This week we walked through one of the hardest and most necessary sections of Scripture: the fall. Genesis 3 opens with a serpent making a familiar move, taking the generous goodness of God and reframing it as restriction. The offer to Adam and Eve was a claim to authority: stop receiving wisdom from your Creator and become the definer yourself. They took it. And everything changed.The consequences spread immediately. Shame flooded in. Relationships fractured. Work became hard. Death entered the story. And then, from Genesis 4 through 11, we watched sin do what it always does: escalate. A garden becomes a murder field. A murder becomes a brag. Civilizations organize themselves around rebellion. By Genesis 6, God grieves over what his creation has become.But even inside the consequences of the fall, God plants a promise. Genesis 3:15 hints at an offspring who will crush the serpent. Something has to die to cover human shame, and that thread runs all the way to the cross.Romans 5 gives us the frame for all of it: two men, two acts, two results. Where Adam grasped, Jesus emptied himself. Where Adam hid in shame, Jesus endured it publicly. Every move of the first Adam is reversed by the second. When we put our faith in Christ, we are joined to that second Adam, and the bent image begins to be straightened from the inside.Scripture references: Genesis 3-11, Romans 5:8, 18-20, Romans 8:22, 2 Corinthians 3:18, Matthew 27:51URF WEBSITE: ➤ http://www.urfellowship.comSOCIALS: ➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urfellowship/➤ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/urfellowship

Most of us are living from a story about ourselves that was written by someone other than God. This week we looked at the gap between the false self, the identity we absorbed from our wounds, our failures, and the people around us, and the true self, the one God had in mind when he formed us.Psalm 139 gives us the foundation. God knitted us together with the same deliberate care a weaver gives to the loom. He was present in the formation. He knew what he was making. He liked what he was making. The ancient world said humans were disposable labor. Psalm 139 says you were known before you were formed.We traced this pattern through Scripture. The Israelites at the edge of the promised land called themselves grasshoppers, and that became their ceiling. A man named Salim carried a false identity as a failure and a disappointment until he brought it honestly to God and received a true name instead. Jacob wrestled through the night and had to say his own name, the deceiver, before he was given a new one.The honest middle comes before the new identity. You bring the real thing. God speaks the true thing.We closed with three questions to bring to God: What is the most important thing you want me to know right now? Where am I not living in truth? And what do you call me?You cannot give away what you do not have. Letting God name you is not indulgent. It is generous.URF WEBSITE: ➤ http://www.urfellowship.comSOCIALS: ➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urfellowship/➤ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/urfellowship

This week we opened Genesis 1 and 2 not as a science debate or a piece of poetry, but as something more specific: a temple-building text. Using the work of scholar John Walton, we traced how the six days of creation follow a forming-and-filling pattern, and how day seven is the moment God moves into what he has made. The cosmos is his temple. His rest is not exhaustion. It is delight. He settled in to be with his people.From there we looked at what it means to be made in the image of God. In the ancient world, kings placed statues throughout their kingdoms to announce their authority. Genesis says God did something similar, except his images walk around, eat breakfast, and drive to work. We are royal representatives, image bearers placed in the world to reflect God's rule into every corner of it.Genesis 2 zooms in close. God kneels in the dirt, forms a man like a potter works clay, and breathes into him face to face. The first human's lungs were filled with the breath of God. Then God plants a garden and places his image bearers in it with a commission: cultivate and spread it. Eden was the seed. The whole earth was the field.Three practices came out of this: receive your identity from God before the world tells you who you are, take the gardening commission seriously in whatever corner of life you have been placed, and understand that the whole story is moving toward one thing: presence. God with his people. That longing we feel for things to be right is not nostalgia. It is the image of God in us remembering the garden.Scripture references: Genesis 1-2, Psalm 132, 1 Kings 8, Colossians 1, 2 Corinthians 3, Revelation 21URF WEBSITE: ➤ http://www.urfellowship.comSOCIALS: ➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urfellowship/➤ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/urfellowship

Why does God allow suffering? Before we can walk through the biblical story, we have to be honest about the hardest question in it. This week we looked at three layers of suffering: human freedom used destructively, spiritual powers working against God's purposes, and a creation groaning under the weight of consequences it did not choose.We started with love. Genuine love requires genuine freedom. Freedom means the real possibility of choosing against love, and choosing against love is the root of evil. God knew the cost. He decided the world he was after, a world where love is real, was worth it. This is not a picture of God orchestrating evil. Scripture shows Jesus treating sickness and death as enemies, as things that do not belong in his Father's world.So what does God do with a world in pain? He enters it. He took on a body. He suffered. He died. He rose. The resurrection is the first fruits of a coming harvest, proof that restoration has begun. Paul says God works for good in all things. He redeems. He transforms. Nothing is wasted.We are not passive observers. We lament honestly, pray into the gap between heaven and earth, show up for one another, and carry the presence of the Spirit into a broken world. The tomb is empty. Suffering will not get the final word.URF WEBSITE: ➤ http://www.urfellowship.comSOCIALS: ➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urfellowship/➤ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/urfellowship

We began our nine-week journey through God's unfolding kingdom by addressing the foundation: Can we actually trust the Bible? If Scripture is mythology or ancient speculation, we're wasting our time. But if God is truly revealing himself through these pages, everything changes.The New Testament was written remarkably early. Most scholars agree all 27 books were written before AD 100, with Paul's letters dating to the 50s and 60s—less than 30 years after Jesus died. This matters because eyewitnesses were still alive to verify or contradict what was being written. The gospels were composed between the 60s and 90s AD, well within living memory of Jesus's ministry.We have overwhelming manuscript evidence. Over 5,800 Greek manuscripts show 99.5% agreement across centuries and continents. Compare this to other ancient texts we accept without question: our earliest complete Plato manuscripts come from 1,200 years after he wrote.The church didn't create the canon arbitrarily. They recognized books that were written by apostles, used widely from earliest times, and conformed to apostolic teaching. The Spirit guided this process over centuries.We're not claiming every translation is perfect or that the Bible is a science textbook. We're saying Scripture reliably tells us what God wants us to know about himself, ourselves, and his rescue plan for the world. The Spirit who inspired Scripture illuminates our reading of it today. We can build our lives on this foundation.URF WEBSITE: ➤ http://www.urfellowship.comSOCIALS: ➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urfellowship/➤ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/urfellowship

We gathered this morning to celebrate what the Holy Spirit has done through our capital campaign. That total represents kitchen table conversations, prayers, and willingness that runs counter to human nature.In 1 Chronicles 29, we see David preparing materials for a temple he would never set foot in. After being told he wouldn't build it himself, David gave massively from his personal treasury and rallied the nation to participate. His prayer reveals the truth behind all generosity: everything we give comes from God's hand first. We're returning what already belonged to him.David's framework redefines generosity. We tend to see it as subtraction (I have less now), but scripture presents it as return. God measures our giving by what it costs us, not by the amount. When hundreds of people in Columbiana commit to a building campaign despite tight budgets and financial pressures, that willingness comes from the Holy Spirit rewiring priorities and creating generosity where fear should dominate.We gave toward people who don't know our names yet. A family about to fracture. A teenager losing hope. They'll walk into a seat we helped fund and encounter Jesus in a way that changes everything.At communion, we remembered the ultimate gift: Jesus, who was rich, became poor so we could become spiritually rich through his poverty. The bread and cup remind us what freedom cost and what it provides. One day we'll gather at a different table and see how every sacrificial gift echoed into forever. And with David, we'll say: who are we that we should give like this? Everything came from you. All glory belongs to you.URF WEBSITE: ➤ http://www.urfellowship.comSOCIALS: ➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urfellowship/➤ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/urfellowship

Easter raises a question most people never think to ask: why does Christianity still exist?Every major movement in history follows a predictable pattern. Unrest, a charismatic leader, a compelling message, a growing following. The leader dies, and the followers carry the ideas forward. Islam, the civil rights movement, countless others. The pattern makes sense.Christianity doesn't fit.Jesus never talked about overthrowing anything. He told people to pay their taxes and said his kingdom wasn't even of this world. The crowd that cheered him on Palm Sunday turned on him by Friday because he refused to be the liberator they wanted. And the core problem with his message was that Jesus placed himself at the center of it. He didn't ask people to trust his ideas or his principles. He asked them to trust him.So when Jesus died, everything died with him. His closest followers scattered. Peter denied him to a middle school girl. There was nothing to pass on because the message was a person, and the person was gone.Then Sunday happened.Mary shows up at the tomb expecting a body. The stone is moved. She assumes theft, not resurrection. The men think she's out of her mind. Peter runs in. John outruns Peter (and makes sure we know that). They find burial linens, folded and empty.And everything changes.Those same scattered cowards walk into the streets of Jerusalem with one message: you killed him, God raised him, we saw him, repent.The resurrection is the only explanation for the church. And for followers of Jesus, it's something more personal. It's a receipt. Proof that the debt has been paid in full.If you've been on the fence, this is the weekend to step off it.URF WEBSITE: ➤ http://www.urfellowship.comSOCIALS: ➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urfellowship/➤ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/urfellowship

Sermon Summary:Palm Sunday is more than a parade. It is a case study in what happens when people see what they want to see instead of who is actually there.The crowd that welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem was desperate. Rome was occupying their land, and Passover week was saturating the air with stories of the God who had defeated Pharaoh. When word spread that the Messiah was coming down the Mount of Olives, the crowd responded with everything they had. Palm branches. Cloaks. Shouts of Hosanna. They were ready for liberation.One week later, much of that same crowd was calling for his execution.The difference was not what Jesus did wrong. The difference was what he failed to deliver. He did not fight Rome. He did not rally an army. He got arrested. And once he stopped performing according to their category, they stopped seeing a person. They saw a failed label. And failed labels are easy to discard.This sermon traces that dynamic into our own lives. The human brain categorizes constantly, and that capacity becomes dangerous when the category replaces the person. Paul's phrase in 2 Corinthians 5 is kata sarka, seeing according to the flesh, sorting people by surface and deciding they are the sum of one characteristic.Jesus refused that. He sat down with tax collectors. He looked at Matthew in his booth and saw someone worth calling. He kept finding the actual person underneath what everyone had already decided.And at the cross, the most powerful labeling device the empire had, he prayed continuously for the people killing him. No enemy list.The invitation is to let what God has already said about us free us from needing to label others. The love of Christ compels us. The Spirit changes what we see first.URF WEBSITE: ➤ http://www.urfellowship.comSOCIALS: ➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urfellowship/➤ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/urfellowship

The Christian life is fundamentally a story about trust. From the fracture in the Garden of Eden, where the real break was not disobedience but distrust, to the ministry of Jesus, the whole arc of Scripture is God working to restore a trust relationship with people. The Ten Commandments came after the Exodus because relationship always precedes the rules. God's goal has never been compliance. It has always been trust.This week's sermon centers on Matthew 8 and one of the most surprising moments in all four gospels: the only time Jesus is described as amazed. A Roman centurion, a pagan military officer with no religious credentials, approaches Jesus on behalf of his paralyzed servant and says something remarkable. He tells Jesus he does not need to come to the house. Just say the word, and it will be done. The centurion understood authority. He knew that Jesus was operating under a power greater than himself, and he bet on it without needing to see it happen first.Jesus turns to the crowd and says he has not found faith like this anywhere in Israel. People who knew Scripture, kept the laws, and attended the temple were outranked in faith by a Roman who had never been inside one. Knowledge about God had become a system. The centurion had trust.We are in a moment that calls for that same kind of faith. Our church is building for people whose names we do not know yet, people God is already drawing toward this place. The goal cards we are praying over this week are not just financial commitments. They are acts of trust, a way of saying to God: we believe you. We cannot see what is coming, but we trust the one who can.URF WEBSITE: ➤ http://www.urfellowship.comSOCIALS: ➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urfellowship/➤ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/urfellowship

Greetings from the Upper Room Fellowship, a church in Columbiana, Ohio, where we seek to Know God, Share Life, and Serve Others together. At the Upper Room Fellowship, we believe in a relational God who created us and will go to whatever lengths possible to connect with us so we can experience his perfect love. We believe that His love is open to all and has the power to transform lives and communities.URF WEBSITE: ➤ http://www.urfellowship.comSOCIALS: ➤ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urfellowship/➤ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/urfellowship