Covenant Church at Creekside | Weekly Inspiration for Christian Living

Our world is in need of healing—we are in need of healing; Jesus heals not just in the obvious way, but if you look at the healing stories in Matthew we see that each time Jesus is also responding to a deeper underlying issue. He heals the broken spiritual needs with which we are afflicted.

Too often we, as Christians, function as if the spiritual ceased and is no longer relevant; We act as if we don't have any "superpower" yet Jesus blessed us with the power of the Spirit to be healing agents in the world; we are called to ask the Holy Spirit to intervene on our behalf. Are we willing to walk in wonder?

God is the God of comfort and He comforts us in our troubles. God does not remove us from troubles, but God comforts us IN troubles. God has more for us though, He is preparing to comfort the world THROUGH you. God uses you--your experiences with troubles, as a source of comfort for the world. Think for a moment... who do you know that could use comfort and how can God use you there?

SERVE Director Meghan Mazerolle walks us through the complex relationship between love and fear. Using 1 John 4:10-18 as the anchor text we discover what it means to know perfect love, to be perfected in love, and to attempt to offer that love to others.

We start the new series, "This Is Love" with a look at God's ultimate love story that begins with The Fall in Genesis. But in this story of judgment and condemnation, we see three instances of God's love for us. And later on, through Christ God takes on our decay—the destruction of humankind. When Christ is victorious, we are victorious.

"Resist the devil, and he will flee from you." The devil is a liar—it is his native language. He whispers to us always, breaking us down with the lies he tells us—we're not good enough...our sin is too great, we are not worthy to be loved. But he is a liar by his very nature. TRUTH: God rejoices over you. Whatever battles you are fighting right now you can proclaim victory because of Jesus' love for us—for YOU.

An ideologue is an uncompromising adherent to an ideology...a system of ideas or ideals. We're trained in modern society to view this as an insult we hurl at our opponent. But is not the quality of the ideology dependant on what the idea or ideal is? If the idea is good, or holy, wouldn't we want to adhere unwavering to that?

Pastor Jason uses this framework to delve into the words in Philippians 2:1-5. In this text Paul speaks of making his joy complete by one-minded of spirit and love. To adhere to Jesus' commandment—love others as yourselves; "As I love, so you, too, ought to love one another." How would our lives and communities be transformed if we were to truly adhere unwaveringly to this ideology of love?

Aiming for perfection of our own will all of the time leads us to either a position of defeat (I can never measure up) or one of complacency. (Jesus has already done the work, soo...) But the target is for our lives to imitate and announce the kingdom of God. Aim for those concrete steps that you can put into place... And know that 1. You are embodied with the presence of the Almighty God. 2. You don't go alone. The body of Christ goes on mission together.

Being of one mind is about foundational thinking—casting down all other idols and lifting up the one true God. As soon as we shift our focus to something lesser, it drives us apart.

Do you put church in a box? Is church a place? "I go to church at the place on the corner." Is it a time? "Church is at 10:30." With Acts 2:42-47 as an anchor, Pastor Jason reminds us that church is, at its core, a group of individuals bound together through a set of experiences that have transformed their lives.

FOMO (Fear of missing out) has become part of our culture. But what if we approached our spiritual life with that same fear? This week Pastor Jason takes us through the stories of the Fig Tree and Jesus clearing the temple court. Why are these two narratives linked in scripture? One thought is that Jesus may be telling us that our churches have all of the flowers and none of the fruit—in modern terms, have our churches, with all of their programming, and events, and consumerism, become fruitmess? Lacking in the Spirit? He goes on to talk about prayer as a core function of the church. We end our time together by invoking the Spirit of God in prayer as a church lifting up Afghanistan, Haiti, and all those who have been impacted by the COVID pandemic. #WeTheChurch