1 Samuel 14:1 - "One day Jonathan son of Saul said to his young armor-bearer, “Come, let’s go over to the Philistine outpost on the other side.” But he did not tell his father. - NIV

I am not sure how it happened, but I stumbled into the story of Jonathan one day. The son of king Saul was wondering about with his armor bearer and realized that a massive Philistine army was approaching his father and 600 Israelite soldiers. He knew that if they were going to stand a chance against this army that they would need some help.

Jonathan trusted that God would protect them and help them in the battle. In verse 6, Jonathan says, “Come, let’s go. Perhaps the Lord will help us, for nothing can hinder the Lord. He can win a battle whether he has many warriors or only a few!” What drew me to this passage was not Jonathan’s unwavering trust in God, it was the way his armor bearer responded to his request. He said to Jonathan, “I’m with you completely, whatever you decide.”

Jonathan had trust in his God, and the armor bearer had trust in Jonathan. There is a level of complete trust that takes them right into the heart of battle. Facing unbelievable odds, the two men only managed to defeat a large army. Verse 14 says, “They killed some twenty men in all, and their bodies were scattered over about half an acre.” After that, panic set in among the Philistines as they began to kill each other, and even an earthquake happened to confuse them even more.

This month I am going to be praying that we understand the mission of those who consider themselves followers of Christ. If we lay claim to this faith, then we should in fact be like Jonathan and his armor bearer. We should trust that our God goes before us, and that in Him is how the battle is won. What battle are you facing? Do you believe that God can be trusted to help you win the battle? It is time for the church, to be the empowered body of Christ!             
- Pastor Mike
 

​Luke 9: 23-24 - "23 Then he said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow me. 24 If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.” - NLT

In an attempt to avoid another August of back to school cliches, I thought it would be good for us to remind ourselves what we are called to do as followers of Jesus. Assuming, that we consider ourselves a follower of Jesus, He calls us to take up our own cross, lay down our own way, and follow Him.

There are several ways in which this is accomplished and we will spend the five Sundays of August leaning into those ways in which we can follow Jesus more closely. We will discover that Jesus can be followed and found in love and our love for others will be the way in which people see Him. We will find truth in what it means to follow Jesus, rather than simply walking behind Him. When we pray consistently and with purpose, we can find the strength to keep following Jesus. We will find out that following Jesus requires us to be part of a greater group that chases after Him together. Being a disciple of Jesus also requires us to utilize our weapon of praise and worship.

Jesus was God in human form, and yet He called twelve men to follow Him. Does Jesus need people to follow Him, or do we need someone of great character and divinity to follow so that our lives will look more and more like His?
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If we are looking for value and purpose out of our relationship with God, it will come through our diligence in being a willing and committed follower of Jesus. Are we ready for that journey?
- Pastor Mike

James 4: 8-9 - "Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom.” - NLT

The world right now can be a difficult place to navigate. We have been given access to an influx of information that our bodies were never intended to process. We are overloaded with input and most of that input is awful for us. It can have a negative impact on our emotions and our stress levels and it leaves us feeling empty and alone.

Mindful Health Solutions offers this piece of information regarding that very topic. “This constant bombardment of information leads to elevated stress and anxiety levels. The overwhelming need to process every piece of information and the inability to do so can create an unstable mental state. People also may end up feeling lost and anxious, struggling to discern what truly matters.”

With all of this information overload we might be feeling as though God is distant, and we “just don’t feel Him anymore”. One of my favorite sayings is that if God feels distant, guess who moved? We might be feeling overwhelmed right now, and if we are, I pray that we know how to help ourselves in the midst of that struggle.

God feeling distant is not a new thing. One of the earliest writing of the Bible is the book of Job, and I am sure that he felt distant from God. Psalm 88, written by Heman the Ezrahite, is another tale of being overwhelmed with trouble and God feeling far away. Jesus changed all that for us on the cross. God chose to be “with us” so that we did not ever have to feel that He was far away. I pray that you will join us this month as we discern our feelings, and trust God to help us through the darkness.
- Pastor Mike
 

Acts 1:8 - "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” - NLT

In our post-Easter world, it would make sense for us to come to an understanding of what it is that Jesus came to do. He came to save us, sure, but there was so much more that He came to accomplish. Jesus not only took the punishment for our sin, so that we could be in right relationship with God, but He also provided us with the teaching and tools necessary to be His empowered ambassadors in this world. 

Jesus knew that we could never have the ability or the holiness that we would need on our own. We have all sinned, and have fallen short of God's glorious standard. When Jesus chose to ascend to heaven, He also chose to send back to us God's Holy Spirit. He would be our advocate, our helper, and our power so that we could indeed become witnesses in this world to what Jesus has done. 

Jesus calls us to be bearers of His message. The Holy Spirit empowers us to do what it is that we do not believe that we can do. He is the one who gives us courage to take a stand for our faith. He is the one who provides the words that we need when we don't seem to have any. He is the one who empowers us to do far more than we might imagine or think. 

This month I pray that we will lean into the Holy Spirit power that Jesus has provided. I pray that we will be engaged in relationship with God on a whole new level and that His power and might will shine through, so that we can be the equipped and empowered ambassadors of Jesus that this world needs. 

- Pastor Mike

Matthew 28: 18-20 - “18 Jesus came and told his disciples, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. 19 Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. 20 Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” NLT

Most of us have just come through another Easter season. Whether you were organizing and/or participating in an Easter egg hunt, reaching out to your neighbors, or hosting the family, I am sure that all of you were doing something this past weekend, even if we knew “why”.

For many of us who follow Jesus of Nazareth, this past weekend was a remembrance of what He did on our behalf. God chose to become one of us, and He also chose death on a cross for us. This was all so that we could be reconciled to God. The apostle Paul tells us that all of us have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory, and therefore, Jesus came to die, make a covenant promise with us in His blood, and correct the mistake.

If this is all true, then we ought to be living as though the God of all creation spared no expense to save us from ourselves. We should be living a life that looks like it is forgiven, restored, redeemed, and reconciled. We should be loving, caring, hopeful, and unafraid of the future. After Jesus rose, He left the disciples with a plan. This plan was to spread this forgiveness and goodness. We should listen to Matthew 28, not like it is a story in a book, but rather an important page in the owner’s manual of our life. Make disciples of everyone. Baptize, everyone. Teach, everyone, to obey the commands that He has given us. If the world is going to understand who Jesus is, we will have to get better at showing them who Jesus “really” is.

Make no mistake, God will love you and yet watch your decisions take you to an eternity that you may not want. Love is patient, love is kind, love bears no record of wrongs. Jesus is the one who forgives and calls us to forgive others. He asks us to love the world as He does. Let that be what helps our body of believers multiply. Jesus can, I cannot. He is God, and I am not. Show people the real Jesus today!  
- Pastor Mike

Luke 25: 2-3 - “2 They found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. 3 So they went in, but they didn’t find the body of the Lord Jesus .”(NLT)

We have been spending our Lenten season asking the question, what if? What if these Scriptures are more than stories that have been told over time? What if they are true? If there is truth to these writings and to this text, then we know so much more than we give ourselves credit for. If they are true, then there is much required of us that we may be falling short of.

Easter is the season in which we remember that God chose to become one of us, and then chose to die for us and for our sin. The one thing that was keeping us apart from Him, He chose death for. God would rather die than to be without you. The proof of which was in that empty tomb.

Jesus was everything that He said He was. He was the Messiah! He was the Savior! He was the hope of a lost world. He was our once forever sacrificial lamb that would take away all sin. The Apostle Paul wrote, Romans 8: 38-39, 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  This is what we have because of the empty tomb.

When they saw that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb, it didn’t initially hit. But when Jesus appeared, it all made sense. He promised, and He delivered. If this is all true, then that grave is still empty to this day, and Jesus is still alive.

I pray that over the coming weeks, we begin to understand that there is a God who loves us immensely, and He desires for our life to be brilliant, wonderful, and full. He did not hold back, defeating sin and death, just for a chance to have a relationship with us. How much can we repay Him with our lives in order to celebrate that which God did for us.

Our King lives! The truth is that we live along with Him!  
- Pastor Mike

1 Thessalonians 1:56 - “For when we brought you the Good News, it was not only with words but also with power, for the Holy Spirit gave you full assurance that what we said was true.” (NLT)

There has always been some debate as to whether or not the Scriptures are true. Can we trust what was written so long ago? Can we believe that these texts have not been tampered with and that they could possibly stand the test of time? It seems as though it was going to be a problem for people who were even in the midst of living out the Scriptures. Even the people who knew the Old Testament Scriptures had that trouble, and even crucified Jesus because of it.

So what makes us so different? Jesus. At least that is the short answer. Scholars estimate that Jesus fulfilled between 300 and 570 prophecies both with His life and after His death. It would be an incredible coincidence that some random guy, could manage to make that happen. When Jesus rose from the grave and was seen to be alive, there were over 500 people that saw Him. In 1 Corinthians 15: 3-8, Paul gives a list of people to whom the risen Jesus appeared. These witnesses to the resurrected Jesus include the Apostle Peter, James the brother of Jesus, and, most intriguingly, a group of more than 500 people at the same time.

So if we can build a case that there is truth within this text, what happens next. What if it is all true? What should our lives look like if we believe this to be true? Should we act differently? Should we trust differently? During our season of Lent I have written a daily devotional to go alongside with our weekly sermon series that will explore this life that we are living, or at least should be living, if this is all true!

Maybe we should make different decisions. Maybe we should trust Him in our weakness and troubles. Maybe, just maybe, we can be transformed by the living God and see a difference come to our lives and even the lives of those around us. Wouldn’t it be great if we took the next 40 plus days, searched our hearts, searched through the Scriptures, and found all that God intended for us to find, so that we might be all that He calls us to be. What If…?
- Pastor Mike
 

Romans 5:8 - “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.” (NLT)

February often brings us thoughts and memories of Valentine’s Day. We think about love and the people in our life that we love, maybe there might be some people that love us too. Either way we find ourselves inundated with hearts, cards, images of cupid, and what we believe to be love. There are so many definitions for love, it can get overwhelming.

A quick search shows us that there are many levels to the word love. Philia is the love between good friends. I can think of some people that I have “philia” love for. There is Eros love, which is hopefully reserved for our spouse, as that is an intimate, physical, and sensual love. There is Philautia, which is a love for oneself. The Greek’s believed that you had to have a love for yourself before you could have an honest love for someone else. Then you have God’s love. Agape love. Agape love is a selfless, altruistic, and universal love that is often described as everlasting. It's a type of love where you care for someone without expecting anything in return.
When Christ died for our sins, God demonstrated just how selfless His love for us was. He chose to forgive us through His love. Through this great forgiveness, He showers us with so much unselfish love that we cannot help but make that love contagious to others. This love that God provides helps us to be more creative within our pursuits and within our relationships. God also showers us with a Biblical love that we can study and read about in the text.

God’s love for us is great. Even though we were far from Him, He showed up, became one of us, and chose to lay down His life for us so that we might know how great His love for us is. We just heard about this covenant love that He gave us, and so our end of the agreement is to live a life in which we love others the same way that He first loved us. 1 John 3:16 tells us, “We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters. “ Hopefully we are found loving like Jesus.

- Pastor Mike

2 Corinthians 5:17-19 - “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” (NLT)

Well, 2024 is in the rearview mirror and God has brought us into 2025. Hopefully God has brought us with a new mindset and a new life! As we pack away the Christmas decorations I am hopeful that we do not miss the reason that we celebrate God choosing to become one of us and to be with us.

I firmly believe that God saved each one of us for a purpose. Everyone has a place within the body of Christ, and each person has a gift that is unique and special for that purpose and place. When we are aligned and utilize our gifts and talents together, along with the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, we become a living, breathing, unstoppable force for God’s great good!

We must first define who we are and what God is desiring for us to be. When we understand His plan and purpose, we can align our actions and work with what He desires for us to do. This is likely one of the most difficult things that we will do. God allows us to choose Him, or not. He will not demand or force His way upon us so when we take those steps, even if they are small, they become a part of the greater journey that is being an active participant in the work of God here on earth.

The road won’t be an easy one, but if we are willing to be a church on mission, then we will see an active, vibrant, and living body of Christ that is making a difference in the world around us. It will take all of us, moving together, in a common direction, so that we can be the messengers of God’s great reconciliation for His creation!

Are we willing to be a church on mission? Do we have the courage to step out in faith and do all that God is asking of us? Let’s make 2025 our year, lived out for Christ!

​- Pastor Mike
 

Luke 2: 10-11 - “10 but the angel reassured them. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. 11 The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David!” (NLT)

What is Christmas really all about? Each year, the culture focuses on gifts under the tree, meals around the table, family spending time together and hopes of winter weather. These all certainly play a part in the most wonderful time of year, but there is something else that is at the heart of the Christmas season. The Bible tells us that the real reason to celebrate is the saving grace offered to us through the birth, life and death of God’s son, Jesus.

The prophet Isaiah writes one of the most classic of all Old Testament prophecies about the coming birth of Christ. The passage he writes is born of gloom and darkness. The world had felt the full weight of sin, and it had wreaked havoc on all of creation. What Isaiah offered in chapter nine was something the Jewish people needed more than anything—hope. Hope that one day someone would come to make all things right and restore what had been broken. The birth of Jesus was the fulfillment of that hope and this fact offers us hope in our lives today (See, Isaiah 9: 2-7).

In the book of Luke we see the prophecy of Isaiah being fulfilled. The shepherds of the field knew that this was God’s glory revealed, and salvation had come to all who believe. Do we really believe in salvation, or do we believe in a chubby old man wearing a red winter suit that comes down our chimney to give us gifts if we are good? It is amazing to me that God has provided us with the greatest gift that we could ever receive, and yet for some of us, it isn’t going to be enough.

The heart of Christmas is a God who loves us, desires us, and made us for so much more than we know. He made us to love Him back, and saved us from ourselves at just the right time. God desires for you to have an amazing Christmas, full of all that you need and in many cases even more than that. God desires us to remember His great gift to us this year! Jesus, our Lord, our Savior, our King, our Emmanuel (God with us)! 
- Pastor Mike