Christ Community Sunday - Leawood Campus

We all need a king who is truly for us. Not just when we are strong or good, but when we are weak and anything but good. Not just when we know where we are going, but when we have lost our way. We need a king who is truly there for us, who will not abandon us, even when we ignore him, doubt him, blame him or turn our backs on him. The good news is that we have a kind like that! A king that knows our human vulnerability, sees us as precious, and is with us now and forever.Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/48991413Prayer Requests: https://ccefc.ccbchurch.com/goto/forms/2509/responses/new22.12.04

Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/48977463 Prayer Requests: https://ccefc.ccbchurch.com/goto/forms/2509/responses/new22.11.27

Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/48977448 Prayer Requests: https://ccefc.ccbchurch.com/goto/forms/2509/responses/new22.11.20

The bible has often been called the “good book” for it indeed is that. It is the masterpiece of masterpieces.  But the good book can be misused for deceptive aims, abusive purposes and nefarious ends.  The bible can be wrongly taught to say what it does not say, to support deceptive plausibilities that perpetuate anything, but truth, goodness and beauty in the world, but rather legitimize abuse, domination, evil, and suffering. Our hearts break at this, but it is a sober reminder for us of the importance of teaching what the Holy Scripture actually teaches, of teaching the whole counsel of God and embracing the moral clarity it brings to our broken world.We are not our own. We belong to Jesus. We learn from Jesus as yoked apprentices who understand and steward power radically different from the world. re–what a glorious place we live, love and work before an Audience of One.Prayer Requests: https://ccefc.ccbchurch.com/goto/forms/2509/responses/newSermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4897744122.11.13

For most of us, we just have to learn to dance. Occasionally, that means stepping on each other’s toes. The marriages that do this best, sacrificing and submitting, loving and respecting, they don’t even know they’re doing it. They aren’t focused on the steps. They are focused on their partner. Your marriage is not about you and that is the best news in the world. Because the truly best things in life are not about us. They are about Jesus. The greatest story of all time. God as our husband. And even when we run from him, hide from him, hurt him, betray him…He never stops pursuing us. Sacrificing for us. Cherishing us. Loving us. Never ever ever. You in this room are God’s beloved.Sermon Notes:  https://www.bible.com/events/48977429Prayer Requests: https://ccefc.ccbchurch.com/goto/forms/2509/responses/new

Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4897395622.10.30

When we are at our worst, it is often because something has deeply hurt us. Hurt people hurt people. But what if the opposite is also true? What if loved people love people? This is the point the apostle Paul is trying to make in Ephesians 5. Paul knows we will never love each other, our neighbors as ourselves, until we know how loved we are. He calls the church, those who follow Jesus, beloved children of God. For those of you who have children in your lives, you know the look on a child’s face when they know they are loved. There is a delight, an ease when a person feels like someone takes a genuine interest in them. A safety that you are in the love and care of someone else. Loved people love people. Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4897058422.10.23

I meet people who their entire lives have never been taught that God cares about their work, but actually he has called you to serve Him there. More than that, he actually put you there to do something only you can do. As we have been learning in Ephesians, as Christians, we are called to take off our old self and put on our new self to live out our calling in all areas of our lives, not just church on Sunday. Whether paid or unpaid, our honest work produces something good. God is a worker, and he created us to work, and Jesus redeems us to work, not only as a means to provide for ourselves, but of worshiping Him and serving our neighbors. He not only calls us to work, but He is in our work with us. All work that produces good things not only honors God, but serves others. Our faith matters in our work.Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4896701622.10.16

I think it is fair to say that our contemporary culture is one marked by an identity crisis. We don’t know who we are anymore. In our modern quest to know ourselves, we have become more anxious, confused, isolated and despairing. As members of God’s family and the Christian faith, we are knit together in community. Like changing our clothes, we are called to put off our old self and put on our new self. We are not to live as we used to live because we are not who we used to be. We are a new family with a communal code of ethics tied to the relational outworkings of joyful Christian love. Paul points out three distinctives of our new family, the new us, the true us. We must be wise with our words, good at anger, and radically forgive others. These disciplines are not only about experiencing God’s power to change, but more to deeply encounter his abiding presence with us moment by moment.Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4896328822.10.09

As a church, we are the body of Jesus. When people see us individually or collectively, they should see Jesus. We should be able to say to people, if you want to see Jesus, look at us. We are His body. Often though, we do not look like Him but instead look like the rest of the world in our values, behaviors, and attitudes. As the church, we are called by God to oneness; that is one Body of Jesus. To make oneness possible, we must be humble, gentle, and patient with one another. We all need each other. We can’t grow up alone. We can only become the fullness of Christ together with God’s help. It’s not always easy, or pretty if we’re honest. But we are growing up into something glorious, something eternal, something more like Jesus. Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4895963922.10.02

Paul describes the local church as a holy temple, a dwelling place for the Triune God by (in) the Spirit. If we are followers of Christ our very individual bodies and collectively as the body of Christ, are a people, a place where God’s presence dwells. The Holy Spirit is the one who somehow brings that reality into time and space. God’s divine presence and supernatural power of Trinitarian love is experienced in time and space, both individually and collectively. To in joyful submission, heartfelt obedience, and contagious hope allow our embodied lives to be increasingly empowered and controlled by the Holy Spirit. To be spirit-filled individual apprentices of Jesus, to be a spirit-filled local church where the fruits of the spirit are manifested in our relationships and experienced in our relationships. The fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The local church is not only a prayerful community, it is also a supernatural community, created, empo

As modern westerners, we live in a pretty materialistic culture. We tend only to trust what we can see with our own eyes. That is actually a pretty unusual way to look at the world historically. But in a biblical worldview, there are powers that have influence in our world for good and evil. When you consider the depth of evil we see in the world, and the unexpected moments of healing, joy, or grace, it’s not hard to imagine that there are powers we cannot see who nudge our experience this way or that. These powers speak of God’s ultimate wisdom, brilliance, and magnificence. When God looks at us, he sees his most brilliant work of art. We are the victory of God. We must not lose heart because Jesus has overcome the world.22.09.18

Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/48948509Ephesians 2 gives us a soaring vision of the church as a new family. Something surprising the Triune God is building for his glory and for all eternity. Something also rather messy, yet amazingly and beautifully diverse. Jesus calls us to a different way of seeing one another as a family but also seeing ourselves differently. Not one with a posture of superiority, but one of centered humility. We are a family. In grace, Christ not only reconciles us, breaks down the dividing walls, but also gives us a new identity. We the church are fellow citizens of a kingdom with all the privileges, loyalties, and responsibilities of that kingdom. We the church have a new king and we have been given a kingdom agenda.22.09.11

Grace in the Bible is the free gift of God. There is nothing we can do to earn it. We can either accept it or reject it, but if we accept it, it doesn’t leave us the same. It changes us from death to life. We cannot build our faith on anything less than this. When we don’t know God or haven’t accepted his gift of grace, we are dead. We are not only dead, but we are guilty. We are guilty before God and his standards for us, but God’s judgment is different from the judgment we know towards one another. God’s judgment is rich in mercy. His gift of grace is a gift of mercy. He offers to us the payment for our guilt if we would only accept it. When we place our trust in Jesus, his life becomes our life. Whatever is true of Jesus, is true of us. Whatever good is in him, is working itself out in you. And whatever Jesus is, in life and death, in mountains and valleys, in darkness and light, wherever Jesus is, you are with him. And nothing can change it.Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4894485422.09.04

Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/48941176We are anxious people living in anxious times. The many challenges of pandemics, climate, technology, overwhelming information, and political and governmental concerns seem to “seep into our collective consciousness, building on an increased sense of insecurity and powerlessness…an anxiety over an uncertain future.” Prayer is God’s most powerful antidote to anxiety. Prayer helps us regain a hopeful perspective. Prayer helps us remember who is really in charge. Prayer helps us reconstruct a more communal faith. As creatures made in God’s image, we were created to pray. We were always meant to have an ongoing communion with our Triune God who we increasingly know and are increasingly known by. We pray to Jesus, the one that is really in charge, the one who has all authority. The one who loves us more than anyone and has the sovereign and omnipotent agency to act on our behalf and to intervene in our lives and in a fearful, anxious, and uncertain world.22.08.28

Deconstruction is a process by which we question what we know, or at least what we have been taught. When it comes to deconstructing our religious beliefs, our faith, we’re talking about things of ultimate significance. If we are going to reconstruct, to build something that will stand the test of time, it all starts with God. His plan was set in motion from the foundation of the world and stands the fullness of time. And there’s even more to God’s plan. It’s news for all people. It’s grace that forgives sin and adopts us into God’s family. God’s plan is about more than just people. God's plan is to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. There is nothing in all creation not touched by God’s plan. Because God’s after all of it. Everything. And he’s calling us into all of those spaces to participate with him in his work of redemption and renewal. It’s all for his glory, not yoursSermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4893759222.08.21

There are fewer things harder in the Christian life than waiting for Jesus. The glory of God is not so much about the glory due to God, but something God will reveal about himself. Something we sometimes have to see to believe. Something that sometimes makes us wait. Jesus waits for reasons inexplicable sometimes to us, and Jesus weeps when he sees us weeping, and Jesus rages when he confronts death and suffering in his good world. The glory of God is this: in Jesus, there is no grave over which Jesus cannot triumph, including his own, and including yours and mine. And when we believe he is the resurrection and the life, the Son of God, he, too will one day call us by name, will speak over every tomb, grave, urn, or ashes we’ve become, and say, “Come out” and no one and nothing can stop him. Jesus wins. Do you believe this?Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4893393022.08.14

No one likes to think about aging. Our natural reaction to aging is usually revulsion, but time is coming for you. And as uncomfortable as that makes us, or as painful as that may be, the better we are able to reckon with that idea, the wiser we will be, no matter how young or old we may be today. It’s never too early to remember your Creator, to remember that we are creatures, with an expiration date. We must take seriously our frailty, our impermanence, and our death, which pretends to, tries to, convince us that life has no meaning at all. But we can do more than remember our Creator. On this side of Jesus, when we see the whole testimony of God’s revelation to us, we can do one more thing here. We can hope in our Redeemer, because every passing day in Christ, we are one day closer to the renewal of all things. Yes, even as we age, renewal only gets closer. Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4889633622.05.29

We all want to be on the front line of protecting freedom, but the fight for real freedom is not outside of us, but within. We must beware who offers us freedom and at what cost. Satan will use the common areas of our lives to deceive us from our sin. Sin permeates, stains, and spreads. It begins in one part of our life and moves into the deepest parts of us where our subconscious takes over and suddenly we are driven by fear, shame, success, and idols we have cultivated where Satan is at work in our identity. The greatest weapon against the Enemy’s lies is truth. Only truth has the power to set one free and truth is not elusive. Jesus also stands in front of us. He sees our hearts and offers us freedom from sin and the enemy’s captivity. The yoke of Christ gives us rest so that we can experience love and faithfulness over manipulation and destruction, turning us towards what is good. Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4892008422.07.17

Our family shapes who we are in ways we are hardly even conscious of most of the time. We come from extended families with their own stories, histories and patterns. But are we in Jesus’ family? In this family obedience is not because we earn something from Jesus. It’s because, as Jesus says, his words, his instructions, his design, IS eternal life. Obedience to Jesus doesn’t just give us access to life. It is life. And you know this because Jesus obeys. Jesus constantly obeys. In fact, if you really look at Jesus’ words about himself, he is constantly reminding us that his real power comes from obedience to and dependence on His Father. Obedience is the life we want to live. Being a part of Jesus’ family means that our obedience and love for his words grow over time. Is your love of Jesus’ words increasing? Do we read his word and want to obey?Sermon Notes: https://www.bible.com/events/4892302722.07.24