Hillside Foursquare Church - Reno

By Hillside Foursquare Church

A weekly podcast with sermons, messages and talks from Hillside Foursquare Church in Reno, NV.

Hillside Foursquare Church exists to help people find, understand, and follow God’s plan for their live... more

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How many episodes does Hillside Foursquare Church - Reno have?

The podcast currently has 659 episodes available.

Hillside Foursquare Church - Reno episodes:

January 11, 2015 Ordinary People #2 - Staying Connected
Our text for today is John 15:1-13
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24min
January 04, 2015 Ordinary People #1 - Disciples
Acts 4:13 – Now when they (the religious leaders) saw
the boldness of Peter & John, & perceived that they were uneducated,
common men, they were astonished. & they recognized that they had been with
Jesus.
It’s human nature to disqualify ourselves &/or come up
with reasons why we can’t respond to Christ’s invitation to follow Him as His
disciple. The excuses run the gamut:
We’re ashamed of ourselves. Too sinful. Too broken.
Unworthy. Insufficient & inadequate for the task.
2 great examples of this are Moses & Simon Peter. In
Exodus 3-4:17, Moses responds to God’s call to bring freedom to the Israelites
enslaved in Egypt, & to lead them to the Land of God’s promise using the
excuses:
I’m a nobody
I don’t have the authority to do this on my own.
They won’t listen to me.
I can’t talk very good in public.
Then, in John 18 & 21, we see Peter, ashamed at his
failures, short-comings, & denial of Christ, left behind the life of a
disciple of Christ & returned to the life he’d known before the call of
Christ: fishing.
In both of their situations, these men were looking at
themselves to try to find something within that would enable them to be &
do what God called them to be & do. And they couldn’t find it. Instead, God
PROVIDED everything they needed in order to be able to do what He called them
to BE & DO.
Because God doesn’t choose & call us because we’re
awesome. Especially gifted. Extraordinary.
He chooses & calls who He does to show what HE can do in &
through normal, everyday, ordinary people. People who spend time with Him. And
who will obey His words.
This coming Sunday, we’re starting a series called “Ordinary
People” to explore what it looks like for us to be Jesus’ disciples, to BE with
Him, & to follow wherever it is that He leads.
Blessings, grace, & peace to you

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33min
December 28, 2014 Jesus REVOLUTION - Set Free
This last Sunday at Hillside we wrapped up our “Jesus REVOLUTION” series – it’s was also our last Sunday gathering of 2014. The normally hectic pace of life has significantly increased in this Christmas season, & in some ways, I feel like I’ve had to be more & more intentional about stopping, reflecting, & evaluating life, its happenings, my priorities, & what I give my time to. Specifically, over the last couple of weeks, I have been trying to take time to reflect on the questions:
What could/would it look like if Jesus did a revolution in my life?
What am I expecting/hoping for Jesus to do in me?
What am I wiling to put on the table?
Don’t get me wrong. I love my life. The time spent with my family & friends. Watching my kids turn into great adults who love Jesus & are making strides forward in their own lives. The work I am privileged to do. The life & growth in Christ I’m seeing within our church family. And still…
I wonder what areas Jesus wants to cut away so that I can grow, develop, deepen. What thought patterns & meditations of my heart He wants to transform. What ways I interact with & respond to others. How I can better take care of myself (body, mind, & spirit.)
I guess what I am expecting is that He is doing something NEW in me. That He is in the process of awakening parts of my life, my soul, that have been dormant or stagnant. That He is going to be refining me – So can will continue to be growing more & more like Him.
So the answer to the last question, “What am I willing to put on the table?” is ME. It feels a little scary – which means that my prayer heading into 2015 & beyond is: “Increase my faith, Lord. Because “…we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.” Hebrews 10:39
Blessings, grace, peace, & FAITH to you
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32min
December 21, 2014 The Jesus REVOLUTION: ...Are You Him?
John the Baptist was a prophet. Actually, he was THE prophet, the one promised in Malachi 3:1. The one that would announce the coming of the Anointed One. The Messiah. The Christ.

The first time John saw Jesus, he boldly declared, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” & he proclaimed, ““The Messiah will baptize you with the Holy Spirit & fire. His winnowing fork is in His hand, to clear His threshing floor & to gather the wheat into His barn, but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire.” Luke 3:16,17

John interpreted the coming of Jesus Christ as the arrival of the Kingdom of God on earth, where God’s justice would be meted out swiftly, with the faithful disciples (the wheat) being brought into the kingdom, while the unfaithful & unbelieving (the chaff) would be judged & destroyed. The Roman empire would be overthrown & the Christ would sit on the throne of David. Except…Jesus didn’t fulfill John’s expectations. Any of them.

Instead of passing out judgment & justice upon humanity, Jesus declared the message of salvation, the Gospel Good News to all who would hear it. He healed the sick. Raised the dead. Brought freedom to those bound by darkness. John was alone. In prison. & confused. So he sent a few of his followers to ask Jesus, “Um… Are You Him? Or should we be expecting someone else?” John couldn’t reconcile what he believed the Christ would do & be with what he saw Jesus doing & being.

In reply, Jesus took John’s disciples on a field trip - & He healed the sick. Brought freedom to the oppressed. & declared the message of hope, life, & salvation to all that would listed. & He sent John’s followers back to him with a message: “Tell John everything you have SEEN & HEARD. This is what the kingdom of God looks like as it advances.”

What John missed is that though there will be a time for judgment, that time isn’t now. The Jesus Revolution was (& is) about salvation. Restoration. Healing. Reconciling people to God. It’s Good News. And it changes everything.
Blessings, grace, & mercy to you!
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23min
December 14, 2014 The Jesus REVOLUTION: Hearing & Doing
One thing that Jesus did to help His disciples & other seekers to understand God, His nature, His kingdom, & the appropriate response to it was to use allegorical stories known as parables. Each one began something like this: “The Kingdom of God is like…”

In the parable of the Hearer, Jesus told of a farmer who sowed seed – some fell on a hard footpath. This seed never took root, & was eaten up by birds. Other seed fell on rocky soil, where it quickly sprung up, but because of the rocks, never developed roots & quickly died. Still other seed fell among thorns – this seed also grew, but the thorns quickly choked the little plant to death. Finally, some seed fell on good, lush soil where it grew tall & strong & bore lots of fruit.

He wrapped up the parable with the phrase, “He who has an ear, let him hear.” And then He withdrew from the area. And no one understood what the parable meant.

The disciples came to Him & asked for more – because they had already committed to follow Him, He revealed the meaning. The soils represented 4 types of disciples & their ability to HEAR & RESPOND to the seed, the message of the Gospel Good News. Was their heart HARD, like the footpath, with no fruit at all? Or was it ROCKY, where they responded positively to the Good News, but as soon as difficulties came, they faded away? Or was it THORNY, indicating that the desires for money & other things of our world overwhelmed & choked out any hope of fruit? Or was the soil GOOD, allowing deep roots & great fruitfulness?

Each disciple was called to HEAR what Jesus REALLY said, & then take appropriate action so that they would continue growing into fully mature followers of Christ.
And we are challenged to do the same.
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37min
November 30, 2014 Reflections on Hillside - w/Ally Siwajian
At Hillside, we believe that one of our main purposes as a church is to help people find, understand, & follow God’s plan for their lives. This means moving people towards self-discovery, helping them uncover & develop their God-given gifts, & talents, exploring their hopes & dreams, & hearing God’s direction & moving towards it.
This Sunday, we welcome our friends Anthony & Ally Siwajian back to Hillside for a visit. They were a part of Hillside for several years until moving to Los Angeles almost 2 years ago to pursue their dreams. Currently, Ally is working at the Foursquare Headquarters in the Communications department, & Anthony is writing the next great fantasy novel. (True story – I’ve read some of the rough draft.)
These are two people who are gifted, articulate, authentic, sincere, compassionate, invested in Isaiah 58-style social justice, & they are even nerdy like me (they met in a Literature class at UNR on the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien.) I miss them terribly, especially Anthony’s distinctive laugh. At the same time, I also know that sometimes when people have found, understood, & begun to follow God’s plan for their lives, it takes them on a journey of a lifetime…. A journey out of Reno. These 2 are living well, & I am incredibly proud of them & the steps of faith they are taking daily.
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31min
November 23, 2014 The Gratitude Experiment: Responding to God's mercy & grace
One of the things that has stood out to me through my studies for our current series, “The Gratitude Experiment,” is that our attitude of thanksgiving & living with a grateful approach to life actually flows as a response to God for His mercies, grace, care, salvation, & provision in our lives.

The Psalms (the church’s songbook for a couple thousand years) has dozens of examples of this – with the writer encouraging God’s people to “Give thanks to the Lord because He is…” & follows that with different reasons to be thankful – He is good, gracious, compassionate, our Rock, fortress, & deliverer, slow to anger, rich in mercy & love, never changing, never abandoning us. And the list goes on.

One of our text for this week, Romans 12:1-3, continues in this vein. In it, the Apostle Paul challenges his readers to respond to God’s grace & mercy by offering God every aspect of our lives. Doing this helps us not to become so well-adjusted to our own culture that we don’t see & don’t question where it has headed into the direction opposite to God’s way (see our scripture from last week, 1John 2:15-17.)

Then, as we fix our full attention on God, we see what it means to follow Him… & as we do that, we are changed & transformed from the inside out.

My great hope is that this little 3-week series has brought thanksgiving & gratitude to the forefront of our minds, & long after this holiday season is past, we are still expressing thanks to God & to others, & are living like Jesus would be if He were walking in our shoes.

Blessings, grace, & mercy to you!
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21min
November 16, 2014 The Gratitude Experiment #2 - Learning To Be Content
A few days before Halloween, I walked into Costco to pick up some supplies for dinner. I made it 30 feet into the store & was confronted by a huge snowman, who just happened to be fronting a mega-sized Christmas display. Christmas display.
Christmas carols emanated from somewhere in the pile of holiday cheer. Anchoring the display were several large ticket items, each promising to be the core of many present-wish lists. I stood staring for a good minute, soaking in the spectacle. Someone stopped next to me & commented, “Awesome, huh?! I can’t wait for Black Friday!” Me: “Help me Jesus.”
This reminded me that our culture is a consuming, self-indulgent culture – it’s in the DNA of our human-sinful nature. 1John 2:15 speaks of it when John writes: “Don’t love the world, or the things of the world…for all that is in the world – the desires of the flesh, & the desires of the eyes, & the pride of life – is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away, along with its desires…”
To me, John is warning us against 3 HUGE temptations: the desires of the flesh (self-indulgence,) the desires of the eyes (a never-fulfilled longing for MORE stuff) & the pride of life (selfish, me-focused ambition.) These things each have the ability to shipwreck us & our faith by pulling our focus (& priority) onto things that are temporary at the expense of the eternal. What are some ways that we can battle this when it is so much a part of our culture it SEEMS normal that stores would open at 8 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day?
One way is by asking the Holy Spirit to sensitize us to values & priorities that are eternal (Think Matthew 6:19-24,) Another is asking Him to reveal areas of our hearts where our priorities have gotten out of whack. If/when we discover something is off, we repent & make a shift in our thoughts/directions/actions.
Ultimately, in this season of thanksgiving, cultivating contentedness & gratitude will help establish priorities centering on the things that really matter.
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29min
November 09, 2014 The Gratitude Experiment #1 - Overflowing with Thanksgiving
NOTE: To watch the video we used in our Sunday service, "The Science of Happiness" click HERE.The preamble to the Declaration of Independence states a belief that the Creator has given us certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness. Even if we haven’t been in a civics or government class in a while, weknow, as Americans, these things are our birthright.

It’s interesting to me that Jefferson (& his editors) included the phrase “the pursuit of happiness” - & it makes me ask the questions, “What would it take for us to BE happy?” And “If I’m pursuing happiness, what does it look like when I CATCH it?”

Think about it: what would make you happy… for a long time? Think big. Winning the lottery? Being able to live in a tropical paradise? Your favorite sports team winning the Super Bowl/World Series/etc…?

It seems like that would do the trick – surprisingly, however, statistics say something different. For example, a study of lottery winners showed an initial spike in happiness immediately following their winning the big bucks. However, within 9-12 months of the win, lottery winners reported that they felt no more “happy” than they had before they won all the money.
People adapt to their life circumstances - & in order to “be happy” we need to do something/try something new. Which works for a while – until we adapt again. It’s like being on a “pursuit of happiness treadmill,” always chasing, but never quite attaining it permanently. (The scientific name for this phenomena is “the hedonic treadmill.” Google it.)

So what can a person do to increase their longer-lasting feelings of happiness? Again statistics reveal that people who regularly express gratitude & thankfulness to those in their lives have a significantly higher sense of happiness. I think that the reason for this is expressing gratitude involves being mindful of our life circumstances, & actively looking for the areas where we have been blessed, loved, & cared for.

Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be in a series called, “The Gratitude Experiment.” I’d like to encourage you to take time to write some lists of the people, places, & things that you are thankful for. Then, write a brief note to the people in your life that you’re thankful for & blessed by.

Blessings, grace, & peace to you –
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21min
November 02, 2014 FLIPPED #9 - You have 2 choices...
After having spent the last several months reading, studying, & now teaching through the Sermon on the Mount, I have drawn a couple of conclusions for myself that I don’t think I had before (or at least hadn’t identified.)
In this passage of Scripture, Christ defines exactly what it means to be His disciples:
in how we relate to & obey God & His commandments.
In establishing our priorities & values from which we live our lives.
in how we worship Him, not merely with our outward actions, but from the bottom of our hearts, with all that we have.
In how we interact with & care for other people.
Matthew 7 concludes with Jesus telling His disciples they have 2 choices: follow Him & walk in His ways, on His terms, or do anything else. He does this comparing:
2 gates, the narrow and the wide. The narrow gate leads to life; the wide to destruction.
2 types of trees, good & diseased, the good, which produces good fruit, the diseased which brings forth bad fruit.
2 types of disciples – the ones He knows (those who do the will of the Father,) & those He doesn’t know, regardless of what they think they’ve done in His Name.
2 foundations – Rock & sand, with the foundation of rock representing the person who hears & puts into practice His words; sand is the life foundation of the person who has heard His words, yet ignores them.
To me, the entirety of Matthew 5-7 can be summed up in Matthew 7:13,14 – the only way to experience God’s life & purpose is to enter through the narrow gate (Jesus) & to walk the hard road of obedience to God’s word, humbly choosing to do His will over our own. After re-reading this over & over, what stands out to me is that I cannot “self-define” where & how I will be Christ’s disciple. He’s already done that, & my choice is to embrace that & start walking with Him, or to choose the lesser (& easier) wide gate through which I can do what I’d like, how I like it… sifting through Christ’s commands & picking up those that are palatable, while leaving behind those that I deem are not.
Following Christ is hard – Jesus said it would be, because it involves denying our own selfish ambition, picking up Jesus’ way, & moving forward WITH Him.
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32min

FAQs about Hillside Foursquare Church - Reno:

How many episodes does Hillside Foursquare Church - Reno have?

The podcast currently has 659 episodes available.