What Jesus Says to a Complacent Church

Many of us, view God as a spiritual cop … rather than the Saviour He wants to be.  If we’re really honest, we have a view of God like He’s in heaven with a baton, ready to pounce on us.
The problem is, when we view God just as that judge, we tend to distance ourselves from Him. 
 
In the story of ‘the woman caught in adultery’, Jesus could easily have moved into the role of judge.  The surprise is, He avoids that role and we learn by His treatment of this woman that Jesus comes to replace ‘guilt’ with ‘grace’, and replace our ‘sin’ with ‘salvation’.

Listen now as Pastor Peter Unpacks his thoughts.

“Daring to go in faith” is one of the keys in daring faith to seeing miracles. Two of the words that summarize Jesus’ message are: “Come!” and “Go!”
We come to Jesus in faith and receive the Holy Spirit, and we go in faith and build God’s kingdom.
To do this, we:
(1) go to God for help,
(2) go together for support,
(3) go on to maturity, and
(4) go tell the Good News.

Listen now as Pastor Peter unpacks his thoughts.

Many times in life we feel like we are waiting for God – waiting for an answer to prayer, fearful to move forward without hearing from Him. Yet in God’s waiting room we have to remember that there will be delay, there is an unseen battle going on, that God is preparing us for His blessing, God keeps His promises and we are in good company.
While we wait we can write down the lessons we learn, act as though we already have our answer (Romans 4:17), imitate the habits that cause our faith to grow strong, and trust God instead of panicking. Let’s talk over a few of these.
Listen now as Pastor Peter unpacks his thoughts

Spiritual growth is a life-long process.

God has a part in this process and we have a part. We can be absolutely certain that God will faithfully do his part, but we must do ours as well.

We need to let God’s goals for our spiritual growth be our own life goals, too. In this discussion we’ll consider some ways in which we can do this.

Listen now as Pastor Peter unpacks his thoughts.

A Daring faith includes daring to commit.  Daring to give ourselves completely to God.  In Romans 6:13, Paul describes it as giving every part of ourselves to God.   Everything.  We don’t hold anything back.
 
This includes the most important commitments in our lives:
worship,
fellowship,
discipleship,
ministry, and
mission.
 
We can strengthen our faith, by uniting with others in worship. 
We can discover our identity and purpose, when we connect with others for fellowship.
To will develop our potential, when we learn with others to grow (discipleship).
We experience significance, when we serve with others in ministry.
We make an eternal difference, when we join others on mission.

Listen now as Pastor Peter unpacks his thoughts.

God tells us many times that this world is not going to last. The universe is winding down, history is moving toward a climax—Jesus Christ is coming again. The Bible has more to say about his second coming, in fact, than it does about his first. How would your life change if you used more of your time, money, and energy on what’s going to last forever?

Daring faith: the key to miracles – includes daring to imagine! God-inspired dreaming often goes far beyond anything we could imagine! Through God-inspired dreaming, we learn that: (1) Our imagination shapes our life, (2) Imagining is essential to living by faith, (3) Great lives are built around great dreams, (4) God’s dream for our lives is bigger than our dreams, (5) Doubt is the enemy of imagination, (6) God’s Spirit and God’s Word fuel our imaginations, (7) Growing our character will clarify our vision, and (8) If a dream is from God, it will be connected somehow to His church and plan for the world.

Listen now as Pastor Peter unpacks his thoughts.

On the first Easter morning when Jesus’ disciples John and Peter went to the place where Jesus had been buried, they found an empty tomb and his body gone. When John saw this, he believed in Jesus’ resurrection. God wants us to believe in Jesus. The word “believe” appears 250 times in the New Testament, and God’s people are called “believers.” The question “Do we dare to believe?” may be the most important question in our lives. 

Listen now as our Youth Pastor Pierre unpacks his thoughts.

Faith is multifaceted: it is seeing everything in the world from God’s perspective. Faith is not desire; it’s not feelings (which often get in the way of faith); it’s not bargaining with God; and it’s not pretending something untrue is really true. There is always more than one way of looking at things.

Listen now as Pastor Peter unpacks his thoughts and discusses how seeing things from God’s point of view produces a faith that dispels fears and unlocks miracles and dreams.