The Rock Church Temecula Valley

Serving is so important to our relationship with Christ. Serving is not simply something I do but it is who I am. You cannot divorce serving from the Christian to do that is to divorce Christ from the Christian. It says in 1 Peter 4:10 that, "God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another." We are to use these gifts to show...

Growth is always intentional, never by accident. Growth is always by purpose, not by chance. Growth is not an automatic thing but a necessary thing. To grow is to change, if you are changing for the better you are growing up regardless of the way you feel. You don’t have to feel your way through growth, you can know your way in growth. It is very obvious and measurable according to Scripture. We g...

What does it really mean, to love God? Many of us are fans of Jesus, but being a fan is superficial. Loving God means placing him in the center of our lives. Allowing him to touch anyone and anybody rotating and revolving in our lives. 

We have to make efforts to grow our faith! How do we do that? By working with joy in our lives. Not all things bring us joy or are enjoyable, but if we engage with God in everything we do, we will have his joy. God is working in us to create desire and ability, and by partnering with God in our faith, we will grow and have great joy!

We don't have to earn the grace of God, because he has freely given it to us. So many times we serve God with the idea of working for our salvation, but that isn't the case in Christianity. Jesus didn't die to make us valuable; he died to prove how valuable we are. 

We are called to live in freedom. Sin will take you further than you want to go and cost you more than you want to pay, Whether it is a sin that is obvious, or beneath the surface, we have to reject it in all forms. But before we confront it in other people, we must face in our hearts. 

We all have at some point in time desired to change. Whether it is a spiritual matter, a relationship, a way of responding, or simply the way we were thinking. Change is hard! It is one thing making a decision, it is another managing that decision on an ongoing basis. We have to recognize that we are in a spiritual battle and our mind is the battlefield. What we arm our minds with, will determine...

Dealing with stinking thinking starts with us expelling the toxic thinking in our minds. When we have negative thoughts, the more we feed them the more they will grow. Stop feeding the negative thoughts in your life. 

Don't copy the customs of this world, but instead renew your mind by changing your thoughts. The question we ask ourselves is how do we build healthy thinking? It is simple, by recognizing that it is all about the soil. The soil of your mind is either good or bad; it is up to you to choose the ground in which the seeds are sowed.

Our thought lives can make or break us. We have to begin to think about the thoughts that run through our mind. We have to control our thoughts because are feelings come from our thoughts. When we have an unhealthy thought life, it leads us into sin, but when we allowed God to renew our minds, we can resist temptation. 

This new year we need to identify where we are so that we can know where we are going. You then have to identify what are the tools you need to grow. There are many principals that we see from scripture, but one of the greatest things we need to build is sight because without sight we can’t anticipate making the adjustments that we need.

As we look into the new year, a common question that we ask is, where do I start? The first place we have to start is by eliminating hurry from our lives. We need to be intentional about gaining a good sight that only God can provide. 

God's timing is everything! When we look into the scriptures and see the time and place where Jesus was born we realize that God knew exactly what he was doing. God has it all planned out. This principle applies to our own lives too. Be encouraged that God has a plan for you, even though you may not understand it completely. 

We matter to God. We see time and time again the people are defined by their jobs or positions, but you aren’t. We see this through the example of the shepherds. The announcement of the Jesus wasn’t to majesty, but it was too ordinary people. It doesn’t matter if we are the rejects of society because we matter to God.

We love to imagine the Christmas story as a peaceful time, but the truth is that it was chaos. Between the birth, Herod, and the consensus the birth of Christ was hectic. However, in the midst of chaos, there is hope. God sent Jesus into a chaotic world because he wants to show us that he can handle all of our messes. Jesus coming to earth was good news for all people. 

We must live our lives in such a way that honors God in both private and public. When we say we believe something but don’t live it out, we are a stumbling block for people who aren’t believers. We want to live honorable lives before God and before people.

While we may be passionate about some people, God is passionate about all people. It is our responsibility to be peacemakers, not troublemakers. When we have the ability and opportunity to be a blessing we must do so. God doesn’t just want you to be blessed he wants you to be a blessing. 

When we serve Jesus, we have to use our brain as much as our heart. Some people think that Christians are all about spiritual and not about the intellectual. Common sense and wisdom are an integral part of our lives. We must use good common sense just as the Proverbs writer tells us.

We are called to live an honorable life, but we do that through wisdom. True wisdom comes from Jesus. If Christ isn’t our pursuit, then we will miss out in the divine wisdom that he provides. Jesus is our wisdom and power, and he enables us to live a life filled with wisdom. He must increase, we must decrease.

Discipline can be an intimidating word. However, when it comes to our relationship with God, it is an integral part of it. We have a propensity towards sin, so we must be open to the correction that the Lord provides. 

Giving has become a taboo subject in the church today. However, if the scriptures point to one thing, it is that God always wants more for you than he wants from you. Giving is a matter of heart more than it is a matter of actions. We put our faith in our stocks, the economy, or even our 401k, but isn’t it time we put our faith in God?

Sometimes we become to wise in our own eyes, but the Proverb writer makes it very clear. We must practice humility. By walking a life in humility we build up a awe and holy fear of the Lord. Fearing the lord allows us to walk in his wisdom. 

We notice that we honor God when we trust him with all our heart and trust in him. The blessing comes from honor God, because he will direct our paths. By honoring God we value his will for us.

We live in a world that has separated kindness and truth, but the Bible shows us that truth and kindness go hand in hand.  Check out today’s message as we learn how to incorporate both kindness AND truth in our lives.

What does it mean to honor or treasure God’s Word? It might surprise you to know, that the emphasis in the Bible is not on studying, but on remembering, meditating or pondering it. The problem is not that we are stupid, but that we are forgetful. A lot of us know quite a bit, but we don’t enjoy and soak in it. Thereby we don’t apply it and live beneath the life that is available to us....