The Summit Church

<p>You are either a sheep or a goat. You are either committed to the mission, all-in for Jesus, using your resources for the Kingdom, or you are not. You are either praised for your commitment and welcomed into the kingdom or condemned and left out of it. No middle-ground. And that puts the lukewarm Christian in a very precarious position.</p>

<p>So much of our soul unrest comes from having a 'contract' mentality with God.</p>

<p>The value you place on something is shown by what you’ll give up for it. When Jesus talked about finding the Kingdom, he used terms like that. He taught that finding the Kingdom was like finding something of such incredible value that you’d gladly leave everything else behind to get it.</p>

<p>This weekend is going to answer a lot of questions for you. It’s going to explain the dynamics of what is going on in your heart when the Word of God is being taught and why some people, even though they are really smart, can’t seem to grasp the truth and don’t believe. It will explain why so many well-meaning people interpret the Bible in different ways and why sometimes the Bible feels so hard to obey.</p>

<p>When it comes to racial reconciliation, none of us are where we should be. But we can all walk forward together.</p>

<p>Each person has been uniquely assigned a role in bringing glory to God. Comparing roles only leads to discord; our call is to hear the words of Christ – “Follow me.”</p>

<p>If the resurrection happened, it's 'game on' for all things Christian. If it didn't, then it's game over!</p>

<p>This week we’ll walk through the actual moments of the crucifixion and see the clues the writers put in there to explain why it happened. And then, we’ll do what we’ve done the previous weeks of our series, “Instead of Me”—we’ll see how the responses of the people surrounding the events are supposed to give us pictures of us.</p>

<p>In "Accused for Me" we’ll look at how the four primary characters surrounding Jesus’ trial represent us and give a glimpse into four potential ways we can respond to Jesus.</p>

<p>As we continue our series, “Instead of Me,” we’ll look at just why Jesus endured the rejection and abandonment of his loving Father and why it makes all the difference for our lives.</p>

<p>You can tell whether you are a “Judas” or a “Mary” by how you respond when life disappoints you. Do you get angry, like Judas, because God doesn’t seem to keep up his end of the deal, or do you, like Mary, consider Jesus a better treasure than an easy life? Which one do you relate to more?</p>

<p>Moses, the good-looking, adopted son of Pharaoh, actually starts Exodus 3 as a pretty insecure guy after a string of setbacks. We’ll see this weekend through his story that confidence comes not from discovering greater things about yourself or tapping into your potential but rather from seeing how big and powerful God is, discovering his purposes for your life, and getting swept up in them.</p>

<p>Many people think the second commandment (don’t make carved images) is just a restatement of the first commandment (don’t have other gods before God). They’re actually quite different. The first is about worshipping other gods instead of God; the second is about worshipping the right God in the wrong way. We may not think we can relate much to this commandment because we don’t have any gold statues in our homes that we bow down to every day. But as we continue our “Not God Enough” series this weekend, we’ll see how we break this commandment whenever we elevate our preferences about God above God’s statements about himself.</p>

<p>This weekend, we’ll start our series “Not God Enough” and tackle the conception that God is just a slightly bigger, slightly smarter version of us and how it creates so many problems in our lives. There’s a man in the Bible who had more questions for God than anyone else I know of, and his story gives us some wisdom to apply to our questions about the universal problem of suffering.</p>

<p>Our prayer life, the content of our prayers or our lack of prayer, reveals the condition of our hearts.</p>

<p>When it comes to prayer, there are a lot of stories from the Bible and truths that just hurt your mind when you try to understand them. One of those is the indication from Scripture that God knows the end from the beginning and will accomplish his fixed and eternal plan. So why pray? Does that mean that prayer is less a way of changing God’s mind and more a way of changing us?</p>

<p>Aren’t you glad there’s a story in the Bible where Jesus explains to his disciples how to pray? He even gives us a model prayer to follow. This week Pastor J.D. walked us through the Lord’s Prayer and shared some practical suggestions for how to either start a daily prayer time or jump-start your prayer time if you’ve gotten into a rut.</p>

<p>The first week of our new series, “Ask,” will not just be an attempt to get you to make a New Year’s resolution about your prayer life. Together we’ll look at Jesus’ example and see that his whole life was saturated with prayer and that the main way we access his power is by praying in four specific ways.</p>

<p>For all that I need, all that I lack, all that I could never be in myself,<br>Jesus is the great I AM.</p>

<p>There is freedom in not having to worry whether you will face adversity or prosperity today when you are in and with the Prince of Peace!</p>

<p>You’ve got to stop viewing your Heavenly Father through the lens of your earthly one. Reverse the order: Understand your earthly father through the lens of your Heavenly one.</p>

<p>What is the best thing God can do for you in the midst of any given problem? Do you trust him as Wonderful Counselor, and are you ready to do whatever he says?</p>

<p>Waiting can be hard, because in waiting, what we want to happen just hasn't happened yet. And waiting can especially be hard at Christmas. In Luke chapter two, there's a Christmas story for those who wait. It's not the Christmas story most of us are familiar with.</p>

<p>Unlike Esther, who was not confident her life would be saved if she obeyed God, we know how the story ends: God wins. The only question is whether or not we’re willing to follow God’s purpose for our lives and be a part of what he is doing in the world.</p>

<p>As we finish strong in our two-year Multiply faith journey, it’s timely to take a look at a passage in Galatians 6 that speaks to the principle of sowing and reaping. We’ll look at how God multiplies in kingdom fruit what we offer to him with open hands and how our money infallibly reveals what we worship.</p>

<p>Paul ends his letter to the Galatians by tying together his two main concerns of gospel integrity and relational unity and giving a litany of practical applications—not a list of things to do but out-workings of what has been done for us through Jesus Christ.</p>

<p>One of the familiar themes from Galatians is the finished work of Jesus and the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. Paul wants us to understand that sin will lose its grip on our lives when we focus less on limiting the power of sin—the desire to do the opposite of the fruit of the Spirit—and more on the growing presence of God in our lives. Only when we soak ourselves in the love of Jesus and what he did for us will we really come alive and bear fruit.</p>

<p>In this message, Pastor J.D. talks about the ongoing uses for the law in our lives and learn how being justified by faith actually drives us in devotion back to the law and gives us the desire to obey out of love for God our Father.</p>

<p>Have you ever been at a point where you wondered why, even after becoming a Christian, you still feel unhappy or you can’t find peace or satisfaction or you just can’t make a relationship work? In his letter to the Galatians, which we’ll continue studying this weekend, the Apostle Paul explains why we can’t just think of salvation as simply Jesus Christ paying our sin debt. We have to recognize that sin leaves us not only guilty before God but also unable to live the Christian life, and the only way we can grow is in the same way we started in the Christian life: through faith in Christ’s finished work.</p>

<p>In this message Pastor J.D. unpacks four kinds of freedom that Paul says we should have when we believe in Jesus - all illustrated in a story of a confrontation between Paul and Peter.</p>

<p>God has given you a lens through which to see how God has been preparing you - through your gifts and experiences and even through your sins and failures - to tell others about his grace, and he’s given you his Word in which to ground your statement of belief.</p>

<p>In the first message from the series "Freedom in the In-Between", Pastor J.D. talks about why Martin Luther considered it the most important book of the Bible, how only the gospel of Jesus Christ has the power to save us, and why we have to fight for it.</p>

<p>Many of us suffer from something that we often cannot see in its entirety in ourselves: an undisciplined life. The book of Proverbs gives us a lot of instruction and rebuke to those of us that find ourselves neck deep in indiscipline.</p>

<p>"Eat, drink, and be merry” may not sound like sound biblical instruction, but that often seems like Solomon’s main point in the book of Ecclesiastes. God wants his people to "eat, drink, and be merry", but that is not the end of it. Solomon is speaking from the perspective of one who, like us, lives under the sun. In this message, Pastor J.D. looks at the conclusions drawn in Ecclesiastes and how they should shape the lives of us as believers, who know there is much more to look forward to over the sun.</p>

<p>Ecclesiastes makes no apologies for its blunt talk about the senselessness of living. In this message, Pastor J.D. looks at several ways Solomon experienced this absurdity but also what we should do while we are under the sun in light of our eternal perspective and what we know to be true over the sun.</p>

<p>Our default mode is to "be better", "do more", and "try harder" in order preserve and provide for ourselves and our families. But in Psalm 127, we are reminded that we will only experience the true rest that God promises when we embrace our true role and trust in him, because he has already provided for us.</p>

<p>In 1 Kings 11, the downfall of the wisest man who ever lived seems to come out of nowhere. But does it really? Were there any warning signs along the way? In this message, Pastor J.D. takes a look at what brings a good man, even the world’s wisest man, down and what we can learn from his mistakes.</p>

<p>Matthew 25:14-30</p>

<p>In this message, Pastor J.D. takes a closer look at Solomon’s prayer of dedication of the temple. We’ll see how, in his embodiment of his knowledge of God and thanks for God’s faithfulness, our right understanding of God can lead us to ask him in faith to use us and pour out his blessing.</p>

<p>At the most basic level, what does it take to be a fruitful Christian?</p>

<p>The fruit of the Spirit is not about achieving something, because you can’t anyways. Rather, it is about knowing someone, and his name is Jesus.</p>

<p>In this message, Pastor Will Toburen shares five characteristics of faithful evangelism that we see from the encounter Jesus had with the Samaritan woman at the well.</p>

<p>One of the greatest misconceptions about the church is that we don't sin very much. We often live superficial lives of fake smiles. Sadly, over time God's people have learned to hide sin and sorrow. But the church is not a showcase of Colgate smiles. It's a hospital for sinners.</p>

<p>In Malachi we see how the cycle of Israel’s persistent unfaithfulness is mirrored in many people’s lives today. Though they keep trying harder and doing more religious things, Malachi reminds them—and us—that we cannot do more to make a way for our reconciliation with God but that he would send someone who would do it for us.</p>