National Community Church Audio Podcast

The Valley of Crisis is where we discover who we are, and more importantly, who God is. It’s the place where faith is forged, vision is birthed, and character is cultivated. How do you get to the other side? You’ve got to PRAY YOUR WAY THROUGH and WORSHIP YOUR WAY OUT of the crisis.

Like the disciples two thousand years ago, we find ourselves sheltered-in-place this Easter. Fear is in the air. Uncertainty is everywhere. The good news? The tomb is still empty! When Jesus walked out of the tomb, death was no longer undefeated. When it seems like all is lost, we go back to the empty tomb. That is where our faith is found. That is where our hope is anchored.

We find ourselves in a season of isolation, chaos, frustration, grief, readjustment. We are adjusting to a completely new normal all the while facing weeks and months of new pressures and challenges. In our text today, Jesus found himself facing pressure, pain, and challenge in the moments before He would face the cross. As He entered the garden, He grappled with all that was to come and shared honestly about His desire for a different path. In fact, He shared his agony and anguish to the point of sweating blood. He was desperate! It might be Christ’ greatest show of humanity as He wrestled with God. In His wrestle, He ultimately came to an incredible statement of sacrifice, relenting with, “Not my will, but thy will be done.” In one statement, He accepts and finds resolve for the difficulty to come. Jesus shows us that we can be honest in our emotions with God. Yet we still have to move forward in His will. He shows us we can lean into grief, but we must ultimately come to a place of acceptance. Emotions h

The table is one of the most ubiquitous yet overlooked settings in the Scripture. Throughout the Old Testament, the table is where people encountered the power, provision, promise, and presence of God. In the New Testament, the table is where the powerful were confronted, the oppressed were uplifted, the outcasts were invited, the self-righteous were ridiculed, and the seekers were given a glimpse of the kingdom of God. He encouraged his followers to remember him when they came to the table together in a ritual that has been practiced by the church for 2,000 years. Whether we call it Communion, The Lord’s Supper, or the Eucharist, it is the place where we ground ourselves in our common faith and are united in Jesus.

In a season of social isolation and anxiety, this weekend we’re taking a team approach to our message. You’ll see a show of unity in isolation with all seven of our Campus Pastors taking a part in the sermon via ted talk. On a daily basis we find ourselves inundated with new data and further pushed into isolation from one another. Questions are consistently swirling. What if I get the virus? Am I going to survive financially through this? How can I do my job and home school my kids? What if someone I love who is health vulnerable gets sick? The questions can be endless. And worry can be overwhelming. Our text is Matthew 6:25-34 where Jesus exhorts us to do what seems impossible: Do not worry. He was saying that to an audience who actually had more to be anxious about than we do. Yet, he called back to the very basics of faith: Trust. We pray today that you find faith deep within your soul, to reach out and re-center yourself in Christ and find trust in Him.

As we age, pieces of our personality are held hostage by painful moments in our past. Jesus came to set the captive free—the inner child within each one of us. It’s never too late to be who you might have been.

Success and outcomes seem to constantly dominate our focus. All of our decisions seem to hinge on them. Jesus was also concerned about success and outcomes for his disciples. But in John 15, he uses the metaphor of the vine to explain to them that their success (or rather fulfillment of their purpose as his disciples) hinged upon one particular input; remaining in him.

As we explore The Jesus Way, today’s passage leads us to Jesus turning the social structure of the day upside down in the way he leads. Jesus lays down his position and instead picks up a towel. It wasn’t a singular commendation of service or an isolated call to humility…it was the combination of both. We’ll spend our time today unpacking this beautiful story in the form of five values: Humility, identity, filling of the Spirit, obedience, and love.

The Holy Spirit will sometimes lead us where we don’t want to go, but He always goes with us! The wilderness is not the enemy. The wilderness is a part of the way, the Jesus way.

Seeking God with greater consistency, greater intentionality, and greater priority is the solution to a thousand problems. You don’t FIND time. You have to MAKE time. How? You’ve got to pitch a tent like Moses. You need a TIME and a PLACE where you get off the grid and get with God. The only ceiling on your intimacy with God and impact on the world is daily spiritual disciplines.

Jesus teaches us to love our enemies. It’s counter-cultural but is entirely freeing. Henri Nouwen states, “Loving our enemies is the way of becoming free of our enemies.” To close this series, we are praying for new eyes - to see people the way God sees them and to be more for them than we are against them.

When we hear “turn the other cheek” or “go the second mile”, what we usually translate that to is “just let them win” or “roll over and play dead”. But what Jesus of Nazareth is telling us in this passage is actually quite provocative. He’s not actually telling us to fight back with violence or take a passive stance. Rather, Jesus is offering us a third way of non-violent defiance. Let justice win.

Deep down we all want to be able to trust each other's character and not be tricked, fooled, or played. But it is hard to trust because regularly people do not keep it real. This was an issue with the Pharisees that Jesus addresses in Matthew 5 (as part of the Sermon on the Mount). They had the tendency to make vows with loopholes so they could not be pinned down. Jesus directly challenges them on what it means to have integrity. And it is a message to us all on how to respond and keep our word to one another.

The teachings of Jesus are disorienting. They are disorienting because some of them are difficult to understand and all of them are difficult to apply. Jesus points us to a Creator who designed sexuality to reflect the eternal joys and mysteries of heaven, and he teaches us to walk in relationships with one another in a way that reflects his perfect love. This message tackles the tough teachings of Jesus on adultery, lust, and divorce.

In Matthew 5:21-24, Jesus unpacks the true meaning behind the sixth commandment. The pharisees focused on the act of murder, but Jesus said, the anger in our hearts has the same judgment before God. Have you ever taken time to look under the hood of the anger in your life? Anger is a secondary emotion. When we dig beneath the surface, we find anger is often born out of an unmet need or expectation. And we find that there are other emotions and challenges at play that lead to anger being expressed. What is the underlying hurt in your life? Anger is an iceberg - there’s always so much more underneath the surface. We’ll walk through this scripture and its progression, as it takes us from anger to forgiveness to reconciliation. Some of us need to learn to forgive and let go of those offenses that have actually taken us captive. And some of us need to reach out to those that have been offended by us and move towards reconciled relationship. These are not easy steps. But the Lord can give you wisdom as you reflect

Half of spiritual growth is learning. The other half is unlearning. Jesus didn’t do an orientation with his disciples. He did a disorientation. Six times in the Sermon on the Mount He says, “You have heard that it was said, but I tell you.” Jesus was uninstalling Old Testament paradigms and reinstalling New Covenant principles.

We often have plans, goals, and things that we are pursuing. That is not a bad thing. But what happens when the plans we’ve made go left or don’t materialize? How do we respond to that? In the life of Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus, we see how to move forward when God has a different plan.

During the most wonderful time of the year, as dubbed by the popular Christmas song, many people don’t have the same sentiment. And there are many reasons for that. But the proclamation of Jesus’ birth, was not related to gift giving, holiday cheer, or decorations. It was all about joy found in the ultimate gift of Jesus.

God’s greatest gift came wrapped in swaddling cloths. That gift is right relationship with God. It’s God with us, God for us, God in us. But that gift, like any gift, must be unwrapped.

4 simple words exploding with meaning - "peace be with you". Jesus' first words after being raised from the dead are loaded with cultural and historical meaning. There is much more than meets the eye and more relevant to our culture in crisis than ever.