from Philippians 4:4-7
Anxiety and worry have become so deeply woven into the fabric of our culture and our daily lives, and we often try to do little more than keep those feelings at bay in order to be able to function…yet, there is a promise in Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi that invites us to live and operate, not from a place of trying to stay of anxiety in order to function, rather to live in the promise of God’s peace and presence with us regardless our circumstances.
w/ Vern Collins
from 1 Peter 1:3-9
In our seven week series, “All Things Made New,” we consider the work that Jesus is doing in this world…a work that we don’t have to wait until time has reached its fulfillment to experience, but that we can experience and be a part of now!
As we conclude our series, we are faced with the question, “In what or who do you anchor your hope?” So often we find ourselves let down or disappointed by people or things of this world, and while we were made for relationship and we were made with this longing for that which is NEW, we were meant to find the fullness of both, not in people or earthly pursuits, but in Jesus-the One Who makes possible for us a hope that is enduring and unchangeable!
w/ Vern Collins
from Lamentations 3:22-24
In our seven week series, “All Things Made New,” we consider the work that Jesus is doing in this world…a work that we don’t have to wait until time has reached its fulfillment to experience, but that we can experience and be a part of now!
When trying to live into the new life that God has made possible in Christ…when trying to bring His New Kingdom to bear on this earth, what happens when the troubles and trials of life seem too much to bear?
We look to each day as a gift…and each rising of the sun as a tangible example of God’s mercy and faithfulness.
w/ Ed Glaize
from 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 and Matthew 9:9-13
In our seven week series, “All Things Made New,” we consider the work that Jesus is doing in this world…a work that we don’t have to wait until time has reached its fulfillment to experience, but that we can experience and be a part of now!
Once we have found in Christ, freedom from our own pursuits or the pursuit of trying to earn our salvation or relationship with Christ, what exactly are we freed into? Is into pursuing the life we want knowing that we have a hope and a future, or is it living life in such a way that those around us begin to know and are invited into the source of our hope?
w/ Vern Collins
from Romans 4:4-6
In our seven week series, “All Things Made New,” we consider the work that Jesus is doing in this world…a work that we don’t have to wait until time has reached its fulfillment to experience, but that we can experience and be a part of now!
When we’ve said “yes” to the new work that Jesus wants to do in us and is doing in this world, but the “novelty” feels like it begins to wear off because the worries of this life begin to crowd in, or we find ourselves slipping back into old pursuits, we must lose heart…instead we find hope in the fact that we have been welcomed by Jesus, empowered by His Holy Spirit, and set free to pursue all that God has for us to be and do.
w/ Vern Collins
from Revelation 21:1-5
In our seven week series, “All Things Made New,” we consider the work that Jesus is doing in this world…a work that we don’t have to wait until time has reached its fulfillment to experience, but that we can experience and be a part of now!
Jesus proclaims in John’s Revelation that He is making all things new. Where God is at work…where the Holy Spirit is present…there is newness breaking in. What is hindering you from experiencing it? What is hindering you from being a part of it?
w/ Ed Glaize
from Psalm 139
Perhaps deeper than our need to be loved is our need to be known…in fact, wrapped up in our need to be loved is the longing to be loved for who we truly are…and to be loved for who we truly are is the reality that we are KNOWN!
There is One Who not only knows you…TRULY knows you, but One Who is present with you…always.
Imagine how your view of life might begin to change if you lived in the reality of the truth of God’s love for you and presence with you.
w/ Vern Collins
from Acts 2:42-47
Psalm 85:6 reads, “Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?”
This longing undergirds our series and this season of revival we are asking God to bring. What is hindering your rejoicing? What is getting in the way of you living completely surrendered to the love and presence of God in your life? Where do you need revival?
We are all being formed by someone or some thing…the question is: Who or what are you allowing to form you? Imagine a life ordered toward following Jesus, being loved by Him, learning from Him, and modeling your life after His…when we choose to do that we find that the thing we are growing into is Christ. And everything changes as a result.
w/ Vern Collins
*Including invitation to Communion
from 1 Kings 18:16-39
Psalm 85:6 reads, “Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?”
This longing undergirds our series and this season of revival we are asking God to bring. What is hindering your rejoicing? What is getting in the way of you living completely surrendered to the love and presence of God in your life? Where do you need revival?
Are you living a divided loyalty? Is your allegience torn between God and between some thing in this world that you hope will help provide meaning and fulfillment and identity and purpose? All too often, we place our hope in things that are never meant to fulfill and provide…perhaps it is time to rebuild that altar of our lives and create a space for God to move, being willing to lay down those things that are simply not of Him.
w/ Vern Collins
from Ezekiel 37:1-14
Psalm 85:6 reads, “Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you?”
This longing undergirds our series and this season of revival we are asking God to bring. What is hindering your rejoicing? What is getting in the way of you living completely surrendered to the love and presence of God in your life? Where do you need revival?
As we open this series, we are invited to consider two things: 1) that even in the most seemingly impossible situations, God has the power to revive; to restore life; to make new, and 2) God isn’t after only the form or appearance of life, rather God longs to send His Holy Spirit that we may KNOW and EXPERIENCE life!
Where are the dry bones in your life? Where is the valley of death in which you need the Holy Spirit to come?
w Vern Collins
from Acts 2:1-21
What might be possible in your life and in the life of the church is you saw the gift of the Holy Spirit given at Pentecost as vital today as it was to those on whom the Spirit fell when the church came into existence?
w/ Vern Collins
from Acts 1:6-11 and Isaiah 43:18-19
In Isaiah 43:18-19a we read, “Forget the former things do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” In Revelation 21:5, we hear the words of Jesus captured by John, “He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’” Since the beginning, God has been in the business and the process of taking that which is broken, and rebuilding it…making it new!
How many times over the past 14 months have we heard or uttered some version of the statement, “I can’t wait until things go back to normal…until they go back to the way they were?”
Is it possible that our longing for what is familiar is hindering our ability to see the possibility of God doing something new?
w/ Vern Collins
from Isaiah 58
In Isaiah 43:18-19a we read, “Forget the former things do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” In Revelation 21:5, we hear the words of Jesus captured by John, “He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’” Since the beginning, God has been in the business and the process of taking that which is broken, and rebuilding it…making it new!
As we consider God’s work of rebuilding both in our own lives and in the church, one of the questions we must be willing to wrestle with becomes, “who or what is forming us, and into what are we being formed?” There are any number of things in this world that we allow to speak into our formation…there are even a number of facets of our faith that God can use to form us. This week we look at the work of worship as a key part of the ways God longs to form us into the image of His Son Jesus for the world.
w/ Vern Collins
from Nehemiah 1:1-4, 2:1-5, 4:12-20, 8:1-10
In Isaiah 43:18-19a we read, “Forget the former things do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” In Revelation 21:5, we hear the words of Jesus captured by John, “He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’” Since the beginning, God has been in the business and the process of taking that which is broken, and rebuilding it…making it new!
While there is pain in what is lost, in what we have to be willing to let go of or what is stripped away from us, it is absolutely possible to find and experience God’s goodness in the healing that takes place when we begin to allow God to rebuild!
w/ Vern Collins
from Lamentations 3:13-26 and Colossians 1:15-23, 2:6-7
In Isaiah 43:18-19a we read, “Forget the former things do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” In Revelation 21:5, we hear the words of Jesus captured by John, “He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’” Since the beginning, God has been in the business and the process of taking that which is broken, and rebuilding it…making it new!
In the third week of our series we are invited to consider the integrity of the foundation on which we are seeking to build our lives, and even on which we are seeking to be about building God’s church. Following our time considering what it might look like to clear the way for God to build something new, when those things that we don’t need or that God doesn’t want for us are stripped away, we are brought face to face with the steadfastness or the integrity of our foundation.
What if the foundation on which you were building your life and on which we are seeking to build God’s church became the firm foundation of God’s faithfulness instead of the shifting sands of what this world prioritizes.
w/ Vern Collins
from Luke 9:1-6
In Isaiah 43:18-19a we read, “Forget the former things do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” In Revelation 21:5, we hear the words of Jesus captured by John, “He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!’” Since the beginning, God has been in the business and the process of taking that which is broken, and rebuilding it…making it new!
In week two of our series, we look at Jesus’ instruction in Luke’s Gospel for the disciples to enter into the work He has set the example for…but he instructs them not to take anything extra with them. Where might God be inviting you to clear the way for the new thing God longs to do?
w/ Jeff McClain
Here is the poem used in our Benediction:
Fear – a poem by Khalil Gibran.
It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.
She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.
And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.
But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.
Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.
The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.
from Luke 24:13-35
In Isaiah 43:18-19a we read, “Forget the former things do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” In Revelation 21:5, we hear the words of Jesus captured by John, “He who was seated on the throne said, ‘I am making everything new!'” Since the beginning, God has been in the business and the process of taking that which is broken, and rebuilding it…making it new!
As we begin our new series, “Rebuild,” we are invited this week to consider that part of recognizing the need for God’s ability to make new is to come to terms with that which we have lost. As you consider this past year; as you consider your life-what has been lost? Where have you experienced loss? As you think about the church, where has there been loss? How might that loss open the door for possibility?
w/ Vern Collins
from John 20:1-18
Are those things in this life in which you have placed your hope able to bear up under the weight that you place on them to hold you up when you face life’s challenges?
There is One Who will not only always bear up under the weight, but will bear you up when the weight is too great!
Jesus Is Alive!
w/ Vern Collins
