Our Goal Is Love

God promised Abraham a nation, and then more than ten years passed with nothing to show for it. Sarah was still barren and well past the age when any of it made sense. So she did what most of us do when a promise runs long. She stopped waiting and built a plan of her own.

It was reasonable, and it seemed to work for about half a verse. Then it turned the house into a war zone. And the one who suffered the most was the person with the least power. This Sunday we opened Genesis 16 and followed the chapter in three moves, the cause of their impatience, the consequence of it, and the cure. That cure begins where you would not expect it, out in the desert, where God finds a runaway servant at a spring, calls her by name, and hands her a promise as large as the one he gave the patriarch. She walked away calling him El Roi, the God who sees.

Join us as we wrap up Vacation Bible School with this sermon from Colossians 2:3.  No matter what we think we are looking for, "Jesus is the treasure we seek!"

A recent article in Popular Mechanics asked whether heaven has a physical address — somewhere out past the edge of the known universe, or folded into a dimension we can't yet see. It's a question people have chased for a long time, and science keeps coming up empty. This Sunday, we look at what Scripture says instead: that heaven was never a location to find, but a person to be with.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident."

Most Americans can recite the line without thinking about it. But few have paused to deeply consider what our founding document actually declares. Fewer still have held these statements up against Scripture to determine just how unalienable these truths are.

This week's message looks at that preamble directly.

For 250 years, the promise of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” has provided a world-changing paradigm to societies who wish to throw off the bonds of oppression.

But Scripture tells a bigger story. Life is not just something given, it is offered eternally. Liberty is not just the freedom to choose, it comes with the weight of what is chosen. And happiness is far too low a pursuit when God promises so much more.

Join us as we lay our founding document alongside God's eternal truth.

If God is all-loving and all-powerful, why does suffering exist? It's one of the oldest objections to faith, and atheist voices like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens have built careers on it. But what if the very illustrations these thinkers use to argue against God actually point straight back to him? In this message, Pastor Major walks through Romans 8 and three unexpected images — a miracle drug, a dangerous road, and a dentist's chair — to show why suffering may not be evidence against a loving God, but proof of one. Whether you've wrestled with this question yourself or know someone who has, this episode offers a way through.

When Sebastian Berhalter made the U.S. World Cup roster, his father, former USMNT coach Gregg Berhalter, wrote him a letter. As Sebastian read it on camera last week, he couldn't get through it without crying, undone by one line in particular:

“I'm proud of you because of who you are, not because of what you accomplished.”

That same kind of declaration echoes from centuries earlier, spoken over another Son at the very start of His ministry. Before a single miracle, before a single sermon, before the cross, the Father said: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

When we read that phrase, we might be tempted to think that the Father’s feeling towards the Son was based on what he had accomplished. But his identity was settled before His earthly résumé even began.

The Father’s pleasure in us is rooted in who we are, not what we produce. And for those of us who are fathers, it's more than something to receive; it's something to pass on, speaking pride and delight over our children long before they've proven anything to us.

Join us this Sunday as we open Matthew 3 and discover what it means to be loved by the Father — and what it looks like to love like Him.

This season marks the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. 

While we celebrate the birth of our nation on July 4th, if you remember your history, you know the founding was anything but swift or certain. In the early months of 1776, the delegates gathered in Philadelphia were deeply divided. Some colonies feared the consequences of a full break with England and preferred to pursue what many called "the middle way.” They wanted to resist the Crown's overreach, but stop short of separation and remain Englishmen. Others, like the Virginia delegation, were convinced that separation was not only necessary but already, in every practical sense, inevitable.

For months, the Continental Congress limped on the matter, debating, delaying, unable to reach a resolution. Until June 7, 1776, a delegate from Virginia rose and forced the issue by making a formal motion.

"Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."

Richard Henry Lee's formal motion could not be tabled or talked around. It demanded a vote. It forced a choice. And ultimately, it required a Declaration.

Nearly three thousand years earlier, the prophet Elijah stood before the people of Israel on Mount Carmel and forced the very same question. "How long will you go limping between two opinions?" he asked. They had refused to declare what, in their hearts, they already knew to be true. Elijah did not debate them, and he did not allow room for additional delay. He dismantled the pretense that silence was a neutral position.

Like the delegates in Philadelphia, and like the people of Israel on Carmel, many of us are limping. This Sunday, we will open 1 Kings 18:17–40 and be challenged to choose!

Sometime in the fourth century, a monk sat in the Egyptian desert and made a list of every way the human soul could go wrong. That list became the seven deadly sins, and for 1,500 years, through the fall of Rome, the Reformation, and two World Wars, theologians, poets, and pastors looked at those seven and said: that’s the whole map. That covers it.

Until now. 

A recent article by James Parker in The Atlantic suggests our age may have produced an eighth.

Have you ever noticed that when Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness, none of the offers were viciously evil? Bread for a hungry man. A miraculous sign. The kingdoms of a world Jesus himself had made. That’s what makes it so unsettling — sin is just that subtle.

Join us tomorrow morning as we open Matthew 4 and examine what may be the eighth deadly sin.

Ella Langley recently made history as the first woman to hold the top two spots on the Hot Country Songs chart for multiple weeks — surpassing Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, who each did it for one. The song at number one was "Choosin' Texas." The song at number two was "Be Her."

In the song, Langley paints a picture of the woman she wants to become — someone who isn't stuck on the past, isn't worried about tomorrow, and stays talking to Jesus. In an interview, she said the song came straight from her own honest desire for growth. "I just literally sat there and said things I wanted to work on."

Maybe it's resonating because most of us know exactly what she means. We all carry some version of that image — who we want to be, how we want to live, the person we can picture clearly but haven't quite become yet. The gap between who we are and who we know we should be is one of the most universal feelings there is.

We aren't the first to face that chasm between what we are and what we want to become. Paul faced it too. This Sunday we're going to look at what he shared — and what it means for every one of us still trying to close that gap. We'll see you at 10:30