Northplace Church Podcast

There is a difference in the general social interaction between people…and the supernatural relationship and community that is supposed to exist in a biblically functioning community. On the surface, they may look the same but one is natural, the other is supernatural; it’s incarnational. And because of that, Incarnational Community is counter-intuitive; it goes against the flow of what comes natural to us. When we understand what scripture says - what God expects for his people - it changes our whole perspective and thinking about relationshipsLiving incarnationally will help us transition:1. From Conversion to Community 2. From Association to Participation3. From Self-Righteousness to Compassion4. From Individualism to Fully Present5. From Drudgery to CelebrationOne another statements:1. Be at peace with one another (Mark 9:50)2.Be of the same mind with one another (Romans 12:16, 15:5)3. Accept one another (Romans 15:7)4. Be kind, tender-hearted, and forgiving to one another (Ephesians 4:32)5. Bear with and

This is Week 5 of "The Year of Here"If we start living like Jesus, letting him live his life through us, being Jesus with skin on, living incarnationally; then our world will see the glory of God in and through us just like John’s generation saw it in Christ Jesus.We’ve talked about incarnational worship and incarnational presence. We’ve spent some time talking about living the incarnational life, but today we're talking about Incarnational Compassion.Something pretty incredible as you study church history is that there is an incredible correlation between the church’s emphasis on the incarnation and its compassion. For example, during medieval times, there was a revival of focus on the incarnation; it’s not coincidental that during that same time the church’s influence on medicine and its development of Christ centered hospitals exploded.Beliefs impact behavior; and when you understand the incarnation, it changes they way you approach the Christian life.Visit our website for the video of this

This is Week 4 of "The Year of Here"What is the habitat for the dwelling of God’s presence? Where has God chosen to make his habitation?The church - not the building, but the people - when we come together corporately, collectively to worship, according Paul, we become a dwelling place or habitation for God by the Spirit.The place that God has chosen to dwell, the place that he has chosen to make his unique habitation is the collective worship of his people. When we come together each weekend to sing, lift our hands, exalt the name of Jesus; we are making this place the habitat of God. Our worship is the environment where God has chosen to dwell.This should to be game changer for us. It should change everything about the way we approach weekend worship experience at church.

Part 3 of "The Year of Here"Jesus didn’t just come to show us what God was like. He wasn’t just the Son of God. He was the Son of Man. He was human, He was flesh, and one of the primary reasons he put on skin was to show us how to truly be human. And this is God’s strategy of changing the world. When we are incarnational humans like we are supposed to be - embodying the presence of God like Jesus did - other people will see the glory of God through us. Honestly, that’s God’s strategy for changing the world. One person being transformed by God’s grace in such a way that they actually live it out. They flesh it out in such a way that others see the glory of God through their lives and are drawn to Christ. They are transformed and the whole thing starts over, covering the earth with transformed lives.

We have come out of the Christmas season this year, doing something a little different. Instead of taking our conversations a completely different direction, we decided to dive deeper into the incarnation of Jesus. The message of the incarnation is that God has become a man; that he has come here to be with us. It’s about his presence. We want to know what that looks like in our lives in a practical sense. What does that mean for me Tuesday morning at work, or at soccer practice Thursday night; or at our family’s table when we finally get a chance to sit down and have a meal together. This is a year where we want to learn how to practice the presence of God; to be carriers of the presence of God. We want to learn how to literally “flesh” out our faith.Jesus made the announcement that he had come to establish his kingdom in the world; it is a new and different way of living life. So what does it look like to live as he commanded, now that the kingdom of God is here on earth. Before he left, Jesus made a remark

The word "Here” became a key word in our Christmas conversations and the manger became the central image in explaining the Incarnation - how got God “here”. But as we were praying through the Christmas and Advent theme…we had this sense that it wasn’t the end of the conversation but the beginning of the conversation. That 2019 was supposed to be The Year of “Here”2019 "The Year of Here,” will be a year where Northplace falls in love with the dwelling presence of God in our corporate gatherings. But it will also be a year where we learn what it means to practice the presence of God in every dimension of our personal lives. If God has come - If he is here and he dwells in me - how will that change my professional life, my home life, my everyday life?We desperately need to answer the question: Does the incarnation have any relevance in my life now that Christmas has come and gone? The answer is a resounding YES! 

When we search for change in the wrong places it often makes things worse.‭‭Mark‬ ‭5:24-34‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Christmas Eve is the crescendo of the Story of God. The driving passion of his heart from the very beginning of the bible up until now, is to have a close personal relationship us. He wants to be with us. He wants to dwell among us. If you search the scriptures, you will see God compassionately and continually trying to break into the disinterested hearts of sinful people.  He doesn’t give up on us. He just keeps chasing, he keeps pursuing and he keeps arranging circumstances, events, and people in our lives that keep pointing us back to his love. There is nothing he wants more than a close relationship with you. That’s the very reason why there is a Christmas. He couldn’t stand the distance. He had to get close. He was not going to let the distance in our relationship with him be his fault. He was going to do everything in his power to be near to give us every chance to now. So the God of the universe left the splendor of heaven, robed himself in human frailty and broke into our world as a baby in a manger 2

What does it mean to live an incarnational life?When God comes to dwell among his people, he comes with a purpose. His presence doesn’t fill our lives and his presence doesn’t fill our corporate worship experiences so that we can sit, soak and sour. This is the mistake a lot of us make that truly value the presence of God. We become so focused on the presence of God; worship in the presence, soak in the presence, celebrate the presence, and all of that’s fine, but if we never understand the purpose of the presence, we end up becoming an inward focused click that’s always coming to the church to “get a blessing” and never doing anything with it. God didn’t fill this place with his glory last weekend so we would get goosebumps and walk out talking about how we “had church.” He filled this place with his presence to mobilize us outside these walls to BE the church, to live it out and be agents of change in our world. 

The Garden of Eden was the fulfillment of the heart of God; a place to give his love to us without restraint, but sin ruined all that. It severed the relationship and brought distance between a sinful man and a holy God. He could have thrown us away. He could have started over. He could have chalked it up as a failed experiment, but he didn’t. He loved us. He pursed us. He came searching for Adam and Eve to restore that severed relationship. There is omnipresence and then there is his tangible, felt, incarnational presence. God is everywhere all the time, but people are not always aware of his presence. Corporate worship is preparing room, preparing our hearts, making us aware. And when the collective conversation is holy holy holy, He comes, Emanuel “God with us”.

On this first weekend of Advent, grasping the rich theology behind the Christmas story, will bring us nearer to God’s presence, reframe our perspective, and infuse our hearts with an otherworldly joy that will undergird the next several weeks of our celebrations. It will literally change the way we do the holidays this year and we hope moving forward throughout our lives.

Most people love receiving invitations. To a party. A meal. A wedding. A celebration. A special event. It’s nice to be included- to feel part of something…because many Americans are truly lonely. We live in a lonely society. That’s why Mother Theresa is right when she famously said: ‘The greatest disease today is not starvation but loneliness.’ Loneliness is one of the greatest ills of 21st Century.Because people have an innate, built in, deep longing to belong. People want to be included. They want to be invited.

Gratitude is the key to a fulfilled life. Every year as we approached the Thanksgiving Holiday it becomes clearer and clearer that learning to foster a grateful heart is THE most crucial piece of what it means to be whole, complete, centered, satisfied, content, and spiritually mature. Here’s what the Apostle Paul said:2 Corinthians 4:15 NLTAs God’s grace reaches more and more people, there will be great thanksgiving (gratitude), and God will receive more and more glory.It begins with a very clear understanding of God’s grace in our lives. When we clearly see our unworthiness and the depth of grace that God has extended to us, it fosters a deep sense of gratitude in our hearts. We are humbled by his sacrifice for us. We are moved by his unrelenting pursuit of us. We are in awe of his faithfulness in the face of all our failures.

Jesus prayed generational prayers.John 17:20 NIV20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” Do you realize the prayers that he prayed over 2000 years ago, are being fulfilled in us? We are living those prayers out now as his disciples. The legacy of prayer is of higher value than stock portfolios, properties, money, or heirlooms. Had it not been for the prayers of my grandmother, I may have continued in my addiction and rebellion. Who knows? I could be in a prison cell today instead of in this pulpit. Her prayers have impacted me and they will impact generations in my family and in this church.

No matter who you are, the Bible will surprise you. No matter what your culture or what your social class, no matter what prejudices or categories you come to the Bible with; it will smash some of them. Most people will say that…you're either inclusive or exclusive, but Christianity is both…radically inclusive and radically exclusive.

What happens when the people of God settle into this world? When they stop resisting the evil of it and start looking and acting more like Babylon than they look and act like the people of God. Daniel stood for his faith. He maintained his identity, his integrity and his commitment to God, but we know there were many who slowly but surely caved to the constant pressure of the culture’s pull. Sadly, they basically became Babylonian and lost their unique identity as God’s people. This kind of thing doesn’t just happen when enemy armies invade your homeland and take you captive like they did Daniel; we face these challenges everyday as the people of God today. We live in a culture that is increasingly antagonistic to our faith. We are facing our own Babylon-like culture and in this environment, it’s easy to spot a “sell out”. It’s easy to spot someone who has outright traded their faith for the momentary pleasures the culture has to offer. The casual observer can see it and the person who has sold out knows it. 

The overarching theme in the book of Daniel is that statement that says: But Daniel resolved not to defile himself…whether it was refusing to eat the king’s food, refusing to stop praying when the king ordered, or many of the other challenges of living out his faith in Babylon…Daniel had a made-up mind…he had resolved in his heart that the headwinds of the Babylonian culture were not going to change him or weaken his faith. Over the last several weeks, we’ve talked about the things that fueled Daniel’s resolve:1. A firm belief in the sovereignty of god2. An eternal hope that gave him courage3. A biblical humility that gave him favor with God and man4. A rare wisdom that balanced grace AND truth and gave him perspectiveThese 4 key elements of Daniel’s life are the foundation of a countercultural faith. But I think we would miss the key ingredient of Daniel’s resolve if we ended this series without talking about Daniel’s prayer life. The wind in the sails of Daniel’s resolve was his prayer life. Trust in God’s

How did Daniel find this balance in Babylon?It all starts with a foundational belief in the sovereignty of God. Daniel believed that God was in control of who was in control. No matter what it looked like in the moment…Daniel was convinced that God would take current leaders and current situations and ultimately use them for His ultimate purposes. Daniel shared the same perspective as the apostle Paul who wrote in the book of Romans:Romans 8:28 NLT28 And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.“Everything” …means “all things”. Every possible “thing” …whatever it is…will ultimately be used to glorify God. Daniel knew this and when you believe God is behind everything…it changes everything. This foundational belief in the sovereignty of God birthed an eternal hope in Daniel. Eternal hope enables you to view life from a perspective greater than your current circumstances. When you have a hope that transcends the momen

Daniel knew that Nebuchadnezzar was a pawn on God’s eternal chess board that would ultimately be moved around to accomplish God’s ultimate purposes in the world. Daniel saw this first hand. He served at least 3 different kings in Babylon and led spiritual awakenings under each one. There are moments and seasons when finite people judge their current circumstances without faith in God’s sovereign control and the despair, but not Daniel. Daniel knew no matter what it looks like in the present, God is at work.Daniel had an eternal perspective and his eternal hope calibrated his life; and not what was going on at the moment. When you have that kind of hope it gives you a courage and confidence that is unexplainable. The world is falling apart, your life may be falling apart, but there is a joy, a peace, that baffles outsiders and onlookers. Your life doesn’t rest on the outcome of current situations; your life is anchored to an eternal hope that transcends this moment in history.

We have our own version of this cultural Christianity, and it's easy to not sense the conviction anymore about what is right and what it means to walk in the fruit of the spirit. There are more people, as the days progress, and as America and the world becomes more like Babylon, that are practicing a hybrid Christianity. There will always be a church, there will always a dominant religion of the day, and it would be better for us if it was a completely opposite religion than some hybrid of the Christian faith. When you take Christianity and make it a hybrid, it's no longer Christianity; but it's dangerous because it's deceptive. And there is a cultural version of Christianity that is not real Christianity: a counterfeit faith. My hope in this conversation was to make all of us ask the question, is my life driven by good intentions or is my life driven by genuine faith? And the only way to know that is for your faith to be tested. Northplace Church on FacebookNorthplace Church on InstagramP