Waterbrooke Church

This sermon is called “A Christ-Centered Christmas.” It’s meant to be a very practical message on how to negotiate your way through the next few weeks as a disciple of Jesus. The Christmas season offers many of us the opportunity to be together with people, family, and friends, with whom we often don’t usually have the time just to have an extended hang out. It really is a privilege to be with peo...

Christmas can be one of those profoundly lonely seasons for people. Grief, abandonment, job changes, personal moral failure, political and global turmoil can leave a person feeling deeply alone and acutely isolated even in the hustle and bustle of the season. In John’s gospel, we encounter several people who feel long forgotten. For example, in John 5, the apostle John describes a man who was para...

“In the beginning was the Word…” Jesus is the One that gives everything its meaning, its purpose, its life. He is the Source, Center, the Goal, the Gift. Jesus isn’t merely the “Reason for the season.” Jesus is the Reason for everything. “God knows how much we need the creation-to-destiny themes of the biblical narrative in order to make sense of our lives, so he lovingly gives those dominant them...

This Sunday, our message is taken from Acts 5:1-16. The title of the sermon is “A Necessary Dose of Holy Fear.” We often lose sight of the holiness of God. In our busy lives, we can simply begin to take God for granted and forget that the God we serve is the God who is real. He is “holy, holy, holy”. He is not a good luck charm or an add-on to our list of priorities. He is not the genie in the bot...

This Sunday’s sermon was called “Unintimidated”. In Acts 4:32-37, we see the fruit of the collective praying of the early church disciples. The number of the disciples had been growing rapidly. There were now at least 5000 of them (Acts 4:4). With that growth, there came an increased opposition from the temple leaders. The chief priests, the Sadducees, and the temple guard arrested Peter and John...

This Sunday, we examined the subject of praying for courage as we seek to share the hope of Jesus with others.  In Acts 4, Peter and John are remarkably bold in speaking about Christ to the religious leaders who are threatening them. These are the very same religious leaders who had recently arranged and successfully carried out the crucifixion of Jesus.  The boldness of the disciples was not natu...

This Sunday’s sermon is entitled "Uncommon Courage." If there is any chapter that indicates a radical shift in the lives of Jesus’ disciples, it's Acts 4. Luke writes in Acts 4:13, “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.” The religious leaders were astonished at t...

This Sunday's sermon was taken from Acts 3.  Luke recounts the story of the first healing miracle in the Book of Acts. Peter and John encounter a lame man who is begging for alms at a place in the temple called “The Beautiful Gate.”    Here’s the great news: Jesus is the Beautiful Gate opening to a glorious new creation. That lame man represents all of us spiritually. More than just us, the lame m...

When Christ takes hold of our hearts, the Holy Spirit doesn’t produce a reluctantly obedient group of people who are dutifully carrying out a list of religious behaviors. The Holy Spirit creates a new community with a shared passion for Christ and the kingdom of God. Life in the Spirit flows out into life in community with God’s people. It is supernaturally “natural” for Christ followers to want t...

This Sunday we studied one of the most exciting passages and important passages in the New Testament. Acts 2 records the crucial event of Pentecost. God Himself shows up big time and the trajectory of human history is now and forever changed. God is here. God is on the move. God will extend his reign to the ends of the earth. Pentecost is the biggest game-changer for the church and its mission aft...

This Sunday’s message is called “Waiting on God Together.” Jesus gave his disciples clear directions when He ascended to the throne of heaven. His charge to them was that they were to go to Jerusalem and wait for God to send the promised Holy Spirit. So, 120 disciples gathered together in an upper room and waited together.  We often are placed by God in seasons of waiting. Some of those seasons ar...

This Sunday, we BEGAN a new series in the book of Acts. The book of Acts is a careful recording of the advancement of the kingdom of God into the Gentile world despite hostility and hardship. We constantly need to be encouraged and reminded that the mission of God happens through the unlikeliest of people (ie., Saul of Tarsus) in some of the most hostile environments. This happens precisely becaus...

This Sunday, we spent some time considering a glorious psalm of praise - Psalm 146. That psalm begins: “Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, o my soul! I will praise the Lord as long as I live and sing praises to my God while I have my being.” One commentator writes “The believer’s life should be continuous praise.” “Should be” are the operative words. We often find ourselves in a wide array of chall...

This Sunday, we studied Psalm 103. We are meant to hear in this Psalm Jesus’ voice calling to us to rejoice in Yahweh, the Lord! Why? Because He loves us unconditionally in Christ.  We live in a world where love is hard to find and it is especially hard to keep. People are fickle. Friends are often fickle. What makes it especially challenging is that we are sinners and so, there are often good rea...

This Sunday Andy Keppel will be leading us through Psalm 31. Here's the first part of the text to help you prepare:    In you, O LORD, do I take refuge;       let me never be put to shame;       in your righteousness deliver me! 2 Incline your ear to me;       rescue me speedily!    Be a rock of refuge for me,       a strong fortress to save me! 3 For you are my rock and my fortress;       and for...

Waterbrooke Family, This Sunday's sermon was taken from Psalm 132 and is a glorious picture of Jesus’ love for us, His bride, the church. The message is called “The King at Rest.”  It’s a picture of the King and his Bride finally living together in unity and love and peace for all eternity.  This past week was our nephew and niece’s 13th wedding anniversary. They shared a picture of the wedding ce...

Waterbrooke Family, This Sunday, we discussed persevering as a believer in a broken and a hostile world. Jesus says these words in Matthew’s gospel: “But the one who endures to the end will be saved” (Matthew 24:13). He says this is in the context of teaching his disciples that the mission of God will happen in an increasingly hostile world: “And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of...

Waterbrooke Family, In Psalm 72, we have a song written by Solomon. It is the last psalm in a collection (Books 1 and 2 of the Psalms) that is considered to be largely psalms written by David. Psalm 72:20 reads, “The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended.” What’s beautiful about this psalm is that we get the heartbeat of the son of David for the kingdom. Solomon prays for God’s blessing on...

Waterbrooke Family, This Sunday, we studied Psalm 45, which is a “love song”. This is one of the greatest and most joyful psalms in the Bible. It was written to celebrate the marriage between the King and his Bride. The words contain effusive praise for the King and what He is like as it invites the bride to embrace the abounding joy of her impending marriage. Often, in fairy tales, the handsome p...

This Sunday, we studied another great Psalm – Psalm 19. C.S. Lewis wrote: “I take this to be the greatest poem in the Psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world” (Reflections, 73). What makes this Psalm so beautiful is that it opens up to us God’s glory not just in creation but in His Word.  Here’s the challenge that we all face: We live in a world of both glory and catastrophe. We behold...

Waterbrooke Family, This Sunday’s message is from Psalm 18 and is called “The Exultant King.” Psalm 18 is written by King David when God has finally established his kingdom and defeated all his enemies. It is recorded near the end of David’s life in 2 Samuel 22.  There is no doubt that David is blown away by the abundant goodness and unfailing love of God towards him throughout his life. There wer...

Have you ever felt God is taking a long time to answer your prayer?  Does it feel like sometimes your prayers have gone no higher than the ceiling? Join us this Sunday as we walk through Psalm 13 and see how Jesus, Our Compassionate King is truly with us during these times. In Christ, Bruce Washington

Well, this has been the summer of rain! I actually love how green everything is but it has been recently providing challenges for farmers and folks in our area. There are little lakes in fields where there normally isn’t water and there shouldn’t be. I get updates from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and some of the portages between lakes have been closed due to erosion caused by rain. Water can qu...

This Sunday was Father’s Day. For our message this week, we spent a little time together meditating upon Psalm 23. The twenty-third psalm is without a doubt the most well-known and, I would suggest, well-loved of all 150 psalms. And I think rightly so. This psalm brings the assurance that from beginning to end the Lord, Yahweh, shepherds his people through all the storms of life and brings us safe...

New Series this Summer - “Sing to the King.” It is a study of the psalms with a focus on God’s provision of a righteous, redeeming King for His people. That King is Jesus. Thank God that He is the King that we all need but could never find. In a world where leaders are perpetually flawed and fallen, there is One who can be trusted.   This Sunday, in our series called “Sing to the King”, we conside...