the Cross Orlando

Continuing the Psalms series that closes out the church year, Ben works through the second half of Psalm 34, an acrostic that invites us to taste and see that the Lord is good. Drawing on Elijah in the ravine, the Holy Family in Egypt, and Jesus calming the storm, he describes taking refuge in God by fearing the Lord rather than relying on ourselves, and seeking a peace that doesn't remove hardship but removes panic and existential dread in the middle of it.

Opening a six-week series in the Psalms to close out the church year, Ben works through Psalm 30, where the psalmist credits God for a secure mountain, is dismayed when God hides his face, and cries out from the edge of the pit. With Peter's 'Lord, to whom shall we go?' from John 6, he argues that since only God can rescue and restore, we can receive mountaintops with thanksgiving and call out for help from the pit.

Closing the series on the network's four core values, Ben reads Luke 4:14-30, where Jesus begins his ministry in the Nazareth synagogue by reading Isaiah 61, and uses Job 5 to argue that we are the poor to whom he announces good news. He contrasts Nazareth's rejection with the widow of Zarephath and Naaman, who received God's provision in unexpected ways.

Guest speaker Blake Wright of Resurrection Church in Sanford closes the network values series with 'sincere,' contrasting the Pharisees' flattery in Matthew 22 with Jesus' call to love God and neighbor, a sincerity he lived out through every healing and conversation. Drawing on 1 Timothy 1:5 and the early church in Acts 2:42-47, he describes a sincere church as one that loves one another, serves because people matter to Jesus, and knows it belongs to Christ.

Ben works through Ephesians 2-4 to unpack 'focused,' the third of the network's four core values, following Paul's stacked argument that God moves first toward people while they are still dead in their sins, grafts them together into a dwelling place for God, and prays they would grasp a love that surpasses knowledge. That encounter with the gospel, rather than moral effort, is what propels a church out to live truthful, generous, forgiving lives.

Guest speaker Russ Peterson continues the network values series with 'collaborative,' tracing the word to the Latin for working together and finding the pattern in Acts, where the temple-observant Jerusalem church and the multicultural Antioch church strengthen each other in both directions — Barnabas sent north, famine relief sent back. The Jerusalem Council then models how collaboration survives disagreement: much debate, then silence and listening, and finally shared ground rules the Spirit worked out among them.

Opening a four-week series on the multi-site network's core values, this message takes up 'adventurous' through Hebrews 11 — the Hall of Faith, where at least half the examples are people who died without receiving what they were promised. Faith persists because the God of Abraham is broader and deeper than the grave, as the cross and resurrection show, and that conviction frees a church to take risks in loving its neighbors.

A guest speaker works through Isaiah 5's song of the vineyard: God created, cultivated, and protected Israel as a vineyard meant to bear good fruit, yet it yielded rotten fruit — he looked for justice but saw bloodshed, for righteousness but heard cries of distress. Drawing on Micah 6:8 and John 15, it frames righteousness as right relationship with God that flows outward into justice, and Jesus as the true vine we are grafted into.

Opening a series on the church shared with two sister congregations in Lake Mary and Sanford, this message works through Paul's body analogy in 1 Corinthians 12:12-20, teaching that the church is a cohesive unit of distinct members with reciprocal need: you both belong and are needed.

Closing out the series in 2 Peter, this message works through chapter 3 and its answer to the scoffers who ask where the promise of Christ's coming has gone: God's delay is patience, not forgetfulness. Drawing on Isaiah 40-43 and Romans 2:4, it calls the church to wait for the new heavens and new earth with diligent, peaceful lives and hearts of repentance.