Word of Life Church Podcast

Secularism is a philosophy that says nothing is truly sacred. At best there are only ideas we call sacred. But there are no real sacred objects or places or times or things. The secular West has generally accepted this premise; but we feel it as a great loss. The modern premise that there are no sacred things is simply untrue. Christians insist that the sacred is more than a mere idea; there are s...

The role of art is to remind us of this beauty, to help us see what we've overlooked. Those who labor in the visual arts help us see what we have lost sight of. The poets and writers remind us of what we too easily forget: Life is beautiful. Even when life is tragic and painful, there is still beauty in it. We can say similar things about the artists working in music, theater, film, dance. They do...

21st century Western culture no longer has the sense of a God-saturated world. Modern people are not very religious at all. Today most people, though not atheists, feel God is somehow absent or far away. Instead we feel that we live in a secular world with God a long way off. Collectively we feel this as a kind of loss. The Western world in modernity is like a person haunted by a nagging feeling t...

To have a sense of the kind of time in which you are living is part of being prophetic. Malachi was a prophet. He had a sense of the time in which he lived. Malachi knew he lived in a dark time. But as a prophet, Malachi believed the day would come, that there would be a dawn. This dawn (as all the prophets said) would be the coming of Messiah. God's anointed king would bring the day of God's glor...

The Gospel of John tells us that "no one has ever seen God until they see Jesus." The revelation of God is given to us in Jesus Christ. And so we must ask ourselves: Does the view of an angry sadistic monster God look like Jesus? Do we see examples of Jesus pouring out vengeful wrath upon people? Of course we don't! And so, we must reject the view of a monster God. Yet people still struggle with t...

Christ is the new day. If we think only in terms of Christ bringing a new day then we sit by passively and wait for Jesus to forcibly bring the new day. This is the way most of us have been misled to think about the kingdom of Christ. But if we think a bit more creatively, deeply, and scripturally, we discover Christ is the new day and that to be in Christ is to enter the day now! This was in the...

The good news of great joy is that the world's true king has been born! This Savior-King is going to free us from our chains and lead us out of the dark. Christmas is the time of year when Christians are called to repeat the sounding joy. The world’s true King didn't come to reign over the old politics of fear. Christ the King came to lead us out of fear and into the politics of love. Jesus invite...

A long time ago, the church made the cross mostly about private and individual sin. From there the cross eventually became largely sentimental. What was left out was its prophetic critique and divine condemnation of the religion and politics of the world. Religion has been largely about using blame to make ourselves feel better. Politics has been mostly about using power to get what we want. The c...

In the early first century, declaring a new religion wouldn't cause much trouble. The world was awash in varied religion, but it had one political scheme: the Roman Empire. For the early Christians to declare a new political king was a very dangerous proclamation. The early Christians dramatically and radically re-imagined the world with a new king, a new Caesar. This is precisely what the gospel...

The book of Daniel sets forth a vision of a king who is not like warrior-conqueror kings of world history. The dominating rulers throughout history were warriors, known for their rage and mercilessness in conquering the kingdoms of the world. But Daniel reveals a king who will rule humanely and not beastly, who's reign is known for its peace and everlasting shalom. We worship a different kind of k...

When Jesus left his quiet life as a carpenter to launch his career as a prophet and preacher, he first had to walk from Nazareth to Capernaum. We to tend to look at the life of Jesus as being filled with wonder and miracles. But in the Incarnation of God, Christ entered into the tedium of human life. But Jesus made it holy. All of the unremarkable bits necessary to living are made holy in Christ....

The theme of Jesus Christ as king is the predominant theme of the Christmas Carols. We sing "Joy to the world, the Lord is come, let earth receive her king" and "Hark! The herald angels sing, glory to the newborn king". But what do we mean when we sing about Jesus being king? Is Jesus just a “spiritual” king? A king in heaven? Actually the answer is NO! When the apostles first called Jesus King, t...

John describes Jesus as "the light that has come into the darkness." All of us have been impacted by the darkness of the world's system and we have seen the effects of this darkness in the lives of the next generation. It is up to us to bring this next generation, our children, into the light of Christ and each of us have a part to play.

The "kingdom of God" is Jesus-language. Jesus began his public ministry by saying, "Repent for the kingdom of God is at hand." He continued to proclaim the kingdom and demonstrated the kingdom throughout his ministry. After his resurrection he spent time with his disciples, talking to them about the kingdom, but did they see it? Do we? For all of our worship and devotion to Jesus, do we see the ki...

At the core of being an authentic expression of the Kingdom of Jesus in the 21st century is following King Jesus. As we follow him, we hear him calling us to go and make disciples. We are followers of Jesus who are called to make followers of Jesus. We invite people to follow Jesus and welcome them into the family through baptism. From baptism we continue the disciple-making process by teaching th...

To be a Christian is to confess faith in God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We believe the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son and is himself God. Part of the ongoing ministry of Jesus is to baptize us or immerse us in God's life-giving Spirit. The picture of this baptism is not so much of individuals getting the Holy Spirit within themselves. Rather the picture of full immersion in...

Christianity is inherently full of mystery. Christianity is not an explanation, it is the confession of a sacred mystery. At the heart of the Christian faith is the great mystery of the Incarnation. Most Christian heresies come from trying to relieve the tension of the Incarnation. In trying to lessen the tension we either diminish the deity of Christ or the humanity of Christ. We must learn to en...

One of the primary goals of spiritual formation is to become your true self. The real you is calm, content, wise, and unafraid. It is only the false self, the shadow self, that is agitated, grasping, foolish, afraid. You may have had very little contact with your true self. The self who is calm, content, wise, and unafraid is who you really are deep inside. Why are we more often agitated, grasping...

Jesus is a king, the king; and he has a kingdom. To be a Christian is to confess that Jesus is the world’s rightful king and to enter that kingdom by faith and baptism. Our calling is to live as citizens of the kingdom of Jesus here and now, in the 21st century. We don’t live in 2nd century persecution or 12th century Christendom or 20th century modernity. We live in the 21st century postmodern wo...

God doesn't cause all things to happen, nor does he always prevent bad things from happening. But God does cause all things that happen to work together for good. But God is able to take all the events of your life, the good and bad, the beautiful and ugly, and weave them together in such a way that in the end the whole story is beautiful! Sometimes in the present moment our lives seem to be a con...

When imperfect people aspire to perfection, the results are disastrous. And when people find themselves in a culture where perfection is expected, (in their family, or church, or job), they are forced to fake it. Perfectionism requires hypocrisy, and requires people to live outside of reality. But Jesus saves us from all of that! Jesus saves us from the pressure to be perfect. This is really good...

We don't like to admit it, but it's not always our weaknesses that get us in trouble. Sometimes it's what we are good at— our strengths, our successes, our victories— that cause trouble to find us. We pray for success, and some of those prayers are answered. But too much success can become a stumbling block. If the Apostle Paul had nothing but success and smooth sailing in his ministry, it would h...

Everywhere Paul went there were riots. But riots were never Paul's doing or desire or intent. Paul didn't advocate for angry, loud, public protest, but just the opposite. He wrote to the Thessalonians that they should “aspire to lead quiet lives." Paul advocates not for a riot Christianity, but a quiet Christianity. In a world that grows weary of the endless noise of ideological anger, the church...

In the garden of Gethsemane, the disciple Peter was ready to go to prison and death with Jesus. But when he attempted to defend Jesus from the Roman soldiers who had come to arrest him, Jesus rebuked Peter, telling him to put away his sword and renounce violence. Peter was disillusioned and began to follow Jesus only at a distance. Before being redeemed, Peter would end up shedding some heavy tear...

Pastor Derek Vreeland delivers a sermon entitled, "The Useful God".