Discovering Jesus

Have you ever wondered why obedience to God so often feels like a neverending chore we engage in just to somehow prove our faith is "real"? Today our lofty goal is to, by the end of this sermon, discover how we can obey God with joy. We will do that by learning how the ancient Jews accused God of divine nepotism, how Jesus was made perfect, and what the parable of the Ten Minas is actually about.

So, unfortunately the first episode of our new series failed to be recorded again due to a software malfunction. To sum it up, last week we learned that Jesus is our high priest and that we belong in the presence of God, therefore we should make every effort to enter into that presence. This also sets a goal for our Christianity, instead of making it some endless treadmill of morality. This week we expound on that idea and look a little bit more at what it means to enter into God's "rest", greatly enriching our understanding of salvation along the way.

This week we reach the end of Ecclesiastes. As it turns out, there is a surprisingly positive and encouraging twist to this seemingly depressing, hopeless book.

This week we talk about sin, but instead of listing off various sins and reminding you we shouldn't do them, today's passage aims at the root of the issue and reveals the first actual step we must take in order to overcome sin in our lives.

This Sunday we discover how our theology is often incredibly theoretical, and how that damages our belief that glorifying God, as he deserves, is truly worth it. In other words, we will discover today why we often very clearly do not care about glorifying God as we should, and how we come to that state of mind.

We are continuing our journey through the Teacher's musings, and this week we discover what the one thing is that he believes makes this life possibly better than being dead. But we also will see that this one thing is the very thing that often drives us away from God.

This week we discover why the Teacher believes we as human beings have within us a desire for an eternally significant life. Spoiler alert: it's not terribly positive and ends up with him believing it is better to have never been born. However, we will see that Jesus reverses this conclusion, but we'll also see how we often don't realize that the eternally significant life doesn't stop at simply living forever.

Unfortunately, we had some recording issues and we lost part one of this series, but Pastor Tyler recaps what we learned at the beginning of this week's sermon. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

This week we will learn how the Teacher's perspective and experience misled him to conclusions that weren't necessarily true about the meaning of life. As it turns out, we often do the same in areas of our faith and can become unnecessarily discouraged. Today we will see how Jesus answers both the Teacher's questions and our own.

When Jesus said that it is "more blessed to give than to receive" he was talking about way more than just feelings. There are very real, economical, practical, legal implications to his words. This week we explore just what he was talking about and how the way Christians view their place in the world hugely affects their ability to give generously.

Paul ends his letter to the Ephesian church with a call to prayer. This week we look at what he means by "prayer", how and why many people in the church do not experience the type of prayer Paul is calling us to, and the ramifications of this.