VOUS Church

Self-discovery is really soul discovery. Self-searching leads to self-awareness. The truth is, God wants to have a relationship with our true self. Not just our projected self. On the journey to self-discovery, it only makes sense that we’re led to evaluate our interests. How do we identify those interests? Examine what we spend our time on. With hours set aside each week for sleep and work, it's our free time, or what we do with it, that determines who we are.

In “Waste or Create” the second part in the “7 Rules to Self-Discovery” collection, Pastor Rich Wilkerson, Jr. reveals that while free time is free, it doesn't make it cheap. We're encouraged to infuse our leisure time with value.

Three filters that can help guide our use of free time are rest, improvement, and passion. When we pause to recharge it shows we trust God is in control. Bettering ourselves is not one- dimensional but accounts for physical, mental and relational health. And when we put energy toward the thing we'd do even if we didn’t get paid for it, that's where we find passion.

We must learn to leverage our time because as life progresses, our time decreases. Maximizing our spare time and creating value around it, will prevent us from wasting it and help us to leave a legacy.

Sometimes life can feel like driving on a fast-paced highway where we've no choice but to make sudden turns along the way. There's so much we want for ourselves that it’s often hard to know which road to take. While time doesn’t slow down as we navigate our many wants, it’s crucial to determine their source, because desires lead us to our life's destination.

Opening a new collection of talks, “7 Rules for Self Discovery,” Pastor DawnCheré Wilkerson speaks on the subject “Most Wanted.”

It’s normal to hope for success. And on the surface, striving for achievement may seem to be enough, but we must dig deep to find the motivation behind our wants. To do so, we can reflect on areas such as our work, words, and worship, all are signals that can show us whether satisfaction in God is what propels us.

Taking inventory is a first and necessary step to true self-discovery. Psalm 37:3-7 invites us to trust in God to find the answers to our wants. As we soul search with hearts fixed on God, we'll find that his promise to give us the desires of our hearts, was a promise to place his very own desires inside us all along.

At times we can feel disappointed by the challenges we face. During those moments, it can be hard to imagine what the future may hold for us, or how we will ever recover from defeat.

Pastor Rich Wilkerson, Jr. encourages us, when the unexpected appears, to recall the miracle of Jesus’ life and purpose with “The Story’s Not Over,” the last of our “BC/AD: The Rest is History” collection of talks. 

Celebrating Easter brings the story of Jesus’ victory to the forefront. Though to his disciples all may have seemed lost at his crucifixion, we know the story didn't end there. As foretold throughout the Old Testament, Jesus brought salvation to the world when he defeated sin and the grave. His resurrection gave his followers the power to push onward with the good news.

The same idea holds true for our lives today. While difficult situations may threaten to cause us to feel discouraged and delayed, our hope is that God isn’t through with us yet. There’s still more to tell. God gives us exactly we need so that his story of redemption can be told in our lives.

The heart of prophecy is to reveal Jesus to us. Through these revelations, we're reminded that Jesus is just as present in our past as he will be in our future. 

 

As part of our collection, “BC/AD: The Rest is History,” Adrian Molina shares his message “Only After.” He showed that Zechariah’s prophecy of the Messiah’s peace, foretold hundreds of years before Jesus ever walked the earth, connected to the very first Palm Sunday where Jesus rode on a donkey in triumph. 

 

Today, Palm Sunday hasn’t lost its significance because we continue to celebrate our prophesied victory through Jesus. Because they're attached to Jesus, prophecies from the past have become promises of the future. Prophetic promises of hope, peace, love, and life all belong to Jesus. We can take comfort because when we attach to Jesus, those promises are then attached to us.

 

Prophesy reminds us that the God of yesterday, today, and tomorrow holds our destiny in his hands. We need only to trust him and watch to see his promises fulfilled in our lives.

Through life’s highs and lows, it could be easy to feel the pressure that comes with the decisions we've made. At times, a fight that leaves us downright exhausted is wondering if we'll ever come to terms with our past.

Continuing with our collection, "BC/AD: The Rest is History," Pastor Rich Wilkerson, Jr.’s latest talk, “Wrestling With God,” uses Jacob's story in Genesis 32 to encourage us to take our burdens from the past to God. We can seek him with confidence as we face difficult situations because he's capable of restoring and healing our own story.

In times of desperation, we often reflect on previous mistakes and wonder if there was a different path we could have taken. Similar to Jacob, we may even find ourselves wrestling with God and wanting to fix our past before moving forward in his purpose. 

However, it's in brokenness that God shines his power through our lives. God does not want a match with us, he wants a moment with us. And while times of uncertainty may not be enjoyable, they're necessary because they lead to greater blessings than we can imagine.

Scars from the past are part of our testimony, serving as a reminder of God's redemption, and a hopeful future. God positions us to receive his blessings and grace. All he wants us to do is recognize our weakness and surrender.

When studying the life of Jesus, it’s easy to overlook the glimpses of who He is in the Old Testament. After all, Jesus is never directly named. As we enter the second week of our collection of talks titled “BC/AD: The Rest is History” Pastor Rich Wilkerson Jr. explains the different Job Titles of Jesus.

Titles describe what our roles are. They describe our tasks and outline expectations. Jesus had many titles. He came as the messiah to be the answer to the chasm between us and God due to sin. The Old Testament reveals many titles of who Jesus was, is, and always will be. From coming and bearing the title of the suffering servant to the Alpha and the Omega, and even the title of the great “I Am”, Jesus fulfills all these titles and roles. The Job Titles of Jesus create our testimonies, strengthen our relationship with Him, and give us a deeper understanding on who He calls us to be.

Sometimes we get it in our minds that if we could only get that one major victory, we’d be at peace. Our faith would be on cruise control because we’d need only to look to our spectacular success for comfort. Nothing we’d face could shake us. But even the prophet Elijah ran away and isolated himself after a heroic display.

With his latest book of the same title, Pastor Erwin McManus shared the message, “The Way of the Warrior.” He pointed out that our internal battle with anxiety, fear, doubt or any mental illness can be detrimental to our external reality and our fight for peace. Our challenge is to resist the urge to follow the path our negative thought patterns would lead us down.

If Elijah's story tells us anything, it's that we're not exempt from experiencing insecurity, even after our wins. Yes, it's possible to struggle with inner peace, but it doesn't have to be a sign of weakness. In our darkest moments, the God of Peace whispers that he will fight the battle for us, we only need to trust him. Once we do, we're free to boldly share the state of our minds in community and get the restoration needed. With that comes hope for a new and much better day ahead.

Unless you've recently stumbled across a box of Polaroid pictures, or scrolled down to the beginning of your Instagram page, there may be some memories you've forgotten. When we don't reflect on the past, we have a tendency to lose our sense of gratitude.  Pastor Rich Wilkerson Jr. opens up a new collection of talks titled: "BC/AD: The Rest is History." He encourages us to use examples of God's faithfulness in the past as reminders of his consistency in the future. The message "Before I Forget" tells us that remembrance leads to rejoicing in what God has already done.  In Exodus 12, we're led on a journey through the first Passover. It details God's faithfulness to the Israelites during a time of turmoil. Imploring his people to paint their doorposts with lamb's blood, God promised to pass over the homes of those who obeyed him. The annual celebration of Passover showed God's commitment to his promises. Today, it ultimately brings us to recall the once-and-for-all deliverance of Jesus through communion.  When hard times approach, it may be hard to see God's grace through it all. But we must be careful because our faith suffers when we forget his faithfulness. When we take a look back on the times God appeared to guide and protect us, it speaks to a brighter future.

Test-taking can be overwhelming for many of us. There are too many options and too little time. Sometimes the topics we've crammed for don't end up being tested. But when there's an open book test or the questions are revealed beforehand, what relief! More likely than not, it means a passing grade.

In this powerful message, “The 2-Question Test,” Pastor Chris Hodges from Church of the Highlands preps us on what to expect for the ultimate final exam on the day we face God.

When we stand in eternity, we'll answer for what we did with the gift of Jesus' sacrifice and the resources we were given. Our response to just two questions will make the difference between eternal glory with God or not. It will determine the weight of our reward in heaven.

For the most important test of our lives, the stakes are surely high. But the questions we'll face give us a clue on how we should live daily. It's our relationship to God and his will for our world that are essential to getting the answers right. The choices we make today have monumental consequences for our eternity.

The message many of us probably got from church on sex was just to not have it. Unfortunately, that left behind the often unanswered question of What happens if we've already tested the waters? As we round out our "Make or Break" series, the topic possibly most laden with baggage got saved for last—sex. In his talk "Sex Can Make or Break Your Relationship," special guest Pastor Michael Todd from Transformation Church gives us the straight talk on why sex matters and how we can view it the way God does. Many of the issues we face in relationships arise at the fault of our sexual pasts. Be it sex before marriage, pornography or some other sort of sexual exposure, Pastor Mike tells us that out of context sex is a flood spilling out of control, leaving our relationships in its turbulent wake. God's word shows us the proper way to contain the overflow so that sex can be reclaimed as the enjoyable, sacred act it was meant to be since creation. Rather than remain prisoners to sexual sin, we can submit our sexuality to the God who knit us together. He will guide us in living saved lives in a sexualized world.