*We experienced a power outage during our time of worship, therefore the audio is lower quality than usual.*

This week Tyler Schenzel continued on with our Hebrews 11 faith series.

Faith is the organ that allows us to see the supernatural things of God. Successful faith is not about us and how much of it we have, but rather who we put our faith in. It is not the amount or stability of our faith, but the object of our faith.

Tyler opened up the chapter with the story of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, and this righteousness did not come by his works. It is as Pastor Murdoch once said, righteousness is not our responsibility, but it is our response to God’s ability.

We need to hear the word, study the word, and apply the word. In order for the promises of God to take root in our lives, we need to apply the word of God to our lives. We need to live in obedience to the Word of God, and give our lives away.

Noah’s actions were proof of His faith in God, because the one who loves the Lord keeps His commands. God is good, and His faithfulness is never ending.

This week, Pastor Jermaine introduced our series on Hebrews 11, a series on faith.

We believe that the author of Hebrews is writing to Jewish converts who are enduring hardship. Many of the Christian believers were walking away, while others were being imprisoned for their faith.

The author wrote the letter to encourage the church, asking them to consider the cost of radical devotion. He urged the readers to choose the dangerous direction of devout discipleship.

Hebrews 11 tell us that faith is the confidence in what we hope for. It gives substance to our hopes and is a deep and sincere belief in the unseen, and what is to come.

What we see from the story of Cain and Abel in this passage is that righteous living precedes and is more valuable than righteous giving. Abel’s sacrifice was acceptable to God because it flowed from a generous and obedient heart. It is not the quantity or the quality of the offering, but the condition of the heart from which it comes.

Pastor Jermaine challenged us to ask and answer the question: does what is In your hand match what is in your heart?

Pastor Alex David wraps up our series on the Holy Spirit, sharing about the power that we receive to be witnesses for Jesus in all the earth.

We move through four steps in this process:
1) Denial
2) Devotion
3) Display
4) Declaration

Ultimately, we want to live and walk in surrender to the Father's will, living in humility and holiness - and we continue to be filled over and over again by the Holy Spirit.

This week, pastor Matthew continued on with week four of our Holy Spirit series with a sermon titled living life full of the Holy Spirit.

If we are followers of Jesus, we have an obligation to live by the Spirit.

The Spirit makes us new and gives us new desires. The Spirit prompts us to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. We need to yield to the Spirit and obey Him.

We have too often forgotten that love does not equal knowledge, but obedience, and the Spirit within us desires to obey the Father. We must live as Jesus did, keeping the commands of the Father.

The key is learning to yield to the Holy Spirit - our will yielding to the will of the Father.

It is not about perfection, but about being on the road with Jesus: learning, adjusting, growing, repenting, and becoming more and more like Jesus. The Spirit empowers and transform us to become more like Him.

Pastor Matthew encouraged us to ask and answer the question, are we walking full of the Holy Spirit today?

Pastor Matthew continued with week 3 of our Holy Spirit series, this week on hearing the voice of God.

God has been speaking since the creation of the world and has never stopped. We need to hear His voice to know His heart.

In our culture we often place doing before being, and it should not be this way. We need to focus on who we are becoming, because if we have an intimate relationship with Jesus we will also have His guidance and grow deeper and deeper with Him.

The Bible provides plenty of guidance on how to hear God through His Holy Spirit. If we seek Him with all our hearts He will speak to us.

The best way to know the heart of God is to know and to be with Jesus. The Holy Spirit reveals Jesus to us, just as Jesus revealed the Father. This is a lifestyle and a process that we learn, it is a journey. The Jesus revealed to us is the same one we read about and see in scripture, which is why we need to get to know the Biblical Jesus.

Pastor Matthew made three primary points:

1. The Spirit carries on Jesus' work.

The Spirit does not reveal Jesus in a vacuum, He does so through His people by their proclamation and their lifestyle.

2. The Spirit helps us to become intimate friends with Jesus.

True friends can have intimate secrets with one another, and we can have that kind of relationship with God through the Holy Spirit. We should be able to hear Jesus’s words as clearly today as His disciples did 2000 years ago. Believing this is half the battle.

3. We need to implement safeguard for listening to the voice of God.

Does it look like Jesus? The Spirit will only teach us what is consistent with the Biblical Jesus because God is always true to His character.

Is it motivating you to demonstrate unselfish love, which is Gods heart? The Spirit wants to lead us in giving our lives away.

Are you hearing in a vacuum or do you have a community of friends? We need one another to walk out the Christian life.

This week, Pastor Kristen shared a Mother’s Day message about living a lifestyle of worship.
Worship doesn’t fit into any particular box, time or place and instead should be expressed as a lifestyle. Worship should and can be done out of reverence and relationship with the Father, anytime and anywhere as Biblically worship is simply obedience to Christ.

The more we get to know God, the more we desire to obey Him. We cannot live for the Lord and tell Him no, and thus a lifestyle of worship is a lifestyle of obedience to Him. What delights the Lord is lives fully laid down and surrendered to Him. This is often very uncomfortable for us.

When it comes to worshiping the Lord, there is no such thing as a small yes, as our small, mundane and non-glamorous yeses have huge and eternal impact.

We are called to simply do the next thing that the Lord has placed right in front of us, and therefore we must resolve to stay put and be faithful. We need to become a people who first and foremost and concerned with “your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, living our lives with a posture of full surrender.

This week, Pastor Matthew continued on with our series on the Holy Spirit.

As followers of Jesus, we should be listening to and hearing from God regularly. Jesus longs to speak to us, and the way in which we hear the voice of God is through the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is divine, He is a person and a part of the trinity. What is true about each person of the Godhead is true about them all.

We read the Bible to get to know the trinity between the lines. God wants us to know what He is like. We get to know His character.

Pastor Matthew gave us two points on how to recognize the voice of God in the Spirit:

1. We must realize He is available to us.

Worthiness is not a prerequisite to being in the presence of God. We need to be careful not to make feelings an idol, but instead to truly understand and embrace the fact that through the Holy Spirit God is always available and accessible, no matter how we feel about it. Through Jesus we have access to the Father by the Holy Spirit.

When we stumble, we do not need to stay down or give up. We repent, ask for forgiveness, get up and keep going. Sometimes we get so focused on ourselves that we do not focus on the God who will set us free.

We need to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

We have the Holy Spirit to walk with us and to live with us. Therefore we need to practice cultivating His presence so that when He does speak we will hear Him. The Holy Spirit moves and empowers us to obey Him, follow Him, and walk with Him.

We are Gods Holy temple, which is a big deal. It is where God comes to dwell with His people. It is His sign that He is with us. The Lord Himself goes before us, and is with us.

2. Worship is important if you are going to recognize the Spirit.

Worship helps us to focus on God’s glory, and invites us to pay attention to the very one whose heart we wish to know. It allows us to translate what we know about God into a dynamic conversation with God. Our worship matters to God.

This week was Justice Sunday and Kerri Taylor, the executive director of Unbound Houston, shared with us about human trafficking; its definition, what Unbound does, what we can do about it, and how to pray.

Following Jesus should not be boring, and there are many ways that we can join with Unbound in action and with prayer. The prayer points shared included:

Prayer for legislation and legislators.
Prayer for police officers and human trafficking task forces.
Unbound Omaha.
Human trafficking in our city, and for open doors (prayer for an increase of community partnerships).
The justice of the Lord to be made in the area of human trafficking, and for dark places to be brought to light.

This week, Pastor Matthew introduced our new series on the Holy Spirit.

Following Jesus faithfully means that we must prioritize the thing that matter most; sitting at His feet, hearing His voice and learning His heart.

We need to recognize how He speaks and he best place to start is by asking Him to open our ears.

They key is not just to hear the Lord, but to obey Him.

Pastor Matthew made two primary points:

We should begin to recognize the Spirit by getting to know God’s character by means of what He has already said in the Bible.
God shows us His heart in Jesus’s sufferings.

This week Tyler Schenzel finished up our 1 Corinthians series with Chapter 16.

Paul talks about four distinct topics within this short chapter; money, his travel plans, standing firm in the faith and his final greetings.

Tyler spoke about the various things that get in the way of living on mission such as our jobs, relationships, phones, hobbies and desire for comfort amongst others. We need to become people who live on mission; taking control of our schedules before they take control of us. Tyler encouraged us to hear from the Lord and walk through the wide door of effective work that is open for us.

Just as Paul urges the Corinthians, we must stand firm in the faith, putting on the full armor of God and displaying the fruits of the Spirit in every area of our lives.