Gulf Coast Community Church Podcast – St. Petersburg

The metaverse has taken imagination to a whole new level. In it imaginary real estate is created, deeded, bought, sold, and rented out for real $$. If you need a board room for a meeting, you’ll pay more for one with a view. The Nomadx Foundation notes on its website,

“Even though a metaverse is a place that exists only on a computer, it’s just as real as any other place you’ve been to before. You could say that the metaverse is like a vacation from reality: you can create an avatar for yourself and pretend to be someone else for a while, or you can use your imagination and explore new places that aren’t real at all—but still feel real!”

Of course, I would argue that it is not just as real, but that, for them, is beside the point. I have some friends who, a few months ago, were trying to explain the metaverse to me. When they got to the part about people holding real estate and renting it out to other people who want to use it, I knew right then I wasn’t getting on that train. However, it does reveal the power which can be harnessed by the human imagination.

Believers have a sure hope. The Bible commits a significant amount of space to stirring our imaginations about that hope. The OT Prophets speak of God’s coming kingdom. The book of Revelation uses vivid imaginative pictures to help us understand how things really are.

God wants His people to harness the power of sanctified imagination. Join us as we begin a new series, Imagining the Kingdom.

Text: Heb. 6:10-12

Themes: Faith and Patience to Inherit the Promise

Text: Colossians 3:1-17

Themes: Centrality of Jesus, Gospel Culture, Gospel Formation

A few weeks ago, I told a little of the story from a classic Russian film called, “Stalker.” The plot centers around the journey to a room where you will receive exactly what you want. You will not necessarily receive what you might ask for. Rather, the room knows your deepest desires and grants what you truly want.

Imagine a similar room that granted what you needed. It would certainly be safer, but how surprised would we be? We don’t often think in terms of what we need. In fact, we usually think that we need whatever it is that we want. At least that is how children think, and growing up is supposed to change that. What do we truly need? It may be more than you think. It may be less than you think. But knowing what it is should certainly impact how we live.

Just as the three requests of the Lord’s Prayer help form of our desires (the message from a few weeks ago), the last three requests form in us an understanding of our needs—our true needs. Give us today what is necessary, forgive us even as we forgive others, lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

Join us in worship as explore the essential formative prayer for the Christian life, the Lord’s Prayer.

We often talk about the Resurrection of Jesus from the tomb as proof of Christianity. To be sure, if Christ was not raised, our faith is in vain (1 Cor. 15:14). However, that the Resurrection of Christ is proof of Christianity doesn’t mean we can argue people into the faith by offering proofs of the Resurrection. Faith is a gift from God and has to come from Christ Jesus Himself.

The New Testament presents the Resurrection of Jesus as the basis of our hope—the basis of all hope! Arguably, the Resurrection is the only basis for true hope available to humanity, yet how many of us could explain what our hope is and why it makes a difference both in this life and the life to come?

Does the Resurrection merely provide hope for an unending life, as if time was our only problem? What if that life was as broken as this? How does the Resurrection change that? How does this hope shape our lives in such a way that Christ’s resurrection makes a difference in the world today?

Every Sunday is Resurrection Day (which is why we meet on Sunday), but this week we gather to remember specifically the Resurrection of Jesus from the grave. Join us as we worship our Risen King and explore this under the title, The Resurrection and Real Hope.

A Mountain of Crumbs, by novelist Elena Gorokhova, is her memoir of life growing up in Soviet Russia, life in a world so different from our own experience growing up here. Having become a proficient student and then teacher of English, “Lena” taught summer students from the United States who came to Leningrad (now, St. Petersburg) to study Russian. One young man, Robert, pursued getting to know her outside the classroom, against all the rules of course.

When he returned to the U.S. he began writing her and discussing ways to get together again. At one point she writes, “So it was at this point that I realized the futility of my argument, the futility of every argument, present or future, Robert and I might have. The problem we face is that under his un-Russian curly hair presides an American brain, which is fundamentally different from my Russian brain…. The fact that we can speak each other’s language is… irrelevant to our mutual understanding….”

Jesus came to earth from heaven. His vision of life, under His Jewish hair, inside His heaven-infected brain, is so fundamentally different than our brains that “the fact that we can speak each other’s language is irrelevant to our mutual understanding.”

Join us in worship this Sunday, Palm Sunday, and we will explore a story in which Jesus acted out an “absurd” little play, as it were, in order to change our imaginations so that we could understand what He is talking about.

“I don’t want to!” is a phrase every parent of a talking child is familiar with. Of course, the goal of the parent is that sometime between then and when they are adults they begin to want to do the things they ought to do. The process that gets them there is called formation.

When we are born into Christ’s kingdom, we are much like that child whose desires need to be reshaped. We know what we ought to want, but we don’t always want it (at least, deep down), so we find ourselves doing not what we want to do, but what we really want to do. Is this what Paul is describing in Romans 7:15?

Jesus has a solution for us and it is found in answer to the disciple’s request that He teach them how to pray. This Sunday we are going to continue our brief series, Your Kingdom Come, as we explore the urgency of this prayer, the requests we are called to make, and why we must allow this prayer to shape our very desires—why this is a key to successful discipleship!

Join us in worship as we take a fresh look at the Lord’s prayer and its use for the making of disciples.

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matt. 6:9-10)

The Lord’s Prayer is a prayer for what we desire in two senses. First, the coming of God’s kingdom is the longing of the human heart (whether we realize it or not). So it is a prayer for the very thing we desire. But in truth, while we long for what only God’s kingdom can bring, we often long to receive it by our own power, or through other means than God. “There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end of it is the ways of death.” (Prov. 14:12; 16:25)

Secondly, it is a prayer for shaping our desires. Jesus said, “If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” (John 15:7) Of course, if you remain in Him and His words remain in you, your desires will be formed into longing for the kingdom of God to come.

Join us as we take a step back, before our missional priorities, and explore the answers to questions such as: What is the Kingdom of God? Why do we long for it? Why do we pray about it? What difference will it make?

Scripture: Romans 12

We’ve been in a series discussing our missional priorities, the things which are central to our Gospel witness: Gospel culture, Gospel formation, Gospel mercy, Gospel outreach, and Gospel unity. However, we cannot assume the Gospel.

What is the Gospel? Why is it called the Gospel of the kingdom? And what does this have to do with making a disciple? For that matter, what is a disciple?

This Sunday we will explore these things in a parable I would title, “The Parable of Speculating on the Kingdom”. The essence of our discipleship is in whether and how we speculate on the kingdom of God. This, then, must define our methods of making disciples since this is ultimately what defines a disciple.

If you are a believer in St. Petersburg, FL and not established in a church community, join us in worship at 10:00 a.m. as we gather to celebrate our coming King, to embrace our new family, and to consider the culture of this new kingdom of which we are a part.