This week Greg again focused our attention on the story of the Magi from the east (Mt 2:1-11). God was willing to “get in the box” with these astrologers, to “speak their language” as it were, even though it required that God suspend his ethical opinions about their way of life. God's love for astrologers was greater than his hatred for astrology.

This week Greg discussed the familiar story of the three wise men in Matthew 2. As it turns out, there were not three of them, they were not wise by biblical standards and they were not kings, as has been assumed by many over the generations. So what is going on here?

During this service we participated in communion and had an opportunity for people to receive prayer and healing. Donna Stoesz, one of our prayer warriors here at Woodland Hills, led us into this time of renewal and restoration.

Recently Greg has been speaking about the Joy of the Lord and how we are intended to participate in that joy. This week’s sermon addressed two common ways that joy can be “corked” and restricted in our lives. The first is the “Savior Complex” and the second is the “Payback Complex.” Both complexes rob us of the joy that God intends for us.

This week Kevin Johnson, our Community Pastor, brought a powerful message dealing with our hearts. He described the “heart” as the center of human existence, where our human abilities to love, marvel, and dream reside. We are able to experience events and truths deeply in profoundly empathetic ways. In this way the heart really demonstrates the truth of our being created in God’s image.

This week Greg talked about a problem that we all experience: joylessness. We read in Scripture that God is joyful and he desires for us to experience joy too! We need to experience the Joy of the Lord if we are to live an empowered spiritual life in Christ. Joy strengthens us to endure the difficulties of life here and now.

Greg's sermon this week was a reflection on several texts with a guiding theme of “overcoming duplicity.” To work toward overcoming duplicity we need to ask the following set of questions: What is duplicity? How can it be overcome? What replaces it?

It is important to note that Greg tied this discipleship series to our church's Vision Statement. We are called by God for a purpose, part of which is being discipled into spiritually empowered people. In this message Greg explored how we can guard our hearts. We cannot “will” to feel differently about things, but we CAN change how we think and represent things in our minds. Our feelings will follow.

In Christ, we are radically free from the things that bind us to this world. The problem is that we have been brainwashed and led to believe lies about ourselves that prevent us from being what we were created to be. Do we trust our own thoughts about ourselves and others or do we believe what God says?

Through the touching stories that Sandra relayed, we can see that Christ truly is to be found among the “least of these.” Most of us are able to hide our pain beneath the façade of nice clothes, stable living situations, good friends and family support, but do we understand that we too are the least? We must never forget that we are all, always, desperately in need of God.