CrossWalk - Cross Culture Church RDU

Pastor Clay is on vacation this week. Our message this week on CrossWalk is from Cross Culture Church's Student Pastor, Dave Helfrich. Pastor Clay returns next week with Part 3 of the sermon series "Life, Love, Legacy - The Story Of Ruth"

We live in a culture obsessed with love and romance, but it's also a culture where broken relationships are common place. Is it possible that our culture doesn't really know what real love looks like? As we continue our series "Life, Love, Legacy: The Story of Ruth," we come to our second subject in the series, love. We'll be a couple of weeks looking at this subject from Ruth's story and today Pastor Clay is going to explain to us some key characteristics of love from Ruth's relationship with her mother-in-law, Naomi. As we'll hear those characteristics are vital for any love relationship.

The circumstances of life can be hard, we all know it, but that doesn't mean that our circumstances have to rule over us, does it? Today we kick off a brand new series on CrossWalk entitled, "LIfe, Love, Legacy: The Story of Ruth." The story of Ruth is first and foremost a love story, but there's more to learn from the small Old Testament book than you might first suspect. As we'll hear Pastor Clay say today, the kind of life God wants us to have is the kind of life that rises above our circumstances and lives in victory.

Today we conclude our series entitled, "Experience." So far in this series, we've experienced the love, the cross, and last week, the empty tomb. Today we're turning our attention to 'Experience the Transformation.' and Pastor Clay is taking us to Mark chapter 5 where we find a transformation taking place that is even more remarkable than the ones we see in nature such as the caterpillar that enters a cocoon and comes out a butterfly. It's a beautiful picture of what happens when someone meets Jesus, and the power of God brings transformation to their life.

We're in week three of series entitled, 'The Experience,' and as you might guess on Easter Sunday we're experiencing the empty tomb. The three most important words for determining the value of a piece of property are, location, location, and location, although in the case of the empty tomb, we’re not referring to the location of the tomb itself, but rather, the location of the body that was inside of it. Last week, Pastor Clay explained why without the cross, our sins cannot be forgiven and as we'll hear today, without the empty tomb, none of what we believe matters. Critics have been trying to explain the resurrection away for years, but as you'll hear Pastor Clay explain today, our faith in the resurrection is actually the most rational explanation for the empty tomb.

Today we're in week two of our series entitled, "Experience" and we're looking to the most important event in the history of the world, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. As Pastor Clay is going to explain in today's message, there were a number of eyewitnesses gathered there on that hill outside of Jerusalem the day Jesus was crucified, including the religious leaders who had Jesus falsely arrested and condemned to death, the Roman soldiers who carried out the sentence and there were the thieves on either side of Jesus as He hung there that day suspended between heaven and earth, paying the sin debt for mankind. It's hard to imagine anyone offering forgiveness to those who had so mistreated them but I guess that's why they call God's grace "amazing." We're glad you've joined us for this special edition of Crosswalk as we turn to Luke chapter 23 and "Experience the Cross."

Today we begin a new series entitled, 'Experience' and the first message in this new series is 'Experience the Love' from 1 John chapter 4, verses 7 through 21. This week, Pastor Clay is going to discuss what it's like to experience the pure love of God. The world seems to have a lot of different ideas about what love is but fortunately for us, we can look to God's word and see what real love looks like, and what it does to us.

Today we come to the end of this series on the end times based on Jesus’ teaching known as The Olivette Discourse in Matthew chapters 24 and 25. We’ve looked at signs that will indicate the end is near. Today we take a look at the last section of Jesus’ teaching on this subject, and while there is still mention of the return of the King, the imagery changes to that of a judge, and ladies and gentlemen, if your image of Jesus tends to be that of the Suffering Servant who came to redeem mankind by dying for us on the cross, while that image certainly is not wrong, it is also not complete, because ladies and gentlemen, here comes the Judge.

As we continue our series entitled, '2012: The Days After Tomorrow' from Matthew chapters 24 and 25 we come today to what is known as 'The Parable of the Talents' in chapter 25, verses 14 through 30. Responsible, Productive, Profitable, and Judgment are four very important words for us to consider. As we’ll hear Pastor Clay say, "There is a way which seems right to man, but its end is the way of death." Those words from the book of Proverbs remind us that our culture may want to believe that we can all live our lives any way we want with no consequences, but God's word tells us something very different.

When you were a kid did you ever have your parents give you the same instructions several times? Why did they do that? They repeated themselves because what they were trying to teach you was important. As we continue in our study from Matthew chapters 24 and 25 and Jesus' teachings on the end times and His return, we're discovering that Jesus employs the same repetition method as our parents. What Jesus is trying to teach us is important, and as Pastor Clay is going to show us today, Jesus is trying to help us understand that the most important thing we can know about the end times, is to be ready for it.