Do we hold on to titles that God has not given us? In this week’s sermon, we look at the death of Rachel and the reasons Jacob felt so strongly about changing Benjamin’s name.

Because of the surrounding people’s beliefs, Jacob’s initial understanding of God was likely limited. Similarly today we can settle for a limited relationship with God because of the people and the culture we surround ourselves with. In this week’s sermon, we see how much Jacob’s relationship with God had deepened since the last time he came to Bethel and what could be holding us back from experiencing this kind of deep relationship for ourselves.

When tragedy strikes sometimes we want to take charge of the situation so we can salvage what we see as the best possible outcome. In this week’s sermon we go through the story of Dinah, and see how taking matters into our own hands usually means we’re overlooking the redemptive work God is able to do.

When we’re worried about something we often assume the worst. In this week’s sermon, we continue in the story of Israel, or Jacob, as he returns to his brother Esau after fleeing for his life 20 years earlier. We see how through prayer God can change people’s hearts to create an outcome that’s even better than we could imagine. 

At the end of the message is a guided prayer that we encourage you to participate in. After each prompt, pause the podcast to continue in prayer, and when finished click play to go on to the next prompt. 

Reading the story of Jacob you may feel a distaste for his character, but in this week’s sermon, we watch Jacob be born again as he faces his past and encounters God, who has a different future in mind for his child. 

God is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love but do we desire mercy for those we find most despicable? In this week’s passage, God appears to Laban, Jacobs’s deceitful father-in-law, and we see how God thankfully doesn’t follow our standards of who we think is worthy of his attention but instead is full of love and mercy even for those farthest from Him.

In scripture we are reminded that our battle is not against flesh and blood — so why do we still try to fight in the physical instead of the spiritual? In this week’s sermon, Pastor Nathan continues in Genesis 30 and shows how despite Laban’s continued deceit and manipulation God moves in ways that defy the natural.

Sometimes we can be looking for love in all the wrong places. In this week’s sermon, Pastor Nathan unpacks the story of Jacob, Rebekah, and Leah and how we can still see this story’s truths ring true in our lives today.

How do we react when the wells we are drawing from get filled in? In this week’s sermon, Pastor Nathan shows what the story of Isaac and Abimelek can teach us about the true source of living water.

It can be easy to look at ourselves and only see our shortcomings, disqualifying ourselves from being used by God and then going to others, who we consider more qualified, for access to God. In this week’s sermon, Pastor Nathan unpacks the story of Jacob’s ladder and how that access to heaven was only a taste of the access that is now available to all because of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.