GARDEN CHURCH Podcast

Our current series, the Empowering Presence, is focused on the Holy Spirit. One of our primary goals was to clear up misconceptions about the Holy Spirit. It seems like most Christian traditions bring some unclear pictures and ideas about the Holy Spirit. We would like to invite you to listen to Pastor Darren, as he takes an intentional approach to revert some lies that we might believe about the Holy Spirit.

"Here as in Heaven." For more information visit : garden.church

There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Yet, we all tend to have narratives that we believe and perceive about ourselves and others that say otherwise. These narratives model what Paul writes in Romans about the polarizing life that we live as Christians. We have to live either by the Spirit or by the flesh. We have to choose life or death. The only way to live this free life in Christ is by being filled with the Spirit and living the life that God designed for us to live in him. Listen as Pastor Bill slows down our Empowering Presence series in order to give us time to truly understand the Spirit and his role in giving us true life.

The Holy Spirit doesn't come to just be a marker of salvation. He comes in order to reorient our identities to the truth that we are in Christ. Through the Spirit, our whole lives are reconstructed, started with our identities. It is out of our identities that we live out of. When we live out of our proper identities in Christ, we then truly live out of the abundant inheritance that the kingdom of God offers. Listen as Pastor Darren leads us further into our series, the Empowering Presence.

Francis Chan referred to the Holy Spirit as the "forgotten God." As we continue through our series, the Empowering Presence, we wanted to do a survey of the Holy Spirit in order to introduce ourselves to the fullness of this person of God. Pastor Bill took us through the Old and New Testament to get an overarching idea of what role the Holy Spirit plays. This summary allows us to take our first steps into a healthy understanding of the wonder and majesty of the third person of the Trinity.

Who is the Holy Spirit? What does he do? Why do we need him? There is a lot of mystery around God, but even more so when it comes to the Holy Spirit. We started a new series that is all about the Holy Spirit. Listen as Pastor Darren lays out the vision of what it would look like for us to be a churched fully filled, driven, and influenced by the Holy Spirit.

Jesus shows us how to love. As we wrap up our series on Emotional Healthy Spirituality, Pastor Bill urges us to lean into Jesus model in love. Christians are called to look like little Christ's and part of that is shaping the way that we interact with ourselves and each other. Jesus shows us the risk and the weight of truly loving one another. Jesus' words were, "by this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" (John 13:35). Listen as we try to understand what this exactly look like.

Gief and loss are normal in a broken world. We cannot expect to travel through our lives without experiencing hurt. Jesus acknowledges that, and even teaches us how to handle the emotions when dealing with grief and loss. Listen as Bill Dogterom helps us address our emotions, and how to give them to Jesus in order to live fully transformed lives.

"Here as in Heaven." For more information visit : garden.church

There is a heaviness in the air at Garden Church, and it has been felt in our relationships, workplaces, and our homes. Pastor Darren took a break from our Emotionally Healthy Church series to address the spiritual warfare that our church has been feeling. There is a lot of uncertainty when it comes to the spiritual battles that we are constantly facing, and we are thankful for our Pastor equipping us to move on and fight!

What happens when we believe that we can transform lives, renew cities, preach the gospel, bring forth the kingdom, reign in heaven on earth on our own? Disaster. When left to our own devices humanity can and will run itself into the ground. It is because on our own we aren't enough. You are not enough, but Jesus is. How can we learn to root our identities in Christ, so that we may bring life? Listen as our friend, Megan Fate Marshman, walks us through the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand and how Jesus teaches us to lean into him when we don't have enough.

"Here as in Heaven." For more information visit : garden.church

No one is perfect. While most people believe that, we still put on a perfect version of ourselves out into the world so that people can't see our flaws. However, just because we avoid our brokenness doesn't mean it stops existing. It is our brokenness that will corrupt us from the inside out unless it's brought to light so that it may be exposed. Pastor Bill continues our Emotionally Healthy Spirituality series by teaching us the necessity of "living in brokenness and vulnerability," in order to live a life that thrives through the boasting of weaknesses.

Pastor Bill continues our series "Emotionally Healthy Spirituality" by talking about "generational sins." It doesn't matter if we come from a healthy or a dysfunctional family, but we adopt sins from our families. Jesus gives a model on how to be emotionally healthy apart from our family of origin, but it doesn't come from ignoring our upbringing, but allowing God to redeem it.

We are not just a body, nor are we just a spirit. We are souls, a product of both spirit and body. Each soul is made of five parts: spiritual, social, intellectual, physical, and emotional. This is a core understanding as Pastor Bill begins our newest series, Practicing the Way of Jesus: Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, which focuses on the emotional aspect of being truly human. As he pulls from Pete Scazerro's book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Bill teaches us the necessity of truly dealing with our emotions and the journey of connecting them to our behavior. Once we look beneath the surface, we can then take the next step in our discipleship with Jesus.

How does it look like for disciples of Jesus to live in the 21st century? We can easily burn out trying to keep up with the Joneses and lose our identities as children of God in the midst of it. Guest Speaker, Dave Lomas, teaches us how we can match our hearts and minds to Jesus by just leaning back. This is a key journey for us to take so that we can take the essential steps to be with Jesus, to become like Jesus, and do what Jesus did.

t is getting more and more difficult to be a follower of Jesus in our current culture. The system that we are currently living in is designed for disciples to fail. If left unchecked, we can easily get overwhelmed and discouraged to even continue down the path to holiness, spiritual maturity, and purity. Listen as Pastor Darren gives us a call to respond to this time by praying and fasting.

Out of all of Jesus' ministry, the disciples asked Jesus to teach them one thing, "teach us to pray." The church has identified this teaching as the Lord's Prayer. Pastor Darren began an analysis of the Lord's Prayer last week and was joined by Michael Petrila this week as they co-taught the rest of the Lord's Prayer. We learned why it is so important to adopt the template that Jesus lays out, and how it not only forms our prayer life but it forms our spiritual journey with God.

Pastor Darren continues our series Practicing the Way of Jesus: Prayer by dissecting the Lord’s Prayer. The more we understand the template of the Lord’s Prayer, the more vibrant our prayer lives will be. Join us as we dive into prayer, in order to get to know the heart of the Father.

For Father's Day we had our friend Pastor Chris Weinand speak on the role of a father in a child's life. Children experience the truth of the Lord's Prayer and the picture of the Father in heaven by the reality experienced by a father's parenting. This is also a call for us to reshape and acknowledge the false realities we may have experience from the parenting that we have received. As we pray the Lord's Prayer, let us reshape our view of the Father, and reshape our parenting as mothers and fathers.

We are entering back into our Practicing the Way of Jesus series, and we are starting with the discipline of prayer. However, before we start dissecting the why and how we pray, Pastor Bill answered one of the primary questions about prayer, "what about unanswered prayer?" We may get constantly discouraged about prayer because of prayers that do not get answered, but the truth is that our prayers do get answered just not how we usually expect them to.

"Here as in Heaven." For more information visit : garden.church

This Sunday we had a guest speaker, Todd Proctor, who led us through Acts. Todd observed three stories of how God works through the church in unexpected people, in unexpected ways, in unexpected places. This is crucial because the stories in Acts are precursors to the stories that we are now invited to participate in, presently.

"Here as in Heaven." For more information visit : garden.church

Though there are many Mary’s mentioned and named throughout the New Testament, the story of Mary Magdalene is a powerful one. While there is mystery and rumors surrounding this character, we can glean truth from the scriptures about Mary’s character. Pastor Bill introduces us to the woman who led the female disciples that funded Jesus’ ministry, the woman who stayed at Jesus’ feet as he was being crucified, and the woman who encounters Jesus’ outside the empty tomb. Listen to find out what happened to this woman to love Jesus and the gospel above her own life.

This week, Pastor Darren teaches out of Luke 4:14-21. This text deals with Jesus proclaiming the Year of Jubilee, and what was God's socio-economic and political vision for his people. Through Jesus, a new reality breaks through for the poor, oppressed, and outcast here and now. We are invited to join Jesus in bringing this upside-down kingdom through our lives. We see this reality through the story of the rich young ruler and the blind beggar contrasted with the most controversial story of Zaccheus.

As Peter was walking by the gate called Beautiful, he encountered a lame man who was asking for money. Peter offered to heal the man, and he began to walk. Acts then continues to cover stories of Peter and the rest of the Apostles doing what Jesus did. However, Peter didn't begin with these highlights of success. Pastor Darren walks us through Peter's rough and bumpy discipleship with Jesus and offers us a model of what we can expect in our own walks with God.

What happens when a ceremonial unclean leper that has been ostracized and rejected his whole life encounters Jesus? The law and the system are turned upon their head by the Way of Jesus. God breaks systems that oppress and reject, all in pursuit of love. That is God's heart, and in Jesus' interaction with the Leper we see God's love put on display.

Encounter is a series about what happens when ordinary people experience and extraordinary God. This week Pastor Darren shared his story about how his 9-week healing process of two torn ligaments was cut short by a miraculous healing. This story was a precursor to the Encounter story that the paralytic man and his friends had with Jesus. Listen this week as we hold on to the truth that God wants to give us faith that is renewed every day as we continually encounter God through our everyday ordinary lives.

In our year-long series, Practicing the Way of Jesus, we are taking a break post-Easter to focus on the person of Jesus and what it means to encounter him. Pastor Bill helped start off this mini-series properly entitled Encounter: When Ordinary People Experience an Extraordinary God. We began by walking with the disciple known as Doubting Thomas. Bill helped us understand what it means to walk with Jesus in the midst of doubt, skepticism, and confusion while being moved in faithfulness.

Three days later after the death of Jesus, we have a plot twist in history, he is resurrected. With this resurrection Jesus brings the hope of new life because what took place on the cross was proved true. Listen as Pastor Darren guides us in understanding what is the good news that Jesus proclaimed with his life, death, and resurrection.

In order to understand the significance of Jesus’ death on the cross, we must understand the Gospel. The Gospel is good news for all who hear, and the faith of Christianity hinges on what took place on the cross. It all starts in the Garden of Eden, and that is where Michael Petrila leads us in our reflection of Good Friday.

On Palm Sunday, Jesus came in on a donkey completely subverting the perspectives of his disciples and followers. When they wanted a conquering king that would overthrow Rome, Jesus let everyone down by coming in God’s way. Pastor Bill, teaches us how Jesus will constantly let us down if we hold on to our perspectives of God’s plan for the world. In order to properly align ourselves with the subversive reality of Jesus, we must let go of our plans.

We are continuing with our focus on the spiritual discipline of 'fasting'. Pastor Bill helped clear the foggy nature of this discipline, by defining what it is and what it isn't. Fasting is a way that realigns, clarifies, and centers our minds and souls to God. Listen this week as we learn how this discipline has given prominent figures throughout scripture guidance in walking in step with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

"Appetites are not the driver for behavior." Continuing with our discussion on Fasting, Pastor Bill walks us through how fasting equips us to fight Satan and the flesh. We revisit Matthew 4, as Jesus is in the wilderness, assessing how he is not at his weakest, but because of the discipline of fasting, Jesus was at his strongest. Join us as we learn to join in the fight against spiritual warfare through the discipline of fasting.

In Matthew 4, Jesus is taken by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness where Jesus is tempted by Satan. By analyzing how Satan attacks Jesus, we are able to know how he also attacks us. Guest teacher Listen, as guest teacher Chris Weinand helps us understand the tactics of Satan and how we as the church can stand against his advances.

Fasting is a discipline that invites humanity to pray with our bodies. It also is an avenue where we can stand in solidarity with the poor. Pastor Darren leads us through Isaiah 58, as we understand how we can intentionally fast to relate to those who are poor and marginalized in our world. Join the Garden as we learn how to stand against oppression and stand for justice, one meal at a time.

Once confronted by Jezebel, Elijah is sent into an escape from his homeland. During this time, God turned Elijah's escape and turned it into an encounter with God. Pastor Bill, walks us through this story of Elijah going to Mt. Herman and the lesson he learned about the power of silence. It is here where we are invited to join Elijah to listen to the sound of silence and find God speaking in the midst of it.

In the wilderness away from people, work, traffic, music, television, and all other distractions, we find silence. For most, if not all of humanity, silence can seem to be violent to our souls. However, upon examining the lifestyle of Jesus we find that he found strength in silence and solitude. It seems that when Jesus was away from everything that the world deems important, he was able to find communion with the Father. Listen as Pastor Darren invites us into our first Spiritual Discipline as we learn to live like Jesus, Silence + Solitude.

While community, practice, and teaching may all help with transformation, they are not the primary source of transformation. The final step of transformation changes when our environment is changed and replaced with the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit that comes in and uses our community, our practices, and teachings to transform and strengthen our will. Listen as Pastor Darren helps us understand, fully, how we can change into Christ-likeness.

The Way of Jesus, or the Way of the Cross, is not a way to be taken lightly. As Bonhoeffer said, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." How do we live a life marked by carrying our cross, self-denial, and death? Pastor Bill Dogeterom helps us walk through this paradigm and what it means for us in the midst of our everyday ordinary lives.

Discipleship needs to be done in community. Especially, during our current age where communities can be found through social media, blogs, and websites. Authentic community that builds, sustains, exposes, challenges, and forms us into Christlikeness is found in the church. Listen as our guest speaker, Megan Fate Marshman helps continue our Practicing the Way of Jesus series, and helps us understand the role of community in our relationship to each other and God.

Doing something is different than wanting to do something. I order to live a life in the way of Jesus, we have to reshape the way we do life. This includes the way that we incorporate practices of Jesus. These practices take many shapes and forms but ultimately are rooted in the person of Jesus. Listen, as Pastor Darren walks us deeper into Intentional Spiritual Formation, as we discuss the importance of, practices.

We as humans are constantly being formed by the world around us. If we are not careful, we will be shaped to look more like the culture of the world, while thinking we are moving more towards Christ-likeness. Listen as Pastor Darren helps us set up a paradigm that will help us live lives of intentional spiritual formation. This will be our foundation to practice the way of Jesus, by being with Jesus, becoming like Jesus, and doing what Jesus did.

With the start of each new year, there comes an overarching sense of reflection of the past year, and the hopeful planning of the year to come. Pastor Bill walks us through his reflection of becoming more like Jesus, and why because God is always there in the midst of victories and failures we are called to tune our hearts to him and his voice. Listen as we start this new year off with a new sense of our place in the relationship between Creator and creation.

Christmas has become so familiar to us. However, when we take a closer look at the Christmas story, we realize that Jesus' birth is anything but familiar. Join us as Pastor Darren helps reintroduce us to the Christmas story, as the radical arrival of the Messiah, Jesus.

"I have to get to this meeting. I have to make sure I can post this. I have to make sure I have time for my family, friends, and myself." Our culture is constantly moving us into a space that is marked by hurry, and it is stretching us thin and wearing us out. In order to thrive in the midst of the 21st century, we need to adopt the lifestyle and pace of our God and Rabbi, Jesus. Listen as Pastor Darren walks us through practical steps in living an unhurried life.

John Rinehart joins us in his second message at Garden Church on the practicals of generosity. In order to live a life that is rooted in the generous God of the Bible, we need to make drastic shifts in our day to day. We do not want to be people marked by how much we earn, but by how much we give. Join us in learning practical ways to implement a generous lifestyle.

Because YAHWEH is so generous and loving, his people should be just as generous and loving. God has been so good since the beginning of creation, the redemption of His people, and the continual outpouring of His Spirit. Once we truly understand this about God, we can then live out a radically different life marked by generosity. Listen as our guest speaker, John Rinehart, walks us through the 'Theology of Generosity'.

In order to be a redemptive presence in today's world, followers of Jesus have to go deeper. It takes more than just being with Jesus and becoming like him, we are also called to do the things that Jesus did. We are a living and breathing representation of Jesus' ministry in the 21st century America, meaning we are to be continuing his ministry here and now. Join us as Pastor Darren lays out this final overview of our Practicing the Way of Jesus series.