All Sermons

One of the most frustrating things about living as a Christian with mental illness is the struggle of thinking that if we just tried harder, we could overcome what troubles us. But it's just not that simple. As human beings we are complex creatures and therefore mental illness is a complex illness.

It seems that mental illness is a taboo subject in the church. Why? Most likely because we just don't understand what mental illness really is - and because the longer we've been in church - there is a good chance that we've adopted the 3 unspoken church rules about it: 1 - Don't talk about it. 2 - Pretend everything is fine. And 3 - No one outside of the family will understand. Those unspoken rules have many of us living and struggling in silence with mental health issues as we wonder how our Christianity should impact our struggles.

This week we’re joined by three volunteers from our youth ministry – Stacie Marzen, Greg Svoboda, & Tim Kurth. We chat about why this ministry is important, strategies for reaching youth, & for fun – what they would tell their middle school selves if they could.

God knew that along with our relationship with Him there is great joy that comes through our relationships with each other. While this is true we also live in a fallen world where the beautiful design of God has been distorted and our relationship with each other marred.

We have the privilege of communicating directly with God which is a blessing beyond measure and should be the wellspring of joy in our lives. When we live with that kind of joy in our lives - it should be contagious!

In this episode, Adult Discipleship leader Haley Close joins us to talk about our fall small group semester and why biblical community matters.

Living with joy is often times harder than we realize...for a lot of different reasons. But the truth of the matter is that when we simplify it - we might find that living with joy is a little easier than we thought. How do we simplify it? By looking at Jesus and all that he has accomplished.

As we run to keep up with Jesus we will do so with ridiculous joy. This is the second core value that we have established as Blessed Hope Community Church. As followers of Jesus we are promised to be filled with an "inexpressible and glorious joy" (1 Peter 1:8) which means we will be a people in this world that live out ridiculous joy.

The staff is back together this week for episode 40 where we discuss spiritual disciplines and why they are so critical to following Jesus.

We were sinners but Christ died for us...and the Holy Spirit seals us as children of God. It's a beautiful truth! And too often we quit there. We claim our salvation in Christ and then we live lives that are largely unchanged. BUT...Christians are to grow to be more and more like Jesus.