Canyon Hills San Luis Obispo

Jesus made you alive, so why are you still dressed for the grave? In this message from our series Ephesians: One Letter. Eleven Questions. Life Changing Truth., Pastor Rich walks through Paul’s call to put off the old life and put on the new one. Old habits, old attitudes, old grudges: some things simply don’t belong to the person God is making you into. Expect practical next steps, honest conviction, and a lot of grace, all built around one question: What needs to die in you?

For 38 years, a man lay beside the pool of Bethesda, convinced his healing depended on stirred-up water and someone to help him in. Then Jesus showed up with one simple question: “Do you want to be made well?” The man said “I can’t,” but Jesus didn’t need the pool. He gave three commands that changed everything: Stand up. Pick up your mat. Walk. Without Jesus we’re all lying by the pool, waiting on the same circumstances to change. When we say yes to Him, He calls us to wake up to our new life in Christ, carry our “mat” as a testimony of what He’s done, and keep walking into the lives of people who need to hear our story. Your mat isn’t a link to your past. It’s a testimony of your future. So who needs to hear the story of your mat?

Getting older happens automatically. Growing up doesn’t. In this message, Pastor Wendell Vinson walks through Ephesians 4 to look at what spiritual maturity really looks like. It’s not about how long you’ve been in church or how much Bible trivia you know. It’s about how you treat people, how you serve, how well you know God’s Word and who you’re doing life with. Whether you’re brand new to faith or have followed Jesus for decades, this one will help you take your next step.

Turn on the news, scroll your feed, look at your own week, and it’s easy to ask: Is God even doing anything? Paul wrote Ephesians 3 chained to a Roman guard, with every reason to think God’s plan had stalled. Instead, he saw something most of us miss. In this message, we discover what God is really up to in the world, and how you can be part of it. You might be standing on more than you realize.

Everyone knows the feeling of standing in a room, holding your tray, with nowhere to sit. Underneath it is one of the oldest questions we ask: Where do I belong? In this message, Rich Shepherd walks through Ephesians 2. It's the story of a wall with a death-threat warning sign, the people it kept out, and the Savior who tore it down. In Christ, strangers become family, enemies become one people, and ordinary people become the place where God lives. It also answers a question a lot of people are asking: Do I really need the local church? There's a seat saved for you.

Most of us were raised to fix things. But what if the thing that needs fixing is you? Paul doesn't go easy on us. Without Christ we weren't just struggling. We were dead, surrounded by the world, opposed by the devil, and driven by our own fallen desires. Then come two words that change everything: "But God." This week we look at the grace that brings dead people to life right now, and why being saved "not of works" still means being saved "for good works." Same person, different walk.

Ever feel like everyone else got something you didn't? Paul prayed for a church that was doing everything right. He didn't ask God to give them more. He asked God to open their eyes to what they already had. A hope that holds. An inheritance with your name on it. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead. It's already yours. The question is whether you see it.

If someone took away your job title, your last name, and your phone — could you still tell them who you are? Most of us answer that question with what we do, what we've accomplished, or what somebody said about us a long time ago. And every one of those answers has the same problem: it can be taken from us. In week one of One Letter. Eleven Questions. Life Changing Truth., Pastor Rich Shepherd opens the book of Ephesians with the question underneath all the others — Who Am I? Writing from a Roman prison with nothing left the world would call an asset, Paul answers it in fourteen verses. And he never once tells you to look at yourself. In this message you'll walk through what the text says is already true about you, why identity comes before instructions in the Christian life, and five things that change on Monday morning when you stop auditioning for a name you've already been given.

You'll spend 90,000 hours of your life at work. So who gets them? Most of us have built a quiet wall down the middle of our lives — God gets Sunday, the job gets everything else. This Labor Day message tears that wall down. What it looks like to be a great employee, a great boss, and why burnout almost never comes from too much work — it comes from the wrong work.

Every one of us is leaning on something. A person. A position. A paycheck. A party. And sometimes the name engraved on the door is our own. Psalm 146 walks up to every one of those and gently takes it down — not to leave us with nothing, but to show us Someone who can actually hold the weight.

In this final message of Summer in the Psalms, we look at where this psalm sits and why that matters. Psalm 146 opens the last five songs in the book — five straight psalms of nothing but praise — written to a people who had come home from exile to a smaller temple, patched walls, an empty throne, and coins stamped with a foreign king's face. Their question was simple: who is actually in charge? And the psalmist answers it in a way nobody expected. He proves this King is King not by listing conquests, but by listing the people nobody else had time for — the oppressed, the hungry, the prisoner, the blind, the stranger, the widow. A thousand years later, a young carpenter stood up in His hometown synagogue, read that same list out loud, and said, "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."

Princes return to the ground and their plans perish the very same day. The Lord shall reign forever.