The Heights Baptist Church

If you missed last week, I really encourage you to go back and listen. I mean really encourage you, otherwise you won’t grasp the significance of today. Last week I suggested, I might even say, proved, that we are walking around on empty. So, if we are exhausted, what should we do? This isn’t rocket science. Rest! If we’d let Him, God would lead us right to reenergized, refueled, and ready to go.

Empty is real. Its impact is real, and I do think knowing, acknowledging this is a part of the battle. I think sometimes as Christians it can be even harder to acknowledge this because there is this faulty idea that we aren’t supposed to struggle. We don’t hit empty. We don’t get depressed. I mean if I am strong in the Lord, that would never happen, right? Why not?

When you are a part of The Heights, you are a part of a family that gives, and God blesses that. God blesses giving. God blesses faith. God blesses obedience. 2020 really helped me appreciate what a giving church we are, and that positions us to be blessed, to be given even greater opportunity for the Lord.

Scripture reveals that outside of Christ, we are spiritually dead, controlled by the world, enslaved to the devil, under the power of flesh, and under the wrath of God. We didn't have the power to save ourselves. Thanks be to God, the scripture didn't end there. We have hope through Jesus Christ.

Can Jesus call us to a 'doesn’t quit' love? I understand there may be people who from a human perspective have committed worse sins against you, than you have against God or others. But, big or small, we never stop failing God. We never stop betraying His faithful love, and He continues to love us.

And today we are back on the topic of marriage and looking at sex and money together. Now these are two topics that certainly warrant a whole message to themselves. I’ve done whole series on these two topics, but today we handle them together. Now in this series we have been asking the question, “Why?” So, why do we have sex and money in a marriage?

What an opportunity we have with a child. We get to obey all these commands that we are afraid of obeying out in the world. We get to teach and train a person to know and love God. You say, I don’t know how? You know more than your 3 year-old. A child is a place where every one of us has a chance to introduce someone to Christ and then help them grow in that relationship with Him. It is our greate...

Today we turn from our discussion on marriage to parenting. We are coming back to marriage with little topics like sex and money, but today and next week, parenting. Today Karen and I are operating under a really simple principle for raising kids: have goals, a target, know what it is you are trying to do.

Last week we saw that the Lord’s distinct way for the man to fulfill the purpose was through sacrifice; and today we look at God’s way for wives. If the key word for husbands is sacrifice, for wives it is submission

The will of God for a husband is to make real to his wife what the sacrifice of Jesus looked like, and in so doing better understand that sacrifice himself. Husbands, is the will of God prospering in your hands? Are you wondering what that even means or looks like? Well, God has a picture for us. Let’s look this morning at Ephesians 5:25-29.

Well good morning, and welcome to Why Family? That is the question we are trying to answer as we kick off 2021. Last week we set the context. Today may be a bit repetitive to last week, but last week was more general and today I hope to be more specific and scriptural.

We have arrived at a place in America where it is as important as ever that we know the answer to *Why family?* If you’re single, divorced, or widowed, and no real thought on being married, you need to know the answer, be able to share the answer. If you’re 16, you need to know the answer and be able to share the answer.

I think most of us just by the nature of our individualism as Americans, do not fully grasp the God-designed role of the church in us experiencing God, His will, His blessings, the life He has for us. From God’s perspective church is essential to life in Christ, and for the American Christian it is maybe more of an accessory for life in Christ

Today makes week 5 we have been on this one verse. We have spent one week on the idea of a government that rests on His shoulders, and then a week each on these different titles, and what they say about Jesus and mean for us. And today we come to Prince of Peace.

We have taken a Sunday and looked at what it means to our world that the government will rest on this Child’s shoulder. We have spent a Sunday each on Wonderful Counselor and Mighty God, so today Everlasting Father. I have made the comment that I wonder if Isaiah fully grasped what he was writing, saying about this Child. What he is describing is so much more than special, more than a great hero,...

We continue this week in our study of Isaiah 9:6 as we look at Mighty God.

Isaiah 9:6 describes this Child in a way that we can only understand as very unique and special. More than unique and special, the Child is being described as God Himself. It was not unusual for ancient cultures to see their King, Emperor, Caesar, hero as a god; but the Hebrew culture was not one those. The Jewish faith did not see their kings or heroes as gods. I need, you need, everything that a...

We’re going to spend this Christmas season with this introduction of the Child in the manger, an introduction that came some 700 years before the manger, the Child, the Virgin. The ideas, the names in this verse not only wonderfully introduce us to the Child that is given to us, but in this we meet the Child who holds all the solutions to 2020, all the solutions to your life. I have five messages:...

I guess I could call today a “Thanksgiving Message,” and if I did, I would be doing that because next week is in fact the beginning of my Christmas series. I don’t think I have ever started a Christmas series before Thanksgiving, but I have a series that is 5 messages long and that meant I needed to start next week. So here we go, here’s me being thankful not for Covid-19, but in Covid-19, because...

The last message of Revelation: 24 messages, a number of them over 35, 40 minutes long; and not only would I not call this an in-depth study, I would say we barely skimmed the surface. There is so much here. God revealed the future to change our today. Turn with me to 22:7-21.

For so many Heaven is a place of the mystical, hazy, can’t quite hold it. And that creates a problem. Heaven is to be a real hope, but it is difficult to hope in something we do not understand. We understand and desire the physical because that is the way God made us. God has communicated very physical, concrete ideas of what Heaven is and where it is going to be. What He has communicated is worth...

Today is the 22nd of 24 messages in Revelation, even though we aren’t in Revelation today. This is a supplement to our series. The last several messages have been much about people being resurrected. We have seen the rapture, the marriage supper of the Lamb, and the Great White Throne. All these people coming to life in the future might make one wonder, Where are they right now? Where do people go...

Every day we walk outside we can celebrate a diversity of how God created everything. Celebrating diversity is celebrating our Creator. Now, to be clear, because diversity is used in a variety of ways today; we don’t celebrate a diversity of ways of rejecting God. We don’t celebrate a diversity of ways of rejecting what He has revealed in His word. But we certainly celebrate the diversity of His c...

Don’t starve at the dinner table. With God’s presence awaiting easy discovery, why do we continue to seek him in ways apart from what he has spoken. Dig in to the Word of God, Let the Word dwell in you richly, allow the Holy Spirit to make himself home in you. Live within the Power and Presence of God and partake at the great feast that God has prepared for you and for me.

Last week we looked at the return of Christ to this world. Unbelievers were wiped off the planet, the Antichrist and false prophet cast into the lake of fire as Jesus returned as the reigning and victorious King. So now what? Is this heaven? Is this eternity? Not quite yet.