A Family Devotional for Thanksgiving

Gratitude increases your spiritual vision. Daily thanking God for His provision increases our ability to see His faithfulness. We’ll quickly discover that God's provisions and blessings have always been there, our hearts just needed to catch up…

Pastor Ryan took us forward on the journey of generosity with a simple reminder to make giving a priority. The Bible gives us principles for giving that have been practiced for centuries in the Christian church. The first fruits principle says to give to God first before using any of your income on yourself, expenses, or savings...

Pastor Ryan continued our series and brought up a core focus of stewarding our finances, our hearts. Who would have thought that our hearts would play a major role in how we manage, spend, and give of our finances. We know that a heart changed by Jesus is going to live like Jesus. We learned we have to guard our hearts or else…

Pastor Ryan began our new series The Journey of Generosity in one of the most generous times of the year. As Pastor Ryan said, generosity isn’t a destination, it’s a journey. We learned today that God is very generous. We get our generosity from God. Generosity is admired and celebrated in the days and life of Jesus. God’s greatest expression of generosity was in the giving of His Son for our salvation.

Pastor Ryan concluded the Building Bridges series by challenging us to rethink and adapt how we’ve looked at church. We were encouraged to think more like a missionary church instead of a stationary church. We learned that over 2000 years ago

What do you do when you come across a person who thinks, holds beliefs, votes, and advocates for things differently than you? How do you have a respectful and beneficial conversation, even if you disagree? Is it possible to disagree without burning bridges... even walking away on good terms? Yes, I do believe it is possible! Here are some tips for having respectful conversations with people…

Pastor Ryan was joined by Dorothy Wood and they opened up today’s message with the point that this Building Bridges series was inspired by the opportunity to help people see Jesus, the Christian faith, and His followers in a new way. Pastor Ryan said he has spent a lot of time helping people who have damaged views and misconceptions of the church, both valid, but both needing to be addressed. If we are careful to be wise around non-Christians…

In this series so far we’ve learned how important it is to build bridges. This week Pastor Ryan started to break down how we build bridges and even shared a powerful video testimony to show us a method we can use. Between last week’s story in John 4 and today’s scripture, we see Jesus was successful at building bridges by doing the following:

Pastor Ryan unpacked portions of John 4 showing us the intentionality and the purposeful love Jesus had for the people of Samaria. We learned that historical and cultural barriers can be broken down if were willing to stop avoiding and start embracing people different than us. Jesus shocked the Samaritan woman and his own disciples through this encounter at the local well in Samaria. Jesus built a bridge by going through Samaria and caring for one woman.

Pastor Ryan starting building further into the series by showing us how we are called to build bridges too. We learned from John 1 that God uses people to build bridges or point and show the way to Jesus. Last week we learned Jesus is the bridge to God, this week we learned we are like bridges to Jesus. Some of us may not feel all that worthy...

Pastor Ryan did a soft launch to our new series today as we celebrated lives who have crossed over from death to life. Pastor Ryan showed us the heart of God for sinner’s in Luke 15 and how much He loves when we repent and the lost is found. We learned that Jesus is the way to God, He is the bridge.

Pastor Ryan wrapped up our Together series taking us through a journey of the early church going into the world to make disciples (devoted followers) of Jesus. We discovered that we are not alone because the Holy Spirit goes with us and that there is strength in numbers.

Pastor Ryan took our together series to the next focus of fellowship that encourages spiritual growth. We learned that we are to grow and go deeper in Christ, together. Jesus is the goal of our growth, He’s the blueprint for who we are becoming, the inspiration for building up another.

Being together is more than about coffee and donuts because real-life issues that need our care and attention are going to come up. It’s often those real-life issues that are moments of growth for everyone in the fellowship. You grow, we all grow, when we apply scripture to care and carry one another’s burdens.

This past Sunday Pastor Ryan began a new series entitled TOGETHER. We heard Pastor Ryan’s heart come out and really the Word of God as he showed us in scripture that we belong together, therefore we are not alone.