Current Church

#GraceWins

“despite your standard of right and wrong, despite your history of right and wrong, regardless of your percentage of right and wrong, regardless of whether or not your thoughts and motives matter, regardless of how much time you have left, despite all of the bad things that you and I have ever done, all of it has been paid for, And all of it was removed when you and I believed in what Jesus did for us.”

#LoveYourEnemies

“But you've gotta get rid of that thinking that says that is what perfect Christianity looks like. Because according to him, when he says be perfect, he says, what that looks like instead is giving to the one who asks you. Loving your enemies and praying for your enemies and for those who persecute you. By loving and greeting people that are outside of your normal circles. Again, perfection, in this case, is doing good for those who cannot or will not do good for you.”

#LoveBeyondDisagreement

“Jesus could have disagreed with every single person that he ever met on at least something if not most things. Because Jesus had perfect theology and perfect understanding of your your heavenly father and my heavenly father, and he could have disagreed with every single person he met on something if not most things. If full agreement with people, if coming to full agreement with people was the requirement for Jesus to have a relationship with people or to have friends, Jesus would have had no friends or relationships.”

#BecomingLikeJesus

“Slowly and steadily, as I mentioned at the beginning, we become like the one that we behold. And remember, we talked about this last week and the week before, consistency trumps intensity. The more often we do this, the more consistent we are in it, the more likely we are to have it change our lives. And when we spend time with Jesus, things start to change. It may be slow, but it's unmistakable. We start to sound like him. We start to see people like him. Jesus Jesus noticed people, not crowds. He noticed people. Not circumstances. He noticed individuals and not interruptions because he recognized those as opportunities.”

#ConsistencyOverIntensity

“Going into the woods with God is less about how long you're there and more about how often you do it. So if you've got ten minutes every day, spend that time with your heavenly father. Develop that discipline. That discipline is so hard to develop, but once you do, it'll become a delight, and you'll find yourself wanting to spend more time with your heavenly father. And if you miss a day, don't miss two days. And if you miss two days, don't miss three days because consistency trumps intensity. I have to remember my slide for a moment. Consistency trumps intensity. Your heavenly father just wants to meet with you.”

#PlaceOfStrength

“It changes your perspective on the things that you're walking through, the things that you're navigating. It's not a sign of weakness, it's not a sign of defeat, it's not like, oh, I gotta go spend time with God because things have fallen apart. No. It's a place of strength, It's a place of refreshing. It's a place where our lives are gonna be transformed.”

#FaithOverPolitics

“I even struggle with this to some degree. I'm sure some of you I'm I'm willing to guess that some of you in this room struggle with this as well, but politics at some point has become have become the test for whether somebody was considered a real Christian. What you believe politically, at least in a lot of our minds, drives how what we think about you as far as whether or not you are a real Christian. Somewhere along the line, for some of us some of us in this room, but I I'm talking about the church in general. Somewhere along the line, winning elections and winning arguments became more important to us than winning people. Winning elections and winning arguments have become more important than winning people, than making disciples, than multiplying followers. And when that happens, our mission field is no longer a mission field. It's a battlefield.”

#YouAreTheChurch

“``Most Christians will believe certain things, but not actually follow Jesus with their life. So here's the challenge for all of us today. If you consider yourself a Christian, don't be most Christians. Don't be most Christians. You know better. So be better. Live your life with more purpose. And here's why. Do you know why? Here's why. Because you are the church. If you consider yourself a follower of Jesus, if you consider yourself a Christian,”

#TestingRevealsFaith

“If you've lost faith along the way because of the circumstances of your life, it's possible or likely even that it's because your faith was being tested. You were learning in that moment and through what it was that you were walking through, you were learning what it is that you really believe about God. You were learning what it is that you truly believe about Jesus. It was being tested. And that testing is okay so long as your faith comes out intact on the other side of that testing.”

#PrivateDisciplinesBuildFaith

“But private spiritual disciplines, they will lead. I promise you, they will lead to a strong faith. Having those private spiritual disciplines in your life will force you to answer the question in every day and every moment, is Jesus actually Lord of my life? Am I following him or is Jesus just something that I believe in? Is Jesus just something that I show up for on Sundays? Am I following him or am I just believing?”

#ComeSitWithMe

“Come to current with me. Come sit with me. Come to Sunday and come sit with me. This this right here, this is a life changing invite. Come sit with me. You know, a single invitation could position you as a catalyst in somebody's faith story. Come sit with me. Hey, come sit with me at current. Might be the first step of somebody eventually coming to faith in Jesus or it might be the first step in someone coming back to faith in Jesus. You never know if you invite somebody to church, you never know if one day you might be part of the story that they tell.”

#PushThroughInadequacy

“This is why for personal ministry, pushing through our inadequacy in order to say yes to God for the benefit of other people grows our faith. When we feel inadequate, when we don't feel smart enough, when we don't feel educated enough, when we don't feel like we have the time, when we feel like we're too old, when we feel like we're too young, when we feel like those middle schoolers are too scary, or just, you know, stepping up and and doing this is it's I I just have a fear of that, you know, whatever the case. When you push through that, you experience God's faithfulness and your faith grows.”

#TrustAndFollow

“Do you trust that what I've just encouraged you to do is the better way? Do you trust that? Will you actually go out and live this out before you even know what the end result is going to be? Will you trust that? Will you follow me? Not do you believe in me, will you follow me? And that's the question for every single one of us every single day. Not to simply believe in Jesus, but to trust in him and live our lives in that way and the outcome he says is this, the rain will come down, the streams will rise, the winds will blow and beat against your house, beat against your life and yet it will not fall because its foundation is on the rock.”

#JesusIsTheStory

“You wanna know what God is like? Don't start back in Genesis. If you want a clear picture of what God is like, you you don't begin in Genesis, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, the few books of the Bible, fantastic books. Go over there and study them and they're fantastic for learning a lot of things, but if you wanna know what God is truly like, you don't start there. You wanna know what he's like, you start with Jesus. Jesus is not this is like, this is so important for us as followers of of Christ. This is so important. Jesus is not a a section. He's not a he's not four books of the bible. He's not part of the story. The entire story is Jesus”

#ResurrectionChangesEverything

“If Jesus could actually predict his own death and his own resurrection which he did on multiple occasions and then pull it off, that changed everything. They they struggled to believe that Jesus that this was Jesus' mission, his path because you can't kill God's Messiah. But if someone can predict their own death and resurrection and then pull it off, that changes everything and it changes everything for everybody. Changes everything for you, changes everything for me, changes everything for your friends and my friends. It changes everything for my family, it changes everything for your family, it changes everything for my kids and your kids, the people that you work with, it changes everything for the people that you live next to, your neighbors.”

#TheyCrucifiedHim

“They say, we have no king but Caesar. We're not loyal to anybody but Caesar, which was so far from the truth. They commit blasphemy in this moment. We have no king but Caesar. And so Pilate hands him over to be crucified. And so they brought Jesus to a place called Golgotha. And I I find this so interesting. Mark, as he gives us the account of the crucifixion of Jesus, this is all he says, and they crucified him. Four words. That's Mark's description of the crucifixion. Four words. They crucified him. That simple. You know why? Because the audience that Mark was writing to, they knew the details of a crucifixion. They knew what it looked like. They knew how bloody it was. They knew how torturous it was. They knew how horrific it was.”

#BaptismIsEvidence

“It's not this magic, hey, now that I've been baptized, I'm gonna go to heaven someday when I die now. It's evidence of something that has already happened that you've already become a follower of Jesus. You've already been saved. A great example of this is, when when Jesus was crucified, you may know that on either side of him there were thieves also being crucified next to him and one of those thieves, thieves on the cross, he he told Jesus, hey Jesus, remember me when you get into heaven. Remember me when you get into paradise and Jesus tells him, hey, you're gonna be with me today.”

#PlankBeforeSpeck

“That's kinda harsh, I would think. And Jesus says this about somebody that thinks like that. You hypocrite. Speck meet plank. He says, first, take the plank out of your own eye and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. He doesn't say to ignore the speck. He says to fix the order. Looking at yourself, correcting yourself, that comes first. Repentance comes before confrontation. Humility comes before influence. The change game says, they go first. Jesus says, you go first.”

#ContentWithOneHandful

“You have a roof over your head every night. That's part of your handful. You have clothes on your back. That's part of your handful. You have a job. Even that that job isn't something you love. You have a job. You have a handful. But we are so tempted to compare this handful, but you have one, you've got one and Solomon is like, it's better to have one handful with and be content with that one handful than to chase after two, than to to toil and work and drive after two because chasing that second handful is gonna cost you. So the question today, the the primary question of the day is, what's that second handful gonna cost you?”

#DontGiveYourPowerAway

“Doctor Robert Anthony, he says this. He says, when you blame others, you give up your power to change. When you blame other people for what's going on in your life, you give up power to change. When you assign blame, you are giving up the power to change your circumstances and to change yourself. It's saying, hey. Well, this isn't on me. This isn't on me, so I don't need to do anything about it. I don't need to fix this. But when when you assign blame and when you assign blame to people or your circumstances or to God or your upbringing or your parents or whatever, you know, whatever it is that you blame for your the reason that you are at at where you're at in life, what you're saying is it's outside of my control. That's outside of my control.”

#RelationshipWins

“We're going look at this question and the question is, what's the win in a relationship? What is the win in any given relationship? And the answer to that is simple. It's the relationship. That's the win. The win is having a mutually satisfying, mutually enjoyable relationship. That's the win. Where no individual person is winning and no individual person in that relationship is losing because if one person loses in any relationship then both people lose in the relationship. And many times what happens is when there's a winner and a loser, the two of the two of you lose the relationship.”

#shareYourStory

“``Share your own story. I I love this. I I heard this quote this week, from a friend and I was like, this so perfectly fits with my message. I'm just gonna throw it in and so I I love this quote. It's from RC Sproul. He says this, we are not righteous people trying to correct the unrighteous. That's not what Christians are. We're not righteous people trying to correct the the sinners, the unrighteous people out there. Evangel or as one preacher put it, evangelism and evangelism by the way is just simply sharing our faith with other people. Sharing our faith with other people. Evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.”

#LeadByServing

“``Can you imagine if you and I did the exact same thing at work? I I know that it's tempting in our culture. I know that it's tempting in our work environments to try and fight our way to the top, to climb our way to the top. But throughout scripture, we are told it's not how how high you can go and it's not how far you can fight to the top, it's how low can you go. Can you put yourself at the bottom of that ladder and make sure everybody else is higher up than you. That's what we're told throughout scripture.”

#HolyRestDay

“``Here's what holy actually means. The the word holy means set apart for a unique purpose. Set apart for a unique purpose. In this moment, God is setting one day of the week apart after all of our days of work for a unique purpose, for replenishment. He's setting it apart as a unique day where we're not gonna do any of our to dos. We're not gonna do the things we must do. We're gonna do the things that we want to do. We're not gonna do the things that drain us. We're gonna do the things that refill us. Again, this is how you were created. This is how I was created.”

#WorkIsBroken

“So the curse, when the curse came after sin, the curse was not the fact that we had to work. That was not the curse. The curse was on the work itself. This is why even the best jobs, you might have the best job in the world that you absolutely love, but even the best jobs have good things about them, but they can also be very, very frustrating.”

#LightHasComeHope

“``Today, I just want to share with you the good news of great joy, that the light has come. That hope has come. That Jesus has come. And if you will open up to him, and if you will follow him, then that light will enter into your life. And it will not make your problems go away. What it will do, what it will do is it will bring hope. It'll bring grace. It'll bring truth. It'll bring perspective on those problems. And you will know in those moments that you are not alone. And you will have peace. And you will have hope.”

#YouAreValued

“``Have you ever felt, or have you ever been told, like, has somebody communicated to you verbally or non-verbally that the world would be better if you just hadn't been born? Have you ever been told that you were a mistake? Have you ever been, have you ever felt, even if nobody's told you this, have you ever just felt like the world would be better off without me? My family would be better off without me. If you've ever felt that, you should know that one of the important lessons of Christmas, at least according to Matthew, is that God is not embarrassed by you. You have value.”

#NotDefinedByMyPast

“Or maybe you might even say, you know what, I'm not happy where I am. I feel like I'm an embarrassment of myself because maybe of my job situation or what's going on in my marriage or everyone knows what I'm addicted to. But the good news, the good news of Christmas is this, that men and women with an embarrassing past are not an embarrassment to Jesus. In fact, this makes you a candidate for the greatness, to have greatness in the kingdom of God. This is the story of Christmas.”

#FollowForBetterLife

“``Every single one of us in this room, we have two things in common. The two things that we all have in common, you're on the naughty list. You're on the naughty list. You're a sinner. But also just like me, you're invited to follow Jesus. And if you do that, you will be changed for the better. That's why we say around here all the time, following Jesus, following his way, like learning about Jesus and following him will make you better at life. Not perfect. Certainly will not make you perfect at life. It certainly will not make your life perfect. It will make you, it'll make your life better and it will make you better at life.”

#RecognizeYourNeed

“So blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God. So let's pause right here on this poor in spirit. Nobody likes to be poor. Another way of looking at this verse, if we were to change the wording in a little bit to mean, to reflect what the poor in spirit means: blessed are those who recognize their need for God, for theirs is the kingdom of God or kingdom of heaven.”

#WelcomingCommunity

“Our goal from the very beginning was to create a place where unchurched people or people with varied or limited church experience would come, and they would get an experience that felt helpful to them, that they would walk out going, that was very enjoyable. Like, I look forward to going back to that next week, where people might walk out and go, hey, I'm not sure if I believe everything you believe. I'm not sure if I'm there yet, but man, I sure do like being around you guys, and I can't wait to come back the next week. That's what we wanted to create.”

#AcknowledgeAndAdjust

“There are worse things in life than feeling bad about yourself. For example, you know what's worse than feeling bad about yourself? Refusing to acknowledge and adjust. Refusing to address something bad about yourself. That's worse.”

#YouMatterToGod

“Everybody matters to God, whether God matters to them or not. In fact, you may not even know that today in your own personal life, you may not be aware of the fact that you matter to God, even if God doesn't really matter to you. Even if he's not really important, even if you don't believe in him, he is still for you. You matter to him.”

#FaithTetheredToJesus

“``We want to tether the next generation's faith to the person of Jesus. Our faith, your faith and mine. Christianity. The foundation of Christianity is the resurrection of Jesus. That is the foundation. In fact, the Apostle Paul himself said if Jesus did not rise from the dead, that then all of this is useless. That was his word. Useless. It's pointless. It doesn't matter. If Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then nothing else matters. But because he did, the resurrection is the foundation of our faith. That's the roots right there.”

#CreatingChurchForAll

“The only thing that we knew as a church at that time is that we just knew we wanted to create something that was different from anything that existed in our community. We wanted to create a different kind of church as far as we could tell in this community. And we wanted to create a church specifically that was for people that may not feel necessarily like church is for them. There are people in our community that don't feel like the church is their thing or that it's in their favor. And we just knew we wanted to create a place that was for people just like that.”

#LoveReflectsInWords

“If you're a follower of Jesus, this is part of what we're talking about throughout the series is part of what it means to follow Jesus, who gave us his new command. He gave his disciples, his followers, this new command. He said, a new command I give you, you are to love one another. You are to love other people the way that God through Christ loved you. And our words are a reflection of that. Our words are part of what it means to follow Jesus in that love. Our words should reflect this others first command, this others first command that Jesus gave you and me.”

#OwnTheImpactOfYourWords

“While we are quick to acknowledge the fact that people's words spoken to us, over us, and at us have impacted our lives and our childhood, and again, who we see in the mirror, we're quick to recognize that. What we are not so quick to recognize, what we're often slow to recognize, and here's the point of today's few minutes together, and what we are slow to take responsibility for is how our words land and impact others, which should bother all of us, right? But it should bother a specific group of us more, those of us who consider ourselves Jesus followers.”

#JesusDefinesLove

“You get to choose. I get to choose. We all have a choice as to whether or not we choose to follow Jesus. You can make that decision for yourself. But here's the reality. We do not get to choose what it looks like, reacts like, or sounds like to follow Jesus. We don't get to define what that love looks like in our own way. You and I, culture, you as an individual, me, us as a church, we don't get to define love our way. Jesus defined what love looks like for us. Jesus modeled what love looks like for us.”

#GraceForFaults

“We are seeing this more and more in our culture and unfortunately, it's creeping into the church. In fact, I feel like it's actually more in the church. It might be more in the church today than it even is outside the walls of the church. We send these messages to people like, hey, if you don't believe exactly what we believe, if you don't believe the same thing we believe on any of those hot button topics that's on the screen, if you don't believe what we believe, if you don't believe what we believe about scripture, hit the road, get on out of here. You're not welcome here. We don't welcome questions and doubts and disagreement around here. Can I just say that is the way of culture? That is the way of culture. That is not the way of Jesus. It's just not.”

#PrideDestroysFamily

“But David, because of his pride. He stayed behind. As far as he was concerned, war, that was beneath him. And then he takes somebody else's daughter and wife. He devalues the family model in this moment. He's elevating himself. He's putting himself above other people. He's putting his own wants, his own desires. He's putting all that above everybody else. And so he sends somebody to get her for himself.”

#FaithInJesusProof

“What's important here for our purposes today is that we're introducing the fact that there is a who, there's a somebody, there's a God that is behind everything. And we can debate the details, even those of us who believe that God created the heavens and the earth, we debate the details on what that looked like. And we can debate all of that. But I believe that God created the heavens and the earth. And I don't believe it because the Bible tells me so. I personally believe it because Jesus affirmed it. And then Jesus went on to...to predict his own death and resurrection and pulled it off. So I think if a guy can predict his own death and resurrection, pull that off, we can believe what he has to say.”

#FaithInAction

“``We just have the gall to believe around here that when people can actually understand what we talk about on Sunday mornings and then go and apply it during the week, Monday through Saturday, that that is what is deep. In fact, that's basically a thought that comes from Jesus himself. Jesus in one of his parables said that anyone, and you can answer this if you know, anyone who hears these words of mine and does what? Anybody? Puts them into practice. Anyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice.”

#DevotedToTheFour

“And when the church very first started, we're told that they were devoted to four things. They're like, if we're going to miss something, if we're going to cut something out, if we're going to forget something along the way, it's not going to be these four things. We're going to be devoted to these four things. This is the thing that the church was all about from the very beginning. They were all about Jesus's teachings, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayer. They're like, these are the four, absolutely we cannot miss these things. If we're going to be the church, these are the things that we're not going to miss out on.”

#BeyondLabelsGodSeesWorth

“Sinners in this case and in most cases in scripture and even for us today, sinners were people who were considered to be too far out of the reach for God. They were too far from God for him to like bless them and for them to, you know, be in his favor. And a lot of the times the reason they were considered sinners was because they had made perhaps poor decisions that had made them sinners. For some of them, they were considered sinners simply because of their occupations. Whatever their occupations were based on their faith system, it made them ceremonially unclean. They were unredeemable because of what they did as part of their jobs.”

#IdentityInChrist

“You are not defined by what you do. Instead, you're defined by what Christ says you are. He calls these believers, he calls you guys blessed, and he calls you guys approved, is what we learn in James.”

#SeekWisdomFromGod

“You might be in a situation like we were where your relationship or you feel like your relationship is terminally ill. There's nothing that can be done about it, and you're barely hanging on. And I would encourage you to follow this scripture right here from James, the brother of Jesus, who knew him better than anybody, to ask God for wisdom, and he's going to give it to you generously.”

#FromDoubtToFaith

“James did not initially believe, and neither did his siblings. They did not believe that Jesus was God. They did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah, that he was their savior. They didn't believe any of that. They in fact thought that Jesus was crazy, that he was kind of self -centered a little bit. That's what they thought. And then they saw their brother Jesus crucified on a cross, and then they saw him alive. And at that point, they discovered, oh, hey, he really is the Messiah.”

“``He was powerful and he was gentle. He was strong and he was kind. He was fearless and he was compassionate. And John says in that Jesus, God in the flesh here on this earth, in him was life. And that life was the light of men. In other words, his life, it modeled for us. It lit the path for every single man on the planet. It lit the path the path of how we are to live our lives. It showed us the way.”

“Because I believe that regardless of the way that you are wired, regardless of the way that, of what comes natural to you, regardless of the script that you were handed, I believe that we find the best picture of what it means to be a man, of what it means to be masculine in Jesus. And that's not, I don't say that because I think we all need to become like, you know, carbon copy versions of something and all look and talk and act and behave exactly the same. But I say that because when, when we follow Jesus and when we look to that version of Jesus that we find in the gospels that these men and women tell us all about, we will become better men. We will become better fathers. We will become better husbands.”