“Christ is being proclaimed. Our responsibility is to respond.” In a very convicting sermon about the sovereignty of God in our salvation and our belief in Him, Pastor Ethan helps us understand through Scripture that yes, God saves, and yes, God is sovereign, but in His sovereignty He does not open everyone’s eyes to see the Truth. In fact, God blinds the eyes and hardens the hearts of those who wouldn’t believe. Like many of the Jews in the New Testament, some of us see Christ’s glory and hear testaments of Him, yet still reject Him because we desire glory from man. Only God has the authority to open our eyes and ears, and soften our hearts so we’re able to respond correctly to the revelation of Christ and the Gospel, but Pastor E reminds us, “Never does Scripture talk about God’s sovereignty without man’s responsibility.”

Believing in the power of the Holy Spirit to do its work in our own hearts, Pastor E does not offer practical steps in how to respond to this. He asks hard questions that shed light on where we place our glory.

As Christians, many of us have been taught that the world we live in is evil. Although it’s our current home and reality, we’ve been taught to separate ourselves from it completely, treating it as a waiting room until we get to Heaven. We’ve created a dichotomy that has us believe the material world is bad and the heavenly realm is our home. This perception of the world has everything to do with how we live here, and if we don’t understand God’s plan for creation, why He sent His Son, and His redemptive work through us as followers of Jesus, we see the world wrongly.

Without understanding why Christ came, and our role here, we fail to point unbelievers and injustices to the only perfect mediator who was and is, Jesus Christ. This week, Pastor Leonce takes us through the story of God’s redemptive work from Genesis, all the way to the New Heaven and New Earth in Revelation. He preaches that Heaven is important, but it’s not final, because everything in Scripture points to a renewed Earth that followers of Jesus have stewardship over. Pastor Leonce leaves both the unbeliever and the believer with implications to the understanding that Heaven is not ultimate. We’re at home now and must work diligently with what God is already doing because Jesus did not come to condemn the world, but to save it.

We’ve all been through seemingly impossible situations. Some of us are in the midst of those trials right now and feel completely hopeless that anything good can come from it. Whether it is death, sickness, addiction, a broken marriage, unemployment, dry seasons in our spiritual walk, or the salvation of a loved one, at times we lack the belief that God will be who says He is and that nothing can stand in the way of His authority. Our inclination is to consider a situation dead, too broken to be fixed and disregard our faith in the Almighty, all-powerful Creator of all things.

What situations in your life have you deemed dead? In John 11, we see that not even physical death can stand in the way of Jesus’ authority and that He has the power to bring dead things to life. His glory will not and cannot be diminished. This week Pastor Leonce urges us to put ourselves outside the tomb of Lazarus and to imagine what it would be like to see the dead be resurrected by the authority of Christ. He walks us through why Jesus waited days after Lazarus’ death to come to him, and challenges us to believe that if God can undo physical death, there is nothing outside the scope of His power, and that it is all for our joy and His glory.

John 11:38-44 | Not Even Death | He Already Stinketh

What is our hope in? For centuries we’ve been fascinated with what’s going to come next. We’re interested in how our circumstances are going to play out and many times we put our hope there. Even for the believer, it’s easier to put our hope in the future promises of God and the coming kingdom, forgetting that in Christ we have life now.

In Jesus’ encounter with Martha, we see that this anxiety about the future and our hope in better circumstances is not what Jesus wants for us. He’s after our hearts. He wants our faith, hope, and trust to be in Him.

This week Pastor Ethan asks us to question where our hope is and urges us to believe now in the power of Christ. Our hope is not to be in Jesus fixing our problems, but in Jesus alone. He ends with two questions to reflect upon, and a challenge that would lead us to know that Jesus is better than any other thing we could ever place our hope in.

John 11:17-27 | Not Even Death | The Dead Live Now

All throughout Scripture, we see the relationship between remembrance of the mighty works of God, and a right standing with God. Predictions and prophecies were made in the Old Testament beginning in Genesis about the coming Messiah, yet when the Jews were face to face with the Son of God, they could not see Him for who He truly was. They forgot His works and consequently lived with no expectation that God could be God.

Just like the Jews, Jesus issues us the same challenge to live in expectation. He commands us to believe in the past works and promises of God and to live with faith that He will continuously and abundantly work for our good. This week, Pastor Leonce helps us recognize why we fail to expect God to be God, and how we should respond practically to the challenge to trust God and live expectantly that He is always who He said He would always be; God.

Do you really believe that you are secure in Christ’s hand? Has God’s promise of eternal and abundant life through His son become a reality in yours, or are you living in fear of condemnation? Many of us, like the Jewish leaders who questioned Jesus, continuously need to be reminded of what it means to be sheep in His pasture.

This week we continue to unpack the implications of what it means to be His, and why we can believe wholeheartedly that all of our being is secure in Christ and that to Christ, we are His greatest gift. Pastor Leonce walks us through how our ideas about our security in Christ characterize the relationship we have with our Heavenly Father, and how to move towards living a life that completely reflects the promise that nothing and no one, including ourselves can take us out of The Father’s hand and away from His love. It’s a beautiful promise.

“I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me…”

Jesus is not simply “a” good shepherd. He is “the” good shepherd. He knows His sheep intimately, and His sheep find rest in His care. When His sheep are under attack, Jesus does not flee. He saves, and He rescues. Jesus loves His sheep selflessly in His life, and sacrificially in His death.What makes the way a shepherd cares for his sheep special, is that sheep are completely weak and defenseless on their own, and must be kept under a watchful eye, lest they perish.

This is a rich metaphor of the way Jesus loves and cares for His sheep, because we are the sheep. We are His sheep. He knows us, and we are altogether satisfied by His presence. This week, Pastor Ralph walks us through the beautiful truths of what it means to be sheep in Christ’s fold, and the ways we respond to Jesus, our Good Shepherd.

A French philosopher and historian once wrote, “When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.” Regardless of our faith, many of us believe these six things about money and possessions.

Money equals security.
More is better.
More money makes us more.
Borrowing is necessary and normal.
My money is my money.
My use of money has nothing to do with my view of God.

Whether we are followers of Christ or not, how we view money matters, and based on the staggering amount of debt that plagues our nation, communities, and households, we need to reconsider what we believe about money and possessions. If we are followers of Christ though, we must come to believe that our faith and our finances are inseparable.

Whether you’re thousands of dollars in debt, or living comfortably with none, how should you view and steward your finances? This week, Pastor Leonce takes us through what the Bible say’s our view of money and possessions should be, and gives us four practical steps to change the way we think about money, freeing us of all the lies we’ve bought in pursuit of more.

Proverbs 23:4-5 | Proverbs 15:16

In every human heart, there's a desire to be fully satisfied, and in that desperation for satisfaction, we consume things which do not satisfy. We consume because it's gratifying, but it never really satisfies. Naturally, we believe the needs of one, outweigh the needs of many. We see all of our resources as a means to our own end, therefore spending thousands of dollars a year on things that we want, as opposed to things we need, leaving little room to save, and more importantly, give. The Bible calls this behavior foolish.


This week, Pastor Copper shares the hope through Christ that we have as the only true satisfier. He also explains how Christians ought to live and steward our finances. For both the believer and nonbeliever, he leaves us with practical steps to begin taking control of our finances, and saving, and asks us to imagine what it would look like if we never again bowed to our consumption.

Proverbs 21:20