Identifying disbelief as a core flaw, Pastor Mark Cress provides an overview of the start-well, end-bad third king of Israel, challenging listeners against spiritual compromise.

How was David a man's after God's own heart (1 Sam. 13:14, Acts 13:22)?  Pastor Mark Cress details aspects of David's walk with God, even amid his sin and failures. Do our lives reveal the same root embrace of the supremacy of God?

Flaky friendships abound in contemporary culture. The friendship of Jonathan and David, by contrast, models what friendship ought to be. Pastor Mark Cress examines its features to provide a biblical model for being a friend.

Pastor Mark Cress unfolds the selfishness, jealousy, and desperate wandering of King Saul into the occult, and challenges listeners to turn to God and flee whatever in our lives runs on the same doomed track.

One was guilty and released, one was innocent and sacrificed. Which one are we? In this message from Easter, Pastor Mark Cress helps us grasp our sin, Christ's obedience, and the marvel of freedom through substitute.

Pastor Mark Cress digs into the life of Samuel and invites us to relate the themes of his life as a challenge for our lives. Are we dedicated to God?

Samson's choices are a study in self-ruin and turning from God's community to a community that is NOT God's provision. Pastor Mark applies the lessons of Samson's life to help us see the many deceptions of sin.

Lessons from the account of Gideon --- who experienced great military victory through God with just 300 men, then made a gold item (ephod) that became a snare to Israel --- are applied by Pastor Mark Cress.

Pastor Mark Cress notes a couple of the ways that the figure of Deborah is mis-used in the history of Christianity, then goes through the biblical account of how Deborah, and another woman, Jael, was used of God and received glory that typically went to a man.

In part 10 of the Threads series, Pastor Mark Cress unfolds the love-plot and redemptive-plot of the Book of Ruth, the great-grandmother of the ultimate Redeemer, Jesus.