Freedomhouse Ballito

Closing out the Identity, Authority and Mission series, Greg picks up where the last few weeks left off: chosen, redeemed, sealed, saved for service, ordained to serve. Now what? He goes back to Genesis, to the original call to rule, subdue, serve and keep, and makes the case that this was never about titles or platforms. It's about how you do whatever you're doing, wherever you are. He la...

This Sunday, Freedomhouse ordained/appointed deacons. Ryan looks at Philippians 1 and the ordination of a group of deacons, and unpacks what that word actually means: not a title, not a task list, but a description of a life laid down in love. He traces it through Paul's letters and back to Jesus himself, "the deacon above all deacons," and lays out five things deacons do in a health...

Ephesians opens as a prayer, and Paul does something bold with it: he takes the language of Jewish blessing and points it at a new king. In this message from our Identity, Authority and Mission series, Alexander Venter reads Ephesians 1 in its original context, as a subversive letter about a different kingdom, and walks through seven things that are true of everyone in Christ: chosen, holy and bla...

Continuing the Identity, Authority and Mission series, Ryan turns to Ephesians and asks what it actually means to be seated with Christ. Not as a badge to wear, but as a vantage point Paul keeps opening wider: first grace, then power, then purpose. Ryan is honest about how easy it is to get stuck on the first part, that we're saved, forgiven, secure, and stop there. The rest of the passage won...

Ryan opens this message from 2 Corinthians 5 with an admission that he's preached this passage before, with a different emphasis. The line we usually take from it, "you are a new creation," is true, but it's only half the sentence. The other half is harder to sit with: that newness was never just for you. What does it mean to believe that, so that you're transformed to be mor...

Nick Graham brings a message that's specific enough to sting a little and honest enough to land well. Living on the Ballito coast means living somewhere with very visible measurements: where you live, what you drive, where your kids go to school, how you look, who you know. None of that is wrong, the problem is when those things quietly attach themselves to your identity and start telling you...

Greg Nixon brings the third message on authority, and he lands it somewhere unexpected: not in the dramatic or the spectacular, but in the ordinary Tuesday afternoon. Building on Peter and John's encounter with a man who hadn't walked in forty years, he makes the case that the people around them didn't see two remarkable men, they saw Jesus. That's the point. Authority isn't so...

Alexander returns with the second part of his message on authority, and this time he brings a story that makes the whole thing land differently. In ancient Israel, if your family fell into debt and lost their land, the nearest relative was obligated to come and pay what you owed and return what was yours. Alexander uses that image, the kinsman redeemer, to walk through the sweep of the Bible's...

Alexander opens a new thread in the I Am series, shifting the conversation from identity to authority, and he starts somewhere most teaching on this topic doesn't: with a clear-eyed look at how badly authority has been misused, in homes, churches, governments, and workplaces, and why that matters for how we understand God's design. Working from Genesis through Daniel and into the Great Com...

Ryan returns with a message that's simple on the surface but cuts deep: what you fix your gaze on is quietly shaping who you are. He opens with heliotropism (sunflowers tracking the sun across the sky) and builds from there, making the case that identity doesn't just come from what we believe about ourselves, it follows our vision. The crux: What is the "thing" is that is discipl...

Patrick picks up where Marilyn left off the week before, still in Luke 15, still with the prodigal son, but this time through the lens of a question the Father quietly asked him in his own devotional life: do you really know how much I love you? It's a message that's been brewing in him for months, and it's an honest one. He talks about growing up with a loving earthly father and still...

Marilyn Duke is a gift to the Freedom House family, and in this message she brings the parable of the Prodigal Son to life through narrative preaching. But before she tells the story, she gives us something just as useful: a way of reading any parable. What is Jesus saying about himself? What question is he answering? Who is he talking to, and what would they have understood that we might miss? Th...

In this message, Ryan explores Jesus' invitation to live not as empty wells that constantly need refilling, but as springs overflowing with the life of God. So often we approach our relationship with God from a place of striving or spiritual depletion, believing we must continually earn or recover what Christ has already given us. Yet the gospel reveals something far greater. Drawing from Jesu...

In this message, Alexander explores how Jesus' baptism reveals the foundation of every believer's identity. Before Jesus performed a single miracle or began His public ministry, the Father declared Him to be His beloved Son. This affirmation became the secure place from which Jesus lived, resisted temptation, and fulfilled His mission.  Drawing from Jesus' temptation in the wilderness,...

This Father's Day Greg brings a timely reminder that if you don't know what God looks like, you just need to look at His Son. Listen in for an exploration of what it actually means that God calls himself Father. Not a lofty theological title, but something deliberately familiar, the kind of word you'd use in a home. Working through the Gospels and into Paul's letters, Greg makes th...

Nick continues the I Am series with a message that works two ways: the great I Am interrupting our cycles, and the decision to be the generation that says enough. Working through Gideon's story, Nick looks at how God tends to speak to people based on who he's calling them to be, not their current circumstances, fears, or track record, and makes the case that what looks like reduction (in a...

In this message, Kean shares deep encouragement from his own life , his first time preaching, just before heading off to minister in the US. He's honest about years of living two different lives: one version of himself at church, another with his friends, and the exhausting effort of keeping the two from colliding. He talks about what finally broke that open (a rough season, a desperate prayer...

Ryan picks back up on 2 Corinthians 5 in this message, building on last time's idea of the great exchange. The case he makes is that righteousness was never meant to function like a ticket, something that gets you in the door and then sits in your pocket. Instead, it's the basis for an actual relationship: because of what Jesus did, we're not just forgiven from a distance, we're br...

Most of us picture spiritual growth like a renovation project: same house, slowly getting fixed up. Ryan pushes back on that picture in this message, working from 2 Corinthians 5 and what he calls "the great exchange": Jesus takes what's wrong with us and hands over what's right about him, not as an upgrade, but as an entirely new identity. He's honest about how much of our s...

Cedric van Duyn is a dear friend and our guest who has shared many times at Freedomhouse. He and his beautiful wife Angie lead a church in Gig Harbour, America. He digs into a phrase Paul uses with Timothy: the "good deposit", something real that God has placed inside every believer through Christ. Drawing on the Great Commission and Paul's letters, he unpacks what that actually incl...

Ryan Matthews opens a new thread in our Identity, Authority and Mission series: the grace of God, and he starts with a pretty candid bit of his own story. After becoming a Christian as a teenager, he spent years quietly running on fear of messing up and the need for one particular leader's approval, and somehow ended up joyless and burnt out in ministry despite doing everything "right.&qu...

Practice Doesn't Make Perfect, Practice Makes Permanent That's the line Nicholas Graham opens with in this message, part of our Identity, Authority and Mission series, this time looked at through the lens of discipleship. Using Abraham's story (a man God called a "great nation" long before there was any evidence of it) and a pretty disarming illustration involving his own dau...

What's the difference between following someone and actually being part of them? In this message, guest speaker Greg Stevens who leads Immanuel in Durban North and also a key leader in Catalyst Connect, the wider family of churches we're connected to. Greg walks through a subtle but massive shift the disciples went through: from walking alongside Jesus to, after the resurrection, being cau...

On the first Easter morning, Mary didn't recognize Jesus — she thought he was just the gardener, until he said her name. In this Resurrection Sunday message, Ryan Matthews picks up that thread and asks what actually changes once Jesus is back from the dead. Not just a legal technicality that gets you off the hook, but something much more personal: a new status, a new family, and an invitation to s...

Before you press play: this message ends with communion, so it's worth having some bread and a little grape juice on hand if you'd like to take it together, wherever you're listening. It's Good Friday, and in this message, part four of our Identity, Authority and Mission series, Greg Nixon sits with the weight of the cross, not as a distant historical event but as the place where an old version of...