In the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught His followers how to pray. Each part of the prayer is a hopeful cry that seeks to bring His kingdom on earth (Matthew 6:9-15).

In Matthew chapter 6 Jesus goes after two issues that will keep his followers from seeing His kingdom advance on earth - money and the "religious trap". When Jesus followers start doing things for the approval of man and not God, bondage, criticism, control and disunity are never far behind. Honesty (with God and others) and repentance are the keys to avoiding this trap (Matthew 6:1-6; Matthew 6:16-18; Matthew 16:5-12; Psalm 51:6; 2 Corinthians 10:3-6).

This week we learned that our God is an enemy-loving God and Jesus asks us to be the same. This is yet another example of how His Kingdom is so different than the kingdom of the world. The difficult task of loving our enemies becomes possible as we receive God's love and surrender to His ways (Matthew 5:38-48; Mark 10:42-45; Mark 15:24-27).

Jerry Williams teaches on oaths and vows out of Matthew 5:33-37. As followers of Jesus, we should never feel the need to manipulate others through how we communicate. Our words to one another should be a representation of how God communicates to us. We can always trust that what God says is true and take Him at His word.

This week we returned to Jesus' magnum opus - The Sermon on the Mount. Pastor John gave us an overarching picture of His teaching when He calls us to be salt and light and to be righteous of heart (and so fulfilling the law). Then Jesus teaches on divorce. His heart is for us to have and create families that display what His kingdom and character is like. (Matthew 4:17; Matthew 4:23-25; Matthew 5:31-32: Mathew 19:3-9)

We concluded the Wired Conference with a pastoral note from Jerry Williams and a great encouragement and teaching on worship from Michael Mauldin.

Peter helps us understand our new nature as Christians and how God has designed us to live and relate to Him through surrender and dying to self.

John walked us through some practicals of living out the Greatest Commandment to love God and to love one another.

John took us through one of the hallmark messages of our church - God has wired us for relationships with Him and one another.

Michael Miller kicks off our Wired Conference this year with an amazing message on the work of the Holy Spirit and walking in our identity.