Mental health is brain health and brain health is body health. We have been comfortable with body health for centuries, but when it comes to the mind this is where it gets interesting. We must learn to be open about our insecurities and recognize that we all suffer from them. What are the questions that consume your thoughts and fill you with endless emotions? Fear, stress, loss and past trauma constantly attack our minds. How do we learn not to just cope with these feelings, but to actually live in the peace that God intends for us? You don’t always have the power to control, but you always have the power to surrender.

As we bring our 10-Week Series "Citizens and Saints" to a close, Pastor Jack takes us through the last verses of Ephesians 6. In this chapter, Paul encourages us to put on the armor of God; a passage of scripture many of us are familiar with. With this armor, we have been "Empowered To Stand" and fortified with all we need for victory.

In this conversation, Pastor Jack, Pastor Troy and Susette Magaña unpack Ephesians 5 leading into the beginning of Ephesians 6. Susette is a Christian-based Marriage & Family therapist in Long Beach, CA.

Paul transitions in Ephesians 5 and he addresses families and households. It’s what scholars call a household code of love, respect and mutuality. He provides wisdom for how people should conduct themselves in a family and household setting. Families, like the marriage relationship, have often been seen in our culture as oppressive and enslaving. Most know of or have heard of families where this is the case. But just because families and marriages struggle doesn’t give a reason to dismiss marriage and family nor does it mean that it’s impossible with Gods help to turn things around.

The Apostle Paul encourages us to not be fooled by cheap imitations that try and promise things that only God can give. Paul calls each of us to live in clear contrast to the culture around us. To be conscious about what we give attention to and how we use our time—to make the most of every opportunity and not be foolish with our days but rather understand our spiritual reality in the context of our everyday. We are carriers of the light of Christ. We are a light that shines in darkness. We expose the work of darkness to the light of God’s truth. The way we conduct ourselves and the things we subject or expose our life to matters.

God delights when his family lives at peace with others. Our broken world and our sinful hearts have a way of dividing people in ever-increasing ways. However, Jesus came to reconcile and unite people into one beautiful family, and he has called us to join him on this mission of forming a new race of grace.

We live in a world where human beings, left to themselves, not only choose the wrong
direction, but remain totally confident that it is in fact the right one. Only to eventually
realize that the roads we often choose lead to dead ends. In fact, according to Paul the
habitual patterns of sin and brokenness in humanity is the fast lane towards destruction,
emptiness and spiritual death. But God has done something that rescues us from a
wrong direction and resets our course in a right direction and towards a brand-new
life. God made us alive and raised us up in Christ. Paul’s gospel is all about the grace of
Jesus and that is more than simply enrichment. God’s grace gives life to the dead. It is God’s free, undeserved gift. Some feel that you can earn God’s grace through what they do for God, but there is nothing you can do to earn God’s grace, because it is freely given. Paid for through Jesus himself.

This weekend we wrapped up the Stop Playin’ series with a final sermon on perseverance. Pastor Jack helped us to recognize that how we respond to the tough situations in life says a lot about our relationship with God.