Missio Dei LA Sermons

We all wrestle with anxiety. For some, it's obvious; for others, it's hidden well. At times, it's a mild uneasiness; at other times, it's a debilitating fear. However it manifests itself, experiencing anxiety is part of the human experience. And yet, the Apostle can write that we should be anxious about anything. What does he know that we don't? (note: Pastor Mike meant to credit Dane Ortlund for the backstory of "O Love That Will Not Let Me Go" at the end of the sermon.)

In the Beatitudes, Jesus declares, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy." In the first of two sermons on this Beatitude, we consider the connection between mercy and Jesus' declaration that He came not to call the righteous but sinners.

The Declaration of Independence includes "the pursuit of happiness" among the unalienable rights granted to every human being. And we are a people who relentlessly pursue happiness. Yet, study after study shows that we're not a particularly happy people. So then what is the key to happiness? Psalm 1 provides an answer.

According to Jesus, happiness is the result of hungering and thirsting for something more important than happiness.

Many of us wonder whether Jesus' teachings actually "work" in real life or whether they're just pie-in-sky, wishful thinking. And in our world where things like aggression and self-promotion are seen as keys to success, perhaps no teaching of His elicits more incredulity than Matthew 5:5 - "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." How can this be true?

We like to picture the journey of faith as a smooth upward progression of ever-increasing trust in God. But our journeys are more like roller coasters of faith and doubt. But the good news is that God meets us and walks with us through every up and down.

In a culture in which the pursuit of happiness is seen as an inalienable right, Jesus declares that mourning is a prerequisite for a blessed life.

In the Beatitudes, Jesus gives us a very unexpected, countercultural, and counterintuitive description of a blessed person. The first characteristic of such a person is that they're "poor in Spirit." What does that mean, and why is it the foundation of being a blessed person?

If someone were to ask us for our goals, how many of them would focus on what we're trying to achieve and how many, if any, would focus on who we're trying to be? And how does our answer to this question affect our happiness?

Genesis 2:25 tells us that when God created Adam and Eve, they were "both naked and were not ashamed." They were both known and vulnerable without shame or fear. But once they sinned, they experienced shame in their nakedness, which led to fear, which led to hiding. And ever since then, shame has been a central element of the human condition, causing us to hide from God, one another, and even ourselves. But the Good News is that Jesus meets us in those very hiding places.

In John 5, Jesus approaches a man who's been immobilized for 38 years and asks him, "Do you want to be healed?" This seems like a silly question. Isn't the answer obviously "yes?" After all, who wouldn't want to be healed? But perhaps the answer isn't as obvious as it appears. Perhaps we actually don't want to be healed after all.

We would all agree that we want our world to be marked by justice. Yet, how do we define justice? What is it, and what does it require? How do we pursue it in this broken world? And how do we stay involved for the long haul?

According to a former U.S. Surgeon General, loneliness is a "growing health epidemic." In a recent survey, 2 in 5 Americans said that they sometimes or always feel that their relationships aren't meaningful (43%) and that they are isolated from others (43%). Earlier this year, the U.K. appointed a "Minister for Loneliness" to try to address the issue. Loneliness and social isolation are a growing issue throughout late-modern societies. In such a context, what, if anything, does the church have to say and do?

If asked to write it down, what would your life's mission statement be? Just as, or even more, importantly, how did you go about answering that question? Underneath these questions are two of the central questions of life: What is our purpose, and how can we know it?

In our highly polarized world, Jesus calls the church to embody a unity that points the world to the supernatural power of the gospel.

What picture would come to mind if you heard someone described as "holy?" Would you picture someone who, at best, is austere and who, at worst, is self-righteous and judgmental? That would probably be a pretty common reaction. But what if holiness has gotten a bad rap and is in fact the key to our wholeness?

We all long for joy and peace, but what are they, where can we find them, and is it possible to have them in the midst of sorrow and suffering?

God's heart is for every nation and every people group on earth. His redemptive love is offered to all peoples. And in His grace, He also grants us the privilege to play a role in the great story of salvation that He's writing. To hear more about the breadth of God's love and our role in making it known to others, you can listen to this week's sermon from our guest speaker.

Disappointment is an unavoidable part of life. Throughout our lives, we suffer disappointments, ranging from the minor to the life-altering. How does the Resurrection of Jesus speak to this reality, including disappointment with Jesus Himself?

Where do you draw life from? In John 15, Jesus uses the imagery of a Vine (Himself) and Branches (us) to highlight the fact that He alone is the True source of life and that it's only by staying intimately connected to Him that we can bear fruit as His followers.

In John 13-17, Jesus is giving His disciples, and by extension us, a hosts of promises as He prepares them for His death and the mission He'll send them on afterward. Among all of the astonishing promises Jesus gives, the greatest is the promise of the Holy Spirit. Yet for many, the Holy Spirit is a mysterious figure, leading some to ignore Him while leading others to develop "interesting" ideas about Him. However, Jesus not only promises us the Holy Spirit; Jesus also explains what it looks like when the Spirit is at work in our lives.

In one of his most famous statements, Jesus declares that He is "the Way, the Truth, and the Life." As we continue our series through John 13-17, we dive into what this statement means for us, and the ways that it helps us face the troubles of life.

Is Jesus the only way to God? Aren't all religions basically saying the same thing? Isn't it arrogant, divisive, and dangerous to make exclusive truth claims? Isn't it more important to live a good life rather than check off a set of beliefs? And what about those who've never heard the gospel? We confront these difficult questions as we take a look at one of Jesus' most challenging statements about Himself.

Home is one of the most powerful words in our language. At its best, it represents love, belonging, acceptance, safety, intimacy, and so much more. And when we have a place to call home, we're much better able to deal with the difficulties of life. In John 14, Jesus promises us that we have an ultimate home, the one toward which every earthly experience of home is but a sign, and that because of this, we should not let our hearts be troubled, even in the midst of great trouble.

In John 13-17, Jesus prepares His disciples for His impending death and the mission they'll be sent on afterward. Jesus begins this time of preparation through the "enacted parable" of washing His disciples' feet, through which he calls us to a life of radical servanthood. But even more foundationally, He invites us to be served by Him and His cleansing grace. 

As we think about the future, we often do so under the illusion that we're in control. Yet, because it's an illusion, it leads us to all sort of problems. However, because that's our ingrained default mode, giving up that illusion often leads us to nihilistic paralysis. Our guest speaker Alex Watlington describes how to avoid both of these pitfalls and points us toward the path of flourishing offered by Jesus.

As we conclude our brief series on praying for others, we consider how to pray for God's power in others' (and our) lives and what exactly it looks like when God's power is at work within us.

Hope is one of the most fundamental needs we have as human beings. Yet, where can we find our hope? What can we hope for? And can hope be anything more than wishful thinking or naive optimism? (Note from Pastor Mike: "I meant to acknowledge at the beginning that a few of the images/illustrations I use are drawn from "Seasons of Waiting" by Betsy Childs Howard)

Over the next several weeks, we'll look at examples from the Apostle Paul to help us learn to pray for others. In Colossians 1, Paul prays that the Colossians would be filled with the knowledge of God's will. But what exactly does that mean, and how can it shape the way we pray for others?

Why is praying regularly so hard for us? And can prayer be an avenue for our freedom? And is there anything unique about Christian prayer? As we begin our series on prayer, we look to Jesus Himself and His answer to these and other prayer-related questions.

As we begin a new year, we take a look at Jesus’ Parable of the Sower. This well-known parable is a powerful diagnostic tool for helping us reflect on the condition of our hearts so that we can have a more fruitful relationship with Jesus in 2018 and beyond.

We often wind up “domesticating” and “sentimentalizing” Christmas by making it about things that we can all get on board with – time with family, peace on earth, etc. However, even at His birth, Jesus elicited a variety of responses from people, including hostility, indifference, and worship. Why did people then, and why do people now, have such diverse responses to Him?

Why did your parents name you what they did? Was it in honor of someone who went before you, perhaps a relative or other significant individual? Was it because of the meaning of your name? Was it just because they liked the sound of it? In our culture, names have various levels of significance. However, in the Bible, names are very significant as they reveal something foundational about the person (or place or thing). In that light, we consider the names of Jesus and what they mean for us today. (Note: From 1:35-2:30, the congregation is given time to discuss a question. So you may want to skip that portion).

Christmas can be a difficult time for many, with one of the main sources of heartache being our families. As many of us wrestle with the challenges of family at this time of year, it’s right to wonder whether the Incarnation of Jesus into a specific family tree has anything to say to us in that heartache.

The Gospel of John famously opens by describing Jesus as “the Word.” But what does that mean, and what are its implications for things like our desire to belong, our confidence in God’s love, and our frenzied, fragmented selves?

How would you describe your relationship to money? Are you a Spender of money? Are you a Saver of money? Are you a Servant of money? Or are you a Servant with your money? As we conclude our series on Stewardship and Generosity, we consider what it looks to have and live out a vision where we serve others with the resources that God has entrusted to us and how that leads to our freedom and joy, the blessing of others, and ultimately the glory of God.

We often treat Jesus sort of like the local Goodwill, where we donate clothes that we weren’t planning on wearing anyway. Similarly, we often give Jesus control only of those things that either don’t matter that much to us or that we’ve clearly broken while withholding those areas of life that matter the most to us. And for many of us, one of those last areas is money. As we spoke about in the first sermon in our series, the doctrine of creation tells us that money, and material things generally, are good and something we can enjoy and delight in. In this week’s sermon, we discuss how the doctrine of the Fall shows us that money is very dangerous and something that can become one of the most powerful idols in our lives, one that Jesus seeks to liberate us from so that we can be a generous people.

How should Christians feel about money, material things, and created goods in general? Should we enjoy or be wary of them? Is it ok for us to have more than we need, or should we simply meet our necessities and give the rest away? Can created goods help us in our relationship with God or are they a distraction at best and an obstacle at worst?

In the broadest sense, blessing others involves anything we do that helps others live as God intended them to live, i.e. in right relationship with Him, ourselves, others, and creation. As we continue our series on Missional Habits, we consider two additional ways that we can bless others: gifts and service. To hear how each of these can help others flourish spiritually, psychologically, relationally, and/or vocationally, you can listen to our sermon from this past Sunday.

Being missional isn’t first about doing a whole bunch of new things but about doing what we already do with an eye toward blessing others. Well, there’s nothing we do more than talk. And that’s even more true if we include emails, texts, etc. But what are our intentions in all of those words, and what effect do they have? What if we took this thing that we do more than anything else and sought to bless others through it? What might it look like? How might God use t? And how can we become such a people?

Eating and drinking are among the most foundational and common things we do. But what if they point beyond themselves to redemptive realities and, as a consequence, are some of the most powerful missional habits we can develop?

If God answered all your prayers from this past week, how many people would have come to saving faith? How would people in your church have been blessed? How would your city be better? If we struggle to answer these questions, is it possible that our prayers are inadvertently deepening our self-centeredness rather than helping to free us from it? We reflect on these and other questions as we consider “missional prayer” in our latest sermon.

In Ephesians 2:10, Paul writes that we are God’s “workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Similarly, in Titus 2:14, Paul writes that Jesus “gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.” A central reason that God saved us so that we would be a people who zealously do good works. But how does God equip us to do those works? We consider this question and others in this week’s sermon.

A central part of our vision at Missio Dei is to love L.A. – the beautiful, glorious, and broken city where God has placed us and to which He has called us. But what does loving L.A. require of us? What does it mean for us to be a church not just in L.A., or even just for L.A., but with L.A.? How can we be a “counterculture for the common good?” To hear thoughts on these and other questions, you can listen to our sermon from this past Sunday, the 3rd in our Vision Series.

Before the Church is an instrument of God’s shalom in the world, it’s meant to be a display of God’s shalom in the world – a new community that reflects the love of God in its life together. But what would such a community look like? We wrestle with that question in the second sermon in our Vision Series.

A scholar once identified the “anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness” as the root anxiety of the modern age. Whether that’s historically and sociologically accurate, the question of meaning and purpose is a universal human question that we all wrestle with. We all want to know that we matter. In the words of the acclaimed writer David Foster Wallace, “We are all dying to give our lives away to something.” But what should that something be? To hear thoughts on these and other related questions, you can listen to our sermon from this Sunday, the first in a 3-part series outlining our church’s vision.

How do you we find contentment in the midst of disappointments and regrets? What’s the secret to happiness when we find ourselves in what feel like the cul-de-sacs or even the dead-ends of life?

Doubting is something that most Christians do not think you are permitted to express and work through, yet the Bible has multiple stories and situations where doubt seems to be a *part* of faith. What is doubt, and is it the enemy of faith? Are there any benefits of it? And how to work through times of deep uncertainty?

One of the recurring statements throughout the Psalms is the call to “Praise the Lord.” But why does God call us to do this? Is it because He’s some sort of insecure narcissist who needs to have His ego stroked? Shouldn’t whether I’m a good person or not be all that matters and not whether I praise Him or love Him? And besides, what about Him deserves my praise anyway?

Suffering comes into our lives for many different reasons. The most of horrific of these reasons is that we sometimes encounter genuinely evil, sinister people who intentionally, repeatedly, and remorselessly harm others. What should we do when we encounter such people? And what hope does God provide if we’ve suffered greatly at the hands of such a person?

Home is one of the most powerful words in the English language. It’s more than a physical house. It speaks to a sense of welcome, belonging, identity, and safety. And the story of the Bible, of the Christian gospel, is that of humanity being created for home, having lost that home, spending our lives searching for home, and, in Jesus, being welcomed home. To hear more, you can listen to our sermon from this Sunday based on Psalm 105.