The Gathering Windsor Podcast

“As Paul prays, these Colossians will learn what will help them stay and succeed in the game of life. What we’ll find is that It’ll be what we need to accomplish all that God intends for each of us, but nothing we can find in ourselves.”

If Jesus Christ alone was not sufficient for salvation, then eternal life could be obtained by any sort of means, and the gospel would be reduced to just another path. Paul begins his letter the Colossians by introducing himself to those he’d never met, reminding them exactly how thankful they should be for the one who cannot be replaced.

Are we true disciples?  Are we building our lives on the solid rock or shifting sand?  Pastor Phil finishes the series on the Sermon on the Mount by examining the intense warning and gracious invitation contained in Matthew 7:21-29

“This whole sermon of Jesus comes on the heels of Jesus’ first call to disciples to repent. To this Jesus essentially returns as he asks people like you and me, ”Do you know where you are going? How will you get there?”

You could imagine that Jesus, fully aware of every human heart would see this combination of desire to live for God and be successful in Kingdom living, and yet at the same time the look of “how are we ever going to be able to do this?” Is this not just a recipe for despair? Our effort to live for Him in His Kingdom is possible as Jesus points out in this well-known but often misunderstood passage...

A sermon on judgement in our lives. The way judgement should be looked at in every aspect of our scripture and through God's grace in an effort to discern and uphold His standards.

How do you handle day-to-day worries? The simple things that we get anxious about like food or clothing? What about our careers, our money, or relationships? Jesus addresses them for us and gives us a practical approach to handling the stress that often comes with them.

Like the first disciples, fallen sinners exposed to a world of selfishness, will fight the temptation to focus on temporal wealth – things that do not bring glory to God. They’ll collect earthly treasures as if they are better than anything Heaven can give. Jesus wants to wake us to reality and teach us that what we treasure tells us more about our relationship with Him than we may know.

Believers must remember that the things that we do must be solely for God and not for ourselves. The question is: will what we do be for God or for us. It might be a harder question to answer than we might think.

We understand justice, but as believers who want to be more of who God has remade us to be, what we share with Jesus’ disciples is the need to be more like our King in how we respond when we are personally mistreatment by others. This will of course, also inform how we are to treat others as well.

We like loopholes and often look for them. So often we are like the Jews of Jesus’ day, who valued convenient truth over absolute truth, we often rely on a “as you don’t get caught mindset.” How much are we committed to truth, exactly? How does that relate to Oaths? In Matthew 5:33-37, Jesus continues to challenge the popular but false Jewish interpretations of the OT.

Pastor Phil concludes the series in the book of Ruth by highlighting the character of Boaz and Ruth.  He also explains that Boaz’s redemption of Ruth is a foreshadow of our ultimate redemption in Jesus Christ.

We get so caught up in doing, that we forget that God is the One who can make it happen and possibly without even realizing it, we jump up on the throne of grace – we grab the wheel of our life and exclaim – “thank you Lord, we’ll take it from here.” Today we learn that if we’re going to live for God by faith, it’ll mean that we must be careful to let Him lead.

We can’t always perceive what God is doing in our lives and wish we could see just what God is up to.  We have the benefit of hindsight as we walk with Naomi, Ruth and Boaz and learn that God’s imperceptible  providence is continually at work in the lives of ordinary people.t is God up to through our disasters?

If Christianity is a ‘singing faith,’ why do we sing and what good will it do in the life of the believer? Today, from both the Old and New Testament, guest speaker Jody Cross will explore with us what it means to “Sing!”

Naomi teaches us that we need to trust God even when we don’t want to; when our theology is right, but our interpretation is wrong. What is God up to through our disasters?

Pastor Phil begins our series on the book of Ruth by explaining that God’s people are called to trust God’s plans even in the midst of pain.

Whether you have grown up in church or you are new to exploring Christianity, we all need to hear of and reflect on the power of the Gospel. The Gospel is real, as evidenced in the

Many of us know this story about “Doubting Thomas.” John adds this story to help sinners to believe in Jesus, but also as a reminder to believers to help them grow in their faith.  

While the gospel accounts tell us everything we need to understand how Jesus died, Galatians 3:10-14 helps us to understand why it was needed. As Paul explains the Curse, the Christ, and the Cross, we’ll see that Jesus Christ overcame our greatest problem, and provided for our deepest need.

Adultery, lust, and divorce damage and destroy marriages.  It’s an all-too common reality in our culture.  However, believers in Jesus, are called to live in counter-cultural ways.  They are to live as citizens of God’s kingdom.  Pastor Phil walks through a difficult passage and explains that kingdom citizens honour their king by honouring marriage.

Kingdom citizens have, in Christ, an exceeding righteousness that makes it possible for us to live as we should – the way that God intended with attitudes and desires that please him. This is possible all because Jesus came.

Salt and light has an unmistakable influence in life, and so they serve as a divinely inspired, and relatively easy-to-understand metaphor about the importance the role that believers play in the world.

The Sermon on the Mount is the quintessential summary of Jesus’ teaching.  The beatitudes serve as the introduction to the sermon.  They also describe the counter-culture values of the Kingdom of God.  Pastor Phil walks through Matthew 5:1-12 and explains that those who trust in the King must learn to live as citizens of his kingdom.