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How To Face Trouble.

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In the midst of uncertainly, anxiety and threat, it’s more important than ever that we learn how to best respond to, and allow God into, our troubles. We’re all equal in the face of coronavirus. We’re all fragile, but God treats us with great care. He cares more than we could know, and He has the power to calm every storm, heal every disease, and comfort us in every trouble.

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The Holiness of Health 7: Bringing it to God

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How do we approach God? Without knowing God is safe and good and kind, it’s always going to be very difficult to let him into the areas of our lives we most need his power and love for us. Jesus says God is a father to us. But what does this actually mean?

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The Holiness of Health 6: Loving Well

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We all know the importance of love. Without it our lives can be withered and empty. But it’s one thing to know the theory and quite another to actually put it into practice. So how can we learn to love well? This talk is an attempt to go beneath just surface theory and help us work out how we might love in meaningful, christ-like, incarnational ways.

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The Holiness of Health 5: Grief and Loss

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Grief isn’t something we often talk about in daily life, but the reality is, it is something we all experience more than we think we do. Whether it the loss of someone we love dearly, the betrayal of a trusted friend, the loss of a job opportunity, or something we had planned for ourselves.

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The Holiness of Health 3: Work from Rest

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What stops you from giving yourself a break? God created us to work from a place of rest, and yet so often we do the opposite - we rest from work. We toil and strive, working too long hours with no enough fulfillment, and find ourselves collapsing into the weekend, trying to recover before work starts again.

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The Holiness of Health 2: Go Back to Go Forward

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What makes us what we’re like? Why do we behave in the ways we do? In order to go forward in life, we often have to go back to revisit some of the painful experience in life which have been most formational. We don’t do this to ‘heal ourselves’ or for a spot of self-indulgent naval gazing, but rather to let the Holy Spirit in so that he can bring his supernatural power to heal and restore us. The more we’re able to do this the more we can live free from the power of the past and become the whole people we were created to be.

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New Year, New You? Don’t Rush

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In the first service of 2020, we consider what God is calling us to be and to do, both individually and as a church community. Throughout the Bible, the people of God are confronted with a choice to make about the decisions they have to make in their lives: Do they trust, and do they wait, and do they love God; or Do they grasp, and do they strive, and do they rush God?

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Advent: Light

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The prophet Isaiah foretells that the birth of Jesus will be like a light dawning upon a world in deep darkness. In a single moment, all instances of darkness - destroyed. But, if that’s true, why does is so often feel like we are still living in the shadows? In celebration of the first week of advent, let us consider what Jesus’ light is actually like, how it first shows up, and what it is that He comes to do.

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Colossians: Living At Peace.

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Peace is at the heart of any community that thrives. It is no surprise therefore that it is integral to the community of Jesus. It should dictate how we treat all relationships, particularly those which have an imbalance of power at their heart - in Paul’s day these were between husbands and wives, slaves and masters and parents and children.

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Colossians: Keep With Him & Embrace The Life He Offers

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We are meant to be God’s close friends — the temptation to add on to Jesus or climb the ladder of spiritual hierarchy is a mirage with false promises. We’re most full when we take Jesus for all that he is and trust He’s taken care of the details. So let’s keep on with Him and embrace the life He offers.

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Colossians: Not Just The Way In, But Also The Way On

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Jesus doesn’t save us, then it’s ‘up to us’. He saves us and then it’s up to Him. So we don’t need to live in fear. He backs his investments and He has invested everything into us. So He is not just the way into the good life He is the way on, in that good life. Our job is to open ourselves to and cooperate with His redeeming and reforming work in our lives.

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Colossians: The Center Of The Universe

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Colossians is jam packed with Paul’s intricate theological weaving technique. If we want to understand this letter for all its worth, we must start at the starting point. Jesus is Lord and he has been made known, to this ancient church plant in Colosse, and to bread in Los Angeles.

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Giving Pt.2

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The light side of money. Throughout the bible we are told of not just the dangers of money but also of the potential it has to do huge good. God made a bountiful creation for us to enjoy. Using money as Jesus intends not only establishes and strengthens human relationship and experience of life, it also brings us closer to God and deepens our experiences of him. So let us not be scared of or greedy with money, but free and generous.

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Giving Pt.1

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Jesus tells us to be shrewd with our money. But that isn’t always easy. The reason for this is because money exerts some serious power and control over us. But when we treat it as it should be treated we can be free and generous and encumbered by it. That’s the goal for all of us. And it is entirely possible to live out this goal when we allow the power of Jesus, not money, to govern us.