The reason why Pharisaism is always popular is because we think it's possible to follow rules. "I can clean the outside of the dish but I can't clean the inside. I can't change my nature—it's hard-wired." But God can.

Matt 5:8

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jesus tells us, against everything the world suggests to us, that the root to extreme happiness is by way of holiness, purity, and integrity.

Matt 5:8

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our healing comes both eternally and now in this present life through a restored relationship with God where we receive mercy. That is the path to healing and the nature of our redemptive experience.

Matt 5:7

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We need to be people who are proponents of fairness and justice. When it comes to our relationship with God, however, what we really need is mercy. What would a culture of mercy look like in our country?

Matt 5:7

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The distance and lack of real intimacy in marriage seems very difficult to solve. Ultimately the loss of intimacy with Christ is what this whole book is pointing us to. How do we regain it once more?

Song of Songs 5:2 - 6:3

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Our whole western society is set up to encourage us to seek happiness. But happiness is one of those things that cannot be obtained by seeking it for itself. The only way to get happiness is by seeking something else.

Matt 5:6

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The saying "your best life now" is half right. "Your best life then" is more like it. In this message we study the most radical beatitude—blessed are the meek. The idea that the meek will inherit the earth is astonishing.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How do we get ourselves to stop being so uppity before God? How do we make ourselves realize our own spiritual poverty that we might inherit the kingdom in all its power and glory? The answer, of course, is that we cannot. Before you can receive spiritual fullness, you have to realize that you need it.

Matt 5:3

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

People today want to be spiritual. They want to get in touch with a higher power, they believe in transcendence, they want connection with something out there. But Jesus says we must realize we are not spiritual at all.

Matt 5:3

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We need to recapture the idea of the power and authority of Jesus' Word in church life. That is what will feed people; that is what will grow people. And the lack of it is why we have nominal Christianity—people aren't being fed.

Matt 5:1-2

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices