The Olive Branch Markham • Audio Podcast

This message is part of our series, "Fear and Peace – God is where He's supposed to be even if life isn't" The one thing that rocks our world and steals our peace more quickly and thoroughly than anything else—is chaos, ruptures, and breakdowns in our relational world. Know who needs to fix that? We do. No one else—not even the posse of friends we tell about it—can heal our relational world. ...

This message is a part of our series, "Fear and Peace: God is where He is supposed to be when life isn't". If you’ve been a person of faith for any length of time, you have without doubt gone through the cycle of thinking, "There’s God!”, where you sense His Presence, you feel assured that He’s with you, working in your circumstances, your Forgiver, source of strength and hope. And then one day, y...

This message is the final part of our series, "If You Wanna Go Up, You Gotta Go Down".  No one ever drifts into what Christ has called them to be; we have to cut the anchors, decide on our primary citizenship, keep our eyes on the ultimate goal of life, and PRESS ON!

This message is part of our message series, "If You Wanna Go Up, You Gotta Go Down". Who are you imitating?  We start as babies, copying the big kids and the adults around us. That's how we begin learning about our new world.  Then, we're teens – and we act and dress like our closest friends. It's a way of expressing our belonging.  But adults, whether we know it or not, we continue...

This message is part of our message series, "If You Wanna Go Up, You Gotta Go Down".  We have all received way more than we deserve in life. God’s goodness and love follows us in many many ways.  Life is all about God’s goodness and kindness—it's called Grace!  Our lives have never been intended to be dams...reservoirs...bigger barns... where we hoard and store grace,...

This message is part of our series, "If You Wanna Go Up, You Gotta Go Down". Paul reveals that, like us, he was a collector of personal trophies. Things that proved how important, successful and valuable and knowledgeable he was. One day, he had to follow the example of Jesus Christ and empty himself. He realized that trying to impress and coerce people was a dead-end street. He also realized that...

This message is part of our message series, "If You Wanna Go Up, You Gotta Go Down". A lot of times, Christ-followers just don't get it–that our faith was meant to be lived in community with others–little platoons where we know and are known, love and are loved, serve and are served, celebrate and are celebrated.  In fact, every truth taught in this letter was meant to be interpreted and...

This message is part of our series, "If You Wanna Go Up, You Gotta Go Down". Most of us underestimate the awesome impact our lives can have on others–simply by God shining His glory through us.  The darker the world gets, the greater that chance we have to light it up–bring colour, clarity, dispel fear... The most amazing news is that God Himself is at work in us, helping us want to obey...

This is the first message of our series, "If You Wanna Go Up, You've Gotta Go Down". If we want true greatness in our own lives, if we want to leave light behind us—and step into greatness forever—the way is down. Wait. What?! In our world, UP is a big deal.  When we’re little, we can’t wait till we grow up.  We want the value of our home to go UP.  We want our career...

This message is a part of our series, "Higher Ground".  The Gospel–the Good News–it is the most amazing truth on earth. The power to change the world at its core. And it was tremendously costly to Christ, who died to make it freely available to all.  Now, as Christians, we are called to not just USE the Gospel... but to LIVE it, and offer it to the people of this world for whom it is ina...

This message is part of our series, "Higher Ground". Praying for someone else can sure be intimidating. How do I do it well? What is something I should always say? What if I suck at praying out loud? Sadly, all of us have thought this before. Paul, in his little letter to the Philippians, has a fantastic approach to this dilemma. He suggests that when we pray for others, we pray for them to be “fi...

This message is part of the series, "Higher Ground".    How we understand it: “To live is ME, to die is LOSS” But once again, God's Word blows the assumptions of our culture out of the water. The Apostle Paul says, "To live is Christ, to die is gain." Is it possible to live on a plane that is absolutely inaccessible–where your life, your values, and your reward are untouchable? Even chea...

This message is part of our series, "Higher Ground".  Our world system makes it pretty clear that joy is something that happens to you if you can just click in all the right things–kind of a roll of the dice.  The implication is that it is clearly related to our circumstances.  The amazing, counter-intuitive teaching of the Bible is that joy is a choice, largely unrelated...

This message is part of our series, "Higher Ground".   We westerners are obsessed with doing.  We think sweat, energy, productivity--and endless doing is the key to everything. When we think of God's will, we often think, "What does He want me to do?"--as if that's the ultimate goal.  When we follow God's direction, we look for a completed, packaged product--something.&nbs...

This is the first message of our series, "Higher Ground" (July 2020).  Jesus talked A LOT about the Kingdom of God. He literally meant, the span of God’s reign and leadership. The word ‘KINGDOM’, for us, immediately brings to mind a lot of stuff from the Middle Ages: knights, castles, princesses... stuff that has no real place in what Jesus meant. The word ‘country’ or ‘nation’ is where the b...

This message is the second message in our two-part series from "The Letter of James". Doing what God says to do. Why is that so much harder than we'd like? We definitely WANT TO, in theory... but when it comes to truly acting, we often can stall.

This is part one of two from The Letter of James. Blair shares with us some timely truths about the role of trials in the Christian's life. They have an important role to play. 

This message is part of our series, "THE SIGNMAKER". Jesus made an extraordinary claim for Himself which either reveals Who He really is –– or makes him crazy and off the wall! He claimed, at the end of this astounding message on how to live well, that He would be the Judge at the end of time. Imagine if you or I made this kind of claim? Jesus’ words are shocking! The bottom line is that there is...

This message is a part of our series, "The Signmaker".  At a time when there are so many choices and so many options, there are people who tend to be more selective with who they trust with their bank accounts–than who they trust with our souls. It’s important to know, especially when it comes to your soul, what a person’s motives are. Some people’s motives are really all about themselves......

This message is part of our series, "The Signmaker". Choice is one of God’s best gifts to human beings. It’s something He allows us to do––without interfering––because it’s part of being made in His image. We LIVE in a land of choice at a TIME where there are more choices than ever before in history of the world! But we’re in the middle of a season where those are choices have been severely limite...

Becoming like Christ... because that is what we were meant for. Blair Malfara shares a message about what it means to bear the image of God. The final message of our series, "Start Stopping".

The final message in our series, "Start Stopping".  Everyone has expectations about how they should be treated. No one likes to be ignored, judged, hated, devalued, marginalized, or seen as worthless, useless, dumb, defective or contaminated. Jesus had a very simple solution for just about every relational issue you can imagine: "Do for others what you want them to do for you."   So, wha...

This message is the a part of our series, "Start Stopping".  Whenever it comes to us worrying and stressing out over the circumstances we find ourselves in, Jesus always points up—to the goodness and generosity of a Heavenly Father with infinite love, infinite resources, infinite wisdom and infinite time. But, we tend to not even look up!  We’re pushing, scrounging, badgering our kids, t...

Judging! Today's Christian, we are marked with this very characteristic to the point where people are turned off from getting to know our God.  Jesus, who made it clear that God hates pride - and is out to humble the proud, says, " Don't judge - or it will boomerang, and come around to BITE you!"

Pastor Ken shares a special Mother's Day message during this pandemic.  In these days when we're all packed together in one house with disease stalking the planet and emotions running high and kids getting into trouble out of sheer boredom, it's hard to stay calm. The enemy of our soul, Satan, has plenty of raw materials to create fear and chaos with. And it's on days like this that we need t...