Renewal Church

This Sunday we are blessed with a guest speaker, Phil Wright. Phil teaches us how we must be wary of our internal voices and how they can bind us. We will never be free of our internal critic until we learn to listen God's voice and tear down the rest. God's voice is never condemning and always affirming. And when we are able to recognize God's voice, we begin a process of renewing and refreshing our minds.

Today we continue our series on the Gospel of John with a passage on John the Baptist and his response to Jesus' rising popularity. Pastor Ulysses teaches us with this story that we need to be sure of who we are in this world. We need to realize we are children of God and that our self-worth should come through that alone. Every accomplishment we do is through His grace. Therefore there is no point to compete with others, especially other Christians. Afterall we all should build up the bride, the Church for the bridegroom, Jesus. We must decrease and He must increase.

This Sunday Pastor Ulysses speaks to the beginning of John 3, which emphasizes the importance of spiritual rebirth and God's love for us. We learn the concept of leaving our past selves behind to become renewed through our new life centered by Christ. The sermon also digs deeper into the idea of God's love and desire for a relationship with us. While we are ultimately judged by God, we are not condemned thanks to the salvation provided by Jesus.

This week Pastor Ulysses walks us through John 2:12-25 where Jesus enters the temple and finds it with merchants and money exchangers. He then drives them out of the temple while rebuking them for turning the sacred space into a marketplace. Pastor Ulysses encourages us to reflect on our own intentions attending our "temple". What are our true intentions when we attend church? How can we ensure we avoid the "consumer Christian" mentality and instead cleanse our hearts to be in alignment with glorifying God and building up the body?

This week Pastor Ulysses take us through the passage in John’s gospel which presents Jesus’s first supernatural act on record. The story presents to the reader some fascinating questions. Is Jesus rebuking his own mother? Why does Jesus perform the miracle after first seemingly refusing to do so? Pastor Ulysses uses these questions to challenge our perception of who Jesus is and how he related to his family and his disciples. In the story of this miracle at Cana there is also a beautiful image of Christ’s blood shed to purify us, a new and different grace delivered to us by God through His Son.

As Pastor Ulysses continues his series in the Gospel of John, verses 19-34 points to the Jesus already introduced through the testimony of John the Baptist. As the Jewish leaders try to investigate who this Baptist was, they make many guesses. Is he the promised Messiah or the prophesied Elijah or even the prophet promised by Moses? John instead points to Jesus, the only one worth knowing and cherishing. John introduces Jesus as the lamb who takes away the sins of the world, the one in whom the Holy Spirit remains and the one who fills us with his spirit. John identified it as a privilege to point to this Jesus. Listen to Pastor Ulysses explain why!

Today we begin a new sermon series on the Gospel of John. Through this passage, we are introduced to Jesus and learn that though He is of flesh, He is the perfect expression of God. The deeds and words of Jesus are those of God. As Christians we need to remember that Jesus so loved us, He gave His own life so that we may be saved and free to have a relationship with God.

This Sunday we are blessed with a guest speaker from Kairos Christian Church. Pastor Peter Yoon delivers to us a message on the importance of missions through the lens of the parable in which Jesus restores a blind man's sight. Through this passage, we learn that in this world of broken people, God sends hope and healing through His healed messengers. When we embrace the gospel and walk with God, we can do this as well.

This past Sunday, Pastor Joel King asks the question “Why are you here?”, serving as a reminder for us to check our motivations in being a follower of Christ. Pastor Joel then explores the motivations behind why the disciples followed Jesus and uses that as a template of how we should follow Jesus in our lives as well.