HopePointe Sermon Podcast.

What if happiness begins with surrender? For the Apostle Paul it was full surrender to the gospel that brought him joy. When our focus is the gospel, and how God wants to use all circumstances to advance the gospel, we may find it easier to look beyond ourselves and see what The Lord is doing around us.

Week 1 of our series "Be Happy."

As long as we’re making it all about us - our desires, our wants, we will feel like we are always chasing “happy.” Jesus is offering more than happiness, Jesus is offering joy that comes when we choose surrender. Surrender to the way of Jesus Christ. 

(Due to technical difficulties this episode picks up about 4 minutes into the message)

Are we ready for what The Lord may say to us or where he may be leading? In Acts 9 both Ananias and Barnabas had Kingdom vision and faith to see what The Lord was going to do through the conversion and life of Saul of Tarsus. The once persecutor of the church was one of the methods The Lord was going to use to advance His Kingdom. May we have a similar type visions and faith.

Production or presence? It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that our relationship is based producing or works. The truth is that our relationship is to be grounded in the presence of Jesus in our lives. In John 15 Jesus reminds us to remain in him...that he is the vine and we are the branches. May we be a people who move from busy to presence.

Waiting...No one likes to wait but what if being the church God has called us to be begins with waiting. Acts 1 reminds us that when the disciples are given the mission to go and make Christlike disciples their first command was to wait for the Holy Spirit.

In a world that tells us that we can write our own story and that our story should revolve around us; The Lord says that the better way is to recognize that he is the main actor in the story. This is part 1 of a series reminding us of what it looks like to be narrators of God's story; telling others what God is up to in our lives and the world around us.

Money is a power in our society. The call for followers of Christ is to make sure money is not something we serve but simply something we use. Generosity will lead us to breaking the tyranny of money. This is our fourth and final message in our series, The Ways of the Wise.

Our work is more than just something to occupy time. In our work, God is inviting us to join him in his redemptive story. In part three of our series, The Way of the Wise, we understand the holy and sacred calling of our work and how we worship God in it.

A hot topic for the church to tackle is gossip. As we continue our series, The Ways of The Wise, we ask ourselves the question, "how do we use our words wisely to build up instead of tearing down?"