Dwell Christian Church

One of our last Sundays as Dwell Christian Church, we spent a time of sharing stories from the past and ultimately hopes for our future.

In the final sermon on the fruit of the spirit and spiritual discernment, we finish looking at reliable signs of true spirituality.

What does it mean to walk by the Spirit? One thing it means is to look to our hearts and find our affections in God.

PBC Willow Glen Elder Tom Tanquary shares with us from Philippians.

Freedom is a more complicated subject then we often realize. What does Paul mean by freedom in Christ and do rules have any place in the Christian life?

Jesus commands us to abide in his love that in him we may find the strength to follow him in obedience and love one another.

How do discern real spiritual growth?  Jesus gives us some clues using the imagery of a vine and its branches.  We are to abide in him if we are to produce any real spiritual fruit.

Tom Tanquary from PBC Willow Glen shares with us about God's Glory through Exodus. 

Author and Pastor Chris Nye shares with us from Matthew on Christ's forgiveness. 

Pastor Chris Tenny speaks to the seasons of life and God's seasons and how they apply to our day to day life.

Gary Vanderet from PBC Willow Glen shares with us from Isaiah. 

What do we mean and we don’t mean by “scripture alone."

Many understand that it is by faith we saved but few understand what faith alone means.  Faith is about trust in Jesus.  True faith in Jesus should guide us into doing good works and away from self-reliant works to justify ourselves.  Faith is also a means to knowledge, to greater understanding and learning.

Jesus did not come to tell us what to do, but to serve us and deliver us from our enslavement.  Too often we seek our own glory, even in the name of serving Christ and thus abuse our power.  It is the abuse of power Christ came against, to free to us from using others to serving others with joy.

Abraham is a well story but we sometimes forget he was Abram first.  He was not as “blessed” as we may perceive and his life is a life of faith in the one who blessed.  Have we too forgotten whose we are?

Continuing in our new series Life Explored, guest speaker Pastor Steve  Patton shared with us from Mark 10:17-31, The Trustworthy God. 

The Bible asserts us that God is good and that this is something creation makes clear, and is reflected in our own humanity. The trouble is don't always seem like he is good. But rather than questioning his goodness, perhaps we should wrestle with what we think is good and if the good we wish he was is actually good.

Three things we learn from Psalm 37 about delighting in the Lord and finding the desires of our hearts.

The final sermon in our series "Romans". 

How do we love people with whom we disagree? In Romans 15:1-13 Paul says it is the gospel that we find what we need in order to love those whom we disagree.  We are challenged by how Christ has challenged and encouraged us so that we can lay aside our preferences for the sake of others.

Christians are not under the law, but they are under grace and to love one another. Every once in awhile a Christian needs to wake up, put on Christ and fulfill the law of love.

The Bible encourages us to submit to governing authorities. We are given reasons for the good government does as well as its limits. By having a realistic view of government we can help but politics back in its rightful place.

How can we have genuine love in the face of changing emotions and circumstances? What does genuine love even look like? In this passage, we examine the foundation of genuine love, the radicalness of genuine love and the relentlessness of love in the face of evil and hardship. 

In our third sermon on spiritual gifts, we look at kingly gifts, gifts of leadership and organization. Leadership is redefined by Jesus as service but our weakness and brokenness often get in the way of using our gifts to bless. The good news is God can use our greatest weakness to give us great hope.

The second part in our series on spiritual gifts. The prophetic gifts are those associated with knowledge and speaking. What are these gifts and how should they be used?

Paul says in Romans 12:1-2 that in light of all that God has done in Christ to give us salvation, we should give of our whole selves to serve him and others. We continually offer ourselves up as living sacrifices by not conforming to this world but to be transformed through a mind renewed by the Spirit and learning God’s will to be true in lives.

What hope is there for Israel?

Romans 9 discusses the difficult questions about Israel in light of the gospel and their status as God’s “elect.” God remains free to show his grace to whom he chooses and this is beyond human understanding. God’s actions to save are always rooted in his character and gracious and merciful and not in favoritism. His purposes remain redemptive and to incorporate people into his purposes to redeem.

Romans 8:26-30 gives us assurance how God is working in the midst of our struggles. The Spirit of God himself groans within us. That God can use anything to shape us in Christ and that we are destined for glory.

Life is filled with a lot of difficulty and suffering, whether due to our sin or our human frailty. We often wonder why God would permit us to go through such difficulties and struggle with the lack of an answer. But Paul does tell us that in the gospel and sovereign God who suffers with us, we groan, wait, and hope.

Guest Speaker Paul Nunez shares with us from Romans 8:11-17 about the mortification of sin. 

Romans 8 begins with one of the great statements in scripture that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ. We are assured to escape God's judgment against sin. This fills us with great hope and with great humility.

Romans tells us we are justified by faith in Christ apart from the law. So what should be a Christian’s relationship to the law now? In this passage, we explore three ways the Gospel calls us to live free from the law.

Paul addresses the second question in Romans 6 that if a Christian is not under the law, do they have a license to sin. He argues now we are bound by grace. We are no longer a slave to sin but a slave to God. We often think freedom must be the ability to chose to do what we desire without outside influence. But freedom is not so simplistic nor desirable. Sin leads to death but being a slave to God leads to life everlasting with God and others.

Guest Speaker Pastor Justin Buzzard, (Garden City Church), shared from us from the book of Mark. 

In 2 Samuel 9, we explore one of the most powerful pictures of the kindness of God. David has ascended to the throne and is looking to show kindness for the sake of Jonathan to anyone from the house of Saul. The only person still alive from the house of Saul is a destitute cripple named Mephibosheth.  In this passage, we examine what it means that God’s kindness is really “covenant" kindness, and what it means for Christians to live every day as recipients of God’s covenant kindness.  

The Bible depicts Adam as the one who brought sin into the world and spread it to us all. Individually everyone falls short of God’s ideal and corporately we all contribute to the problem as well. But Paul wants to make clear that grace abounds more and more over sin. God’s grace does not just cancel out sin but is a power far greater than the power of sin in our life. If we receive death through Adam because of sin, we receive grace and eternal life through Jesus.

Paul pauses in Romans 5:1-11 to reflect on the immense blessings we have in being made right with God. Peace with God gives us hope to not only merely survive life’s difficulties but to be made better by them. It is the love of God that has been poured into our hearts and gives us a peace that is more than simply the absence of enemies, but a thriving joy filled life.

Christianity is not about having faith like giants such as Abraham, but about having a faith like Abraham, in the God who can do the impossible. Often we fail to see the significance of ordinary lives of sacrifice and miss that our faith is in the God who gives life to the dead. Paul shows that faith to resist to do good and resist evil, it's about mustering up the strength but about trusting God to give life to the dead, the God who raised Jesus from the dead.

Guest Speaker Pastor Gary Vanderet shares from Hebrews 11:1-7, The Nature of Faith.

What does it mean to live by faith? Paul uses the story of Abraham to show that God has always used people who simply trust him. Abraham’s life is an example of faith through the ups and downs, was oriented towards God and for the sake of those who would believe.

The heart of Paul’s gospel in Romans is that we are justified by faith in Christ. In this message we look at what that means and how we receive the righteousness of God through Christ, and what differences that makes for us individually and even socially in our fractured society.

Romans 3:9-20 is Paul’s concluding argument that all humanity is under the power of sin. It is a part of the story that we have rebelled against our Creator and that all the sin and evil in the world is the result of us cutting ourselves off from God. Despite the strong belief in our individual goodness, even our culture tells stories exploring the depths of human evil that are peculiar to the modern world. Stories of machines taking over, rebelling against their creators, human beings, resemble the Biblical narrative but differ in important ways that reveal God’s goodness and mercy to redeem a fallen race.

A large portion of the Bible tells the story of Israel which we often neglect in stressing the offer of salvation through Jesus. This can cause many of us to wonder if God's plan really worked or that the gospel was plan B. Paul says the failures of Israel does not cancel out God's faithfulness and his grace doesn't give a license for sin either.

Romans 2:17-29 continues Paul’s critique of religion and says traditional markers of Jewish identity were no good if their obedience did not come from the heart. In this, we see a critique of cultural pride and thinking our way is better than another. But we also see God bringing different kinds of people together through the gospel and repairing our divisions through repenting of cultural pride and living by the Spirit.

The picture of human idolatry and immorality in Romans 1 gets a lot of attention. But equally important is Romans 2 depicting the arrogance religious people. We start this section looking at religious hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is a danger for everyone, but especially the religious who are rightly criticized by the irreligious often uses things taught by their own faith. The solution then is found in a deeper understanding of the gospel not a denial of it. It is to move beyond a superficial faith and become a whole people that embody grace based correction and judgmental law based correction.

 In our Romans series, we will pause to look at challenging topics such as Rom. 1:26-27. In this message we seek to make a case for compassion, to address what scripture says, to ask what we do with it today, and to provide hope through the gospel for we have been washed, sanctified and justified by the Lord Jesus Christ, awaiting our eternal glory in Christ. Following the sermon is a Q&A.

Paul beings to unpack the state of human sinfulness in the second half of chapter one. The primary problem is our rejection of God, our lack of trust in him not specific sins. Two things are asserted here that people really struggle to hear, the wrath of God and human sinfulness. But this is good news, for God’s wrath is an expression of his love and understanding sin helps diagnosis our problem.

Romans 1:16-17 contains Paul’s thesis for the whole letter that God has shown his righteousness in the power of the gospel to saved anyone. Paul is not only trying to spell out what the gospel is and what it means throughout the letter, but also how it unites people to God in Christ and to each other in the church.

Luke ends on a strange note but it assures us that Paul’s message is about Jesus and the kingdom of God just as Jesus’ message was. It assures us that the gospel will go forward not simply in spite of but in the very midst of hardships and opposition. The very nature of a message about salvation through a crucified and resurrected Savior who is also Lord also characterizes the lives of those who are called to follow him. Paul’s life embodies this message and so should ours. A message of sacrifice undergirded with hope.

Acts 27 contains a detailed account of a shipwreck where God providentially spared Paul and everyone else on the ship. This is not just an engaging story, but one that instructs us in how God works in his providence to accomplish his purposes: to show us his goodness and mercy, to take the gospel to all people, and to see his hand in everyday things.