Westwinds

"Go and make disciples of all nations."

Thousands of years have passed since these words were first recorded by Jesus' earliest followers. Since then, the church has grappled with what these words mean and how we might live into this "discipleship model" of Jesus. These words have been passed down over thousands of years, yet our history often reveals the ways in which we have often tried to replace this discipleship with easier alternatives:

Trends of "individualistic spirituality" that favor personal transformation over communal formation.

The creation of isolated, insular faith communities who seek safety over living into their calling.

Well-meaning organizations that do good work in their communities, but are completely disconnected from the way and mission of Jesus.

The way of Jesus seems to tell a different story. The way of Jesus is a discipleship that is not simply about what we "do," but about who we are "becoming" together.

The calling of Jesus "requires" something of us – but not as a calling that simply takes something "from" us. Rather, the calling of Jesus requires something of us the way a seed requires water and sunlight.

Just like a seed requires water and sunlight to grow and flourish, Jesus requires us to become vulnerable. Jesus asks us to go into the places to be with people we could never imagine being with. Perhaps these risks we must take are the very things "required" for us to grow and flourish in the way of Jesus.

This last week of "The Host" is a culmination of conversations we have been having together for the past few weeks about hospitality, calling, and mission. However – beyond giving hospitality, answering calling, and responding to the mission of God – this calling of Jesus will always ask us to also be willing to receive the same hospitality from others.

These practices are not just about being "for" others and "for" God. These practices are about learning to be "with" others and be "with" God. These practices are about presence.

The global Christian faith is built upon thousands of years of tradition and a history of people learning how to follow Jesus in their own places, times, and cultural contexts. However, this global movement of faith started in just one singular place... in Galilee, where Jesus was from.

Biblical scholars and historians estimate the vast majority of Jesus' life and ministry was spent in this small, singular part of the world, around a small handful of towns surrounding the Sea of Galilee. Years before Jesus' final journey to Jerusalem, most of the Gospel accounts take place in this tiny region of the world.

Jesus' life was profoundly local. He lived among a specific people, in a specific place, at a specific time.

For centuries, the mission and message of Jesus has called many believers to unknown destinations and distant lands. What if the calling of God is often much simpler? What if the calling of God asks us to start right where our feet already are?

In the Book of Matthew, Jesus commissions his disciples to "go and make disciples of all nations," but only after walking with them through years of ministry, healings, casting out demons, and demonstrating his love through death and resurrection. Before he says "make disciples," he promises his Spirit – and that this Spirit will go with them into "Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."

As the disciples were empowered to go and "make disciples," some were tempted to ask, "who is the greatest among us?"

Jesus reveals this is the wrong kind of question to ask. Instead, Jesus invites his followers to embrace a new kind of power – a power not simply found the miracles, healings, or strength... but a power discovered in the midst of weakness.

EPISODE TITLE

The One Who Sits With Us

EPISODE SUMMARY

Jesus was always eating with people.

Throughout the Gospels, meals become places where barriers disappear, outsiders are seen, and people who were rarely treated as equals suddenly find themselves sharing space with Jesus.

This week, we explore the hospitality of Jesus through his encounter with the Samaritan woman in John 4. She approaches the well expecting to be ignored by a Jewish man. Instead, Jesus speaks to her, sees the pain behind her story, and invites her into a relationship marked by dignity and compassion.

But the invitation of the message isn't simply to become more hospitable.

Before we can offer the hospitality of Jesus to someone else, we have to learn how to receive it ourselves.

Jesus chooses to sit with us. He sees us. He knows our weakness. And he earnestly desires our presence.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Sharing a meal in Jesus' world communicated belonging, dignity, and equality.

• Jesus' hospitality consistently crossed social, religious, and cultural boundaries.

• The Samaritan woman expected invisibility, but Jesus chose to see and engage her.

• Jesus' knowledge of her past is better understood through compassion than condemnation.

• Receiving is an important part of hospitality. Jesus asks the woman for water before offering her living water.

• We don't earn God's presence through spiritual maturity or good behavior.

• Learning to welcome others begins by trusting that we ourselves have already been welcomed by Christ.

• Communion reminds us that Jesus doesn't merely tolerate our presence—he desires to sit with us.

KEY MOMENTS

00:00 What Part of Jesus' Story Do You Love?

02:21 The Meals We Often Overlook

04:06 Why the Table Mattered

06:07 The Meaning of Hospitality

07:45 Jesus: A Friend of Strangers

08:24 Why Jesus Went Through Samaria

10:01 Meeting the Woman at the Well

12:08 "Go Get Your Husband"

15:17 Seeing Her Story With Compassion

16:21 Jesus Invites Her Into His Life

17:37 Why Receiving Can Be Difficult

19:08 God's Presence Isn't Earned

21:11 Receiving Before Giving

21:33 Jesus Desires Our Presence

22:17 The One Who Sits With Us

23:48 The Wide Open Table

SCRIPTURE REFERENCES

John 4:1–42

Luke 22:14–20

Ephesians 3:18–19

Genesis 1:26–27

REFLECTION QUESTION

What might change if you stopped imagining Jesus as someone you have to convince to welcome you—and began trusting that he already desires to sit with you?

CONNECT WITH US

The hospitality of Jesus begins with an invitation: to be seen, known, and welcomed into his presence. As we learn to receive that kind of love, we can begin to extend it more freely to the strangers, neighbors, friends, and unexpected people we encounter every day.

Subscribe to the podcast, share this episode with someone, and stay connected with Westwinds Church as we continue exploring what the hospitality of Jesus can look like in our lives.

How do you know what you're called to do when everything is demanding your attention?

Our feeds can put the needs of the entire world in front of us at once. We encounter war, politics, suffering, outrage, advertising, entertainment, and endless opportunities to care. Eventually, many of us find ourselves exhausted, apathetic, or unsure what we're actually supposed to do with our lives.

In the final week of Look T(Here), we explore the connection between attention and calling.

Throughout Scripture, God's people developed practices that resisted the systems trying to define who they were and what their lives were for. Pharaoh told Israel their value was found in what they could produce. God called them something different. Jesus later stripped away layers of religious complexity and returned to something remarkably simple: love God and love your neighbor.

Maybe calling isn't usually about discovering one enormous thing you're supposed to accomplish.

Maybe it's learning to faithfully inhabit the life God has already given you.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Too much access to the world's suffering can leave us exhausted or numb.

• God has not called us to carry every burden we encounter.

• Our attention affects our ability to discern what God may actually be calling us toward.

• Calling exists within the ordinary domains of our lives—our relationships, resources, work, communities, and responsibilities.

• Sabbath was a practice of resistance that challenged Pharaoh's definition of human worth through production.

• Every cultural system has its own version of calling and formation.

• Jesus simplifies the calling of God's people around loving God and loving our neighbors.

• Giving our attention to God creates space for God to reshape our desires.

• Most of our lives will not be defined by dramatic moments of calling, but by ordinary faithfulness where our feet already are.

KEY MOMENTS

00:00 Attention Shapes Desire, Desire Shapes Life

03:24 Living in an Attention Economy

06:15 Why We've Lost Touch With Calling

07:05 A Tour Through the Algorithm

10:45 Compassion Fatigue and Compassion Apathy

12:00 God Hasn't Asked You to Carry Everything

12:31 Calling in Your Actual Life

20:42 Called to Be a Kingdom of Priests

21:19 Pharaoh's Calling vs. God's Calling

22:18 Sabbath as Resistance

25:14 Jesus Announces His Calling

28:04 The Greatest Commandment

29:05 Every System Has a Call

30:38 When Distraction Drowns Out Calling

31:03 Your Newsfeed Gives You the World

31:58 Faithful Where Your Feet Are

32:21 Resisting What Is Forming Us

33:15 Giving Our Attention to God

SCRIPTURE REFERENCES

Exodus 19:3–6

Deuteronomy 5:12–15

Isaiah 61:1–2

Luke 4:16–21

Matthew 22:34–40

REFLECTION QUESTION

What has God actually entrusted to you—and what would it look like to become more faithful right where your feet are?

CONNECT WITH US

You don't have to carry the whole world.

Following Jesus often begins much closer to home: with the people, responsibilities, resources, and places already in front of us.

If this message was meaningful to you, share it with someone and stay connected with Westwinds as we continue learning how to give our attention to God and live faithfully in the lives we've been given.

Some parts of being human are incredibly precious.

Our grief. Confession. Doubt. Shame. Fear. Longing.

Jesus once used the image of pearls to describe something valuable that shouldn't be entrusted carelessly. And that strange teaching feels increasingly relevant in a world where technology isn't only competing for our attention—it's beginning to compete for our intimacy.

In Part 2 of Look T(Here), Corey explores the movement from an attention economy toward what he describes as an “intimacy economy,” and asks what could happen as we increasingly turn toward technology for companionship, advice, emotional support, and meaning.

Then we turn toward Jesus' very different vision of human community: people who know one another, confess to one another, carry burdens together, share meals and homes, and become trustworthy enough to hold the precious parts of one another's lives.

Maybe one of the most important questions in an increasingly isolated world is:

Who gets your pearls?

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Technology increasingly competes not only for our attention, but for our intimacy.

• Jesus treats the vulnerable parts of our humanity as precious and worthy of care.

• Healthy community requires humility—we deal with the logs in our own eyes before trying to remove someone else's splinters.

• Real relationships involve mutuality, inconvenience, vulnerability, and even the possibility of being hurt.

• The church has an opportunity to offer something increasingly rare: a community where people genuinely know, need, and care for one another.

• Acts 2 gives us a picture of a church formed around shared life rather than personalized individual experience.

REFLECTION QUESTION

Who currently receives the most precious and vulnerable parts of your life—and what makes them worthy of that trust?

SCRIPTURE

Matthew 5:13–16

Matthew 7:1–6

Romans 12:15

1 Corinthians 12:25–26

Galatians 6:2

Ephesians 4:2

1 Thessalonians 5:14

James 5:16

Acts 2:42–47

What has your attention?

We live in a world where countless platforms, companies, advertisements, and algorithms are competing for our focus. And increasingly, we're realizing that these things don't simply occupy our time. They can shape what we want.

And what we want shapes how we live.

In Part 1 of Look T(Here), Corey explores the modern attention economy alongside an ancient biblical understanding of human formation. From Genesis to Jesus and the early church, Scripture continually returns to the importance of what we look toward, think about, seek, and desire.

This isn't ultimately a message about getting rid of your phone.

It's an invitation to reclaim the agency God has given you over your attention—and reconsider what worship might actually mean.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Attention shapes desire, and desire shapes our lives.

• Modern technology didn't invent this relationship; it learned how to capitalize on something deeply human.

• Scripture repeatedly invites us to become intentional about where we place our minds and attention.

• Jesus warns about becoming worried and distracted by many things while missing what's directly in front of us.

• Worship can be understood as choosing to give our attention to God.

• Spiritual formation isn't simply about believing the right things. It's also about becoming intentional about what is forming our desires.

REFLECTION QUESTION

If what receives your attention eventually shapes what you desire, what is currently shaping you?

SCRIPTURE

Genesis 3:1–7

Romans 7:15–20

Romans 12:1–2

Colossians 3:2

Philippians 4:8

2 Corinthians 4:18

Hebrews 3:1

Luke 10:38–42

Matthew 6:25–34

Psalm 16

Psalm 27

Psalm 119

What does it really mean to say that everyone is welcome?

Paul's letter to Philemon puts that question to the test. Philemon knew the theology. He was known for his love. He was a respected leader in the early church. But then Onesimus—a man who had once been enslaved in his household—showed up at his door.

Suddenly, what Philemon believed about Jesus had to become something he actually lived.

Paul invites Philemon and the entire church into a radically different way of seeing one another—not through the status, hierarchy, or labels their world had given them, but as brothers and sisters in Christ.

Because saying, “You're welcome here,” is one thing.

Seeing someone as your equal is another.

This week, we explore the little letter of Philemon and the radical, preemptive welcome of a Jesus-centered community.

Chapters

00:00 Reading Someone Else's Mail

02:19 Meet Paul

06:34 Who Is Philemon?

08:15 Meet Onesimus

09:00 The Bigger Story of Colossians

13:11 Two Letters Arrive Together

16:14 Which Letter Do You Give Him First?

17:42 When Belief Becomes Action

19:11 The Risk of Making Ourselves Vulnerable

22:35 What Will Philemon Do?

23:12 Reading the Letter

25:15 Paul Appeals Through Love

28:32 More Than Welcome

31:03 Baptism and a New Humanity

Key Takeaways

Paul continually challenged the hierarchies that shaped the Roman world, calling followers of Jesus to live as citizens of a different Kingdom.

Colossians gives the church a new way of seeing the world; Philemon asks what happens when that theology has to become action.

Paul asks Philemon to receive Onesimus no longer according to his former status, but as a dearly loved brother.

Following Jesus sometimes means becoming vulnerable rather than organizing our lives entirely around self-preservation.

A Jesus-centered community does more than say everyone is welcome. It refuses to see people through the hierarchies and labels the world has given them.

Baptism is a visible reminder that our deepest allegiance and belonging are found in the Kingdom of God.

The welcome of Jesus is preemptive: grace and hospitality are extended before we have done anything to earn our place.

Scripture References

Philemon 1–25

Colossians 1:15–20

Colossians 3:11

Colossians 4:7–9

Philippians 3:4–8

What if the life we're chasing is upside down?

Everything around us teaches us to look out for ourselves first. Protect yourself. Get ahead. Build your own success.

But when Paul writes to the church in Philippi, he points them to a completely different way of living. At the center of his letter is a beautiful picture of Jesus, who didn't grasp for power or privilege but willingly emptied himself in love.

This week, we explored why the way of Jesus often feels upside down—and why it might actually be the truest way to live. From everyday conflicts to suffering, generosity, and relationships, Paul keeps bringing us back to the same place: the self-giving love of Christ.

Because the life Jesus invites us into isn't centered on self-preservation.

It's centered on self-giving love.

Chapters

00:00 Welcome & The Church in Philippi

00:48 Why Paul Loved This Church

04:10 What Would Jesus Do?

06:13 Living as a Different Kind of Community

09:50 When Faith Becomes a List of "Shoulds"

12:09 The Poem at the Center of Philippians

13:24 Adam, Jesus, and the Choice We All Make

16:00 The Upside-Down Life

17:03 Why Paul Had Hope for Philippi

19:08 One Question That Changes Everything

20:53 Remembering the Way of Jesus

Key Takeaways

Philippians is centered on the person of Jesus, not a list of religious expectations.

The hymn in Philippians 2 is the foundation for everything Paul teaches throughout the letter.

Jesus chose humility and self-giving love instead of grasping for power.

The way of Jesus often runs against our natural instincts and the values of our culture.

The simple question, "What would Jesus do?" remains a powerful way to center our lives on Christ.

Communion reminds us that following Jesus means continually remembering and embodying his self-giving love.

Scripture References

Philippians 1–4

Philippians 2:5–11

Acts 16

Genesis 3

Matthew 26