Redemption Church - Sermons
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An Easter Sunday message from Jeff Lawrence, Lead Pastor of Redemption Church.
Does life feel like a roller coaster sometimes? Jacob's life certainly did. This week, we'll look at another twist and turn in Jacob's life as he prepares to meet his brother Esau again after 20 years. Jacob's situation will give us an honest picture of the difficulties of life in our world, but it will also point us to hope in the midst of whatever life throws our way.
How do the routine frustrations of life teach us to lean on God? This week, we continue our journey with Jacob as he experiences both professional success and business corruption in his partnership with his father-in-law Laban. In our study, we will see how common conflicts of life, though annoying in the moment, can be used by God to shape our faith and bless our lives.
What do you want from life? We all have heart longings that demand our attention and drive our emotions. This is a normal part of life. But things get messy when we set an inordinate amount of hope on someone or something that can never fulfill us. This week, we watch Jacob’s wives seek to win affection, appreciation, and significance in all the wrong ways. It’s a complete mess! Yet God works through this dysfunctional family to bring about his plans for good.
Have you ever set your heart on some great goal only to be disappointed in the end? This week, we see Jacob’s disillusionment in the very moment he thought would be the highlight of his life. Yet even when the trickster gets tricked, God is at work to bring about his good. Join us as we see how our disappointments reveal desires that only find their fulfillment in God.f
What kind of people does God love? It’s an important question that this passage answers for us. To this point in Genesis, we’ve not seen anything admirable about Jacob — not his character, not his morality, not his spirituality. When Jacob is on the run, unsuspecting, and fast asleep, the gate of heaven opens to reveal God’s grace. Jacob was not looking for God, but God came looking for Jacob.
To be experts in grace, we must first admit we are experts in sin. Of course, none of us like to talk about our failures, but they’re still there. In some ways, things are complicated because good and evil keep showing up together, side-by-side, in our lives. So, we dress up our good intentions and do the best we can. But what if grace offered us a better way?
In the Age of Amazon, we've grown accustomed to having whatever we want delivered to our doorstop in two days or less. And it's not just Amazon. We can order food, stream movies, and communicate with others in an instant. But have you ever wondered what this instant, easy access to everything is doing to our spiritual lives? In week two of our series, we'll look at Jacob's dad Isaac and see how life with God is nothing like ordering on Amazon.
Most of us believe in God’s grace—at least in theory. But we often struggle to trust it in our everyday lives, so we live with by an internal scoreboard of our successes and failures. Yet over and over again, God uses messy and sinful people (like us) to fulfill his plans. This series follows the life of Jacob as it wanders a twisted path filled with grasping, striving, and deceit as well as redemption, blessing, and beauty. We will see how the gospel triumphs as he learns to lean upon God rather than self. Through his journey, we will learn to grapple with our own shortcomings as we live by faith in God’s relentless grace.
We wrap up our Deep, Meaningful Life series looking at the call to expand the reach of the gospel in our city and in our world. In Jesus’ plan, each of has a role to play using our unique spiritual gifts, heart, abilities, personality, and experiences to advance the mission of God.
This week in our Deep, Meaningful Life series we'll look at the importance of connection to others when it comes to living a life of flourshing. Most of us know we need connection, but genuine connection is often hard to come by in our world where we often feel the need to perform and conform just to fit in. In John 13, though, we see that Jesus' vision was that the church would be a place where deep connection can be found.
We kicked off our Deep, Meaningful Life series looking at our personal devotion in Jesus’ call to “follow me.” This week, we see the importance of our personal development. Devotion without development is shallow. We will dive into the ways Jesus developed his disciples to live a deep, meaningful life.
The clean calendar of a new year invites us to renew and refocus our lives. This January, we will survey the New Testament Gospels to see how Jesus develops people to flourish as his followers. We are investing the entire month in you: your devotion, your development, your connection, and your expansion of God's love in our world. This is a great time for everyday people -- just like you and me -- to wake up to deep, meaningful life in Christ.
A short reflection on Psalm 1 as we wind down 2023 and usher in 2024.
Message from Jeff Lawrence on December 24, 2023
When you read about the birth of Christ, perhaps no one had a front row seat like the Innkeeper. He first told Mary and Joseph that there was no room at the inn, and then he showed them into the courtyard where the animals were kept. This week, we will consider the arrival of Jesus through the eyes of the Innkeeper as we consider the importance of seeing — really seeing — the significance of Jesus’ birth for our lives and our world.
Have you ever found God’s plans wild and weird and wonderful, all at the same time? This week, we will see the Christmas story from the surprising perspective of the angel Gabriel. He was the one God chose to tell an innocent teenager, Mary, that she would give birth to a Savior son. Were these words easy for an angel to speak? Were the eyes of the angel alive with wonder as he watched these long-awaited events unfold in God’s good time?
Seven hundred years before the birth of Christ, the prophet Isaiah foretold of the virgin birth of a son to be called Immanuel (which means, "God with us"). This week will look at the story of the birth of Christ through the lens of Joseph. What can we learn about Joseph that might open our eyes to the greater wonder of this familiar Christmas story?
Like nothing else in human history, Christmas combines the cosmic marvel of God's salvation plan unfolding in time, and at the same moment, the most intimate and personal of human interactions surrounding the birth of a little boy. Join us this Christmas season as we zoom in for a close up look at Christmas from the perspective of the wisemen, Joseph, the angel Gabriel, the innkeeper, and the multitudes of the heavenly host. Through their eyes, we are invited to watch and see the miracle and the mystery of Jesus' birth.
How should Christians relate to those who are outsiders to Christian faith? This is an important question, especially in our complex and often contentious times. In these verses, Paul closes his letter with a call to be fully alive in gospel mission to the world around us as we prayerfully, wisely, and winsomely make the most of every opportunity.
How does new life in Christ affect our relationships? This week, we explore the ways in which being made alive together in Christ works out in everyday life — in our family and in our work. When Jesus is at the center of our relational world, it transforms and reorders everything under his leadership.
Most of us want to grow spiritually, but how exactly are we supposed to go about it? Over these four weeks, we will seek to answer this question and help you move toward spiritual maturity with Jesus. Join us this weekend as we talk about reasonable and unreasonable expectations for our spiritual growth.
Most of us want to grow spiritually, but how exactly are we supposed to go about it? Over these four weeks, we will seek to answer this question and help you move toward spiritual maturity with Jesus. Join us this weekend as we explore how our spiritual renewal leads us to put away our old habits and patterns and put on new attitudes and actions that look like Christ.
Most of us want to grow spiritually, but how exactly are we supposed to go about it? Over these four weeks, we will seek to answer this question and help you move toward spiritual maturity with Jesus. Join us this weekend as we explore how our spiritual renewal leads us to put away our old habits and patterns and put on new attitudes and actions that look like Christ.
Most of us want to grow spiritually, but how exactly are we supposed to go about it? Over the next four weeks, we will seek to answer this question and help you move toward spiritual maturity with Jesus. Join us this weekend as we see how embracing our identity in Christ transforms us from the inside out.
Humans have an innate desire to connect with the divine, and this leads people to pursue spirituality through a variety of paths. In this section of Colossians, Paul deals with missteps which lead people into false spirituality that limits the freedom and fullness of their experience of life in Christ.
Last week in our study of Colossians we looked at one of the most Christ exalting passages in all Scripture in which Paul described Jesus as the cosmic creator who also died for you and me. It’s incredible, mind-blowing truth. But if we’re honest there’s often a disconnect between what we know intellectually about Jesus and our daily experience of life with Jesus. This week we’ll see the importance of growing in our understanding of Jesus and how we can begin to connect theological truth to our daily lives.
Who is Jesus to you? Many people think of Jesus as a positive influence, a great philosopher, a wise friend, a freedom fighter, or a kind humanitarian. In this famous passage, we see Jesus the cosmic Christ who is far more than a good human — he is a divine human. We learn that we need to know who Jesus really is and what he’s done for us so that we can discover who we really are and all that Jesus wants for us.
Where do you seek “the good life”? Romance? Career? Kids? Sports? Money? Attention? But what if you discovered that these things only flourish fully when lived in light of the greatest thing? In Colossians, we see Jesus Christ exalted above all else. When our lives are connected to Christ, we are “made alive together” to experience new humanity, new freedom, new identity, new character, new relationships. In this series, we are asking one revolutionary question: is Jesus Christ first in your life?
When you consider hospitality, you probably have a single event in mind — a meal, a party, a get together with friends. In the Bible, we see an invitation from God to enjoy his eternal hospitality forever. There is no invite more valuable, no provision more ready, and no celebration more extravagant — yet the consequences are great for those who refuse to come to the table of God’s grace.
