Jesus’ encounter and miraculous healing of a man who’d been lame for 38 years reveals much about how God loves us, and what we need if we too want to be made well.

In our Western culture, we place a lot of faith in rationality, science and technology. Yet, for all the tremendous benefit they bring, the state of our world testifies that many problems are beyond our fixing. In this encounter with Jesus, we see the progression of the official’s faith as he encounters his own hopeless situation.

Perhaps one of the more well-known of Jesus miracles, it is intriguing that turning water into wine at a wedding in the small town of Cana is where Jesus chose to perform his first miracle. But it is packed with relevance for us today.

In our final in person service for the year we light the fourth advent candle: the candle of love, sing Christmas Carols and Sheila Thomson shares Part 2 of our Christmas series Light in the Darkness. Jacob Moon also performs his original song Emmanuel.

This is literally a dark time of year with days shorter and nights longer in the winter months. Emotionally, many people struggle with the ‘winter blues.’ Despite our advances as a society, our world still feels very dark. Scripture reveals that Christmas is about light breaking into darkness. The Christmas message acknowledges the darkness of our times, but in doing so, emphasizes the light and our yearning for it.

Self-control is a virtue that can refer both to the strength to refrain from doing something that we shouldn’t, but also to the strength of stepping up and acting when we should. In this final message in our Counterculture series, we look at how Christ makes self-control a very real possibility for us in regards to our desires and things we do.

We can often over-value characteristics like strength, toughness and self-confidence, and see gentleness as weakness or timidity. Yet Jesus, despite his obvious power and status, describes himself as gentle and humble. This is what makes gentleness so countercultural in an oftentimes harsh world.

We’ve all felt the disappointment as we’ve witnessed political, business, sports or religious leaders “sell out” their core values and beliefs in compromise. Yet, if we’re honest, we’re guilty of compromise too. In this message, we look at the virtue of faithfulness as an expression of our love for God and others: what does it mean and how do we practice it in our daily lives?

When we are kind to others, what is our motive? Often we are kind not for the pure motive of helping an other, but so that we feel better about ourselves. But that is not the way God has shown His kindness to us. In this message we look at what it takes to really be kind and practical ways we can express that pure type of kindness to others.