Title: Upside Down Dependency
Speaker: Nate Holdridge
Overview: In this week's message from our Upside Down Kingdom series through the Sermon on the Mount, Pastor Nate Holdridge opens Matthew 7:7–12 and asks the question every honest disciple eventually arrives at: How can I possibly live the kingdom life Jesus has described? As Jesus winds down his longest recorded sermon, he turns from demand to provision, giving three extraordinary resources—persistent prayer, a good Father, and a Spirit-fueled imagination for loving others. These are gifts secured by Jesus himself, who prayed in our place, lost his Father so we could gain one, and fulfilled the Golden Rule on the cross before ever asking it of us. This is a message for anyone weary of their own limitations, wrestling with a longstanding unanswered prayer, or longing to see the Father more clearly. The kingdom life is impossible without Jesus—and, through him, genuinely within reach.

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Title: Upside Down Judgment
Speaker: Nate Holdridge
Overview: In this Sunday sermon from Matthew 7:1–6, Pastor Nate Holdridge continues the Upside Down Kingdom series at Calvary Monterey by confronting one of the most misused verses in all of Scripture: "Judge not." Pastor Nate shows how Jesus is not forbidding discernment but warning against a hyper-critical spirit that overlooks personal flaws while fixating on the flaws of others. Working through the memorable speck-and-log imagery, he calls us to humble self-examination as the necessary first step before we can become truly helpful to our brothers and sisters, offering practical categories—parallel sins, echoed desires, and overcorrections—for honest heart-level audits. Pastor Nate Holdridge then turns to Jesus' sobering counterbalance in Matthew 7:6, cautioning us against becoming "pearl pushers" who try to force truth on the decidedly hostile. The result is a pastoral, gospel-saturated vision of kingdom people: gracious, humble, discerning, and shaped by the One who humbled himself to extend his help to us.

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Title:An Admirable Church: A Brief Study of the Ephesian Church
Speaker: Nate Holdridge

Link to Sermon Notes:
https://jesusfamous.com/blog/an-admirable-church-a-brief-study-of-the-ephesian-church/

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Title: Living Hope
Speaker: Nate Holdridge
Scripture: 1 Peter 1:3-5

Link to Sermon Notes: https://jesusfamous.com/blog/easter-2026/

Link to Discussion Questions: https://www.calvary.com/s/LG-Discussion-Questions-SP26_April2-5.pdf

Title: Upside Down Worry
Speaker: Nate Holdridge
Overview: In this week's sermon from the Sermon on the Mount series, Pastor Nate Holdridge walks through Matthew 6:25–34—one of Jesus' most famous and most challenged teachings on anxiety. Jesus commands His followers not to worry about food, clothing, or tomorrow, and supports that command with four vivid arguments drawn from birds, wildflowers, human limitations, and pagan behavior. But rather than offering a shallow "just stop worrying" message, Jesus exposes anxiety as the emotional residue of misplaced allegiance and calls His disciples to a radical reorientation: seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and let the Father handle the rest. We try to answer honest objections to the text—including the reality of clinical anxiety, the suffering of devout believers, and the necessity of hard work—and show how each objection, when examined carefully, actually reveals a deeper layer of what Jesus is saying. This sermon is for anyone navigating the relentless anxieties of modern life.

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Title: The Upside Down Treasure
Speaker: Nate Holdridge
Overview: In this sermon from Matthew 6:19–24, Pastor Nate Holdridge walks through three powerful metaphors Jesus uses to expose the deepest allegiances of the human heart: treasure, eyesight, and slavery. Jesus moves beyond external behavior and religious practice to confront what we actually value, how we envision the good life, and who—or what—truly has ownership of our lives. Pastor Nate unpacks the cultural background of the "healthy eye" and "bad eye," explains why your heart follows your treasure rather than the other way around, and shows why Jesus declared divided loyalty not merely unwise but impossible. This teaching from the Sermon on the Mount is an MRI for the soul—an invitation to inspect our functional allegiances and reorient everything toward the kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33).

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Teaching today at our Women's Gathering is Leanne Tuggle on the topic of Mary and Martha.

Title: Loving Your Bible More
Speaker: Geoff Buck
Scripture: Psalm 119

Link to Geoff’s Website
strengtheningthechurches.com

Title: The Upside Down Spiritual Life
Speaker: Nate Holdridge
Overview: In this week's Sunday sermon from Matthew 6:7–15, Pastor Nate Holdridge walks through one of the most familiar passages in all of Scripture—the Lord's Prayer. Rather than treating it as a rote recitation, we’ll unpack it as a template for a rich, structured prayer life: compact enough to pray in a minute, expansive enough to carry a lifetime of conversation with God. Working through the two halves of the prayer, we explore what it means to begin with the Father's honor, rule, and will before turning to our own needs for provision, forgiveness, and daily leadership. If your prayer life has grown mechanical, rushed, or shallow, this message is an invitation back to the closet and back to the Father who is already waiting.

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Title: The Upside Down Spiritual Life
Speaker: Nate Holdridge
Overview: In this sermon from Matthew 6:1-18, Pastor Nate Holdridge walks through Jesus' warning against performative religion — the danger of doing the right things for the wrong audience. Jesus gives three illustrations of this temptation: giving to the poor with a trumpet blast, praying on street corners for maximum visibility, and fasting with a disfigured face designed to advertise spiritual discipline. In each case, Jesus contrasts the hypocrite who has already been "paid in full" with human applause against the disciple who practices righteousness in secret before a Father who sees, knows, and rewards. Pastor Nate shows how the Fatherhood of God — mentioned ten times in this passage — is the controlling center that transforms our motivations, turning us from an audience of peers to an audience of One. This teaching includes practical guidance on biblical fasting, an honest look at why the contemporary church has been slow to teach on fasting, and a call for every believer to embrace the secret life of faith that Jesus assumes of all His followers.

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