Woodland Hills Church

As children, we learn to play “hide-and-seek” with our siblings, parents and friends. Many of us continue to play this game with God as adults. Kevin Johnson challenges us to turn to God with our whole heart and receive God’s mercy and grace.

Psychologists use Rorschach tests to reflect what is inside a person. How we see the world and even how we read Scripture works in a similar way.

Ephesians 3:14-19 is perhaps one of the most powerful descriptions of love we find in Paul’s writings. The love Paul speaks of is so great he is forced to press the boundaries of language to express it.

In the parables of the lost sheep, the lost son, and the lost coin, it becomes clear that it is we who are lost and God who seeks to find us. Those in the position of danger are the ones who presume upon their relationships with God.

In the parable of the lost coin, the woman calls her friends and neighbors together to rejoice with her when she finds it. Greg explores why she was so excited to recover a single coin of seemingly limited value.

In the story of the prodigal son, the focus is typically on the younger son who runs away and squanders his father’s wealth frivolously. His sin is as obvious as his disobedience. The elder son is also relating badly to his father, but in a more subtle way.

Typically, we call the famous parable by Jesus “The Prodigal Son,” but that title is actually a bit misleading. The point of the parable is not the younger (Prodigal) son’s recklessly extravagant living. Instead, it’s about God’s recklessly extravagant love.

We, as Jesus followers, are called to reflect God’s love in this world. We are to live lives of love, as imitators of God. We are to do everything in love and live in the unity of love with other Christ followers.

God's love for us is overwhelming! But that's not the whole story. As we receive God's love we are able to return that love to God and others.

God’s desire for us is that we become all that God created us to be. Life is the process in which we can resist or yield to God’s desire for us. When we yield we sense God’s burning love as warm and liberating. When we resist we experience God’s burning love as pain and wrath.

God’s love is victorious! But perhaps not in the way that you’d expect. We often associate victory with our ability to control or defeat others but God’s victory encourages our freedom rather than squelches it. (We love discovering art that connects us to God in unique ways. Thank you to Dale Johnson for incorporating his art into this weekend's sermon.)

The love of God expressed in Christ on the cross shows the radical lengths God is willing to go to restore us. This healing of our relationship with God takes the form of a covenant, not a contract.

The love of God expressed in Christ on the cross was “foolishness to the Gentiles” and “a stumbling block to the Jews”. God’s love is scandalous to us all in different ways.

It is impossible to fully grasp God's love because it is infinite! The best we can do is humbly recognize our limitations in this way and give ourselves over to the overwhelming love that God extends to us.

In the story of the Prodigal Son, the son leaves home and experiences intensely that something is missing. Eventually he comes to his senses and goes home to his father. Greg connected this desire that the son felt to the German word sehnsucht which is a powerful form of longing that we all feel at times in our lives.

For our Good Friday service, Greg looked at the life and death of Jesus using three different Marys. Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene.

In the final week of our “Kingdom Economics” series, Greg answers four questions that were submitted by the congregation and podrishioners. 1) Why doesn’t WHC teach tithing? 2) I’m broke! Didn’t God promise me I’d reap what I’ve sown? 3) If misfortune isn’t a “curse” from God, why think good fortune is a “blessing” from God? 4) Is America “blessed”?

During the series, many people have sent in questions about their personal finances. Today we heard from a panel of people from Woodland Hills who responded to those questions with Kingdom of God principles.

In week two of our “Kingdom Economics” series, Greg answers three questions that were submitted by the congregation and podrishioners. 1) Does having a savings account show a lack of faith in God? 2) Does saving for retirement show a lack of trust in God? 3) Is declaring bankruptcy a sin?

Matthew 6:24 tells us that we “cannot serve both God and mammon.” Instead, we can live out kingdom principles with our finances.

Leave it to Jesus to challenge one of our most central cultural values – justifying violence by manipulating scripture. In this sermon, we discover what it means to practice non-violence both in our actions and our attitudes.

Despite Jesus clearly foretelling it, Peter didn’t think he would deny Jesus. But just as Jesus knew Peter would fall, he knew he’d get back up again too.

Jesus came both to save us and to reveal the character of God to us. Rather than coming in great power God came and served. Jesus calls us to “opt out” of the worldly desire to be better than others and learn to love them even when we profoundly disagree with them.

When reviewing Judas’ betrayal of Jesus, Greg had two questions in mind for us to consider: “Was Judas fated to betray Jesus?” And “Why did Judas betray Jesus?”

At the Passover meal just before Jesus was killed he instituted the practice of communion. When we take communion, we do so in the time between the initial experience of our faith and the final fulfillment of our unity with God and each other. This space “in-between” is like the wilderness the Jews experienced after leaving Egypt but before entering the promised land.