South Fellowship Church

Following Jesus was never meant to be something we do alone. In Ephesians 4, Paul calls the church to walk together with humility, gentleness, patience, and love. But living that way with real people isn't always easy.This week, Jessica Rust explores what it means to live out our calling as part of the body of Christ. As we learn to make room for one another, use the gifts God has given us, and grow together in maturity, we begin to see why community is such an important part of following Jesus.

It's one thing to know that God loves you. It's another thing to experience that love in a way that changes how you live. In Ephesians 3, Paul prays that we would be strengthened by God's Spirit, rooted in love, and able to grasp just how wide, long, high, and deep Christ's love really is. Pastor Alex explores the difference between knowing about God's love and truly experiencing it, and why that experience matters for the way we live.

What is God really like? Sometimes the God we encounter in the Old Testament seems different from the Jesus we meet in the New Testament. But what if we've misunderstood the story? In Ephesians 3, Paul describes a mystery that God has been revealing all along. Pastor Alex explores the compassion, grace, patience, and faithful love at the heart of God's character, and what it means to be invited into a story where that same grace extends even to people we struggle to love.

For much of the biblical story, people understood some places as sacred and others as common. There were boundaries around where you could go and who could draw near to God. But in Ephesians 2, Paul describes what Jesus has changed. The walls have come down, everyone has access to God, and his presence is no longer confined to a particular building or place. Pastor Alex Walton explores what it means for us to become God’s dwelling place and carry his presence into the people and places we encounter every day.

Grace is a gift, but we have a habit of adding things to it. In Ephesians 2, Nathan Holmes explores the good news at the heart of the gospel: we are made alive in Christ not because of our politics, church attendance, performance, or anything else we can offer, but because of God’s grace. We don’t have to earn it, and we don’t have to prove ourselves worthy of it. We are saved by grace, period.

There’s a difference between knowing about someone and actually knowing them. In Ephesians 1, Paul prays that followers of Jesus wouldn’t simply know more about God, but would know him personally, experiencing the hope, power, and life that come from a relationship with him.

In the opening of Ephesians, Paul reminds a people surrounded by wealth, power, fear, and uncertainty that they are chosen, adopted, and met with God’s lavish grace. That same grace is for us too, inviting us to accept that we are fully accepted and loved by God.

Proverbs 31:8–9 calls us to be a voice for the voiceless, reflecting God’s heart for justice by using the influence, resources, and margin we have to step toward those who are vulnerable and in need.

We can make plans for our lives, but Proverbs 16:9 reminds us that God is at work in the unexpected, using even the storms we would never choose to shape us, transform us, and teach us to trust that Jesus is present even when we can’t see him.

We weren’t meant to grow into the way of Jesus alone. In this message from Proverbs 27, Sean Switzer explores what it really means for “iron to sharpen iron” and how God can use the honesty, friction, and encouragement of community to shape us. Who has God placed in your life to help you grow?