Reach Church - Everett

It is not simply enough to have the right ideas about God. Those right ideas should always translate into right living.

As we jump into chapter 2 of James, we learn about the sin of favoritism. There are a lot of different types of people in the world, but James reminds us that we are called to love them all.

The genuine disciple of Jesus will live a life marked by controlled speech, compassion for the least, and cleanliness from the ways of the world.

It's one thing to listen to good advice, it's another thing to act on it. James calls his audience to not only "hear" the Word, but to also do what it says. Much like Jesus makes clear in the Sermon on the Mount, those who hear the Good News and yet don't act on it are only fooling themselves into thinking they are spiritually mature. The invitation in this sermon is to reflect upon your own life, allowing God room to challenge you and call you upward into a life of greater faithfulness. Will you accept the challenge?

When we face trials, we have the tendency to think, we are going through trials because God is distant. Or when we are facing trials we think — not only is God distant, but we must not be God’s people if we are facing hardships. This isn’t true. We have all faced trials and it’s easy to wonder if God is near. He is near and He does care and will use your trials for His redemptive purposes in your life. We count it as joy because we are already loved by Him — already a part of God’s family.

There's a difference between knowing something and having wisdom for how to apply what you know. Knowledge is about obtaining information, but wisdom knows how to use it. This week, Pastor Sean unpacks James 1:5-8 and talks us through how we can seek wisdom and find it in God.

Why do we count trials as joy? Because it makes us more complete; it makes us more like Jesus! Whether God allowed it to happen, put it in your path, or is simply with you in the midst of it - we can take heart in knowing that THROUGH the hard times, we have an opportunity to grow and mature.

The Christian faith is best experienced when it’s lived out, not just when it’s considered.

One of the greatest threats to you fulfilling your calling as a disciple is comparing your journey to someone else’s.

Jesus repurposes our brokenness for good and redeploys it to help us live out a better story. A story not defined by our past, but defined by him.

What happens when something no longer fits inside the belief system you use to make sense of world? You doubt. For followers of Jesus, doubt is what occurs when we have experiences that don't intuitively align with what we think we know about God. So where do we go from there?

This Sunday, we celebrated the resurrection of Jesus together! We took a look at John 20, where we see the progression of what the earliest followers of Jesus experienced as they engaged the tomb - from confusion to clarity to commissioning.

Everything changes if Jesus is really King. Many have chosen avoidance, mockery, or hatred, but what would happen if we really believe this to be truth - if He really is on the throne?

Prone to trade Jesus for the disordered desires of our hearts, we often make bargains for the things we ultimately crave. But the good news is this; he willingly accepted the exchange, dying a rebel's death for our rebellion.

Isn't it fun trying to find music your kids will enjoy? :) What I've come to realize is that what often sticks with my kids is what they find most memorable. After a quick search on YouTube for "Proverbs 16:9 Kids," I found this simple tune created by a family band (That's right - they're out there! Gasperetti's are next...). While the kids appeared to be staring directly into my soul, the song itself got instantly stuck in my head. What I realized is that, by accident, I had memorized Proverbs 16:9! Perhaps this family band is on to something... Hope you catch your kid singing scripture after watching this one a few times. -- From the Scripture Memory Songs 3 CD - a sing-along video version of "The Heart Of Man". (www.SpencerFamilyMusic.com)

A life of following Jesus is one often filled with dissonance. Disparity. Disintegration. Gaps between the things we say we believe and the ways that belief materializes in reality. But Jesus' commitment to us through it all gives us hope.

This week, Pastor Sean closed out our “Take Heart” series with the prayer in John 17 that Jesus prayed in his last 24 hours before the cross. This prayer is the longest recorded prayer of Jesus’ and it communicates the heart of God for his people. In Jesus' final moments, he doesn't go looking to satisfy the flesh. Instead, he prays.

Following Jesus has the tendency to be a sometimes confusing process. Lack of clarity can seem built-in and we're often left asking questions with no convincing answers. But it's in our darkest moments of disorientation, moments that Jesus has already foreseen, that he is working for good in ways that we could never foresee.