Northplace Church Podcast

Maybe you’re not all that religious and have never thought about God having some grand plan or vision for your life. In some way, you may have disqualified yourself, simply through your lack of awareness. But make no mistake about it, God has a bigger dream for your life than anything you could ever come up with on your own. You just need to discover it and develop it.You can’t change the past, but today you can start living in the present and preparing for the dream God has for your future.

Anybody that has ever stepped out in faith and followed God on this adventurous journey toward His dream for their lives is familiar with these words: Delay, Denial, Detour, Distraction, Discouragement, Difficulty, and Dead Ends. The headwinds of struggle are inevitable when you’re pursuing God’s call, God’s dream, and God’s plans and purposes for your life. As we talk about the struggle, we all need to remember one thing: God is more interested in who you’re becoming than what He’s called you to do.

Bonus Material from Week 2 of Dream - The Key to Living Life in Crescendo

Bonus Material from Week 1 of our new series Dream - The Key to Living a Life of CrescendoCheck out the full message on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTigCb_FvRA&t=1s

If any group of people ought to be able to live their lives with a "Crescendo Mentality" it ought to be followers of Jesus who believe in the hope of the Gospel. So this week, we are starting a series of messages called: Dream - The Key to Living a Life of CrescendoBecause having a dream, pursuing a dream, and fighting for a dream is a major key to living. life with a crescendo mindset and mentality.

One of the reasons music is so emotionally powerful is the use of two dynamics known as Crescendo and Diminuendo.One of the most powerful moments in a song is it’s crescendo. A crescendo in music is the slow, gradual build in volume and intensity that brings everything to a powerful climatic peak.When done well, the listener actually feels and experiences that moment with the artist.Every crescendo is followed by a diminuendo. A diminuendo is where the volume and intensity decreases.There’s a sense of forward momentum that crescendos...and then the song begins to decline...that decline is the diminuendo.But this crescendo and diminuendo thing is not just a music thing. It’s also a life thing. The “crescendo mentality” is when you live as if the best days of your life are always in front of you.An Easter Prayer of SurrenderJesus, I’ve grown tired of the constant cycle of spiritual highs and lows. My heart aches for something solid and secure in a world of continued instability and uncertainty.Today, I’m convin

On this particular Sunday, the day we've come to call Palm Sunday. Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a borrowed colt while people feverishly praise him waving palm branches and singing.But don't misunderstand this moment and don't misunderstand the reason for their praise. If you don't understand the motivation behind waving the palm branches and offering their praise, you'll never understand how they could go from yelling "Hosanna" on Sunday to many of these same people yelling "crucify him" on Friday.And we sit here and condemn the crowd for their fickle emotional swings, but are we all that different? Some of us sit here today bitter at God because He hasn't met our expectations.But let's try to learn from their mistake and realize that God is up to something bigger than we can understand. When we cannot track his ways, we have to trust his heart. When he is silent, he is not still. He is actively working behind the scenes to bring his good plans and purpo

The way we love and serve others is a litmus test of our own love for God, but also, if we're willing to inconvenience ourselves loving and serving others it will open the door for our neighbors to meet Jesus and experience eternal life for themselves.

Our modern understanding of war and conquest is this idea that the strong impose their will on the weak. And in many cases, the strong turn their conquest into a "holy war" using their god or god's as an excuse to justify their plundering of the weak.Last week, we zoomed out and looked at the big picture story of what's actually going on in the Bible when it comes to war and violence. There are some things that were obvious to the ancient writers and readers of the Old Testament that we misinterpret when we try to look at them through modern lenses.This week we continue the conversation and ask ourselves: How do we confront the modern caricature with a more historically and biblically accurate reality?

As we read through the Bible together this year, it's easy to notice all the violence in the Old Testament. As the voices of God's critics are getting louder, one of the major criticisms we hear today is how God seems to condone "holy war" telling His people to occupy the land and kill anyone that tries to stop them. And then Jesus comes along in the New Testament telling people to love their enemies and turn the other cheek.So then the critical voices ask: Which God do you serve? The genocidal general of the Old Testament, or the peace-loving, merciful God of the New? Because surely these extremely different character traits can't be the same deity, right? And if they are, doesn't that make God problematic?As we reclaim a healthy understanding of the historical and biblical narrative, it answers some of the criticisms of the modern skeptic. But it still doesn't fully deal with those drastic marching orders where God commands them to show no mercy and kill everything that br

As we prepare to move into the book of Joshua in The Unfolding reading plan, let's review the book of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy and ask ourselves these three questions:1. How do these books move the story and narration of the Bible along?2. How do they point us to the Gospel of Grace?3. How do they point us to Jesus?

We're living in the beginning of a historical moment--a moment we've been praying for for years. But because it's happening right in front of us, and because it's happening among students and because it's not happening in a church, many people don't recognize it for what it is.Will people mismanage this move of God? If history proves anything, probably so. But history also proves that God wants to move among us so passionately that he will (mercifully) keep coming. That's just his heart.

Redemptive Historical Unfolding: God Reveals Through TimeIntroduction- The revealing of God’s plan of redemption in the Scriptures is tied to time and space, cultures and people.- Biblical theology utilizes the Bible’s themes, images, concepts, and types to understand and communicate biblical truths about God’s plan in Christ to extend grace to people in order to redeem them.- The plan of salvation amplifies through history. The “unfolding” gains momentum and substance, with all roads leading to salvation through the Lord Jesus Christ.The Principle- Scripture uses the covenants, themes, concepts, persons, places, objects, actions, and events to reveal God’s redemptive plan in increasingly detailed perspective. At the same time, Scripture gives us an overarching view of the “grand narrative” of redemption.- Biblical theology explores both the increasingly detailed perspective and the larger whole—the grand vista.- The method of biblical theology leads us to understand how the parts of Scripture fit into the la

This lecture is taught by our Scholar in Residence, Dr. Doug Oss. He has over 25 years of pastoral experience and 27 years as a seminary professor. Dr. Oss has served as a theologian, author, church planter, Bible translator, Greek scholar, and evangelist. The Big Idea:Jesus Christ is the center point of everything, everywhere, all at once, from the infinity past to infinity future. Christ is the center of ALL. God’s Story is already completed in the scripture - we know the end. We know who wins - yet it is still unfolding in history as we know it. For more information about The Unfolding project, bible study resources, and access to our Northplace reading plan check out TheUnfolding.bible

If you’re paying attention, God is doing something big--right now. Since the Asbury Awakening broke out on February 8th at the end of normal chapel service that turned into a prayer service that never stopped, what God is doing has spread across the country.Be careful of your preconceived ideas of what revival is or what it ought to be. You may have preconceived ideas base on your past experiences, or you may have preconceived ideas based off of denominational expectations. Quit drawing lines for God and telling him He has to color inside your lines. And guard you heart of the cynicism that will make you spiritual barren.If people are in the altar crying out to God, repenting of sin, coming to Christ, and seeking to live a more holy life, we want more of that. That’s the classic definition of renewal and revival.

This was a special week as Pastor Bryan preached from our Durban campus in South Africa for the 5-year birthday celebration. The fact that Pastor Bryan was able to speak in Durban speaks to the power of faith and vision. It speaks to the fruit of being faithful to what God asks us to do, and it speaks the faithfulness of God.There are hundreds of different names and titles assigned to God in the Bible, but the one we need to remember on this historic day is that He is Jehovah-Frugal; the God Who Wastes Nothing.

Just like a team of professional football players need a playbook to map out plans and strategies for a game, we as God's people have been given a book to guide us through life. We have access to a tool that helps lead us through the struggles of life and the power to mold us into who God has intended for us to be. It's not enough for us to see and hear God's Word; we need to love it, learn it, and live it.Check out theunfolding.bible for more resources and a monthly reading plan

God cannot be truly “good" and NOT deal with sin, evil and injustice. This tension between God’s holiness and righteousness and his compassion and mercy toward sinful, broken people is felt throughout the book of Exodus (and your whole bible for that matter). And Exodus will start revealing to us how God is going to reconcile this tension between his gracious heart that demands mercy and his holiness that demands accountability.

You often hear people talk about “preaching the Gospel” or you’ll hear them refer to the “Gospel of Jesus Christ." But what is the Gospel? Well, in a literalsense, it means “good news." It’s the good news about salvation through Jesus Christ. But when most people think about the Gospel they’re usually thinking about it in one of two ways:1. The “Gospel” as a principle2. The “Gospel” as a storyBut here’s the part that a lot of people miss: even though we’re saved by faith in Christ alone (and not by our own works) a real, authentic, saving faith WILL produce good works in us. The gospel will change us deeply and impact the way we live our lives.

We want to answer the question: "What is the Bible?"Is it an encyclopedia of truth where you look up a subject of interest and learn all there is to know? On subjects like God, marriage, sex, money, how to get ahead in life...Is that what it is? Or is it an allegory or riddle about you and life and Jesus and the right way to read it is to look for the deep symbolic clues or spiritual meanings?Here's why this matters: if we misunderstand what the Bible is, we’llturn it into something it's not...and then we’ll end up using it and abusingit to our own ends.