Soma Spokane Sermons

The final gift of Advent is joy, and this week we're looking at Jesus' promise to give a fullness of joy that can never be taken away (John 16.22). Like the other gifts of Advent, joy is something required for human flourishing but often hard to secure. As we walk through life, sorrows seem to multiply. How can we receive life with full joy in the face of life's sorrows?

Hope is the confidence that there is something better beyond the horizon. But, the suffering of this world steals confidence and convinces us that hope must be a cruel and fleeting thing. Jesus speaks truth to our troubled and weary hearts and proclaims that he is the Hope we are in desperate need of.

Peace is not an absence of something, it is the presence of something, the presence of God.

Jesus says he is the True Vine - the only place where what we need for a thriving life can be found. We’ll talk about the ways we go in search of love, acceptance, and validation, how that always ends in a shriveled life, and how “abiding” in Jesus leads to a love-filled soul and overflows in loving relationships.

Recounting the process God has brought Aaron and Megan on as they’ve gone from marginal involvement in the church and mission of Jesus to rearranging their lives around what He is up to and preparing to move their family to serve the in the disciple-making movement in Slovakia! A combination of story-telling, gospel proclamation, and invitation to partnership.

The Corinthians are assigning way too much significance to certain leaders within the church, which always leads to deifying or demonizing them. Instead, Paul urges that we see leaders as servants and stewards - men and women called to sacrifice so the church flourishes, tenderly but courageously pointing the church toward Jesus.

Paul is continuing to bring the Corinthians back to the basics of the gospel and the way of life it produces. In this section, Paul emphasizes the fact that the church is God’s building, built on the foundation of Jesus Christ, to be a dwelling place for the Spirit. It is a unique view of what the church is, what the church needs, and how we all move together towards God’s purposes for us.

While the gospel destroys the wisdom of the world and the schemes of religion, it does have its own hidden and secret wisdom. Wisdom is knowing how the world works and living in it in a way that leads to flourishing. If you want to know how the world works, and you want to play it well, the popular options - Religion and Secularism Wisdom - will fail you, driving you deeper into the pride and self-will that is the root of all our problems. But the Gospel offers a radically different kind of wisdom - given by the Spirit of God - which leads to a flourishing life - not just eternal life, but abundant life now, today, here in all the regular stuff of life.

The gospel is the power of God for salvation for all who believe, because in it God confronts the proud, exalts the lowly, and creates a new kind of people - people deeply aware of their weakness and simultaneously empowered by the Spirit.

Paul’s first appeal to his brothers in Corinth is to find unity under the leadership of Jesus. The divisions about leaders reveal our tendency to reach for physical resources (people, organizations, programs, etc.) instead of Jesus. We wrongly assume we will find fulfillment in those resources. But, only Jesus offers what we are looking for. Only Jesus offers forgiveness, resurrection, and a new identity.

Paul’s first words are thanksgivings to God for his gracious work in Jesus and among the Corinthian church. His words to them are full of confidence in God’s provision and hopefulness in God’s work among them. He’s describing what the church really is, at its core: a people called by God to fellowship with his Son, richly provided for all life and ministry, and guaranteed to be sustained guiltless to the day of Jesus’ return.

A vision for gospel saturation and how it gets worked out into everyday-life disciple-making.

This week we are building on our Vision of Gospel Saturation (Has 2.14), talking about how the church engages in the mission of God. We'll talk about what ministry is (gospel truth in the context of relationship) and clarify the reality that every church member is a minister or missionary.

Paul prays that we’d know our Resources in Christ, our Relationship with Christ and each other, and our Glorious Reality - that God is filling the world with his glory through the church - through us!

Habakkuk speaks from the world we all are familiar with - injustice, suffering, pain, and evil - and shows us the world to come, where knowledge of God’s good heart and his glorious presence seeps into all the nooks and crannies of our world, bringing restoration to all things. It is a vision worth living for!

God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. To recognize we were created for someone and for a purpose in a moving story of redemption is life changing, to the point of contentment.

As created beings we will navigate with something. Something will take up residence in our lives and cause us to make decisions, feel emotions, respond in relationships, and sense satisfaction or not. We are created as worshipers, we will worship someone or something, always! There is a battle going on in and around us. The battle is for our hearts. What or who will we worship?

Rejoicing in the LORD in the midst of suffering is a byproduct of treasuring Christ and His Resurrection above all else.

The Gospel Story presented at our "All Family Gathering" (kids gathered with us) and a connection to Paul's encouragement to find "kindred spirits" as we seek to live a life worthy of the Gospel.

The character and accomplishments of Christ call us to looking to serve one another in unity and to seek His glory and not our own.