How can Jesus tell us how our heart should feel? Drawing on a Christian psychology of emotions, Pastor Glenn Packiam explains that emotions are like the eyes of our heart; what we set our hearts on shapes how our hearts sees. While we feel lost, like no one hears us, and all alone, Jesus calls us to perceive a deeper and truer reality: that He is the Way, that the Father hears us, and that the Spirit is with us.

Pastor Brady and Glenn Packiam begins our new series "One Last Thing" by sharing that what the world needs today are more people who serve like Jesus.

What makes Christian community different from all other relationships is not that we're nicer or 'better' people, but that a Christ-like forgiveness lies at the heart of our relationships. Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us see what forgiveness is not- neither a diminishing of the wrong nor a restoration of trust. The Gospel radically reshapes our understanding of forgiveness by moving us beyond 'balancing the scales' to leveling the ground at the foot of the cross.

Psychologists tell us that kindness involves turning toward one another, being generous about one another's intentions, and sharing one another's joys. But what if people don't appreciate our kindness? What if they don't reciprocate it? Or, worse yet, what if they really don't deserve it? Drawing from the story of David and Mephibosheth and from the English Reformer Thomas Cranmer's 'Comfortable Words', Pastor Glenn Packiam shows us how believing the kindness of God to us produces true kindness in us.

Meals can be a place of tension or a surprising display of unity. Preaching on the party at Levi's house, Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us see how we tend to draw circles around ourselves that only include "people just like us". But the Gospel compels us to make room for others, even those we'd rather exclude. Just as Levi's house became Jesus' party, so our open homes can become places where God is at work.

Why do we center our weekly worship gathering's around the Lord's table? Pastor Evan, in this 1st week of the 3 week Worship. Connect. Serve. series takes us Genesis to Revelation to see how we center our worship around the Table because in scripture God centers His story around the same. We gather around the meal because Christ has undone the original meal of sin by becoming the redeemed meal of salvation.

The first Sunday of Christmas can feel like a letdown. We find ourselves wishing we lived in the days of angels and of Christ's presence on earth. But in this surprising conclusion to the series, Pastor Glenn Packiam shows us how Luke's story opens with angels but concludes with disciples. The Kingdom of God, inaugurated by the Son of God, continues through the people of God- us!- by the power of the Spirit of God. What it look like for us to pray and take simple risks to bring beauty from ashes in the broken places we find all around us?

Herod could have been remembered through the ages as the king who prepared the way for the true King of Jews. Instead, news of Jesus' arrival made Herod fall apart. By contrast, signs of Jesus' birth made pagan astrologers fall to their knees. Pastor Glenn Packiam helps us to see that when life reminds us that we are not in control, we can perceive it as a threat or receive it as an invitation to surrender to the One who is.

How do we bring hope to someone who is not looking for it? Pastor Glenn Packiam describes the the 'closed roof' for those who are not looking for God. But moments of joy-from art, from the story of reconciliation and forgiveness- are always surprising and can make us look up. The 'seams' in the closed heavens are hints that there is more, and can help us find that places where we have come to the end of ourselves. It is there that we see that Jesus brings new life from dead ends, green shoots from tree stumps.

Pastor Brady Boyd asks if we are willing to wait for God to do what He promised, and if we?re willing to be surprised by the way God does it. If hope is believing that God is at work, then joy is about seeing that God is at work. While the evidence of God at work may be dim at times, we can look to Jesus as the ultimate demonstration that joy has come and that joy will come in fullness.