Tragedy is one of those things that none of us want to experience, but many of us will. It's a part of living in a broken world full of broken people, but it's never something we want to think about, anticipate, or expect. And as a result, when tragedy does come our way it often catches us off guard and leaves us feeling hopeless. We feel as though God has lost control and we have lost our way. So what do we do when the unexpected comes into our lives? How can we possibly react well? This week we look at what the Bible says about responding to tragedy and how amidst the panic and the chaos, we can find peace and strength.

Fear is probably one of the most common emotions that we are dealing with right now. With the spreading of the Corona Virus, many of us are afraid for our own health or that of loved ones, some of us are afraid because of our work situation, and some of us are just scared cause it seems like everyone else is! While it might be the results of this virus that bring fear into our lives now, fear is not an uncommon thing. We all have things that we fear and if we are not careful, it can cripple us and negatively affect our mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. This week, Pastor Sean takes some time to address the fear and anxiousness that we are all dealing with and spends time looking at what the Bible has to say about our fear and what we can take away from it that will help bring peace no matter what the circumstances.

Friends not only can provide support and companionship, as we learned last week, but they also can be the people you turn to when you don't know what to do or where to turn to. And in the same way, you can be that person in someone else's life. Great friends help share each other's burden, celebrate each other's victories and forms a bond that becomes like family. In this week's message, we look at how this type of friendship is modeled in the Bible and what it takes to have a purposeful friendship and how you can work to become this type of friend for someone else.

It's hard to build great, close knit friendships as adults. Maybe we're just busy. Or maybe we've been hurt in the past. But for many of us, our best friendships are in the past and not in the present. Loneliness is reported to be a major issue in our culture from all age groups, yet we still find making new close friends very difficult. In today's teaching, we are going to talk about why the Bible says having close friends is so important, not only for your mental and physical health but your spiritual health. We tend to become like the people closest to us and if you did become more like those closest, how would your life be different? Would you be closer to God or further away?

If there is one thing we can all agree on, it's probably that maintaining healthy relationships with those around us is tough. It requires a level of selflessness of us that, honestly, we don't always want to give. And if that isn't hard enough, God calls us to a much higher standard in our relationships. We are to love those who won't and don't love us back. To give to those who seem to only take and take. How is this even possible to maintain? In the last week of our series, we talk about the one relationship that is VITAL to maintain if we want to have good relationships with those around us. That is our relationship with God. If you are struggling to love the unlovely, and to serve those who take, it's time to take a look inward and refocus your attention on the priority and closeness of your relationship with God.

We all have relationships in our lives that we tend to avoid. Whether it's an ex, a co-worker, or maybe even a family member, we do our best to stay away from these people and navigate our lives around them. Sometimes this is from past hurt, but often it's because we feel these people are a waste of our time. It sounds harsh but is often true. We all have a tendency to be transactional in our relationship. To love the people who are easy to love and to avoid the people that are hard to love. God knew this about us and as a result, has a lot to say about how we should interact with these difficult people. This week, we will talk about some motives we have for avoiding these people, assess our motives against what the Bible has to say, and learn from how Jesus interacted with the kind of people many of us think of as not worth our time and energy.

It's a part of our nature to look out for ourselves first and to make our comfort and enjoyment number one. While we might aspire to be known for helping others and putting others before our needs, many times we find ourselves helping in ways that ultimately benefit us. We wake up in the morning planning out how we want our day to go, and often react negatively when something or someone gets in the way of that. So of course this aspect of our nature often causes problems with those around us. When two people with their own interests in mind are in proximity to each other, there are bound to be problems. In today's message, we look at what the Bible has to say about how we should serve others and why we should serve others. By realigning our priorities to God's, we can make strides to suppress our selfish tendencies and make a difference not only in our relationships, but in our world.

Sometimes it's the people closest to us that we struggle to get along with the most. Maybe it's because they are the people we spend the most time with, see the worst of, and can get away from least. All of us would say we want to have healthier relationships with our family, but sometimes, it's hard to imagine how to even begin that process. Because our families have broken people just like us, it's not wonder we find them in conflict. In the first week of our series, we look at what the Bible has to say about our families and focus in on the steps we can take to improve our marriages and our relationships with our kids.

I think most of us would agree that it is a good thing to stay close to God and to intentionally set aside time to hear God's leading, pruning, and guiding in our hearts. That it's good to take a step back in life and lean into what God is trying to tell you. But in the last week of our series, we see what the purpose of staying close to God is! It's not so that we can get more money, be more blessed, or even hear God speaking to our hearts. In fact, tuning our hearts to hear what God wants only matters if we follow through with this one step. And by doing so, we can live lives that are fulfilled in the purpose for which we were created.

When it comes to prayer, many of us are unsure or uncomfortable with how to utilize it in our relationship with God. We say our thoughts and prayers are with others during tough times, but often neglect the "prayer" part. For many of us, talking to God seems intimidating and we believe we have to have eloquent speech and language. And others of us have learned to recite certain prayers since we were kids so much so that we can recite them without even thinking. If prayer is a tool for us to use, then it can only be as effective as our ability to know how to use it. In this week's message, we look at what Jesus had to say about prayer, and how He shows us a template for what to pray for so that we can become more comfortable talking to God.