The Upper Room Fellowship

Sermon Summary:We explored how our past profoundly shapes our present in this third week of our Emotionally Healthy Spirituality series. The core idea: to move into a healthy, mature future with God, we must take an honest look at our past. Science confirms what Scripture has always shown us. Research in epigenetics reveals that trauma and experiences can leave chemical markers on our DNA that get...

SERMON SUMMARYWe explored the journey to authentic spirituality by looking at David's confrontation with Goliath in 1 Samuel 17. Biblical authenticity means discovering who God created us to be, surrendering to the Holy Spirit's transforming work in that hidden 90% beneath the surface. David faced three major obstacles before he ever reached Goliath. First, accusations from family. His bro...

Sermon Summary We begin the year asking ourselves a crucial question: one year from now, how do we want to be different? This new series, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, explores why spiritual maturity and emotional health cannot be separated. Many of us experience a gap between the abundant life Jesus promises in John 10:10 and our actual reality. We might be exhausted, anxious, or struggling i...

Greetings from the Upper Room Fellowship, a church in Columbiana, Ohio, where we seek to Know God, Share Life, and Serve Others together. At the Upper Room Fellowship, we believe in a relational God who created us and will go to whatever lengths possible to connect with us so we can experience his perfect love. We believe that His love is open to all and has the power to transform lives and commun...

We often romanticize Christmas with cozy sweaters, twinkling lights, and sentimental nostalgia. But the reality of that first Christmas was scandalous. God looked at broken humanity and became one of us, born to an unwed teenage mother in a forgotten town, arriving in a stable because there was no room anywhere else. This is love at its purest. In 1 John 4:7-12, 19, we discover what real love look...

We explore Advent as "WAIT Training" - celebrating Jesus' first coming while anticipating His return. Living between two gardens, in the "now and not yet," presents unique challenges, especially when joy feels just out of reach. Joy is more than a feeling. Kay Warren defines it as "the settled assurance that God is in control of all the details of my life, the quiet co...

Greetings from the Upper Room Fellowship, a church in Columbiana, Ohio, where we seek to Know God, Share Life, and Serve Others together. At the Upper Room Fellowship, we believe in a relational God who created us and will go to whatever lengths possible to connect with us so we can experience his perfect love. We believe that His love is open to all and has the power to transform lives and commun...

We kicked off Advent by exploring hope in three dimensions: today, tomorrow, and eternity. Hope isn't just wishful thinking like a Browns fan before kickoff. Biblical hope is the eager anticipation of kids stacked in the hallway on Christmas morning, knowing something good is coming even if we don't know exactly what. We dove into Jeremiah 29:11, that verse on every graduation mug, but we...

We wrapped up our Holy Spirit series by addressing two major challenges that hinder Spirit-filled community: consumerism and control. In 1 Corinthians 14:26, Paul describes a church where everyone showed up ready to contribute—a hymn, a word of instruction, a revelation. The Corinthian church was messy and broken, but the Spirit had freedom to move among them. We're shaped by consumer culture...

We continued our series "The Way" by exploring Ephesians 5:15-21, where Paul calls us to be filled with the Spirit rather than drunk with wine. Paul wrote to Christians in Ephesus, a city saturated with pagan religion, excess, and Roman imperial propaganda. In that hostile cultural environment, he urged believers to be intentional about how they lived. When Paul contrasts drunkenness wit...

Prophecy isn't fortune telling or a Christian version of psychic readings. At its core, prophecy is simply hearing what God is saying and repeating it. We serve a God who speaks directly into the lives of his people and community through individuals who submit themselves to the authority of the Spirit and the community. In the Old Testament, prophets stood at the margins of power, speaking tru...

We're continuing our series "The Way" by exploring the gifts of healing and what it means to pray for the sick. In 1 Corinthians 12:7-10, Paul explains that spiritual gifts are given for the common good of the church, and healing is the only gift mentioned in plural form. We are the delivery system for God's healing gifts. The early church expected healing to be a normal part of...

We continued our exploration of the Holy Spirit by examining a vital truth: Jesus operated not merely as God, but as a Spirit-filled human being. This distinction transforms everything because it means Jesus becomes our model, not just our object of admiration. When Jesus read from Isaiah 61 in Luke 4, declaring "The Spirit of the Lord is on me," he revealed his mission statement. Theologians call...

SERMON SUMMARYWe find ourselves in a tension. We read Scripture and encounter people who had wild, transformative experiences with God, yet many of us settle for something less. We develop explanations for the gap between what we read and what we experience, normalizing something that was never meant to be normal. At the Feast of Tabernacles, as thousands gathered to watch the priest pour water on...

SERMON SUMMARY We explored what a healthy church actually looks like when it's filled with people genuinely following Jesus together. This isn't about perfection or arrival but about a community faithfully pursuing the way of Christ. Drawing from Ephesians 4 and other passages, we identified ten biblical marks of health. We examined how Scripture serves as our authority outside ourselves a...

We explored what total transformation looks like in 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24, where Paul prays that God would sanctify us "through and through." This isn't about becoming boring or religious. Sanctification means becoming the most fully alive version of ourselves. Paul wrote to people in Thessalonica who had already experienced complete transformation once before. They had pledged tot...

Jesus deliberately chose twelve diverse disciples who would naturally clash with each other, demonstrating that God's kingdom unites people who would never choose each other naturally. From Luke 6 and Acts 2, we see that following Jesus means embracing both the beauty and messiness of authentic community. The early church devoted themselves to teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayer,...

We find ourselves living in what theologians call the "already but not yet" tension. Jesus has already defeated sin, death, and evil through his resurrection, establishing God's kingdom. Yet we're still waiting for his return to fully establish that kingdom over all creation. This explains why we experience both the reality of God's presence and the ongoing brokenness of our...

Before Christianity became a religion, it was simply called "The Way." This ancient understanding reveals something crucial: following Jesus involves far more than believing the right things or following moral rules. The Way of Jesus is a complete lifestyle that transforms how we see the world and live each day. Drawing from Matthew 3 and the Greek word "hodos" (meaning road or...

Sermon Summary: Worship transcends a moment in time to become our heart posture of continual surrender to God's majesty. Through Psalm 150, we discover that worship serves as our "main event" because it aligns us with kingdom reality where God reigns eternally. David shows us that worship functions as both beholding and becoming. When we behold God's character through praise, we...

Sermon Summary: In our exploration of Psalm 23, we discover that being led by our Good Shepherd requires one essential skill: learning to hear his voice. Just as sheep instinctively recognize and follow their shepherd's call, we must develop our ability to discern God's voice in our daily lives. David's declaration that "The LORD is my shepherd" reveals a deeply personal rela...

Sermon Summary: This week we explored Psalm 126, a song of ascent that captures the beautiful tension between sorrow and joy in our spiritual journey. The psalm reflects on God's past restoration of Israel from Babylonian exile while acknowledging that deliverance often comes in two forms: sudden, miraculous intervention and patient, faithful labor over time. We examined the rich poetic struct...

Sermon Summary:David's story in Psalm 34 reveals the battle between faith and fear that plays out in our hearts like spiritual musical chairs. After defeating Goliath, David found himself running for his life from King Saul, driven by fear to make devastating choices: lying to priests, stealing sacred items, and humiliating himself by drooling on his beard in enemy territory. Yet from his lowe...

Sermon Summary:Psalm 24 begins with David asking a seemingly impossible question: "Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?" The answer he gives is equally daunting: those with clean hands, pure hearts, and complete integrity. When we honestly examine our lives, we quickly realize we fall short of this standard. We've all taken things that weren't ours, struggled with impure though...

Sermon Summary: In Psalm 84, we discover a song that captures the deepest longing of the human heart - our yearning for God's presence. This "Pearl of Psalms" was likely sung by the Sons of Korah, descendants of a man who rebelled against Moses yet whose children chose a different path. Where their ancestor found discontent and jealousy, they discovered contentment in serving God, ev...