New Life Downtown

What keeps us from bringing our requests to God? Is it the pain of disappointment or the agony of silence? To a people who lived with deferred hopes and dashed hopes, Jesus came announcing the Kingdom and inviting them to ask and seek and knock. Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us see that is because we trust the goodness of our Father in heaven that we turn to Him with our needs. Yet, even Jesus asked for something He did not receive- and yet, He trusted the Father's goodness enough to say, "Nevertheless not my will but yours be done."

In a culture that resists critique and evaluation, we tend to think that Jesus warned against judging others because no concrete judgment is possible; everything is subjective opinion. But Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us see that judgment, though possible, is simply not our place. By detailing what, who, and when we can't judge, we see the difference between judging, discerning, and evaluating. Yet there is a judge who knows all, is over all, and is just enough to judge. But this judge became the guilty one so that the verdict over us is stunningly gracious.

The origins of the "Kingdom of God" concepts so important to Jesus are rooted in the prophetic ministry of Old Testament prophets, especially Isaiah. In these prophetic passages, Pastor Matthew Ayers (Director of the Dream Centers of Colorado Springs) helps us discover that the ideas of salvation, righteousness/justice, peace, joy, God's presence, healing, and return from exile aren't simply New Testament concepts, but traditional Jewish ideas that are fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom that he ushers in. These marks of the Kingdom of God are also the very ideas that help us receive God's grace to confront worry and live in freedom.

Possessions have a way of possessing us and deceiving us. Jesus' words about wealth in the Sermon on the Mount were addressed to both rich and poor because regardless of the amount of our possessions, we are all easily enticed and enslaved. Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us see the life of freedom and truth that Jesus invites us into by letting be Lord of all. When Jesus is our master, we are able to leverage material wealth for Kingdom gains and eternal rewards.

Where do we belong? Why does it feel like we are caught between two realities? Jesus' Sermon on the Mount is the inauguration of an arriving Kingdom, a Kingdom that has come but not yet come in fullness. In a similar way, we are an in-between people, a people who are not what we used to be, yet are not what we will be. The Lord's Prayer, with its phrases from Jewish Messianic and eschatological hopes, is the prayer of a "new Exodus", the prayer of a "wilderness people" who are no longer in Egypt but not yet in the Promise Land. Pastor Glenn Packiam unpacks how this prayer reminds us that we have a Father and a Family, showing us how we are beloved and where we belong.

Virtue doesn't come naturally; it must be practiced. Like the great virtue teachers before Him, Jesus gives us a vision of the flourishing human life and practices that move us toward it. But unlike the teachers of virtue, Jesus diagnoses the problem as being far deeper than we imagined: the sinful human heart. As Pastor Glenn Packiam continues the series on the Sermon on the Mount, we see Jesus shift the focus from our heart to our habits, letting transformation arise not only from the outside in but from the inside out. Yet these practices-- of giving, praying, and fasting-- are not ways to improve ourselves or impress others. They are a way of allowing the grace of God to wash over us as the Spirit forms us for the glory of God.

In culture that says everything needs to be new and exciting, our boredom is often the result of our discomfort with the ordinary--or worse, our soul detoxing from an adrenaline addiction. Where is God in the ordinary places and moments of life? Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us see that the Lord is here, in 'this' place, that drab, ordinary, unspectacular place. God invites us to see ordinary places as holy spaces as we submit ourselves to the practice of gathering with the people of God at the Lord's Table.

Trust is the currency of relationships; it's what makes community 'work.' But to be trustworthy people, we must be truthful people. Pastor Glenn examines Jesus' call to be the kind of people whose word is so trustworthy that promises are unnecessary. Yet this kind of truthfulness begins with truthfulness before God-- a truthfulness that confess our sin and our propensity to manipulate and exaggerate with our words. Confession opens the way for us to hear God's yes to us: a 'yes' given in Christ, a 'yes' that is always 'yes.'

Pastor Daniel Grothe continues our series through Jesus' Sermon on the Mount with a look at what it means to not seek revenge and to love our enemies instead.

In this special sermon following the Black Forest fires that resulted in the tragic loss of two lives and almost 500 homes in Colorado Springs, Pastor Glenn Packiam reminds us that when we don't know what to say or how to pray, the Psalms give us language. From Psalm 42, we learn what it means to lament, to remember, and to hope. Our hope is never for a particular outcome nor in a particular thing; our hope is always in Christ alone - the God who joins us in the storm and works from within the world to renew it.