Mission Hills Church Messages

When you're in the middle of something hard, everything in you wants to get to the end of it.

But what if the middle is exactly where God is doing His most important work? Craig Smith opens Romans 5 to show how suffering produces more than pain. It produces perseverance, character, and a hope that doesn't disappoint.

Some things that worked in one season of life quietly stop working in the next. In this message from Ecclesiastes 3:1-11, Reza Zadeh starts with a story about running beside his five-year-old daughter on her first bike, and what it taught him about when to hold on and when to let go.

He looks at the 14 pairs in the passage, makes the case that grief and trust can sit side by side, and explains why some seasons are for launching while others are for waiting. He offers three questions for sorting out your season: • Is it right? • Is it mine? • Is it time?

He also takes on the phrase "everything happens for a reason" and points to Jesus as the hope we hold in any season. Take the next faithful step this week, even if you don't have the whole explanation.

Is there a spiritual gift you're supposed to find, and will an online quiz tell you what it is? Craig Smith and Colin McFarland keep talking about Sunday's message on discovering your spiritual gifts, and they get into the questions that didn't fit on the weekend stage.

Craig explains why he's wary of spiritual gifts quizzes, and why the Bible's several lists of gifts aren't meant to be one complete menu. He also describes a different way to sort them: by where the Holy Spirit shows up. Is it an ability only the Spirit could give, a capacity to serve or give at a level that isn't natural, or the effect your words have on someone else?

Along the way, you'll hear:

• Why the "boring" gifts like teaching, administration, and serving are the ones a church can't do without,
• How Craig now prays before writing a sermon and before hard conversations, and what happened when he told a man he might have a root of bitterness,
• The story of his wife Coletta asking God who to sit next to on Sunday,
• Why worship never shows up on the Bible's lists of spiritual gifts, even though most of us would say it clearly is one,
• How a college band tour in Bulgaria, and a surprise phone prayer, showed Craig he had a gift for leadership.

Next week: making the most of the season you're in, from Ecclesiastes.

👉 If you've been trying to find your one gift, Craig offers a simpler place to start: say yes to serving and pay attention to where the Spirit shows up.

🎧 Listen to this weekend's full sermon first, then come back here to go deeper. New episodes drop midweek. Subscribe so you never miss a conversation. Like, share, and comment if this episode hit home.

As always, shoot us your questions at [email protected] and enjoy today's episode. Also, check out our YouTube Channel and the Playlist titled "Questions with Craig" for more resources.

Or submit your PRAYER REQUESTS for our care team.

============================= Continuing The Conversation: Feed Credits =============================

HOST:: Colin McFarland, Craig Smith PRODUCTION + MIXING:: Zac Anderson CREATIVE DIRECTOR:: Colin McFarland VIDEO + SEO DIRECTORS:: Zac Anderson, Colin McFarland

A Product of The Mission Hills Podcast Network in Littleton, CO. © Mission Hills Church - All Rights Reserved

How do you find your spiritual gifts? Craig Smith walks through 1 Corinthians 12 and explains why the Holy Spirit is the person, power, and presence of God.

He shares how a college campus ministry showed him a gift he never asked for and why serving is the only reliable way to discover yours.

What do you do with what God hands you: wrap it up safe, or risk it for more? Craig Smith and Colin McFarland talk through the parable of the minas from Luke 19, and Craig admits something he hadn't fully named until Colin asked him live on air: for a few years after COVID, Mission Hills Church shifted from taking new ground to protecting what it already had.

The conversation gets personal fast. Craig shares how, as a student pastor, he used to give far more unpaid time to the church than he was getting paid for, but still felt tense every summer when $25 mission trip letters came in from his students. They talk through why 'generous' might be the wrong word for a lot of what we call generosity, why 'faithful' is often more honest, and how the disciples' outrage over the woman anointing Jesus with a year's wages of perfume reveals how easy it is to be generous with someone else's money while avoiding our own discomfort.

👉 If you've wondered whether you're protecting what God gave you instead of investing it, your time, your money, your church, your gifts, this conversation gives you language for it.

🎧 Listen to this weekend's full sermon first, then come back here to go deeper. New episodes drop midweek. Subscribe so you never miss a conversation. Like, share, and comment if this episode hit home.

As always, shoot us your questions at [email protected] and enjoy today's episode. Also, check out our YouTube Channel and the Playlist titled "Questions with Craig" for more resources.

Or submit your PRAYER REQUESTS for our care team.

============================= Continuing The Conversation: Feed Credits =============================

HOST:: Colin McFarland, Craig Smith PRODUCTION + MIXING:: Zac Anderson CREATIVE DIRECTOR:: Colin McFarland VIDEO + SEO DIRECTORS:: Zac Anderson, Colin McFarland

A Product of The Mission Hills Podcast Network in Littleton, CO. © Mission Hills Church - All Rights Reserved

Craig Smith teaches from Luke 19:11-27, the parable of the ten minas, and asks a question that hits close to home: Is the line between a faithful follower of Jesus and a hypocrite thinner than we think?

This message breaks down why the king in the story is the most generous character in the Bible, and why your faithfulness with money, not your results, is what unleashes that generosity in your own life.

Craig Smith admits the 80/20 rule- twenty percent of people doing eighty percent of the work- made him bitter for years before it made him grateful. He and Kelly talk about why comparison is mostly an environmental problem, why he hasn't opened TikTok since summer, and a three-word filter (content, pattern, relationship) for confronting someone without making a mountain out of a molehill. Plus the word Luke actually uses for Martha, which sounds less like distraction and more like a donkey dragging a load.

👉 If you've ever felt stuck in pain that's become your whole perspective on life, this conversation is for you.

🎧 Listen to this weekend's full sermon first, then come back here to go deeper. New episodes drop midweek. Subscribe so you never miss a conversation. Like, share, and comment if this episode hit home.

As always, shoot us your questions at [email protected] and enjoy today's episode. Also, check out our YouTube Channel and the Playlist titled "Questions with Craig" for more resources.

Or submit your PRAYER REQUESTS for our care team.

============================= Continuing The Conversation: Feed Credits =============================

HOST:: Kelly McSparran, Craig Smith PRODUCTION + MIXING:: Zac Anderson CREATIVE DIRECTOR:: Colin McFarland VIDEO + SEO DIRECTORS:: Zac Anderson, Colin McFarland

A Product of The Mission Hills Podcast Network in Littleton, CO. © Mission Hills Church - All Rights Reserved

What if the difficult person in your life is more than the problem you can see?

In Luke 10, Martha's frustration with her sister quickly spills over into resentment toward Jesus. But instead of treating Martha like a problem to fix, Jesus looks beyond her behavior and responds to her with both compassion and truth. He shows us that the problems we see in people can sometimes be the product of pain we don't see—and that our own pain can shape how we see others.

In this message, Craig Smith explores how to approach difficult relationships without excusing harmful behavior, why our response is our responsibility, and what it looks like to combine compassion with clear boundaries.

Jesus sees people to be loved, not problems to be solved. Discover how that truth can change the way you see others—and yourself.

Watch or listen, reflect, and consider one relationship where God may be inviting you to respond differently this week.

Most of us have a complicated relationship with work — we pray for it, then complain about it.

Pastor Craig Smith opens Genesis 1 to make a case that work isn't a curse; it's the first thing God ever called us to. When you see your job as joining God in creating, caring, organizing, and ruling, everything looks different.

In 2 Samuel 9, King David goes searching for someone — anyone — left from the house of his fallen friend Jonathan, just so he can show them kindness.

What he finds is Mephibosheth: lame, hiding in a place called Lo-debar (which literally means 'nothing'), convinced the king is coming to destroy him. What David does next is one of the most stunning pictures of grace in the entire Bible.

This message from Scott Ridout unpacks the Hebrew word hesed — the unconditional, action-oriented, asymmetrical love of God — and why the table is where that love has always shown up.