Midtown Church Austin

John 15:1-8. Jesus teaches us that to become like him, we must be with him, and we can be with him today through the power of the Spirit.

Mark 1:16-20. Jesus's invitation to follow him is an invitation to become like him, restoring us to who he created us to be.

Haggai 2. In a time of great discouragement, Haggai urges the remnant to be strong, have hope, and check their hearts.

Haggai 1. After more than forty years in exile, the remnant community returned to Jerusalem to rebuild their home. When the temple reconstruction is halted, God sends Haggai to the nation's leaders to address the ambivalence which had taken root in their hearts.

Psalm 63: To keep our passion for God alive, our desire must be for God, our delight must be in God, our dependence must be on God, and our deliverance must come from God.

Psalm 51. What do you do when you feel impossibly helpless about the guilt in your life? In Psalm 51, David teaches us that when we come to God with gutsy guilt, God gives gob stopping grace.

Psalm 3. This psalm is a lament Psalm retelling the time David fled from his son Absalom. It helps us see a real-life example of what it looks like to see our faith grow as we take our fears and anxieties to God.

Psalm 8. God is magnificent because he created the entire universe, and we are significant because we're made in his image and called to represent him in the world.

Psalm 116. When we pray to God in our distress and experience his deliverance, we grow in our love for God and our faith in God. We can rest because we know he is good.

Ruth 4. Experiencing God's loyal love through others has the power to move us to witness, redeem broken lives, and make our lives significant.

Ruth 3. The story of Ruth teaches us that God's extraordinary love is expressed through the actions of ordinary (and often the most unlikely) people. This is especially in times of suffering and cultural confusion. In this teaching, we consider Ruth's conversation with Boaz on the threshing floor and reflect on how Ruth's actions teach Boaz and Naomi about the extraordinary love of God.

Ruth 2. There's a mystery about where God's sovereignty intersects humanity's free will. We can experience this mystery through "as it turned out" moments when we trust God's providence while faithfully trying to find favor.

Ruth 1. To keep our faith while facing difficult trials, we must believe in God's providence (that He is in control) and God's promises (that He can be trusted). Circumstances don't tell us what God is like, but His promises do.

Matthew 7:24-29. Jesus ends his sermon by warning his readers about what happens to people who don't put to practice his teaching. His warning should cause us to evaluate what foundation we're building our lives upon and put his teachings into practice.

Matthew 7:13-23. Jesus invites us to follow his narrow and hard way that leads to life, and he warns us about the easy and wide way that leads to death - the way of religion and the world.

Matthew 7:12. Jesus summarizes the Sermon on the Mount with the Golden Rule. As much as we love the idea of the Golden Rule on paper, we often follow one of two unwritten rules of our own.

Matthew 7:7-11. Jesus teaches that we can pray with confidence when we ask God to help us become more like Jesus. We can pray confidently because we know it's what God wants for us, God can do it, and He's a good Father.

Jesus' command to not judge is one of our favorites to enforce in the lives of others, but when we try to live by it ourselves, we find it seemingly impossible. We will explore Jesus' position on the subject and its implications for those who want to follow him in this teaching.

Biblical hope is the joyful and confident expectation of what's to come based on something trustworthy. Jesus's resurrection is the trustworthy event that makes Christians have hope that everything will be made new.

I Corinthians 15:3-8. No one expected Jesus to rise from the men and women closest to him. Why did they document their unbelief, what caused them to change into those who proclaimed having seen Jesus risen, and what doe it mean for us today?

Philippians 2:8,9. Jesus's resurrection signaled the start of his restoration of the world, a restoration born through weakness, not power. Weakness is the way of God, the way to God, and the way we partner with God in restoring the world.

Matthew 6:33. Jesus announced the availability of the Kingdom of God to all people. In this teaching, we will unpack Jesus' gospel of the Kingdom and His expectation for those who would become His disciples.

Matthew 6:25-34. We worry because something is wrong in the world and something is wrong with our hearts. We can be free from worry when we believe that we're valuable to God and that he knows what we need and will provide.

Matthew 6:19-24. What we believe about God affects our entire lives, from the inside out. In this teaching, Jesus shows us how our vision of God influences our relationship to wealth, materiality, and the poor.

Matthew 6:16-18. We will practice fasting more regularly when we understand how our bodies affect our spirits and our spirits affect our bodies. We'll realize how fasting helps keep our minds on God when we do.

Matthew 6:5-13. Jesus teaches us how to pray and how not to pray. He promises great rewards for those who pray secretly and simply.

Matthew 6:1-4. Our Father notices us and wants to reward us for our good works, but if we do good works to look good to others, we'll miss out on God's reward.

Matthew 5:38-48. We can only break the cycle of Us vs. Them when we don't retaliate and overcome evil by doing good like praying for our enemies, serving them, and befriending them.

Matthew 5:33-37. Jesus teaches people to be those who keep their word. We keep our word because we were created to reflect God, the promise keeper, and called to love others, as God loves them.

Isaiah 58:6-11. The spiritual practice of fasting has benefits and dangers, so we need to ask what kind of fast God has chosen?

Isaiah 54:1-5. It's time to move from a survival mentality to a "thrival" mentality. We should expect great things from God and attempt great things for God.

Genesis 12:1-3. Why does God bless us? He blesses us because he is good, and he's up to something good. How should we respond to his blessings? By blessing God and blessing others.

II Corinthians 9:10-12. The generosity of one church leads to thanksgiving in another church and God being glorified in His Church.

II Corinthians 8:1-5. The kingdom of God expands through the sacrificial generosity of churches and God's people.

Matthew 5:27-32. Jesus discusses how the misuse and misappropriation of sexual desire lead to the objectification and oppression of others and why this is such a big deal.

Matthew 5:21-26. Our relationship with God is inseparably tied to our relationship with people. Only through repentance and forgiveness can we live at peace with one another.

Matthew 5:17-20. Jesus believed that the scriptures were inspired, trustworthy, unchanging, and fulfilled in him. If Jesus saw the scriptures this way, they should not be neglected or unexamined by us.

Luke 10:38-42. Doing things for God apart from being with God leads to emotionally unhealthy spirituality. There are four symptoms to help diagnose if you're making this mistake.

Matthew 5:13-16. Jesus invites his followers to partner with him in extending his kingdom in the world. As salt, we preserve the world from evil and make the world a more flavorful place. As light, we provide illumination for people to see Jesus.

Matthew 5:1-12. Jesus's kingdom was an upside-down kingdom that sees people differently than the world's kingdoms, and it was a kingdom comprised of the powerless, not the powerful.

Matthew 4:12-25. Jesus's ministry on earth can be summed up in this one sentence; "The kingdom of heaven is near." The people of his day were expecting a king who would establish a new kingdom by forming a new people, confronting evil, and bringing freedom.

John 4:4-26. Jesus offers us living water so that we will never thirst again. Though we often fail to access it, Jesus provides abundant and eternal life that we can't find in the world.

John 3:1-16. Jesus explains to Nicodemus the mystery and the Spirit's work in illumining our hearts to see Jesus and the process by which the Spirit does it.

Mark 2:1-12. Our spiritual needs are greater than our physical needs. Jesus came to heal them both, but he knew that spiritual forgiveness was the starting place for spiritual and physical healing.

John 2:1-11. The human desire for joy is infinite because we were made by God and for God, and we can only be satisfied by an infinite God. Jesus came to make a way for us to experience the joy of the infinite God.

Matthew 4:12-17. Jesus came to expose our sins and call us to repentance. His patience and kindness toward us lead us to repentance to faith and ongoing repentance as we follow him.

Matthew 3:13-4:2. Jesus was unhurried, present in each moment, and interruptable for his Father and people. He lived this way because he is love, and love is patient.

Matthew 11:28-30. Only once did Jesus describe his heart, and he said he is gentle and humble in heart. His gentle and humble heart is what made him draw near to the lowly and offer them rest, the rest that he experienced through his pace and practices.

John 1:35-50. Jesus knows us and calls us by name. He knows our backstory, our current circumstances, and our future.

Matthew 4:18-25. Jesus invited his disciples to not only watch his life and ministry but to join him in it. He trained them to do what he did.