Renewal Church

What if the reason for our spiritual stagnation was that we were looking at everything all wrong? What if the standards by which we judged our spirituality were skewed? Surprisingly, this can happen even to the very religious, and sometimes especially to the very religious. In today's sermon, the apostle Paul sets us straight and equips us with a new yardstick by which to measure ourselves.

Everyone knows they need to change, but change can prove elusive, especially if it's not just cosmetic. How do we become different from who our experiences, upbringing and genetic makeup have made us when that's all we have to work with? That's why real change needs to come from the outside. Today we'll learn about the greatest outside catalyst for real, deep, meaningful change that a person can experience.

A strange incident involving King David, a widow of Saul, and the Gibeonite survivors foreshadow the cross of Christ, which would not come for another thousand years, in a surprising way. As we reflect on Christ's sacrifice this Good Friday, 2 Samuel provides a different facet from which to be thankful.

Palm Sunday is a bittersweet day to mark the start of Holy Week. Imagine Jesus coming into Jerusalem and seeing the crowds roll out the ancient red carpet of palm leaves and chants calling Him their savior--only to see the same people reject Him just days later. Had they reflected on Psalm 118, they would know that the stone they would reject would become the cornerstone--and realize that Jesus came to save them from something much bigger than even the Roman empire.

Paul is passionate about hammering this point in for the Galatians: we must not live as slaves, but everything should point to Christ, or else we'll burn out and get paralyzed by our own sense of worth and legalism. To really nail this message in, he drops this bomb on the Jews: keeping the Law for your salvation means Hagar is your mother, not Sarah. All followers of Christ must know that the promised legacy of Abraham and Sarah is freedom, not slavery. What are the things that you place your sense of worth in that keep you bonded in slavery and apart from God?

In this passage of Galatians, Paul teaches a crucial message to Jesus’s followers: God chose to love us and set us free through the cross. Not only that, but this love is what enables us to intimately call out to God as ‘Abba, Father,’ just as a child calls out to his or her dad. Even though this call is what all humanity longs for ever since Eden, we are tempted to go back and earn our affirmation. If you feel like there's something deep in you that feels starved for the love of the Father, listen to this week's message to learn that help is already here to free you from the mentality of slavery--and into true sonship.

In part 3 of our study of Galatians, we examine our relationship with the Law. Not many people realize that God created the Law to show very clearly the underlying sin in His people and thereby accentuate our desire for the coming of Christ. However, by the time Jesus came, the Pharisees in their hypocrisy rejected Him because they thought they could save themselves through perfectionism--and continue to live under the Law's curse. Do you live like keeping the Law perfectly can save you? If you hear yourself taking a condemning tone with yourself, we invite you to listen to this week's sermon and learn what Jesus really wants you to hear through His death and resurrection.

Do you feel like your best still isn't good enough? Are you always striving, but never satisfied? Do you find yourself feeling lonely, with no one in your life who really knows you? Christ came to deliver us from this kind of living. Find out what the grace of God, eating kosher, and a culturally mixed up church have in common as we discover how.

This week, we start our new sermon series on the Book of Galatians. The author of the book, Paul, is speaking to the church in Galatia - a Roman province in what is now modern-day Turkey. It was an area that was deeply affected by Greek culture and still influenced by Judaizers - Jews from Jerusalem preaching legalism. In love, Paul warns the Galatians to accept no other Gospel except the one preached by Jesus, and he exhorted them to live a life in the Spirit. This two thousand year old letter is still so powerful and relevant for us today.

One of the passages that has been examined several times and stirred some uncomfortable questions is Jesus’s interaction with the rich young ruler. Is Jesus implying through this exchange that only good works saves us? Do we all really need to give up everything we have in order to attain salvation? In today’s sermon, we probe deeper into these questions to get to the bottom of what's really going on inside our hearts: what's the one thing in your life that's keeping you from Jesus?