In this week's sermon we look at the last major ingredient to the Spiritual Gifts which is that they are Gifts of Grace. Without grace the gifts would not be extended towards us or used to benefit others. How is it that grace makes these gifts so important in our spiritual walks?

This week, we process 1 Corinthians 14:1-25 and one of Paul’s major principles of the Spiritual Gifts; our meditations on the following questions: How will I benefit you? How are we called to benefit others in our earnest pursuit of agape love and the Spiritual Gifts? How can the gifts of prophecy and tongues work to complement, not conflict with, one another to promote the strengthening of faith for the Church?

This week, we look at one of Scripture’s greatest hits: 1 Corinthians 13. Yet as we study this chapter's original context, we rediscover Paul’s key to unlocking the Spiritual Gifts, not simply the secret to a successful marriage. Thus, as we have been expanding and “re-informing” our working definition of what a Spiritual Gift is, we ask ourselves how our practice and pursuit of the Spiritual Gifts embody God's agape love.

This week, we turn to the New Testament's largest portion on the Spiritual Gifts in 1 Corinthians. Chapter 12 of Paul’s epistle deepens our understanding of the gifts, compelling us to expand our working definition to include the purpose for the gifts. We ask ourselves why Paul wanted so badly for believers to be correctly informed about the Spiritual Gifts and what they have to do with living harmoniously as one body. 

This week’s sermon, brought to us by Mykel Pollock, CityLife’s Pastoral Resident, asks the question, “What is the driving force in your life? Faith or fear?” In Matthew 14:22-33, Peter briefly walks on water towards Jesus, focused on His confidence in Christ. But as soon as his focus shifts to the circumstances, fear sets in and Peter starts to sink. How often do we do the very same thing immediately after seeing God do something miraculous in our own lives? We must come to realize that God chooses to exercise His power through us, in direct relationship to our confidence in what only He can do.

This week, we begin our brand new sermon series on the Spiritual Gifts, in the unlikely place of Exodus 4. In Moses’s story, we see how God called him and had already equipped him with a tool for glorifying God through miraculous signs and wonders. We are left to consider the ordinary tools, resources, and abilities with which God has already equipped us and how He may be empowering us with His Holy Spirit to do the extraordinary, all for His glory.

This week’s sermon, brought to us by Mykel Pollock, CityLife’s Pastoral Resident, discusses lukewarm Christianity. In Revelation 3, Jesus writes to the church of Laodicea about being neither hot nor cold and a faith that was not reflective of His kingdom. We know Jesus did not leave them - nor us - in mediocre faith, but counseled them and promised that if they repented and turned back to Him, they would reign with Him forever. That same promise stands for us today and so we should and could do with some self-reflection and asking ourselves, “Are we living the life of a lukewarm Christian?”

This week’s sermon, brought to us by Ryan Dominguez, CityLife’s Creative Pastor, invites us into a conversation about worship. The global pandemics affecting our world have altered the ways we, as Christians in the Global North, have grown accustomed to worship today. Thus, we reflect on how God’s people have worshipped through the millennia to rediscover the kind of worship our God desires and ask ourselves, “What makes worship great? What makes worship whack? How does Jesus model for us how to make worship great again?”

This week, we conclude our “Deepening our Souls” series with the final thoughts of the Apostle Peter for Christians struggling with following Christ's example and allowing their faith to shape their lives. Peter reminds Jesus’s followers that we are a people of waiting and in these final instructions of this seasoned and tried companion of Christ, we find these enduring questions: How do we live as exiles and sojourners in this world? How do we remain loyal to God and subversive to the world when it tries to claim something that only God deserves?

Pastor Pedro brings 2 Peter to a close by reflecting on the Giant Sequoia Trees in Yosemite National Park. Throughout the 1900s, those entrusted to care for the park were alarmed at the lack of new Giant Sequoias sprouting in the park. For decades they searched for a solution to no avail, until one day a forest fire taught them the value of heat in the growth and development of these enduring behemoths. How is it that fire can both bring destruction and life? It seems what Peter’s epistle has been telling us all along is that going through fire with God does not lead to destruction but new life.