City Beautiful Church : Audio

04/21/24 Ghosts are anxiety-inducing echoes of the past. The resurrected Jesus is a hopeful promise for the future.

04/14/24 As we walk this road of Salvation, even when we only see in part, He’s always engaging with us, liberating us, making our hearts burn for Him; but He reveals Himself most clearly and simply to us in the Breaking of Bread, we just need to welcome Him in.

04/07/24 Right action and contemplative thinking are important, but it is the love in our hearts for Jesus that prepares us to see him as he truly is.

03/31/24 The cross is not about God requiring revenge or retribution in order to forgive, but God reconciling us to Godself by overcoming evil and death.

03/24/24 King Jesus does not come to meet the expectations of the world as we know it, but to welcome us into a dramatically new world.

03/17/24 Mary’s devotion and adoration turns waste into worship (Matthew 26:6-16).

03/10/24 Jesus binds himself to us in our suffering, takes us by the hand and leads us through death, so that we might inherit eternal life.

03/03/2024 Every single belief system we have needs to be brought to the cross and examined against the life and actions of Jesus to see if they hold up. 

02/25/24 Jesus came to deliver us from evil spirits that try to bind us and keep us small.

02/11/24 The signpost at Cana reveals that Jesus is YHWH, the king of the earth. He is the one promised to bring to make the earth right again— to make it flourish.

02/04/24 Jesus passes through the desert of the human experience in order to liberate us from the snares of the devil. 

01/28/24 We believe God has gifted us to one another in this church, so that we become more together than what we are apart.

01/21/24 We have been gifted the Holy Spirit to keep us connected to God and give us direction.

1/14/24 What we believe about God, and how we attach to God, shapes our understanding of everything around us and within us.

01/07/24 In an era of Herodian power-grabbing and Religious lethargy, we have an opportunity to reclaim the joy and awe of those who move towards Jesus in humble worship.

12/31/23 The foundation of the spiritual life is to see ourselves in the arms of a loving God.

12/17/23 The Anointed Shepherd King of Bethlehem is the only one who can rule the world as God intends.

12/10/23 In the advent of the Messiah, we receive God-With-Us, who liberates us from bondage to freedom.

12/3/23 In the advent of the Messiah, the serpent’s head is crushed, sin and death are destroyed, and the children of Adam are gifted new life.

11/26/23 Christ the King of the cosmos is the culmination of all time and space. Every story and experience; past, present, and future; even death and life find their completion in him.

To live “in the name of Jesus” is to testify with our lives to the reign of the king in his new heavenly world.

11/12/23 There is a kind of hope that removes us from the action, and a kind of hope that gives us courage to stay faithful to the good work of the Kingdom.

11/05/23 If the light of Christ is at the heart of all life, and we are the part of creation tasked to see life flourish, we read creation to find God and do all we can to care for it.

10/29/23 The biblical vision for God’s justice and righteousness insists there is enough for everyone.

10/22/23 For us, being “in Christ” becomes the foundational identity through which all other identity markers are redeemed.

10/15/23 To love our neighbors as Jesus commands is to let ourselves be affected on the heart level, for our benefit and theirs.

10/08/23 Christians are called to faithfully work for “the common good” as resident aliens in a foreign land.

10/01/23 Freedom is not a wide-open ocean we tread indefinitely; it is a river we cross to begin our moral formation in the name of Jesus.

09/24/23 To live in the name of Jesus is to develop the courage and imagination to live peaceably in a violent world.

09/17/23 Living “in the name of Jesus” begins with commitment to him and his new heavenly family called the Church.

09/10/23 It is our willingness to put our hand to the plough that speaks to our relationship with Christ.

09/03/2023 Our joy is made complete when we participate in the revelation of Jesus together.

8/27/23 To live “in the name of Jesus” is to testify with our lives to the reign of the king in his new heavenly world.

08/20/23 To be “in the world but not of it” means that we are to live from a different starting point than the world into which we were first born.

08/13/23 To be willing to say, “here I am” when the Lord calls us is to embark on a grand adventure that can only be fueled by Grace.

07/30/23 Personality is the realm of the Son, who comes to show us what it means to be fully human so we can call others into their full humanity.

07/23/23 Story is the realm of the Father, who is with us and turns curses into blessings so we might in turn tell better stories to the world.

07/16/23 Our Calling is found at the intersection of our Story with God, our Personality in the light of Christ, and the Gifts we’ve been given by the Holy Spirit.

07/02/23 We have barely scraped the surface of God’s love revealed in Jesus. Even if it takes us the rest of our lives, it is still worth it to pursue him.

06/25/23 Sabbath, the practice upon which all other spiritual practices are built, brings us back to the wholehearted truth that we are not our frenzied productivity, but the Beloved of God.

06/11/23 Worry causes us to close down, prayer invites us to open up. Worry is a constant inner monologue of fear, prayer is a constant trusting dialogue with the Father.

06/04/23 “We have been called to heal wounds, to unite what has fallen apart, and to bring home those who have lost their way.” - Saint Francis of Assisi

5/28/23 Jesus provides a direction and a promise through the Holy Spirit.

05/21/23 In community we move from competition to communion with people who are here to reveal Jesus to us.

05/14/23 Jesus invites us to pass through suffering by way of sorrow, in order that we might find true joy on the other side.

05/07/2023 In moments where we can recognize resentment quickly, we ground ourselves in that moment by remembering who we are, who the other person is, and who Jesus is.

04/30/23 Silence and solitude invite us to sit in the space where our deepest need - union with God - is met, before we re-enter the noisy world of our surface lives.

04/23/23 Our faith is a dynamic journey of growth as we learn to rest in God a bit more than the day before.