Teacher: Josh Wilson

Text: Psalm 126:1-6

In this sermon from Psalm 126, Pastor Josh asks how joy can survive when life feels dry and our prayers go unanswered. The psalm is a song of joy sung by a people who weren't winning—proof that joy and grief can live in the same breath. Pastor Josh teaches that when we draw from the "well of memory" (what God has done) and the "well of hope" (what God will do), we can find joy even in the valley. This is our act of resistance against despair.

Teacher: Mandi Paszek 

Text: Psalm 42:1-11 

In this sermon from Psalm 42, Mandi makes the case that lament—bringing our real grief honestly to God—isn't the opposite of faith but a doorway into it. She shares how grief needs three things: room to breathe, a companion, and room to coexist with hope. We don't have to rush past our pain to reach God; He meets us in it, like a father running toward a child. The invitation isn't to grieve less, but to grieve well—and discover that God is already near.

Teacher: Josh Wilson

Text: Psalm 86:1-7

Psalm 86 reads as one of the most personal prayers in Scripture, yet it's almost entirely borrowed. It's a patchwork of older psalms and the words of Torah stitched together during Israel's exile. In this sermon, Pastor Josh asserts that ancient, handed-down tools of faith like this are exactly what our souls need. We don't have to keep manufacturing our spirituality from scratch; instead we can turn to handed-down words and practices — like Scripture, the Psalms, or the Lord's Prayer — to lead us back to God.

Teacher: Josh Wilson

Text: Psalm 122:1-4

In this sermon from Psalm 122, Pastor Josh makes a quiet but unsettling claim: faith is deeply personal, but it was never meant to be private. We've been trained to treat the real thing as whatever happens inside us—just me and God—and to leave community, ritual, and shared worship as optional extras. But the people of this psalm sing in the plural; they journey toward God together, and that is exactly how we get formed too. You cannot become who God is calling you to be on your own.

Teacher: Josh Wilson

Text: Psalm 139:1-6, 23-24

Psalm 139 claims that God sees and knows us completely—but is being fully seen good news, or a threat? In Josh's first sermon of the Psalms series, he holds together the tension of this psalm: that the God who searches us is the same God who delights in and treasures us. He's a loving Father rather than a hostile watcher. The invitation is to stop hiding and performing, and instead bring what's real to the God who already knows us and holds us as beloved.

Teacher: Josh Wilson

Text: Daniel 6:10–16

Pastor Josh wrapped up the Faithful in Babylon series with the story of Daniel in the lion's den. In this iconic tale, we see that small, faithful, resolute acts are what shake the foundations of empire — and the courage to do them in the moment is the fruit of a life already practiced in turning toward God, not a heroic decision in the moment of crisis. Daniel prayed "just as he had done before," and that's where this week's invitation lives: toward the small, ordinary acts of faithfulness we keep doing when the pressure is on.

Teacher: Mandi Paszek

Text: Daniel 5:13–30

In this sermon from Daniel 5, Mandi reads the fall of Belshazzar as more than a history lesson—it's a mirror. When Daniel refuses the king's offer of status, wealth, and influence, we see something the ego almost never admits: that what the world calls security has never been able to hold. From Eden to empire, the same script keeps running, and only Jesus breaks it.

Teacher: Josh Wilson

Text: Daniel 3:16–25

Empire's grip is rarely overt. It's the slow choreography of social pressure that pulls us out of integrity one step at a time. Drawing on Daniel 3, Pastor Josh offers in this sermon that one expression of faithfulness is the refusal to bow, even at a cost. We can trust that Jesus will meet us in the fire—but only after we've chosen to enter it.

Teacher: T.C. Moore

Text: Daniel 2:19-28a

Guest preacher T.C. Moore draws from Daniel 2 to name the spiritual danger of empire thinking—and what it looks like to be formed by Kingdom imagination instead. As exiles in Babylon, Daniel and his friends modeled a non-anxious, communal, worshipful posture that speaks directly to our moment. This is a sermon about how we are being formed, who we are becoming, and what community is actually for.

Teacher: Josh Wilson

Text: Daniel 1:8-16

There's a pressure on all of us to go along: not an outright demand to deny our faith, but a thousand subtle invitations to let culture do the naming. In this message from Daniel 1, Pastor Josh explores how empire's formation project works not through force, but through the slow reshaping of desire and identity. Drawing on philosopher James K.A. Smith's concept of rival liturgies, Josh calls us toward the kind of counter-formation that keeps us faithfully rooted in who God says we are.