are vastly different things. The passage challenges us to move beyond religious performance toward genuine heart transformation. We're confronted with the reality that our relationships are the proving ground of our faith. Every conflict, every difficult conversation, every moment...

The Sermon on the Mount challenges us to examine the mirror of our own hearts before we cast judgment on others. In Matthew 7:1-6, we encounter one of Scripture's most direct commands: do not judge, or you too will be judged. This isn't a call to abandon discernment or ignore right and wrong—rather, it's an invitation to radical self-reflection. Jesus uses vivid imagery of specks and planks to ill...

This powerful message confronts one of the most universal struggles we face: anxiety. Drawing from Matthew 6:25-34, we're invited into Jesus' radical teaching about worry and trust. The sermon challenges us to examine what truly drives our lives—is it the relentless pursuit of security through money, possessions, and control, or is it trust in God's provision? Through the beautiful imagery of bird...

At the heart of the Sermon on the Mount lies a prayer that has shaped Christian faith for two millennia—the Lord's Prayer. This message invites us to rediscover this ancient prayer not as empty repetition, but as a transformative spiritual practice that calibrates our hearts daily toward God. We're challenged to move beyond our Protestant hesitancy about liturgy and ritual, recognizing that these...

This week's message takes us deep into Matthew 6, where Jesus confronts one of the most challenging aspects of our spiritual lives: the difference between genuine righteousness and religious performance. We're challenged to examine whether our acts of devotion—giving to the needy, praying, fasting—are truly for God's glory or subtly designed to earn human applause. The sermon unpacks Jesus' use of...

This week's message challenges us to reimagine what love truly means through Jesus' radical teaching in Matthew 5:43-48. We're confronted with an uncomfortable truth: we all create mental categories and rankings of people, justifying why some deserve our kindness while others don't. But Jesus demolishes these artificial boundaries by commanding us to love our enemies—not with warm feelings, but wi...

In a world spinning with anxiety, tragedy, and seemingly endless cycles of retaliation, we're invited to discover something revolutionary: a way of responding to injustice that doesn't mirror the violence done to us. This exploration of Jesus' teaching on 'an eye for an eye' from the Sermon on the Mount reveals that what we've often misunderstood as brutal vengeance was actually ancient wisdom des...

This message confronts us with a powerful distinction that exists in every church community: the difference between being a believer and becoming a disciple. We learn that approximately 80% of any congregation consists of people who are saved and heaven-bound, yet remain spiritually stagnant—they don't read their Bibles regularly, don't share their faith, don't give generously, and don't serve in...

This week's message takes us deep into Matthew 5:33-37, where Jesus challenges our understanding of oaths and integrity in ways that cut straight to the heart. We discover that Jesus isn't simply telling us not to swear—He's exposing how religious people in His time had created loopholes to manipulate others while technically keeping the law. They would swear by the temple, the altar, or Jerusalem...

This powerful exploration of Matthew 5:31-32 takes us deep into Jesus' teaching on marriage and divorce, revealing something far more profound than a simple rulebook. We discover that Jesus wasn't creating new burdens but was actually protecting the vulnerable and elevating women in a culture that treated them as disposable. The sermon unpacks the crucial difference between God's ideal will found...

This message challenges us to rethink our entire approach to spiritual growth by distinguishing between 'trying' and 'training.' Drawing from Matthew 11:28-30 where Jesus invites us to take His easy yoke, we're confronted with an honest question: do we actually experience that ease and rest in our faith journey? The truth is, many of us treat salvation as a finish line when it's really just the st...