Mountain Ridge Church

Are you connecting to God? Are you connecting to yourself and understanding how you feel? Are you connecting to others?

Are you feeling frantic about today, worried about tomorrow, and does that leave you feeling spiritually empty? There is an answer. But before I give it to you, I must something on the front end. It will require radical trust in God. It will require radical surrender to God. And, you will need to make a radical change in your life.

How are you handling grief and loss in your own life? Are you stuffing your emotions? Are you ignoring this stuff or are you turning towards the pain, and growing and maturing through it?

God didn’t come to make your life an American success story. He came to forgive you, heal you and walk with you as you walk through the mess of life.

Do you see history repeating itself? Do you see any behavioral patterns from the past impacting the present for me there? Our family history lives inside us all... even those of us who just don’t want to go backwards so we can move forward.

Do you own a car? Have you ever had the engine light go on? Your engine light is telling you that you need to pay attention to your engine. If you ignore it, you are ignoring reality and bigger problems are coming. Your emotions are the exact same. They are God’s way of telling you that you need to check your heart.

You can live opposite of the ways of this world. You can live a life that is centered on Jesus. A life that is deliberate, intentional, and full of the kind of love that only comes from a relationship with Him! This happens as we begin to work on both our Spiritual health and our emotional health.

A part time job helps you make ends meet but you really don’t want to be there – right? Today we talk about what happens when we treat following Christ like a part time job.

In the absence of love, selfishness rules. Tit-for-tat living, measuring each other, secret agendas, and rankings always leads to broken relationships.

Do you feel stuck?

Think about what life would look like if your first view wasn’t about you, but was seen through the eyes of the Gospel. Would your life look any different?

Our worship, our prayer, and our church should be real… and our challenge as people inside the church community is to let our guards down and allow God’s truth in regardless of how challenging or uncomfortable that can be.

Each of us has a gift from God that we are to be using so that we can help others, whether that’s physically, emotionally, or spiritually. But where does your gift fit?

Paul is driving home this idea that you words don’t matter as much as your actions. Sure, you can tell everyone what an amazing Christian you are, but in the end your actions and how you live is what really matters.

When you face temptation, God knows you can handle it, and you can handle it…but…it doesn’t mean that we don’t have things to do in the process to protect ourselves from our sinful cravings and temptations.

In Christ, we have freedom. There are a few topics that the Bible doesn't address; we call these grey areas. But what happens when our freedom comes before love of others?

Do you believe there is a connection between your relationship with God and how you view sex?

Dealing with sin isn’t fun. It’s like grabbing a porcupine with no gloves. Nobody wants to do it. But the reason we do it is because we love the person.

Paul is WITH them in the mess to lead them by how he is living out of that mess to Jesus! This is where so many Christians struggle, because they aren’t holding onto their own redemption story… they lose sight of the fact that we are all sinners!

When you help others experience grace, that’s when God will empower you. What would you do with your free gift?

In chapter 3 of 1 Corinthians, Paul addresses those Christians who's lives don't look much different than the world around them, and we can all relate to living a Christian life sometimes. Are you giving your best for God?

The Holy Spirit literally unlocks our spiritual eyes and ears to live a different life, a life of Spiritual Maturity. Do you depend on the Holy Spirit in your life? Do you allow this God given GPS device to guide you through life?

Do you feel stuck? For a Christ follower the Cross isn’t just what Jesus did, it should be the place we go to take our mess, our selfishness, our fleshy desires to die each and every day. How do you view the cross?

Today we are opening our series on the book 1 Corinthians. After today, we hope that you have a clear understanding of the timing of this letter, the author, the city and what this letter means to us.

When we trust, we are giving up control over things, knowing that the one we trust will keep their word. We give up control and trust that whatever we gave over will be taken care of. It’s why Solomon says that we should, in all our ways, know Him intimately.

What if busyness is more than just something you are stuck in? What if busyness is actually us rebelling against God? What if it is exactly the same thing as our children pushing against what we ask even as we know what we are asking them to do will actually help them?

Mountain Ridge Church

When we understand that Jesus is truth, and when we live in a relationship with Him, and follow Him believing that He is truth, we are free! Free from what? We are free to live for Him!

Jesus is our way to eternal life. Jesus is the answer to the sin problem. Remember that sin is the divider between us and God. And Jesus was God’s loving answer to sin. The answer, the way is Jesus.

Happy Easter! We begin a new series today called My Story, and to start it off, on Easter Sunday, we want to talk about what God did for us. Religion will always have you trying to earn something. You will always have to work for God’s love, His grace, and your own salvation but there is a huge problem with that idea…it runs completely opposite of what our Bible tells us.

Are you so focused on God so that you can engage community well, or have you started to let go of the rope? Are you seeing weeds of bitter discontentment in your life? Are you allowing your desires to lead you? Remember who you are!

As we chase our desires we are becoming isolated from God and it’s ruining us. We do what we want to, when we want and how we want, and we resent anyone bringing God into it. Maybe we need to understand that what is normal in our culture is nothing more than idol worship.

One of the major ways that our enemy comes at us is by using things that God wired into us. Today we are going to look at probably the biggest and maybe the easiest target of our enemy: He will come at us and use our appetites against us.

The last thing your enemy would ever want you to know about what is really at the very center of all the enemy is up to. He is doing whatever he can to get you to chase everything and anything around other than God to find fulfillment, to find peace, to find life… and none of it will work.

If I could give you one spiritual principle that would take care of 90% of all of your spiritual warfare issues, would you be interested in hearing it?

What do you do when you face a battle that is overwhelmingly …physical?

For so many of us the biggest blocker in our spiritual journey is us. We don’t see a life filled with God’s love pouring in and pouring out of us and it’s because we are working really hard at all we need to do, to be a success, to be a good Christian, and to follow all the rules. In all of it we just aren’t willing to lean fully on God.

Think about this: God’s life sends the message to us, “Your well-being is more important than my well-being.” What message does the local church send to their community? God wants to redeem your world through you in the local church. You have the ability to bring God and your world together through prayer.

If you grew up around religion your focus is probably on sin, and rules, you know the do’s and don’t do’s… when your focus is on sin and not love, Christianity will always look and feel like work to you because your focus determines your experience. Our focus shouldn't be on us, it should be on God and His love for us.

Evil is always trying to get you to make the worst trade of your life. To trade God for sin. Every time sin is offered to us, and it looks better than what God offers, and we go after sin, we have to know the deal we are making.

Today we are going to ask some questions about prayer and we are going to let the Bible answer them for us. Questions like who is supposed to pray? Where should I pray? Who do we pray for? And how should we pray?

You matter spiritually. You are God’s plan to transform our world. If you want authority, passion and the power of God, you accept the reality that you are God’s plan.

Think about the people around you. Think about those you care about who are far from God. Who are you in relationship with that needs your prayer today? Who needs Jesus in a real way? Who needs someone to stand up for them spiritually that you live with, care about, work with, go to school with, or just pass by at the coffee shop in the morning?

You are in a middle of a storm. The boat is rocking. The waves are smashing. You are very tired. A ghost is walking on the water and getting closer. You think it might be Jesus, you’re not sure, you’re a little fuzzy on that. The ghost invites you to get out of the boat and walk on water. Are you excited to jump out? Or do you stay in the boat?

Happy New Year! What if this year, we didn't only make resolutions to better ourselves, but better the world? To make a difference in someone else's life?

Join us as we interview 3 of our church members and hear how God has changed their life!

We've got a BIG announcement for you all today!

Have you ever noticed that being religious feels so difficult? Why? Jesus came to this Earth, and it doesn’t have to be so complicated…He simplified it all.

The greatest invitation you will ever have is to follow Christ and help find and restore the lost. That invitation will radically change your life.

We conclude our series with asking this question: Are you connected to the vine? With all that we've talked about doing throughout this series, the only way that we can do any of it is if we are connected to Jesus.

How do you know if you are growing up in God? How do you know if you are being transformed? What is the test to know? One-word answer: relationships.