Repentance

Pastor Bill Bush · Nov 25, 2024

Using Peter's denial and restoration as a lens, the sermon argues that failure in the Christian life need not be final. Unlike Judas, who rejected Jesus entirely, Peter always believed — he simply fell out of fear. The path forward requires three movements: honestly acknowledging our sin, genuinely accepting God's restoring love, and actively stepping back into the mission Jesus has called every believer to. Repentance, rightly understood, is not merely stopping the wrong direction but turning and going the right way — feeding the sheep, making disciples, and living fully on purpose with God.

Pastor Daniel Goulding · Sep 9, 2024

In Matthew 18, Jesus redefines greatness for His disciples — and for us — by placing a small child at the center of the conversation. While the disciples were consumed with status and rank, Jesus pointed to childlike humility and repentance as the true measures of kingdom greatness. The world conditions us to chase achievement, influence, and ability, but Jesus insists that the path to genuine significance runs through acknowledging our sin, turning back to the Father, and embracing the humble, unguarded dependence of a child — not as a one-time decision, but as a daily way of life.

Pastor Chris Hilken · Aug 19, 2024

Pastor Chris Hilken argues that following Jesus requires far more than a change of outward behavior — it demands a complete renewal of the mind (metanoia). Drawing on 2 Corinthians 5 and Romans 12, he contends that the world trains us to begin every decision with our desires, but that path produces a fragile, fickle identity. In Christ, the process is reversed: we start with the settled identity God gives us, let His Word shape our thinking, and trust Him to change not only what we do but what we want.

Pastor Bill Bush · Apr 15, 2024

Pastor Bill uses Matthew 3 — the baptism of Jesus — to argue that baptism is not a means of earning God's love but an act of humble commitment and identification that flows from it. Just as Jesus' baptism was His humble, public declaration of mission and identification with humanity, our baptism is our first step of trusting God: declaring we are sinners saved by grace, committing to follow Jesus as Lord, and publicly identifying with His death, burial, and resurrection. The sermon presses the question: if you call Jesus Lord, are you actually living like He is?

Pastor Daniel Goulding · Mar 25, 2024

Using the strange Old Testament account of Balaam and his talking donkey in Numbers 22, Pastor Daniel argues that God is always speaking to His people — primarily through Scripture — and that our inability to hear Him is rarely God's silence but rather our own rebellion, distraction, or willingness to rationalize compromise. When we walk in disobedience, God loves us enough to frustrate our path as a whisper calling us back. The path to hearing His voice again runs through humility, asking forgiveness of those we've hurt, and genuine repentance — turning around and aligning our will with His.

Pastor Daniel Goulding · Dec 5, 2023

Drawing from Jesus' letter to the dead-yet-reputable church in Sardis, Pastor Daniel warns that comfort, wealth, and an obsession with reputation can quietly drain a church — and individual Christians — of spiritual life. The Holy Spirit will not indefinitely share space with unrepentant sin, and history shows that churches drift from movements to machines to monuments. Yet Jesus always leaves a remnant, and that remnant — people willing to surrender their reputation, face reality honestly, and live lives of repentance — is exactly what God uses to spark genuine revival.

Pastor Caleb McMains · Nov 27, 2023

Drawing from Jesus' letter to the church of Pergamum in Revelation 2, Pastor Caleb warns that spiritual compromise rarely arrives as a sudden collapse — it creeps in gradually through tolerated false teaching, small justifications, and incremental drift from Christ. Just as the Deepwater Horizon disaster resulted from a long chain of neglected safety measures, and just as Alcoa's safety culture was built one steady step at a time, our faithfulness or our defeat is forged in the slow, daily choices we make. The call of Jesus to Pergamum — and to us — is to repent, return to His Word, and lean into authentic community so that nothing erodes our witness.

Pastor Bill Bush · Nov 7, 2022

Drawing from Ezekiel 43 and Hebrews 12, Pastor Billy argues that God's foundational house rule is absolute holiness, and that because Christ's righteousness has been imputed to every believer, Christians are called to stop merely professing faith and start living it. This means stripping off every weight that slows us down — whether distraction, hurt, or outright sin — and running with endurance by keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the One who endured the cross for the joy of rescuing us.

Pastor Bill Bush · Oct 10, 2022

In Ezekiel 8–11, God exposes that Israel's crisis was never primarily about geography, politics, or circumstances — it was always a heart problem. The people in Jerusalem believed their location and religious activity made them righteous, while the exiles were the problem. God reveals the opposite: He will scatter, gather, and give His people a new heart and a new spirit. This promise finds its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus, whose death and resurrection — foreshadowed by the bronze serpent Moses lifted in the wilderness — is the only way any person receives a new heart, the Holy Spirit, and true life.

Pastor Bill Bush · Oct 2, 2022

Drawing from Ezekiel 5, this sermon confronts the ancient and ongoing temptation to claim God's blessings while refusing His lordship. The Israelites believed their temple attendance and covenant status kept them safe, but God called out their idolatry and spiritual adultery. The same danger exists today: treating faith as a transaction to get God on our side, rather than surrendering to His side. True belonging to the remnant is proved by genuine repentance — not just stopping sin, but turning toward what God has called us to do.

Pastor Bill Bush · Apr 17, 2022

Easter is not primarily about attending church, being a better person, or fulfilling a religious obligation — it is about recognizing that every human being is not merely a mistaker but a sinner in rebellion against God, utterly unable to earn a right standing before Him. The entire Bible, including more than 300 Old Testament prophecies written centuries before Jesus' birth, points to one destination: Jesus Christ, whose death and resurrection is the only way the broken relationship between God and humanity can be restored. Receiving that rescue requires repentance — turning from self and placing faith in what Jesus alone has done.

Pastor Daniel Goulding · Nov 15, 2021

In Romans 2, Paul dismantles the self-righteousness of religious people who feel superior to the unrighteous described in Romans 1. Using the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector as a lens, Pastor Daniel shows that churchgoers are just as condemned before a holy God as anyone else — because God's standard is perfection, not goodness. Our only hope is not better behavior or religious performance, but the mercy and grace found in Jesus, who fulfilled the law on our behalf so that all who believe in Him are declared righteous.