Heaven & Nature Sing! | 'Joy to the World'

In this message, Pastor Colton unpacks the song "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!" and encourages us to listen, to hear what the angels are proclaiming at Christ's birth. God became man and made it possible for us to be born again - for the life of God to get into the hearts of humanity. At Christmas, God is doing a wonderful, creative work through Jesus!

Because the Christian faith moves us long past the trivial and into the deep waters of the real world – the one where we experience guilt and loss and despair, as well as longing and desire; and the one where God is present and working if we would take have “eyes to see, and ears to hear” to quote Jesus.  Living alive to God in the “real world” calls for attentiveness. And that’s what our song is calling for: “Come and behold him, born the king of angels.  O come, let us adore him…”

God works through people of lowly status and in seemingly insignificant places to accomplish his divine plan. This critiques the way that we as humans so often hunger after the ‘bigger’, that which means ‘more power’, for more limelight, for more significance, and opens us up to “Live Little”.

“Advent" means “arrival”; specifically waiting for the arrival of God – to work, and act, and deal with all the evil that leads to our ‘world-weariness.’  And though Advent is shot through with hopefulness, this season is there to help us reflect on the brokenness that is still all around us. Our new series, “Heaven & Nature Sing!” begins by looking at the song of longing and hope: “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” and what it would mean to embrace this song as our prayer for this season.

In the final part of our Being Human series, Jacob Harder encourages us to respond to the wise words of Ecclesiastes, and of the whole Bible, by allowing God to shape our hearts and to lead us into Jesus’ way of being human. May the words of Ecclesiastes lead us to embrace the fully human life Jesus offers – a life where we choose to walk before Him with joy and trust.

Being Human | Part 6: Reality (How NOT to Be Immortals)

In this week's message, Pastor Dave speaks on how we need to know that we don’t know everything – and won’t; and can’t. We may search for certainty – a way to gain control of outcomes in life – but although there are many things we can know, there are many that we can’t as well. And knowing that is part of what we need to live wisely and God-ward.

Jacob Harder speaks on the message of Ecclesiastes 3 – that God made everything beautiful in its time – and how this means we should respond to time, not by trying to be time travelers, but by living in worshipful response to him in every moment.

In his message, Pastor Colton preaches on Ecclesiastes 4:1-12, charting a course through the grim realities of people set on gain and envy through to the beauty of community as people live out the implications of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As we look at Ecclesiastes 4, we see how God has saved us, not for greatness, gain, and consuming, but for relationship with Himself and one another - calling us to lay down the restless pursuit of worldly "gains" to gain that which we cannot lose.