Grace United Caledonia

#ChristAboveEverything

“Christ is worth more than your resume, and that the ultimate goal is Paul and disciples that know Christ declare that he is worth knowing, to know who he is and what he's accomplished, to know him personally and intimately. And this is what Paul began to see near the end of his life, that it was all about Christ. And he could rip up his resume and say, it's not about me. It's all about getting to know him.”

#KnowingChrist

“Christ is worth more than your resume, and that the ultimate goal is Paul and disciples that know Christ declare that he is worth knowing, to know who he is and what he's accomplished, to know him personally and intimately. And this is what Paul began to see near the end of his life, that it was all about Christ. And he could rip up his resume and say, it's not about me. It's all about getting to know him.”

#FaithInTheDark

“So when it gets dark, we're called to get to that quiet place and wrestle with God. Ask for his goodness. And sometimes God says yes and whatever the problem is abates, and sometimes God says I'm gonna be with you in it, and he gives us strength. And then we're called to know that his kingdom is coming through whatever our difficulty is and to shine brightly, to get the provision we need, and to know that in it, well, we might not always shine brightly. We might say things and do things that aren't perfect, as is our nature. But his perfect love will still shine through us.”

#SpiritFilled

“He he recognized this was his agenda, but it started with the spirit of the Lord upon him. And so I find when I cannot do the agenda, the mind of Christ, my problem isn't that I don't know what to do. It's that I don't have the resources within me to do what I'm called to do, and that means I need his spirit. I need to stop at his his gas tank and begin to allow his spirit to fill me again so that I can overcome my own selfishness.”

#FaithOverFear

“So that when the dark night comes, that instead of focusing on all the trouble that's in your midst, You can focus on the Lord, you can rejoice in him, and you can get the resources you need from him so that you can have the peace that guards your heart. And the world is watching you, mostly when the storm comes into your life. And in this place, they can see Christ alive in you, through you. They can hear the song of thanksgiving that you have because you have the hope that Christ died to give you, not as an exterior reality, but as an interior got it. It's gonna be okay.”

#GodIsWorking

“You're not the coach of your own goal. You're not standing at the boards assessing your own progress and deciding whether to keep investing. It is God who's making the investment in you. God saw what you could be, and he's calling that out. He's showing up in the dark day in and day out, helping you. And and and it will happen at the day of Christ, the finished thing. Not just a slightly better version of who you are, rough edges and all. No, human, fully alive, finally yourself.”

#GodFinishesWhatHeStarts

“It's it's our fears that cause sin. But when we encounter God and his love for us despite our sin, that that he's made this covenant, that what he started in us, he's gonna complete even despite us. We have every reason why God should give up on us, don't we? And God says, no, you're mine. I'm your coach. I've got this. We've got this. I'm getting you through.”

#ChurchCommunity

“Now I'm willing to put a $100 on the line to say, you do this, You're gonna find more peace, more joy, more love, more kindness, more fulfillment, more meaning, more direction. Every one of those markers will be way better. When God designed the church, he designed it to have big church and small church together. And when we put them together again, we get transformed, and so does the world. The world wins. I mean, Christ wins. So I wanna strengthen your hands so that he wins. Would you join me?”

#ScriptureRenewal

“That's why God wrote a book. Words matter. Truth matters. Our mind and how we think matters. But here's the thing, we have all these coding errors in our thinking. Some are small glitches, like, I can't be loved or I can't be forgiven or I gotta earn everything or some are lies that eat away as as cancer. There may be declarations over you. You're some labels that are put over you that need to be unput. But when we ponder scripture in the presence of the Holy Spirit, God goes at work on the code.”

#HistoricalResurrection

“And there there we have, this is the claim. Christianity is the only major faith to stake everything that something happened or it didn't. That something happened in a particular week in a particular town in front of people who, whom the names are known. Christianity is saying that there is a historical happening. This Jesus of Nazareth was put on a cross, laid in a tomb, and raised from the grave.”

#TruthAsRescue

“So let's hold this truth the way Peter held it, not as a weapon to win an argument, but as the only strong news, enough to hold a lame man's weight and his own. Let's hold it the way Jesus offered, an open span, build at the cost of his own body, wide enough for tax collectors and Samaritans and dying criminals. And this morning, wide enough for every one of us to cross.”

#HolySpiritBestFriend

“The Holy Spirit is invisible, and yet, he's always around us. And so to live with the sense of his presence with us, even though we can't see him, but if we can just live with faith that he's beside us, that, that he becomes our best friend. We sang that song, Jesus, you're my best friend. And that's what it means. It means living with the sense that he's with me all the time and that I can talk to him in my heart, in my head, and that he'll comfort me, he'll guide me, he'll protect me, that he becomes my best friend, and so I'm never lonely.”

#SecureInChrist

“See, Jesus is dealt with our death, meaning that when we die, we'll be in his presence and we'll live forever. And Jesus is dealt with our purpose. He has a plan for each one of your lives that's better than you can imagine. And so you can relax. He'll guide you in that when the time's right. And all he asks from you for for you today is that you would walk with him and try to do what's right with his help.”

#ResurrectionAndLife

“Jesus then says a word to Martha. He looks at her and says, I am the resurrection and the life. Those that believe in me, even though they die, will live. Do you believe me? What he's saying is that what you see right here isn't everything. This this pain and suffering that you're in the midst of isn't the end of the story. What what you think is death pangs and and and difficulty and and and and is just just a part of a there there's something gonna happen here. This this isn't death pangs, this is birth pangs. Can you get it? Can you get that I'm about to do something great here in the place of your tears, in the place of your suffering. I'm about to bring resurrection. I'm about to bring life. Can you believe in me even in the place where everything goes dark?”

#FaithThatBreaksBarriers

“``It wasn't calling him Lord or Son of David. It wasn't kneeling at his feet. It wasn't even believing that Jesus could cast out demons. It was that this Canaanite woman had the crystal, unshakable conviction that she and her daughter were deserving of God's mercy. And she was willing to break through all the barriers, barriers of ethnicity, heritage, gender, and society to ask Jesus for mercy. That's what Jesus calls faith.”

#HealingVsCure

“``A cure deals with a biomedical organism. A healing is about the restoration of the person. Jesus healed people. He gave them their lives back. He restored them to their right minds. He he cleansed lepers so that they could come back into their community. They were restored to life in the community. That man who raged among the tombs and cut himself with the stones, Jesus restored him to his right mind, and he got started to wear clothes like a human being, not an animal, and he was restored to his community. Curing just fixes the biological mechanism. Healing is about the whole person.”

#FeedTheHungry

“``Send them away, they say to Jesus. Isn't this true of us today? We see the need. We feel compassion, but we feel powerless to help so many. The task seems beyond our means, our abilities. Send them away. Take it out of our sight. Let someone else who is better equipped deal with them. Jesus says, no. You feed them. The disciples want the need to go away, while Jesus draws nearer to it.”

#GiftOfProphecy

“``Prophecy is a gift. A little bit of a weird one, but it is a gift. how do what do we make of this? Eagerly desire the gift of the spirit, especially prophecy. Because prophecy speaks to the pill people to encourage and edify and build up. Yes. Words of prophecy challenge us, but we judge prophecy, we determine if it is from God by seeing if it speaks to the people to strengthen. That's how you know a prophet is a word from God, if it builds up the people, encourages, comforts. Those are the marks of a prophecy that has come from God mediated through the prophet to the people.”

#GateHoldsLife

“``He promises us that. He says, where I am, you'll be. Sometimes, you know, we wonder of his love for us, but he's already defined it. We've already had the great cosmic battle between the wolf and the lion. The wolf, the one who came to kill, steal, and destroy, thought he had destroyed the Lion of Judah. On the cross, we all could wonder, will the hope and promise that he made stand? Will the gate hold? And Jesus took death, became death, died, and rose again in order to declare that the gate held and the gate holds, that we can come in and go out and find life.”

#AncientOfDaysJudgment

“But then the Lord showed me there is one coming, the ancient of days, the son of God. he was dressed in white. hair was wool, pure wool. And his throne was set in the middle of them, but it was flaming. And then around him were thousands, 10 thousands of 10 thousands worshiping him, praising him, glorifying him, and then were brought to him the books of the deeds. And in a moment, without a battle, without any fanfare, he judged each of these kingdoms, and they were gone like chaff blown away by the one word of his judgment. And then I heard that all power and authority and dominion given to this king and that his kingdom lasts forever.”

#HopeOfNewCreation

“As you look through today, I mean, we can see the end. See, John, he'll say that there's a new heaven and a new earth coming down right in this new city in Jerusalem, where there's gonna be no more suffering, no more tears, no more death, where God our father walks with us, wipes away our tears. There is a new reality that's just around the corner. And so we all face difficult days like Daniel did, where the enemy will scare us to say that death will be our end. But Jesus Christ broke death to say, no. I've overcome. If you're mine, we overcome. Trust me.”

#FourthManInTheFire

“``The fourth man is not standing at the edge of a fire with his arms crossed waiting for you to prove yourself. He's already walking towards you. There's no condemnation. There's grace, and there's a fresh start today. To the one who's sitting in the furnace right now, whatever it might be, the diagnosis, the grief, the marriage, the fear that you carried in here and probably will carry out with you, you're never alone in it. You've never been alone in it. Look again. Look around you. There's a fourth man, and he's in the fire with you, and he has no intention of ever leaving you to fight this fire alone.”

#JesusSetsTheTable

“In this night before everything goes dark, Jesus doesn't convene a session. He doesn't deliver a motivational speech. He sets a table. He picks up the bread. He gives it to them. The cup gives it to them. Do you see what he's doing? Do you see what what's happening here at the table? He's saying, the table that I set will cost me everything, and I'm setting it anyway because I want you here because are worth it. He knows the one who feeds you, owns you.”

#SheepAmongWolves

“Jesus is about to send out his 12 spokesmen, and after granting them their powers, tells them that I'm sending you about like sheep into the midst of wolves. They will hand you over to councils, flog you in their synagogues. You will be dragged before governors and kings. You will be hated by all because of my name. And, oh, yeah, before you go, take nothing with you.”

#GraceForTheDifficult

“I have some deeply, deeply annoying people in my life. I am far too old to think I can change them, so I have come to the reluctant conclusion that what I need to change is me. I need to look right in the heart of the deeply annoying with in all of their deeply annoyingness and say, Jesus loves this deeply annoying person. Jesus gave his life on the cross for this deeply annoying person. Jesus washed away the sin of this deeply annoying person and Jesus rose from the dead so that this deeply annoying person can have life and have it in all abundance and have eternal life too.”

#PlayWithGrace

“God doesn't save you just from the penalty of sin and leave you in the audience. He dignifies you. He invites you into the family business, and the Holy Spirit is actively dwelling within you. He patiently teaches you how to use your old instrument. He guides your hands, and when you play the wrong note, and you will, he doesn't kick you off the stage. His grace covers the distance, and he gently leans in and he whispers, watch my hands. Try again. Let's find the rhythm together.”

#PentecostUnitesLanguages

“``And notice what God doesn't do. He doesn't give everyone the same language. He doesn't erase the diversity, he works through it. This is a reversal of what happens in Babel in Genesis 11, where human pride shattered language into a a weapon of division. At Pentecost, the spirit picks up these shattered pieces and arranges them into a mosaic of every tongue, every culture, every accent carrying the same glorious news about Jesus. Babel scatters, Pentecost gathers.”

#NoMapNeeded

“We want a map, and and we wanna do this with God as well. We say, God, show me the entire plan for my life. Show me where I'll be in five years. Show me the how this tragedy makes sense. Show me the finish line. Show me it all, and then I'll follow you. Now the problem is if God answered that prayer, if he showed you a full picture of the future right now, including the deep sorrows, the massive responsibilities, the spiritual battles that you will have to engage in, and the overwhelming glory, it would crush us.”

#AbideInTheVine

“Jesus is the vine, the father is the gardener, we are the branch, but what's actually making the fruit grow? I mean, a branch is really just dead wood, and the life is found in the sap, and the sap is the Holy Spirit. When Jesus says, abide in me, he's talking about positioning ourselves to receive the flow of the Holy Spirit. In the physical grapevine, the sap is the unseen hero. It flows from the vine, rushes into the branches, heals the wounds, pushes out the fruit. The branch doesn't make the grape, the branch yields to the sap.”

#PeaceThroughTheSpirit

“They should ask us, how do you have such peace when everything is falling apart? And then we can get to the answer because we're not flying by sight. We know the teacher of truth and the pilot who commands the wind and the waves has promised to bring us home safely. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Do not be afraid. This is Christ's gift for you, for every one of us. He loves you. He's given you the Holy Spirit. So when you're filled with anxiety, open your heart to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Listen to the word he speaks.”

#SteadyInChange

“But they're looking at us. We're their security. And when they see that we can absorb change in a world that's changing for them, their faith in him increases. They're watching you as you navigate the illness, the loss, the changing culture. And when they see that you're completely unbothered because you're clinging to Jesus and he's clinging to you and walking right beside you, their faith increases. We'd be a church that would honor both the beauty of the past and fearlessly embrace the future because we know the exact same spirit is holding on to both.”

#EncounterWithJesus

“Heartbreak is replaced by heartburn, the good kind, the fire of you know that fire. You know when it happens to you. You know when you come here heavy and you leave here light. In some measure, you've had a revelation of God in your mind, but you've also had an encounter with him. He hears their disappointment. He walks with them. He unpacks the scriptures so that he can minister to their mind, and then he gives them a a concrete example of his love for them.”

#ForgivenAndLoved

“Friends, hear the good news of the gospel. When the disciples were walking away in disbelief, Jesus did not abandon them to their doubts. He joined them on the road. He listened to their pain, and he stayed with them at the table. Even when we are slow to believe, Christ's love for us never wavers. When he hands us the bread of life, he shows us his scars, reminding us that our sins are forgiven, our past is redeemed, and our future is held securely in his hands. In the name of the resurrected Jesus, you are forgiven. You are loved. It's a seal that's upon your soul, never to be broken forever in Christ. Amen.”

#SurrenderEverything

“The only rational move when you're facing the almighty is to wave the white flag, to surrender unconditionally. Jesus then brings the hammer down on this crowd. In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything cannot be my disciple. See, this is the fine print. Grace is absolutely free. Salvation is a gift you cannot earn. But discipleship, following Jesus day by day, will cost you only one thing, everything.”

#EmptyTombFreedom

“No. No. He's stepping right into the midst of your anxiety, right into the midst of your grief, and he's calling your name. Look at his hands. Look at his side. He's defeated the grave. The worst thing isn't the last thing. You don't have to hide anymore. The tomb is empty. The doors have been bypassed.”

#HumbleKing

“Matthew lifts up Zachariah's prophecy. See, your king comes to you humble and on a donkey. Jesus is orchestrating the anti triumph. He arrives with no armor, no army, no weapons. He's riding on an unbroken donkey, an animal apiece. He's entirely exposed. He isn't flexing his muscle or trying to intimidate anyone. He's looking at this abused and cynical and broken people and saying to them, I am not like the other leaders who have hurt you. I am safe.”

#HumbleKing

“Jesus is orchestrating the anti triumph. He arrives with no armor, no army, no weapons. He's riding on an unbroken donkey, an animal apiece. He's entirely exposed. He isn't flexing his muscle or trying to intimidate anyone. He's looking at this abused and cynical and broken people and saying to them, I am not like the other leaders who have hurt you. I am safe.”

#HumbleKingSacrifice

“The king is riding on a donkey and doesn't ride into Jerusalem to execute his enemies. He rides to Jerusalem to be executed for them. The hands that hold the universe together will be soon nailed to a piece of wood so that you could be healed by his wounds. He does not bait and switch. He does not manipulate. He is exactly who he appears to be, lowly, humble, fiercely in love with you, worthy of your full surrender.”

#GodsTimingNotOurs

“Jesus calls her daughter. It's beautiful unless you're Jairus. Because for Jairus, every second Jesus spends with her is one second he he's on he can't spend with his own daughter, and his daughter is slipping away. Time is ticking. The emergency needs to be dealt with now. And Jarius is dealing with a brutal, beautiful truth. God's compassion is infinite, but his timeline isn't our timeline.”

#BringYourBrokenness

“Jesus isn't looking for acquaintances who come to him with their Sunday best. He's looking for desperate children. He's waiting for you to break the rules of your own self reliance. He's waiting for you to push back your fears of what other people think. He wants you to reach out to him and risk the interruption and admit, Lord, I can't fix this. I need you. If you bring your uncleanness to Jesus, he doesn't get dirty. You get clean. You cannot be healed while you're hiding.”

#UnhitchFromPerformance

“We carry this bridle of human performance. And we get exhausted of trying to be good enough, polite enough, right enough. We start gripping these stone tablets of the law, the law we often have written ourselves, and we use them to measure our own worth. This is what makes me a worthwhile human being. And then we start using it to judge others' worth. And Jesus is standing in front of both you and me this morning and he's asking us to unhitch our lives from these systems and he's saying, would you just trust me to save you from your sin?”

#ComeAsYouAre

“We often come to worship, and there's a part of us that we hide. We're good Canadians. We always wanna look good on the inside, but sometimes there's some things in us, some heaviness, some darkness, some doubt, some worry. And the good news is that when you're loved as you are by the Lord, you can come and reveal all of who you are because he loves every bit of you. And we can be honest and allow for him to do what only he can do, embrace us and heal us and help us and guide us and get us home.”

#VisionBeyondSelf

“And and that's what god is doing. He's he's trying to say that that this vision that you're making of your life is far too small for the vision that your good father in heaven has for you. He's got a a vision to get you out of yourself and to be a son and daughter of incredible nobility through and through. And some of the visions that we have are rooted in the world and the cares of the world, and he's saying, you gotta let me deconstruct it so that I can make something of you that you would be proud of and I would be proud of and that the whole heavenly kingdom will be proud of.”

#OpenHisWordHope

“Whatever dark place you might be in, when you open up his book with a humble learner's heart, it draws the holy teacher to come alongside you and light the path forward, to show you the truth, the unshakable truth. You are loved. You're forgiven. You're Christ forever, and he's gonna get you home. If you're in the midst of a dark night, take heart.”

#SimpleWordOfGod

“It's amazing when god takes a simple word of a preacher or of a brother and sister in Christ who lets people know about Jesus and illuminate it in in his heart. I remember a time I was in my basement and had a little youth group meeting. I was really pondering what the word was, and I remember praying and asking Jesus, and he said, just just take out this scripture. Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden. I'll give you rest. I thought, well, that's gonna be an easy message to to these young people. It's and he says, you don't have to do much more than that, Glenn.”

“He goes to the guardhouse, and he signs you in. He he vouches for you. And and he doesn't just vouch and let you go. He he walks with you past every barrier, and he and he brings you right into the father's private office. And there, there's a chair waiting for you, and you sit down and you pour at your heart.”

#YouAreTheLight

“``Jesus would say to us, you are the light of the world. That when we let Jesus come into our darkness and we accept him as king and then we begin to follow him try to listen for him, and then we step out in faith, saying the words we know that he would want us to say, giving, our resources in the way he'd want us to give, serving in the places where he's calling us to serve. And when we do that, we know that there's something supernatural that happens. It brings blessing.”

#WhatWouldJohnDo

“``I think perhaps a better question to ask would be, what would John the Baptist do? Because I think I can make a pretty good guess at what he would do. John's ministry was about coming into relationship with God, and his baptism was about washing away your sinful deeds, repenting, and opening your heart to God's love. He called out the religious hypocrites. He spoke out against the misdeeds and corruption of Herod, and he pointed the people towards Jesus.”

#BaptismBroughtMeHome

“``Of course, just like all those kids I was talking about, I turned my back and walked away. I had nothing to do with church again for almost forty years. And when my life fell apart and I was really in the depths of despair, when my depression was at its worst, it was the memory of my baptism that brought me home.”

#ListenAcrossFaiths

“``So the Jewish people who did know the prophecies couldn't see the sign that the messiah had been born. They had to be told by pagans from a foreign land. So to me, the message is that if you ignore, shut out, refuse to listen to people of different faiths, cultures, countries, whatever, then you risk missing out on God's gifts.”

#LetGodNameYou

“He submitted. He gave up his talent. Some of you are exhausted. Some of you are tired trying to keep up the image. Tired of trying to make a name for yourself. Tired of living up to the names other people are calling you out to be. Just tired of that. Letting them have way too much control over you. Stop doing that. Allow for God to name you. You are a child of God. You've got a last name. You have a first name. Let him name you. Come to him. Lose your life and you'll find it.”

#MustardSeedFaith

“that mustard seed of faith that reached out to Jesus and called on his namewill be responded by his promise I will save youand in the rear view of time you will see his hand at work to save you to transform you to make you into a new creation to give you a sense of who he is and what he's done for you to let his life begin to be seated in you and to transform you from the inside out”

#JesusTakesItAll

“he would come in his son jesus christ and and jesus christ would take all the things that are burdening you upon himself your sin upon himself your death upon himself and we take it on a cross so that it could die with him and a new day could dawn upon you that his death would be the end of your death and his life would be transferred to youso you can live”

#FearOfGodReverence

“One Of The Things He Says He Has The Fear Of God And What That Means Is That There's Such A Reverence For God In The Heart Of This Man That He Will Follow The Agenda Of This God More Than His Own Agenda And We See It Happening In The Garden Of GethsemaneWhen He's Sweating Blood At The Concept Of Absorbing The Sin Of The World Into His Soul And Being Separated From The Triune GodAnd Taking All Of Our Sin Upon The Cross And Being Crucified For It”

#NewLifeInChrist

“``He came and he dealt with death, and he's given us the hope of a new life, that in him even though we die we live, that he's conquered sin and death, and we're becoming a new creation, redeemed more and more by his presence. This is his throne, and we are learning. You see, you're the early adopters. Later on, there will be many more people that it'll be self-evident, but you're the early adopters to letting him be your king, your lord, and this church is established for him so that people might know him and his way, right?”

#QuietTimeRefresh

“And so in the morning I'd wake up at five in the morning and I'd get alone and I would pray. I would get quiet and I'd open up the Bible and I would just kind of read it. And as I was reading it, it was like the author came out of the page and began to minister to me. And began to open up who he is and what he accomplished. And more than that, he began to let me know that I'm loved and forgiven. He began to refresh my heart and refresh my soul.”

#BattleSinAndDeath

“We all know that one day, if the Lord doesn't return soon, we're going to die. You know it's hard to think about, but we're going to die. And God sees that. He sees our battle against our nature, and he sees the battle against death. He knows we want to be a better person. And so he sends his son, Jesus Christ, into the world. He sends his son, Jesus Christ, into the world. To battle sin and death for us.”

#PurifiedThroughTrials

“The scripture talks about us being purified through fire, and the difficulties that we find out what our impurities are, they kind of come to the surface and we find out I'm not so patient or so kind or so holy. We wonder where is God allowing for the fire of this trial to come into our life. God is the one who's trying to lift that from us, to make us more and more like himself, transformed person.”

#SelfRighteousnessExposed

“The Pharisee, we can see, is trusting in himself for his righteousness. His prayer starts out pretty good. Thank you, God. That's a humble prayer. He should have quit while he was ahead. But he continues because he's come to the temple with a list. Thank you, God, that I'm not like those other people, robbers, evildoers, adulterers. I'm not like them. Or even this tax collector over here. I fast twice a week and I give a tenth of all I get. This Pharisee, he is exalting himself, lifting himself up to make himself look good before God.”

#JoyThroughThankfulness

“And as you exercise thankfulness and praise, all of a sudden, inside, you become happier and happier. And there's more and more joy, and more and more life. And just like you get physically strong, we call it spiritually strong, that your spirit is strong, and you're full of life and joy and peace.”