That's Grace Podcast - WB

Faith is kind of this ambiguous word that we use and is often used when it comes to religion and our belief in God. But it’s also something that is pretty hard to put your finger on. We talk about someone being a person of great faith or we say that we want to grow in our faith, but what is is really? In this week’s message, we take a look at what the Bible says about what faith is and what we mig...

God is working to write a beautiful story with your life, but it doesn’t feel that way all the time does it? Instead of feeling fulfilled, we feel empty, alone, and broken. We feel that we are too broken and too messed up for God to be able to fix. The truth is while you might find yourself in an unexpected circumstance, God’s plan hasn’t fallen apart. In this week’s message, Pastor Ken uses the I...

Who do you have in life that’s there for you in both the good and the bad? The one who celebrates with you on the mountaintops and the one that is there for support in the valleys of life. The truth is, we all need the love, care, and support of others. We have an innate desire to be known deeply by others. But it can be difficult to open up about the darker corners of our hearts. The things that...

What would it take for God to consider you faithful? Maybe the first things that come to mind are how often you attend church, how frequently you give to the church, or maybe how much you serve those who are in need. But in this week of our series Scoreboard, we see that God measures faithfulness not by the things we mentioned above, but by the time we spend personally with Him! For many of us, ha...

If you’re like most people, you’ve probably chosen to skip out on going to church here and there. Maybe it’s even been a while since you’ve been to church. Like gets busy and sometimes if we’re honest, church just doesn’t seem like the most valuable use of our time. This week in our series, Scoreboard, we talk about how our expectations of church often determine the value we feel from it. If we re...

What kind of reputation do you want to be remembered with? When people think of you what thoughts, emotions, and reactions would you hope that they’d have? Looking at the way you live your life right now, would these things be what people  remember you by? In the next week of our series Scoreboard, we see how everywhere Jesus went, He had a following of people because of His willingness and H...

Over the past few weeks, we’ve talked about how God has intended our faith to benefit more than just us. The expression of our faith should extend to those in our circles of influence, but sometimes, it’s easier to play the “Christian part” when we are at work, at church, and with our friends. But how does your faith affect those who are in your own home? Do they see your faith being lived out whe...

Time is the most precious resource that we have. Unlike money and possessions, our time is something that we can never earn or buy back. Once it is gone, it is gone. So it’s no wonder that we most often use what time we have for our benefit, but for those who follow Jesus, he says that our time and abilities have been given to us for so much more than our own gain. In this week of our series Score...

Have you ever stopped to think about why talking about money is such a sensitive topic? Money is often the center for many of our arguments, relational breakdowns, stress, frustrations, and worries. It kinda makes sense seeing as how we spend a large portion of our week and our lives working for it. We give up so much time and effort to gain money that is is often something that we hold very close...

How would your life be different if you had a community of people pushing you to grow in your faith? What’s holding you back? Is it the fear of vulnerability, time commitment or thinking it’s unnecessary? The truth is God intended you to share life with other Christ followers for more than just an hour on the weekends. In the second week of our series Scoreboard, we looked at what the Bible says a...

If you had to guess who benefits more from your faith, would it be you or those around you? For most of us, we would probably have to admit that our faith benefits us the most. While it’s true that our faith does benefit us, God has a much bigger plan for your faith. In the first week of our series Scoreboard, we looked at what the Bible has to say about who should benefit most from our faith, wha...

If you had the choice between living in luxury or leaving a legacy, which one would you choose? Most of us would probably try to pick both, but these two values are often in competition with one another. Do we make decisions that best impact the life we are living right now, or make decisions that will leave an impact both now and long after we’re gone? It’s the never ending struggle between insta...

You would probably agree that most of your closest friends, family, and even acquaintances are pretty similar to you. We tend to create and maintain relationships with people who hold to similar values as us, who believe like us, live like us, and yes…even vote like us. There seems to be a part of our nature that searches for comfortability in the people that we rub shoulders with. And this tenden...

Most of us recognize that we all have gifts, talents, time, and resources. Most of the time, we work hard to leverage these things in order to achieve success or to advance ourselves in life. Sometimes we even refer to these things as “God-given” gifts. But have you ever stopped to think what purposes God may have given you these things to accomplish? Most of the time, we leverage them for our goo...

God never drafted you for you to idly sit on the sidelines. God created you with a purpose for a specific purpose! Somehow, we naturally know that we we’re not here just for ourselves. There is an innate sense built into us that we were created for something bigger! But how do you figure out what your purpose is so that you can begin to live it out? In the second week of our series DNA, Pastor Ste...

In the first week of our series DNA, we explore the first and most important of our churches values – Biblically Centered. We recognize that we didn’t invent us. We didn’t choose to be born with the skills, IQ, or advantages. All of that was a gift given to us by God to be leveraged in this life. And because, we didn’t invent us, God has a unique plan for our lives and it’s in His Word that we dis...

Every year, Easter comes around and we hear the stories of Jesus being crucified, dying, being buried in the tomb, and then miraculously raising from the dead. But maybe to you, these stories seem a little far fetch. You very well might believe in God and have grown up in church, but now that you’re an adult you have your doubts about how much is fact or fiction. The good news is that you’re not a...

How do you think your life would look differently if you began to have regular, personal communication with God? Now this isn’t the same thing as telling others our thoughts and prayers are with them. I’m talking about real, genuine, heart to heart talks with God about your decisions, your circumstances, your hurt, your joy, and your desires. In the last week of this series, Pastor Stephen talks a...

In last week’s teaching, we discussed how prayer is supposed to be a performance we put on for God, but a conversation we are beginning. But if prayer is a conversation, how are we supposed to hear from God? How are we to know when He answers, if He answers, or what is His answer to our prayers? Are we supposed to listen for an audible voice telling us what to do? Is it possible for us to mistake...

Imagine it’s a special occasion like a birthday or anniversary and you receive two cards, both from people you care about. One card contains words written by an author and holds only a signature from your loved one. However, the other card is filled with a hand written notes. Which one would you find to be more meaningful. Most of the time our answer would probably be the one with the original, ha...

Prayer is one of those things that we kind of do without thinking about why we do them. We know the Our Father and have other prayers memorized, but what’s the point? We probably all would say that prayer is important in the life and faith of a Christian, but you’ve probably prayed before and felt like God never answered. Did He not hear you? Was He too busy? Or did He just not care to answer your...

So far this series, we’ve looked at how God has used the picture of adoption to describe His relationship with us and we’ve looked at our responsibility to look out for those who are most disadvantaged. In week three of this series, Pastor Brian talks about why God wanted to adopt us. To rescue us is one thing but to adopt is something different. Why did God choose to do this and how does this cha...

Adoption might be one of the most beautiful and powerful expressions of love that we know. To choose to love another, to make them your own, and to allow yourself to be inconvenienced so that you can make their life better. It’s no wonder that God uses this metaphor to describe His relationship with us. While we were distant from God, with nothing to offer Him, He chose to pay a price in order to...

After looking last week at the picture of adoption that God uses to describe His relationship with us, we look at what role God has asked us to play in defending the weak and helping those who are most disadvantaged. We see in James 1:27 that the purest form of religion in the sight of God is the care of orphans and widows and refusing to allow the world to bring you back to the things you once wo...