Sunshine Community Church's Podcast

Leviticus 19:9-19; 1 Peter 2:12 Neighboring well is one of the most essential outreach skills a Christian must cultivate. Of all the spheres in our lives, the neighborhood is most consistently available. It bookends our days as we rise, step up, return, rest, and sleep. It is a place where we must work out differences and forge lasting peace with people outside our family. It is a place where all...

2 Corinthians 10:13 -18 Our Congregation's mission statement talks about each of us having a distinct "sphere of influence." But what does that really mean? This series will explore the various spaces in which we have an opportunity to share about Jesus. It will radically increase our effectiveness in pursuing and nourishing the spiritually hungry people in each of our lives! It takes some thinkin...

Jeremiah 31:1-14 As we look to a new year, we would do well to take stock of all the promises God kept for us and all the ways he has proven that is love for us is based on his grace, not our performance. The more we think about it, the more we realize that all our blessings flow from the everlasting love with which he has loved us! The merriness and brightness we need is in the Lord's hand, not a...

1 John 4 Days that are merry and bright can only be had when we are filled up with love. We humans love so imperfectly, but always crave more; the world proves to us - again and again, that love can be scare and is often counterfeited. We desperately need someone to reset our definitions of love, truth, and even life! Jesus came at Christmas to do exactly that - he came to show us God's love and p...

Psalm 32 The merry and bright life we long for is often stopped by hidden guilt and deep dread of being unmasked as imposters. We often try to fool others (and ourselves) into thinking we are without flaws and that everything in our lives is just fabulous. These fears and falsehoods are the enemies of our joy; we can't be truly set free by the message of the Gospel until we have full victory over...

Romans 5:1-5; Philippians 4:6-7 Advent is a time of preparation marked by the beginning of the Christian liturgical year for millennia. It's important to remember the meekness and beauty of Jesus' first coming to earth, while also preparing our hearts for his second coming as the Mighty King and Victor! The purest hope we can have is that God will accept us into his heaven; the deepest peace comes...

This message concludes our series on Esther- God makes a way for his people to celebrate a victory that points clearly to him; it's his story, but it spills over into our blessing. 

These chapters mark the turning of the tide in this great tale. The change in power, influence, and safety for Esther, Mordecai, and the Jews could not be more dramatic! They go from victims to victors in only a few short movements of the story. We can clearly see there that God not only thwarts the plans of the Enemy, he puts his people in places of influence to reverse the damage and heal harms....

Esther 5-6 In these chapters we see the drama start to escalate as Esther sets her plans in motion while the danger to the Jewish people continues to grow. Mordecai's life is in even greater danger, and Haman's plot to harm him is accelerating even faster than his plans for the other Jews. But God loves to show his genius and sovereignty by turning the tables on the Enemy. As things start to go wr...

These chapters introduce us to the villan in the story - Haman. And man, is he a truly masty one. His hatred, selfish pride, and manipulative nature are downright unsettling. When we see how a single wicked person in the right place of power can destroy and hurt others, it can really be scary and sad! The truth is that Evil is always at work, and we will never know all the ways our Enemy is plotti...

Esther 1-2 Esther is different from other Old Testament books. It is, in many ways, a Persian story about things that happened to Jews living in danger and outside their home country It is an account of the way a world intent on undervaluing them ended up revering and fearing them because of the Lord. This story probes that the world only looks and leers at the exterior; but, meanwhile, God is wor...

Psalm 24 Knowing why we give, who benefits, and who we are trying to please in the process all helps us profoundly in our giving. When the locker room empties back out for the second half, there is a fresh start; let's rededicate our efforts to the Lord and his glory!

Proverbs 31:10-31, John 6:1-14 Welcome to our stewardship series, Halftime , in which we study the concept of managing resources with a mindset like Jesus'! Our church is halfway through a two-year stewardship journey, and we are very excited to stop and take stock of all God has done so far. You see, in life as in sports, at halftime, it is really important to know the score. There is no real ste...

Psalm 61: 2 Timothy 1 We all try to be omnipresent; we are often using our technology to convince ourselves and our loved ones that we can be in all of the places with all of the people, all at once! But we really, really can't. In fact, it seems that the more we try to be omnipresent, the less present we actually are; we walk around like empty husks of men and women, brains sucked out by handheld...

James 1:2-18   God knows EVERYTHING! Wow. That is too much knowledge to even imagine. I don't think I could even absorb all the knowledge there is about a snail, let alone every fact there is to know in the whole universe. But...I WANT to know it all, anyway. Maybe you feel the same. We long for omniscience, and we look high and low for knowledge. But God has set things up so that we just can't ha...

Romans 1:18-20, 1:16, John 14:13-14, 15:5, Luke 18:1-8, James 5:16b-18, Ephesians 6:10 God's omnipotence is manifest in us as prayer; we can't have all the power, but we can plead our case to the One who does.

Malachi 3 When something changes from its original form or nature, we say that it has mutated. If something can NEVER change from its original form or nature, we say that it is "immutable." We are VERY mutable… We change all the time, for good reasons and bad. In fact, it is often said that the only constant with us IS change. Not so with God - he is perfectly consistent and never alters his natur...

Isaiah 40   In this series, we will be looking at some of the ways God has limited our ability to reflect his image. We are like him in so many ways, and can become even more like him as we grow! But, at the same time, He has some things that make him totally unique and absolutely singular. We call these his "incommunicable attributes," meaning the parts of his nature we will never match or proper...

Psalm 119: 97-120   God gives understanding through his word. He preserves people in their difficulties. But those who see to avoid his laws by cunning fail.

Psalm 119:41-64 God invites us into a relationship of promises made and promises kept; our greatest freedom is experienced in this relationship of faithfulness!

Ezekiel 20 This passage is actually absolutely unique in the whole Bible. It is an entirely "behind the scenes" look at how God saw the Exodus and it gives us information about his relationship to Israel that we wouldn't have without Ezekiel. In this chapter, we discover even more about how undeserved and grace-based God's relationship with Israel is, and how utterly unmerited their rescue was, ri...

Ezekiel 17-19 It might sound strange, but people used to want God to deal with them based on group identity, not individual relationship. They preferred to just think, "I'm safe because I'm an Israelite, and our God loves all of us - it doesn't matter what I do as an individual." The idea that God reckons righteousness on an individual basis is fair, but not everyone used to think so! True Justice...

Ezekiel 15-16 This passage is pretty hard to hear. It is God's point of view on his relationship with his covenant people. He shares the story of his journey with Israel, including their humble beginnings, all he did for them along the way, and how badly they violated and disdained his care for them. It is brutal to read, and God was clearly right to punish them. The truth is, though, that Christi...

Psalm 119:17-40 In an age when the talk is all about freedom, it can be hard to undestand why the biblical writers spoke of loving God's law. Law, we hear, restricts and forbids. Law is supposed to be the opposite of freedom. However, law and freedom are more connected than we think and rediscovering God's law holds a key we need today.

Ezekiel 13-14 We will look at a big temptation leaders face in tough times - the temptation of denial. When news is bad, nobody wants to be the one who shares it. The problem is that, sometimes, sorting through the bad news first is the only way to get to the good news! When we tell people only what they want to hear, we make peace and approval to our idols. This idolatry distorts leadership and p...