Back around middle school, a bunch of my friends and I, toilet papered one of neighbor's houses, and in the process, we bought from a local hunting store, a small bottle of deer urine, which we splattered all over his front porch. But before [...]

Whenever I hear about controversial issues in society, in the church, when it comes to morality, I have, I don't think I have ever once heard someone say that Jesus was wrong and they are right. Right? Have you ever heard that? Have you ever [...]

I hope you don't think less of me for admitting this, but there's a part of me, and it's a pretty substantial part of me that likes to sin. I have a lot of experience that makes me say that. I've been through about 41 years of [...]

When I stand up here and look at you, when you sit out there, or you're watching at home and you're looking back at me, I think what both of us would want is the fun stuff of the Christian faith, and there's lot of it. Yeah, I want to [...]

"Do you remember me"? I looked at her kind of familiar face and tried to smile and nod, but inside, the alarm was going off in my brain. Mayday, mayday, this is about to be very, very awkward. I wanted to so badly, but there's [...]

There's a question that has caused me more confusion, and frustration, and tension as a pastor than almost any other. And when I share this question with you, you might think it's a joke and it might seem a bit small but I'm being [...]

Why are you here today? Now, as you process what that reason might be, I think there are two big categories that you can fall in. And you might realize, okay, it was a job, it was a move, it was a friend, it was a relationship. But if you're [...]

So, way back in 1953, a 24-year-old guy, Atlanta native stood at the altar, look the love of his life in her eyes and vowed to love her deeply until death would do them part. Just a year later, in the mid-1950s, this same young man received a call [...]

Now, as we kick things off today with week number one, I want to ask you, it's a really simple, honest question, the question is, as you look back on your life or think about the spot where you're in life right now, have you ever felt as [...]

Did any of you know that four out of the five pastors of our church, almost didn't make it? I recently asked some pretty personal questions to our pastoral team, and got their permission to share with you. And they confessed to me that four out [...]

Imagine if every mom and every dad would only focus on their own behavior and never judge their own children. Moms, dads, what do you think about that? You know, little Billy, smacking little Johnny in the face. And mom says to dad, "Should we [...]

Like, the one guy was definitely the outgoing of the couple. He was a storyteller, a talker. He was passionate, sometimes, funny. Sometimes, inappropriate. A lot like me. Like, "Oh, I can relate to this guy". You know, one minute he says [...]

So, what do the movies Moana, Mulan, Monsters Inc., The Greatest Showman, Coco, Aladdin, Brave, and Beauty and the Beast all have in common? All of them, if you watch and takes notes, and listen carefully, all of them actually have the same moral, [...]

You ever had an experience, where it just felt, it just seem like God was speaking directly to you? Like, not necessarily you're in church, open Bible, you know, reading the Word of God, but there's just, there's something about the [...]

I want to talk to you today about you and about God and about money. Yaay we're preaching about, yeah, so I know that when a pastor or church wants to talk about finances and not just faith when someone gets really personal with what seems like [...]

Here in this world, among us, and in our families, even in our church, anger can happen at the wrong time, at the wrong extent, and be directed towards the wrong people. Anger could do real damage in your life and in mine. I see two real reasons why [...]

It kind of hit me the other day how God has surrounded my life with incredibly organized, hardworking women. I don't know if it's just a me thing or a lots of us thing, but has God put a lot of like, hardworking, go-getter, box-checking, [...]

Like, think of your childhood, think of your school years, think of your romantic life, think of your professional life, think of athletics, think of academics. Doesn't so much of how we feel about ourselves come down to that simple question, [...]

So, I was thinking about it, this past week, and it kind of hit me that I feel bad for Easter. They say that there are two "don't miss moments" in the Christian faith: Christmas and Easter. The birth of the Savior who came to rescue [...]

When my wife, Kim, and I were raising our two daughters, when they were really little, there were three songs that we used to sing to them, day after day, after day, after day, and week, after week, after week, after week because we really wanted [...]

I'm not sure if anyone's every told you this, but there are two things the Bible says about God that you can't miss. The Bible says that God is like a treasure that's at the end of a tight rope. You ever heard that before? I [...]

Let's start with a show of hands. How many of you who are here in church today, or how many of you who are watching out there at home, hands nice and high, how many of you have been born? Just as I suspected. Alright. Another easy question. How [...]

You do not have to say it out loud but when you woke up this morning did you feel like you know despite all the flaws and imperfections that everyone deals with that you had relatively good, meaningful, purposeful, worth living life. As you think [...]

In early 2020, I got to explore Israel. "I'm sitting literally in the place where Jesus' feet touched". I saw some amazing places. "The old city of Jerusalem, the Garden of Gethsemane, beautiful Nazareth, and the Mount of [...]

Like, Jesus would tell crowds of people, "Hey, before you follow me, before you're all in, before you surrender your heart, do you know the cost"? Now, Jesus didn't mean that you had to pay him like, to get into the Christian [...]

Do you ever have any untrue, difficult, maybe even toxic thoughts that you don't just think, you know, on occasion or once a year but the thoughts that kind of come back to your brain day after day, week after week, season after season? I do. [...]

Whether it's the words that come from a friend, a show we're watching, a radio program or a scroll, the words that we consume rarely stop at simply being words. It's almost like a domino effect with the words that we hear, the stuff [...]

Recently, I read every single Bible passage in the entire Bible that use the words think, thinks, thinking, thought, thoughts, and thoughtful. Because apparently, I don't have very many friends. Alright? I didn't have much to do so I dove [...]

Today, I want you, and I want me to slow down just a bit, slow down our busy lives and open, not just our Bibles, but a dictionary as well so that we can read this holy book, this book that has the power to change everything about everything, and [...]

Before I ever heard of a Spotify playlist, or created my first iTunes account, or told Alexa on my little smart device to play my favorite music, my musical selection looked like this. Do you all remember this? This is just a great reminder why [...]

About every month or so, I buzz in at the back door of our local jail. I click that little buzzer, I wait for the intercom, I introduce myself, the door clicks, I walk through the sterile hallway, I fish up to the left, I wait for the doors to open. [...]

Last Friday, I got to have a conversation with a guy I had never met before. Someone who watches our church services online. I'd given him my number. I picked him up on the phone on a Friday afternoon. And before I hung up the phone, I found [...]

I've learnt over the years of being a pastor that when you're in pain, the most natural question for you to ask is actually the most dangerous question for you to ask. "Why"? "Why is this happening? Why am I going through [...]

You know, one of the really cool, really amazing, and really humbling parts of what we do is that people tend to come to us, to the church, and to pastors, normally, when times are really, really good or when they're really, really, not. [...]

It's a serious question to start a sermon, I know. But if you were the devil, how would you do it? We sometimes think of the devil, Satan, demons, as being these dark forces that try to, like, horror movie style freak us out, keep us up at [...]

If you questioned my Christian faith, that wouldn't be crazy. I'm not saying that because I'm hiding some dark, sinful secret or leading some double life. I pray here in church, and I pray when I'm at home. I put on worship music [...]

A few years ago, one of my daughters asked me a seemingly simple but actually very complicated question. We were all carrying buckets, wearing our gardening gloves, going around our property, trying to stop the weeds from their hostile takeover [...]

Back in the year 2010, a very wealthy man named Forrest Fenn hid a million-dollar treasure. First, Fenn apparently owned an art gallery and had become wealthy in the process. But around 2010 he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and so he decided to [...]

There are some moments in the Christian life that are powerful and they're beautiful and they're memorable. When you can feel like the momentum of the people around you, it like trainwrecks your heart in all the best ways. Those are great [...]

In my opinion, one of the most exciting things that Jesus ever said was that God's word is like a seed. Now, I don't know a ton about gardening, but here's the little bit that I do know. A seed is one of the smallest things that you [...]

When you train your heart to say things like, "But God". Yeah. This is bad, it's scary, this is freaky. I don't know how this is going to turn out, but God is still on the throne. Or like some of you say, God's got this. I [...]

The reason some grade school and middle school boys place Apex Legends or Minecraft or Halo or the latest craze is because it makes them happy. The reason some of you scroll TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter is because in some small way, it makes [...]

When I sit down and talk with you about life, and we schedule a time to meet in my office or go to coffee shop or come to your home. And you tell me what's going on in life, what you want in life, what you hope to change in life almost always, [...]

You know, when you throw a stone and it hits someone, and they're willing to leave it alone, but you just have to go and pick it up. And the self-loathing, and the regret, and the bitterness. When we retell the same story of our stupidity from [...]

What exactly does forgiveness look like? How do you heal from the deep wounds that people have caused in your past? Now that's the question in this sinful world all of us are going to have to answer. Which is why I'm so grateful the [...]

I was thinking about that in my own life. I have been spared so far, 40 years in, some of the major traumatic wounds that many people have been through. My mom and my dad were good to me. I have never gone through a break-up. I married my first [...]

I would like to talk to you today about forgiveness. And that is why Pastor Jim emailed me. If have not met him yet Pastor Jim is the guy on our pastoral team who is kind of known for having a really big, compassionate, empathetic heart. Most [...]

But what if you already fell? I know there are double digit people in this room right now that say, "I can't go back, pastor. I wish someone would have told me ten years ago, 'Don't.' Period. I wish someone would have given [...]

I knew that I needed to talk about adultery with you when adultery kept happening among us. Not that long ago, here in our church tragically, there was a couple who is really active in our membership who fell into the sin of infidelity. And then, [...]

A few weeks ago, I started a pretty great debate among a group of local pastors. We're all sitting around a big conference table at one of our monthly meetings and I force them to vote, and I only gave them two options to choose from. Option [...]