This week, Pr. John explains that the Lord’s Prayer reminds us that prayer is not about bending God’s will to ours. It is about learning to trust in God’s will and align our self with what God is up to.

Pr. John's sermon uses Matthew 7 to tell us how we are called to love others, and to not pass judgement on them because we need to judge ourselves first. 

This week, Pr. John talks about prayer, and how it's a personal and relational conversation with Abba--our dad, our father. 

Pr. John's sermon this week is on the beatitudes and how they describe God's kingdom, and its differences from the real world. 

This week, guest preacher Pr. Tim Strommen tells us that in our walk with Jesus and our life with God, we need to know that as humans we will get off track and fail sometimes. But we need to know that maintaining faith practices and being in community will help us stay as faithful followers. 

This week, Pastor John talks about why New Year's resolutions are hard to keep--because humans are in bondage to sin and our own mortality--and how God meets you in those darker places and never abandons you. 

Pastor John talks about the contrast in Matthew's telling of Jesus' birth story and how it is opposite from the peaceful story of a baby born in a manger, and focuses on the politics of the time. 

In his Christmas Eve sermon, Pastor John talks about the meaning and imagery of light at this time of year, from the hymn "Silent Night," to candles and lights shining in the darkness, to our lives being filled with the light of Jesus. 

This week, Pastor John asks whether you are vertically inclined or vertically challenged--that is, whether you have an openness to recognize that God comes down vertically right into our lives. 

Advent is a time of waiting, and in today's lesson from Isaiah 42--the "servant song"--we discover that the waiting is better characterized as longing for God's promise to be fulfilled: "it will be done." Jesus' arrival guaranteed God's promise and also gave us a servant who has come to be on this journey through life with us.