Watermark Bible Church, Portsmouth, Virginia

I’m excited for the opportunity this Sunday to share with you what the Lord has shown me in my study of Ephesians 2, as we continue our Masterpiece Mission message series. Pastor Steve and his family are taking Emma out to Ohio to get her settled on campus, so please pray for them as they make this big transition in their family. And I encourage you to come to our gathering on Sunday fired up, because this is one of the most inspiring passages in all of Scripture, where God reveals to us some powerful truths about the significance of our lives within His purposes. If you’ve ever lost track of time doing something you loved or completely lost yourself in a project, then I think you’ve experienced a little bit of the bliss that God intends for us when we are living out of His masterpiece design for us.

As believers we have been adopted into the most powerful body on the planet, the church. In many circles the church has drifted from who God made her to be to settling for something less. You see this drift any time the church is seen as a place you go instead of who you are, when we call for more volunteers instead of equipping more disciple-makers, whenever we think we need more resources when we really need more Jesus. During the next 6 weeks we’ll look at the book of Ephesians and discover that we were made for a masterpiece mission. We’ll examine 6 shifts that equip the church to impact every corner of culture and every sphere of society.  

We all know the verse, "For God so loved the world, that he gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16) At some point or another we started to equate eternal life with living forever. In Philippians chapter 3 Paul reminds us that eternal life is more than living forever. It is to know Jesus in an intimate way.

If you have read the news this past week, you will have seen the headlines that hundreds of people have died in geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and in Asia. We also have seen people in our neighborhoods and city that passed away each day due to various reasons. The question for Christians should be: "Did anyone tell them about Jesus? Had anyone shared the Gospel with them before they died?" This week we'll talk about the Apostle Paul's challenge to us to share the Gospel with those who have never heard. 

Have you ever felt like you're not good enough for God to use you? On Sunday, we’ll talk about how our doubts, fears, and past failures don’t disqualify us from God's purpose - they're often the starting point. You don’t need to have it all together; you just need to be willing. .

This Sunday, as we continue our This Verse Changed My Life series, we get to hear from Darrell Taylor. He will talk about how a life In Christ Alone is The Key to Spiritual Maturity. This is the heart of what it means to follow Jesus.

A year into my walk with Jesus, the summer before my senior year of college, I came to Richmond, Virginia to participate in a summer training program hosted by the Navigators. Apart from getting to know a group of great guys and working at Kings Dominion, I also learned some life-changing things from God’s word. This week, as we continue our message series This Verse Changed My Life, we’ll look at five things that describe and define what Jesus’ disciples look like. If we want to be successful in our disciple-making mission, it’s important that we know what the goal is. And there’s no better guide for that goal than the very words of Jesus.

Some people have a life verse. Maybe you have a verse that holds special significance and meaning. Perhaps a verse that helps guide and shape the way you see the world. A verse that sticks in your mind and helps you communicate your faith more frequently and with more clarity. During the next 6 weeks you will hear from 6 different speakers. We will each share about a verse or passage that greatly affected our lives. You’ll see the importance of being people of the Word and how God uses the Bible to conform us into the image of Jesus.

This Sunday we will be concluding our we are Watermark series. One of the things we’ve seen in this series is that a name tells you a lot. Our name rests on the Bible, our unchanging foundation for life. This Sunday we’ll look at the importance of being Biblical.

In Bible times names always meant something. God named different people for a reason. The names of places and people help define their character. We are called “the church” for a reason – to communicate that we have been called out from the world with a disciple-making purpose. So also, the name of any church says something about her character, her mission, and her conviction. Watermark Bible Church reminds us among other things of the lasting impact we are to have. After all, once something is watermarked that imprint is there.