Gulf Coast Community Church Podcast – St. Petersburg

What is the biggest barrier to experiencing the life of God’s kingdom?

In Luke 18, three groups come to Jesus. Only one receives an unqualified “yes” — the one group the disciples were trying to keep out!

Jesus shows us that entering the kingdom isn’t about climbing higher; it’s about receiving. But not just receiving a personal gift from God; receiving those the world overlooks as gifts.

That’s what is necessary to enter into a Jubilee community. A community where debts are released, people are restored, and the least are welcomed to the table.

We’ll explore what it means to enter the kingdom of God. Not just someday in heaven, but right now. Join us as we continue Cultivating Generosity: Becoming a Jubilee Community and discover the life that is truly life.

Series: Cultivating Gratitude: Becoming a Jubilee Community
Speaker: Jerry Cisar
Scripture: Luke 16


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📍 Gulf Coast Community Church
555 76th Avenue North Saint Petersburg FL
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What if the way we handle money, possessions, and generosity reveals more about our hearts than we realize?

In this message from Luke 16, we explore two of Jesus’ most challenging parables and the radical invitation behind them. Through the story of the crafty manager and the rich man and Lazarus, Jesus exposes the difference between living in the old economy of scarcity and the new reality of the Kingdom of God.

The Kingdom Jesus proclaims is a Jubilee Kingdom. A kingdom where generosity replaces hoarding, open hands replace closed gates, and eternal investments matter more than temporary security.

The question is not simply whether we give.
The deeper question is which kingdom we actually believe in.

This sermon examines:

• The crafty wisdom of generosity
• The inevitable exposure of wealth
• The tragic misery of closed gates

Jesus teaches that our relationship to money is never neutral. What we love, trust, and cling to ultimately reveals who or what we serve. The invitation of the Kingdom is to live with radical generosity because the King has already arrived and His Kingdom is present now.

Will we cling to the old economy of scarcity, or will we live boldly in the abundance of the Jubilee Kingdom?

Join us as we explore how followers of Jesus are called to become a community of radical generosity, open hands, and visible allegiance to the Kingdom of God.

Series: Cultivating Gratitude: Becoming a Jubilee Community
Speaker: Zach McNabb
Scripture: Luke 16


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📍 Gulf Coast Community Church
555 76th Avenue North Saint Petersburg FL
gulfcoast.community

🎧 Watch and listen to more sermons here
gulfcoast.community/resources

🎧 Listen now on Spotify or Apple
▶️ Watch on YouTube and be challenged to love in a way that makes Jesus visible to the world.

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Something is always forming us.

Jesus once warned His disciples, “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees.” (Luke 12:1)

Yeast is small and hidden, but it spreads until it changes everything.

In Luke 11–12, Jesus shows how fear, greed, and self-protection can quietly shape a community. But He is forming something very different: a Jubilee people who trust the Father, care for the vulnerable, and live with open hands.

This Sunday we’ll explore Jesus’ warning and His vision for a Spirit-formed community.

If something is always forming us, the real question is: what is quietly forming us right now?


Series: Cultivating Gratitude: Becoming a Jubilee Community
Speaker: Ryan Carver

📍 Gulf Coast Community Church
555 76th Avenue North Saint Petersburg FL
gulfcoast.community

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Most of us don’t reject generosity outright. We just want guarantees first.

In Luke 9, Jesus sends His disciples out with no provisions and teaches them a powerful lesson: if you don’t believe the Father will feed you, you’ll never feed others freely.

Then He says something even more challenging: “Take up your cross and follow Me.”

What does that mean for ordinary disciples like us — people who want to be wise, responsible, and faithful?

Join us as we continue our series Cultivating Generosity and discover how freedom from fear opens the door to real, cross-shaped generosity.



📍 Gulf Coast Community Church
555 76th Avenue North Saint Petersburg FL
gulfcoast.community

🎧 Watch and listen to more sermons here
gulfcoast.community/resources

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When Joseph and Mary brought Jesus to the temple to consecrate Him to the Lord, they run into a man named Simeon. After giving thanks for Jesus, Simeon tells them, “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel… 35 so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed” (Luke 2:34-35 NIV).

Our text this Sunday (Luke 4-6 but esp. 4:14-30) is about one community that fell when they encountered Jesus. In fact, they wanted to kill Him. To be sure, His message that day was astonishingly good — and deeply disruptive. They responded poorly.

This text is about an event 2,000 years and some 6,500 miles away. Despite the time and distance between it and us, it carries penetrating questions for us. It still begs the question of whether we will fall or rise.

"Everything happens for a reason."
"It was meant to be."
"Don't tempt fate."

Even in a secular age, we speak as if there's more going on than we can see.
- We long for life to make sense.
- We feel the weight of right and wrong.
- We cry out when the world is broken.
- We hunger for something beyond ourselves.
- We worry that our lives are not entirely our own.
- And we ache to know what we do actually matters.

Why?

In this message we explore six deep instincts that surface - across cultures, across religions, and even among those who claim not to believe at all.

Are these longings just evolutionary leftovers? Cultural habits? Psychological coping mechanisms? Or are they clues?

In this message we continue "Revealing Christ: Beauty, Goodness, and Truth in a Disenchanted World" - and consider how the gospel speaks to the questions we can't seem to stop asking.

How do we reveal the truth of Jesus in a world of relativism?
We live in a world that increasingly doubts whether any truth can really be known.
Truth feels fragile.
Claims to truth feel suspect.
And certainty is often confused with arrogance.

So how can Christians make truth claims in such a world?
And how can we do so in a way that is actually heard by our neighbors?

In our series Revealing Christ: Beauty, Goodness, and Truth for a Disenchanted World, we’ll wrestle with the question: Is Christianity True? We will explore the truth Jesus reveals: how it is meant to be known, and how it is meant to be made known.

What did Jesus mean when He said that He was the way, the truth, and the life? Does it speak of abstract philosophy or concrete life?

Join us as we consider what it might mean for truth to be revealed, not merely asserted.

Series: Revealing Christ: Beauty, Goodness, and Truth for a Disenchanted World
Speaker: Jerry Cisar

📍 Gulf Coast Community Church
555 76th Avenue North Saint Petersburg FL
gulfcoast.community

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gulfcoast.community/resources

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Beauty has a way of drawing us in.
A sunrise doesn’t argue. It invites. A storm doesn’t persuade. It overwhelms. Psalm 19 tells us that the heavens speak without words, quietly declaring the glory of God to the whole world.

And yet, while many of us still sense beauty in creation, far fewer are convinced that Christianity or the church shares that same beauty.

In this sermon, we explore what Scripture means when it speaks of God as glorious, radiant, and even sweet like honey. We reflect on the beauty of God’s character, the surprising beauty revealed in Jesus Christ, and the fragile, imperfect beauty of a church shaped by redemption rather than perfection.

If your faith has felt more dry than delightful, or if you have sensed God’s beauty but struggled to put words to it, this message invites you to see again. To listen. And to discover what might be called sublime grace.



Title: Is Christianity Beautiful?
Main Scripture: Psalm 19:1-14
Series: Revealing Christ: Beauty, Goodness, and Truth for a Disenchanted World
Speaker: Jerry Cisar

📍 Gulf Coast Community Church
555 76th Avenue North Saint Petersburg FL
gulfcoast.community

🎧 Watch and listen to more sermons here
gulfcoast.community/resources

🎧 Listen now on Spotify or Apple
▶️ Watch on YouTube and be challenged to love in a way that makes Jesus visible to the world.

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It’s not uncommon to hear: “Jesus was a great moral teacher—but Christianity is the problem.”

This Sunday, we’ll look honestly at that charge—but we’ll also ask the deeper questions it raises:

Where does our sense of good and evil come from?
Why does the moral vision of Jesus still resonate—even in a post-Christian world?
And how can we be faithful witnesses of Jesus in a world that often assumes Christianity, or even religion itself, is evil?
To explore these questions, we’ll consider why the goodness of Jesus is so difficult to deny, how it has shaped our world more than we often realize, and the call of Scripture to make that goodness visible through our lives (1 Peter 2:9–12).

Join us as we revisit a timeless question with fresh eyes: Is Christianity good?

What if your desires are not the problem
What if meaning is not something you create but something you receive

In a world chasing fulfillment through achievement relationships and control
John’s Gospel announces something radical

Life has come near

Jesus is not an idea
Not a principle
Not a system

The Word became flesh

This message explores how Jesus fulfills our deepest longings
How meaning takes on a face
And how life with God becomes visible in a community shaped by grace and truth

Series: Revealing Christ: Beauty, Goodness, and Truth for a Disenchanted World
Sermon: When Meaning Takes Flesh (John 1:1-14, 20-21)
Speaker: Ryan Carver

📍 Gulf Coast Community Church
555 76th Avenue North Saint Petersburg FL
gulfcoast.community

🎧 Watch and listen to more sermons here
gulfcoast.community/resources

🎧 Listen now on Spotify or Apple
▶️ Watch on YouTube and be challenged to love in a way that makes Jesus visible to the world.

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