CrossPointe Church

Most of us know what it feels like to smile on Sunday morning while something harder sits underneath. Romans 12:9-21 reads like a long list of impossible commands, and if we try to run it in our own strength, we collapse. In this message from our Romans series, Steve shows why Paul opens with God’s mercies before he says a word about love, and what changes when we stop performing and start clinging to Jesus. Listen in if you are tired of wearing a mask.

What happens to your heart when nobody notices what you do? David Mudge knows that question personally. In this message from Romans 12:1-8, he opens up about a season when the recognition fell away and he had to ask whether the love of Jesus was really enough. What he discovered changed the way he serves, and it might change the way you see your own place in the church. Paul calls it a living sacrifice, but it may not mean what you think.

What happens when you spend years mastering the manual and miss the sunrise? Steve opens this message with a camera that comes with a 500-page owner’s manual, and uses it to ask what all of Romans 9 through 11 is actually for. He walks through the mystery of Romans 11:25-36, including what Paul means by “all Israel will be saved,” and then shows where Paul lands after eleven chapters of deep theology: not in an argument, but in praise. Listen in for a message about mercy that is still on the move, and a God too great to fit inside our understanding.

What do you do when a dream falls apart and bitterness quietly takes root? David Mudge shares how a hillside in the Scottish Highlands taught him what humility actually feels like: small, and deeply loved. From there he walks through Romans 11:1-24, where Paul asks whether God has given up on his people, and shows how the olive tree of God's grace leaves no room for pride. Listen in for a message about a God whose plan does not depend on us.

Show Notes:

What if the way to God was never as far off as you assumed? Not locked away in heaven, not buried in some far country, but as close as the next thing you say and believe. In this message from Romans 10:5-21, Associate Pastor Stephen Bean unpacks Paul's answer to one of the oldest questions in the Bible: how does anyone actually get right with God? Along the way, he traces the responsibility every believer carries to both trust the gospel and carry it to others who haven't heard. Listen in for a message about the nearness of grace and the beautiful weight of being sent.

Show Notes:

Imagine two runners: one trained for twenty years, sacrificing everything for this exact moment, and the other never ran a single lap, sitting in the stands with cheese powder on his fingers. Now imagine the untrained man wins. That's the picture Paul paints for a religious, disciplined people who worked hard for God their whole lives and somehow missed him. This week Steve unpacks Romans 9:30–10:4 and asks a question that isn't really about ancient Israel at all, it's about where your own eyes have been fixed. Listen in as we talk about the difference between climbing toward God and resting in what Christ already finished.

Show Notes:

What do you do when God does not fit inside the neat little box of your expectations? When his choices feel jarring and your heart burns with heavy, unanswered questions about fairness, it can feel dangerous to speak them out loud. In this episode, Pastor Steve McKenzie opens up Romans 9:14–29 to tackle one of the most overwhelming passages in all of Scripture. We step straight into the fiery tension of sovereign grace, hard hearts, and divine mercy. If you have ever felt like a cracked, empty vessel wondering why God operates the way he does, this conversation is an invitation to lay down your courtroom gavels. Listen in as we discover how the terrifying weight of God's absolute sovereignty is actually the very thing that breaks open his unstoppable grace for your life.

We have all looked at a room filled with empty chairs and felt a sudden, heavy ache. Maybe it is the ache of a prodigal child who turned their back on faith, a family member who shares your blood but not your hope, or even your own quiet fear that you simply do not belong at God's table. When the people we love walk away, or when our own lives feel fractured, a terrifying whisper creeps into the dark: Has God’s word failed? In this message, Pastor Steve McKenzie opens up Romans 9:1–13 to confront the crushing weight of sorrow and uncertainty. Paul weeps over his own kin, yet right in the ashes of human heartbreak, the Gospel shines with fierce clarity. God’s promises have not dropped to the ground, nor has His sovereign purpose lost its course. Your seat at the table was never secured by your family tree, your moral performance, or your ability to hold onto God. You are there because the Host of the banquet called your name into the dark and commanded life to exist out of nothing. Step out of the exhaustion of trying to earn your place and rest in the unshakeable grace of Jesus, who took the ultimate curse so you could belong forever.

Have you ever felt like your past mistakes precede you into every room you enter? Most of us know the heavy, suffocating weight of being the outcast, standing on the outside of a crowd while carrying a burden of regret we crafted with our own hands. We spend our weeks trying to cover up our flaws, desperate to stay hidden yet starving to be known.

In this message on Luke 19:1-10, Associate Pastor Stephen Bean walks through the story of Zacchaeus, a corrupt tax collector marooned in the branches of a sycamore tree by his own greed and public shame. When Jesus walks into Jericho, He does not pass by the man who wrecked his own life. Instead, He looks up into the leaves, calls Zacchaeus by name, and steps directly into his scandal.

As you start your week, discover how Christ willingly trades places with us. He carries our bitter dishonor onto the tree of the cross so that we can step down into total forgiveness. Listen in to encounter a Savior who is actively hunting down the bruised, forgotten sheep and offering a grace that changes everything.

Have you ever packed up your life and run away from the very place that was supposed to be a sanctuary? Across North America, tens of millions of souls have walked out of church doors with blood dripping from unseen wounds, crushed by spiritual manipulation, silent abandonment in crisis, or the hypocritical cruelty of people who claimed to speak for God. When religious institutions trade the quiet, patient work of grace for corporate branding and quick power, human beings get treated like disposable tools. In Genesis 16, an abused Egyptian slave named Hagar collapses into the scorching dust of the Sinai wilderness, fleeing the household of God's chosen family. She knows what she is running from, but she has no idea where she is going. On a bleak Monday morning when you feel invisible, burned, or cast aside by religious culture, this ancient story cuts through the haze with a shocking truth: God pursues the runaway. He does not defend human hypocrisy or turn a cold shoulder to your tears. Before Jesus ever took on human flesh, He walked into Hagar's desert, called her by name, and revealed Himself as El-Roi, the God who sees. Christ came into our wilderness, bore the shame of an outcast, and hung naked outside the city gates so that every discarded soul could find a safe refuge in His bleeding side.