Sermons.

How do you use your phone less without losing the people who need you? In Matthew 6:22-23, Pastor Mark Addis asks what we look at and when, and offers four practices for reclaiming attention.

How do you declutter your soul? In Psalm 139:23-24, Pastor Tim Rolen shows where spiritual clutter piles up and how to start clearing it, with the Holy Spirit doing the cleaning.

What pushes us to the point of needing a hard reset? Mark 1:12-35 follows Jesus from the wilderness to a whole town at his door, then out alone to pray before dawn. Pastor Kyle Relph opens Not So Fast by naming what wears us down.

Who are you once you stop trying to build your own identity? In 1 Peter 2:4-10, Pastor Mark Addis closes out Tell Me Who You Are by turning the mirror around: God tells us who he is so he can tell us who we are.

Why did Jesus say "I am the gate" for the sheep, and what does it mean to walk through him? In John 10:7-10, Pastor Mark Addis shows how a first-century shepherd became the door of the fold with his own body, and why that claim is mercy rather than arrogance.

What does it mean to abide in Christ, and why does Jesus say we can do nothing without him? In John 15:1-8, Pastor Mark Addis works through the last "I am" statement in John, "I am the true vine," on a Sunday when communion sits inside the message itself.

Thomas admits he has no idea where Jesus is going, and Philip asks to be shown the Father. Two honest questions, and the answer to both is the same sentence. Week four of Tell Me Who You Are, preached by Pastor Kyle Relph.

What does Jesus mean when he calls himself the good shepherd, and why does that land hardest on people who pride themselves on not needing to be led? This message from John 10 and Psalm 23 turns on a shepherd's word for a sheep that cannot get itself back up. Preached by Pastor Mark Addis.

Anyone who has crossed a dark living room at two in the morning and found a LEGO brick with a bare foot knows what darkness does to confidence. In John 8:12, Pastor Mark Addis works through what Jesus promised when he called himself the light of the world, and what he pointedly did not promise.

What are you actually feeding your soul on? John 6:35 opens the seven I AM statements of John's Gospel in this message from Pastor Mark Addis on the difference between treating Jesus as the bread of life and treating Him as dessert.

What if the problem with human desire is not that we want too much, but that we want far too little? 2 Corinthians 4:17-18 carries this closing message from Pastor Mark Addis on the sermon Lewis preached in Oxford while the bombs were falling.

What is the one question running underneath all seven Narnia books? John 3:16-18 sits at the center of this walk through the whole series with Pastor Kyle Relph, from the creation of Narnia to the last battle.

How does a person drift away from God without ever deciding to? James 1:14-15 exposes the mechanics in this message from Pastor Mark Addis on the thirty-one letters Lewis wrote from a senior demon to his nephew.

Why would anyone stand at the edge of heaven and get back on the bus? Luke 16:19-26 gives this message its spine as Pastor Mark Addis walks through the 1945 dream story where Lewis argued that heaven and hell are finally a matter of what we choose.

What did C.S. Lewis mean by "mere" Christianity, and what holds when everything else is shaking? Ephesians 4:1-6 frames this walk through the BBC talks Lewis gave to a nation under bombardment, taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

What is the difference between grief and mourning, and why does it matter to someone walking through loss? Ephesians 2:4-9 grounds this honest message from Pastor Tim Rolen on the sorrow Lewis wrote about after his wife died.

Is there such a thing as objective truth, and what happens to a society that decides there is not? Romans 2:14-15 meets Lewis's most prophetic book in this message from Pastor Kyle Relph on the moral law written on every human heart.

Who was C.S. Lewis, and why does a pipe-smoking Oxford professor still speak to honest questions about faith? Romans 12:2 anchors this opening look at the atheist who became one of the most trusted Christian voices of the last century, taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

What does it mean to be truly prepared for Christ's return? This sermon explores two powerful parables about faithfulness and readiness in uncertain times.

What are you actually building your life on? In Luke 6, Pastor Ethan Smith unpacks the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Builders and asks the question Jesus asked first: why do we call Him Lord if we don't do what He says?

What do you do with a debt someone owes you that they will never repay? In Matthew 18:21-35, Pastor Mark Addis walks through the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant and shows why refusing to forgive builds a prison with only one person inside it.

How does something as small as a mustard seed become a tree that shelters the world? This parable reveals how God's Kingdom grows from humble beginnings into unstoppable influence. Mark 4:30-32 teaches us that in God's hands, small isn't powerless - it's full of potential.

What happens when the worker who showed up an hour ago is paid the same as the one who labored since dawn? In Matthew 20:1-16, Pastor Mark Addis walks through the Parable of the Vineyard Workers and why God's grace offends our sense of fairness.

What if you spent your whole life sitting on a gold mine and never knew it? In Matthew 13:44, Pastor Mark Addis unpacks the Parable of the Hidden Treasure and the difference between living near the kingdom of heaven and actually possessing it.

What does God actually do when someone wanders off? In Luke 15, Pastor Kyle Relph walks through the three parables of the lost items, a sheep, a coin, and a son, and the celebration that follows every single return.

Who exactly counts as my neighbor? In Luke 10:25-37, Pastor Mark Addis walks through the Parable of the Good Samaritan, a story that began as a lawyer's search for a loophole and ended by taking the question apart.

Why did Jesus teach in stories instead of straight instruction? In Matthew 13, Pastor Mark Addis opens the Parables series by explaining what a parable actually is, why Jesus used them, and how to read one without missing the point.

What would it take to clean out your own spiritual house? In Psalm 122, Pastor Tim Rolen connects David's joy at entering the house of the Lord with the morning Jesus cleared the temple courts.

What is worship once you take the music away? In Psalm 100, Pastor Kyle Relph opens three doorways into wholehearted worship: the right perspective, the right relationship, and the right response.

What are you actually building your home on? In Psalms 127 and 128, Pastor Mark Addis works through God's blueprint for a family and a legacy that outlasts the person who built it.

How do you make a short life count? In Psalm 90, the only psalm attributed to Moses, Pastor Mark Addis teaches what it means to number our days and let mortality make us wise instead of afraid.

What does it actually mean to taste and see that the Lord is good? In Psalm 34, Pastor Mark Addis traces David's road from hiding in a cave to a strange kind of freedom from fear.

Are you allowed to ask God how long? In Psalm 13, Pastor Kyle Relph walks through David's rawest prayer and the turn from desperation to trust that ends it.

What does the Bible actually mean when it says blessed? In Psalms 1 and 2, Pastor Mark Addis opens The Psalms We Live with the two gateway psalms that frame everything the psalter says after them.

Jesus did not only call us to be disciples. In Matthew 28:19-20, Pastor Mark Addis closes the Behold Something New series with what it takes to make them, starting with whatever you already have to offer.

How do you keep going after the enthusiasm wears off? Drawing on Hebrews 10:36 and Isaiah 40:27-31, Pastor Mark Addis looks at spiritual endurance through the true story of Shackleton's expedition.

Can you follow Jesus entirely on your own? In Acts 2:42-47, Pastor Kyle Relph makes the case that the church is a shared life, and that a bee and a believer have the same problem away from the hive.

What does following Jesus actually ask of you day to day? In Matthew 4:18-22 and 1 Corinthians 11:1, Pastor Mark Addis frames discipleship as a lifelong process rather than a finish line to cross.

January is when everyone thinks about physical health. In Proverbs 4, Pastor Mark Addis asks a harder question about the toxic patterns quietly shaping our hearts, minds, relationships, and words.

When did you last take an honest look at your own faith? In 2 Corinthians 13:5, Pastor Mark Addis opens a new year and a new series with Paul's call to examine ourselves rather than assume.

Who is it you are looking for? In John 20:1-29, Pastor Mark Addis walks to the garden tomb with Mary Magdalene and asks why so many of us go looking for a Jesus who makes no demands of us.

A birth in obscurity quietly split history in two. In Luke 2 and John 1, Pastor Mark Addis looks past the familiar nativity scene to the staggering claims the child in the manger would grow up to make.

Why would the Messiah arrive in weakness? In Romans 11, Pastor Kyle Relph sits with the part of the Christmas story that is easiest to skip: God's way of working rarely matches what we would have arranged.

What does it mean that God has actually spoken? In Hebrews 1, Pastor Tim Rolen reflects on a God who communicates with intention and clarity, and with a love that means to be heard.

Why did Jesus come when he did? In Galatians 4:4-5, Pastor Mark Addis opens the Christmas series on divine timing and the seasons of waiting that come before it.

What defines a life well lived? In James 1:22-24 and Psalm 128, Pastor Mark Addis asks what legacy is actually being built by the choices nobody is watching us make.

Why is there such a gap between who we want to be and who we are? In Romans 7, Pastor Kyle Relph sits in that struggle honestly and then points past it.

What are you actually responsible for? In Psalm 24 and Matthew 25, Pastor Mark Addis treats stewardship as a way of life rather than a budget line, shaped by reverence, gratitude, and purpose.

Fear, worry, and anxiety are not only emotions. In Philippians 4:6-7, Pastor Mark Addis treats them as tactics that pull focus and wear people down, and works through what scripture says to do next.

Most of what we fear never actually happens, and it weighs on us anyway. In Luke 8:25, Pastor Mark Addis sits with people in scripture who knew what being overwhelmed felt like.

What does it actually mean to be a house of prayer? In Isaiah 56:6-7 and Matthew 21:12-13, Pastor Kyle Relph looks at the phrase Jesus quoted when he cleared the temple.

The moment Peter stepped onto the water, faith and fear collided. In Matthew 14:22-33, Pastor Mark Addis looks at the courage of the step, the pull of the doubt, and the hand that never arrived late.

Philippians 4:8 is usually read as encouragement to think positively. Pastor Tim Rolen argues it is something stricter than that: a command to discipline the mind according to what is actually true.

What is the unseen difference between what we can manage and what only God can do? Pastor Mark Addis traces the Holy Spirit from the first line of Genesis through the boldness of the early church in Acts.

How do you learn to tell God's voice from your own? In 1 Samuel 3, Pastor Mark Addis opens a new series with a boy who heard his name in the night and needed help working out who was speaking.

Nehemiah does not end with a tidy resolution. In Nehemiah 13, Pastor Mark Addis closes the series with the daily work of staying faithful after the dramatic part is finished.

What do you do when God finishes something through you? In Nehemiah 12, Pastor Kyle Relph looks at the day Jerusalem dedicated its rebuilt wall with joy, thanksgiving, and deliberate worship.

What does a genuine revival look like from the inside? In Nehemiah 8 through 10, Pastor Mark Addis watches a whole community hear scripture read aloud and let it change them.

A wall is the easy part. In Nehemiah 7, Pastor Mark Addis looks at the harder work that followed, restoring the people who would actually live inside it.

What do you do when the work is right and the resistance is real? In Nehemiah 4 through 6, Pastor Mark Addis looks at three kinds of opposition and a builder who refused to come down off the wall.

Who actually rebuilt the wall around Jerusalem? In Nehemiah 3, Pastor Kyle Relph reads the list of ordinary families and neighbors who each took one section and started.

When does a burden turn into a calling? In Nehemiah 2, Pastor Mark Addis follows the months of waiting that ended with a cupbearer asking a king for something enormous.

What is the first thing you do when the news is bad? In Nehemiah 1, Pastor Mark Addis opens a new series with a man who heard his city was in ruins and sat down and wept before he did anything else.

If salvation is a gift, what is left for us to earn? In Ephesians 2:1-10, Pastor Mark Addis closes The -ians series on the truth that we were dead in our sins and were made alive by God's mercy.

How do you live well when you do not know what is coming? In 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11, Pastor Kyle Relph shows that Paul answers the question about Christ's return with a way of life rather than a timeline.

Does any of it actually count? In 1 Corinthians 15:58, Pastor Tim Rolen sits with Paul's promise that nothing done for the Lord is ever wasted, however small or unnoticed it was.

What does Paul mean when he warns a church about idleness? In 2 Thessalonians 3:6-15, Pastor Mark Addis works through a direct and surprisingly affectionate correction about living with purpose.

Where do you actually belong? In Galatians 3:23 through 4:7, Pastor Mark Addis walks through Paul's claim that in Christ we are no longer outsiders or orphans but adopted children.

What are you wearing into the week? In Ephesians 6:10-20, Pastor Kyle Relph goes piece by piece through the armor God supplies and the strength Paul insists is never our own.

A British survey once asked people what made them feel most content, and the top answer was alcohol. In Philippians 4:10-20, Pastor Mark Addis unpacks how Paul found real contentment from inside a Roman prison cell.

A Rolls-Royce broke down in Europe, got repaired, and the bill never came. In Galatians 2:15-16, Pastor Mark Addis uses that story to explain what it actually means to be justified by faith.

How do you know if you're living in the Spirit? Pastor Mark Addis says there's only one item on the checklist: have you surrendered your life to Jesus Christ. In Galatians 5:16-26, he unpacks what comes after yes.

A word spelled out in tiny individual artworks. A breakfast burrito that stops working the moment you strip out everything but the sausage. Pastor Kyle Relph uses both on Mother's Day to explain 1 Corinthians 12: the church is one body built from very different parts.

Series titles don't usually need a joke, but The -ians does. Pastor Mark Addis opens New Hope's new series on Paul's letters by explaining the name, then turns to Paul's own conversion story in Acts 9 to show why these ancient letters still speak today.

We love an underdog story, the kid from the Karate Kid, the 1980 hockey team that beat the Soviets. Pastor Kyle Relph closes out New Hope's 15-week series on David with the ultimate one: a shepherd boy who became king, and the far greater unlikely king who rode into Jerusalem on a borrowed donkey.

Most people who meet a lion in a pit on a snowy day run the other way. Benaiah chased it down and killed it with his bare hands. Pastor Mark Addis uses David's hall of fame in 2 Samuel 23 to ask what it looks like to chase our own lions instead of running from them.

A burglar once froze mid-crime when a startled homeowner shouted a Bible verse at him instead of a threat. Pastor Tim Rolen opens with that story to make a point about 2 Samuel 22: confession is short and simple, but praise, once it gets going, runs long.

"Here is your brother, and there is no need to talk to him about what is past." That line from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is where Pastor Mark Addis lands after three hard weeks in David's story. In 2 Samuel 19, the king comes home, and restoration, not punishment, is what waits for him there.

When the storm hit David's life, his own family was the storm. His son Absalom stole the hearts of Israel and drove him into exile. Pastor Mark Addis walks through 2 Samuel 15-19 to find the five unlikely friends God placed in David's path as shelter.

A Rube Goldberg machine works because one small action triggers the next, then the next, then the next. Pastor Kyle Relph uses that image for 2 Samuel 12-15, where David's sin with Bathsheba sets off a chain of consequences that tear his family apart. Content note: this passage includes the account of Amnon's assault of his sister Tamar and its violent aftermath, handled directly but without unnecessary detail.

How does a man after God's own heart end up an adulterer and a murderer? In 2 Samuel 11, Pastor Mark Addis works through the darkest chapter of David's life, and through Psalm 51 and Psalm 32, where David finally writes down what the year of hiding it cost him.

What does a king do with the last surviving heir of the family he replaced? In 2 Samuel 9, Pastor Mark Addis tells the story of David and Mephibosheth, a promise kept years after the man it was made to had died.

David wanted to build God a house. Living in a cedar palace while the ark of the covenant sat in an aging tent bothered him, so he told the prophet Nathan he'd fix it. God had a very different house in mind. Pastor Mark Addis walks through 2 Samuel 7 and the covenant that grew out of that reversal.

A flawless football game is one where every player follows the game plan and the rules, penalties and all, no matter how good the intentions. On Super Bowl Sunday, Pastor Tim Rolen uses that idea to frame 2 Samuel 6: David wanted to bring the ark of the covenant home to Jerusalem for exactly the right reason, and did it exactly the wrong way.

What was the lowest point of your life? Pastor Kyle Relph opens with that question on the way to what might be the lowest point of David's: a lie that gets 85 priests and an entire town massacred, weighing on his conscience while he hides in the wilderness of Judah. Psalm 63 is the song David wrote from inside that desert.

Two friends made a pact: whoever died first would come back and report whether there's baseball in heaven. One did. "Good news," he said, "there's definitely baseball in heaven. Bad news, you're pitching on Friday." Pastor Mark Addis opens with that joke to name the good-news, bad-news rhythm running through David's whole life, and lands in a cave where David gets the perfect opportunity to kill the man hunting him, and doesn't take it.

Romeo and Juliet. West Side Story. Two families kept apart until tragedy forces them together. Pastor Mark Addis uses that familiar shape to introduce a very different, much healthier story of loyalty: the friendship between David and Jonathan, and everything else that happens to David's relationships once he becomes a threat to the throne.

Six cubits and a span. Pastor Mark Addis brought a tape measure to church to show what that actually means: about 9'9", six inches below the top of the sanctuary TVs. That's who a teenage shepherd walked out to fight with five smooth stones and no armor.

Some artists build famous paintings entirely out of junk, things other people threw away, reassembled into something beautiful. Pastor Mark Addis opens New Hope's new year-long series on David with that image: God doesn't pick the impressive people. He picks the ordinary ones and makes them extraordinary.

What are the odds that one man fulfills prophecies written centuries before his birth? On Youth Takeover Sunday, Pastor Ethan Smith walks through the specific predictions Jesus met and why the detail matters.

Do the small faithful things actually add up? In Philippians 1 and Luke 17, Pastor Mark Addis looks at gratitude and the lasting difference made by acts that mostly go unseen.

What actually happens on a two week medical and construction mission to the Ivory Coast? Mike Cousineau of 1040 Initiative and four members of the New Hope team report back on the 2025 trip, the 122 surgeries performed, and what it cost one father to get his daughter there.

A man's mother-in-law died while they were vacationing in Israel, and the funeral director offered two options: ship the body home for $5,000, or bury her there for $150. He chose to ship her home. "About 2,000 years ago, a man died and was buried here," he said, "and three days later he rose from the dead. I'm not willing to take that chance." Pastor Mark Addis opens Easter Sunday with that story on his way to Luke 24 and two disciples who walked seven miles with the risen Jesus without recognizing him.

Four lighthouses have stood on the same small set of rocks off the English coast since 1698. A storm swept the first one away, along with its builder. Fire destroyed the second. The third, built into the rock instead of just anchored on top of it, is still standing 325 years later. Pastor Mark Addis closes New Hope's Christmas series with that history and Jesus's own parable of building on rock instead of sand.

Four women show up in Matthew's genealogy of Jesus: a woman who tricked her father-in-law into fathering her child, a prostitute, a foreign widow, and a woman Matthew pointedly still calls "Uriah's wife" rather than by her own name, Bathsheba. Pastor Tim Rolen asks why God left the blemishes in the family tree instead of writing a cleaner story.

A Minnesota barn burned to the ground overnight. Walking through the ashes, the farmer found a mother hen, dead, and nudged her body to check. Three chicks ran out from underneath her wings, alive. Pastor Mark Addis uses that image to open Ruth chapter 2, where a foreign widow with nothing finds shelter she never expected.

Movie stunts use rubber knives, breakaway glass, and dulled swords, whatever keeps everyone safe while still looking real. "I once heard a leader say that many are called to lay something on the altar," writes Dr. J. Robert Clinton, "and they do, but they take along a rubber knife." Pastor Kyle Relph opens New Hope's Christmas series with the one Old Testament figure who brought the real one.

"Prepared for what?" someone asked Robert Baden-Powell after he coined the Boy Scout motto "Be Prepared" in 1908. "Why, for any old thing," he replied. Pastor Mark Addis borrows the line to close out 1 and 2 Peter: readiness isn't about guessing a date for Christ's return, it's a posture for every day in between.

How do you spot a false teacher when the teaching sounds good and the teacher sounds sincere? This message works through 2 Peter 2, where Peter names the people exploiting the church for money and power, and asks what protects a congregation from them. Preached by Pastor Kyle Relph.

Mark's Gospel mentions, once, that other boats were out on the water the night a storm nearly swamped the disciples' boat. The detail never comes up again, it doesn't help the story, doesn't flatter anyone, doesn't get explained. Pastor Mark Addis argues that's exactly the kind of pointless, unembellished detail no one inventing a legend would bother to include, and it's at the center of why 2 Peter 1 asks us to trust eyewitness testimony over a good story.

What does it look like to already have everything you need for a godly life? This message on 2 Peter 1:3-11 walks through Peter's list of qualities that grow out of faith, and why serving is the result of salvation rather than the price of it. Preached by Pastor Mark Addis.

A German pastor spent the final years of World War II working as a double agent, using his international church contacts to funnel support to the resistance plotting to kill Hitler. Pastor Mark Addis tells Dietrich Bonhoeffer's story to close out 1 Peter, on standing firm in faith when the surrounding culture is bending Scripture to fit the moment.

In a hotel hot spring in Turkey, Pastor Kyle Relph once struck up a conversation with a group of strangers who turned out to be Iranian believers on their way to an underground Christian conference, men whose own family members were being pulled from their homes by police for following Jesus. He opens 1 Peter 3-4 with that story, and others like it, to ask what it actually costs American Christians to suffer for their faith.

How do you live in a place you love while knowing it is not really home? This message on 1 Peter 2:10-25 works through what changes once a Christian's thinking is transformed, from how we see ourselves to how we treat the people around us who do not believe. Preached by Pastor Tim Rolen.

A contractor in Michigan built the first floor of a two-story house without a hitch, then hit constant snags on the second, until his crew realized they'd been working off two nearly identical but different sets of blueprints. Pastor Mark Addis uses the story to open 1 Peter 2's picture of the church as living stones, all built on one Cornerstone.

Pastor Kyle Relph's toddler has picked up a habit: whenever something gets turned off or put away, he waves and says "bye-bye" to it, the fireplace on TV, the moon out the window, anything at all. Kyle uses his son's constant, clumsy imitation of his parents to open 1 Peter 1's command to be holy simply because God is holy.

During the worst week of Navy SEAL training, a class ordered into freezing mud for fifteen hours started singing, off-key, one voice at a time, until the whole class joined in, and the mud somehow felt a little warmer. Pastor Mark Addis opens the new Unrelenting Faith series with that story to introduce 1 Peter's picture of a living hope that doesn't just get us through hard seasons, it changes how we experience them.

A woman named Janine spent years so angry at God after her sister-in-law's suicide that she stopped volunteering, stopped attending Bible study, and started pouring a couple of glasses of wine every night just to sleep. She shares her path back to God in this closing message of the Fit to Serve series, where Pastor Mark Addis addresses recovery, not just from addiction, but from any hurt, habit, or hang-up that quietly disables our walk with Christ.

Four friends once dug a hole through a stranger's roof rather than give up trying to get their paralyzed friend in front of Jesus. Pastor Mark Addis uses their persistence to open a message on relational fitness, the often-overlooked area of spiritual health that shapes every other part of serving well.

A wealthy man once asked Jesus what he still lacked for eternal life, silently hoping Jesus wouldn't say the one thing he didn't want to hear: give away your possessions. Pastor Mark Addis opens a message on financial fitness with that story, on the difference between owning money and being trusted to steward it.

What does emotional health look like for someone who serves? Pastor Kyle Relph works through Jeremiah 17:9 and 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 to show why a deceitful heart cannot be trusted to lead, and how taking every thought captive to Christ is what makes us emotionally fit to serve.

A circus performer's world record for spinning plates at once is 108. Pastor Mark Addis borrows the image to open a message on physical fitness, one of five areas of life we're called to keep spinning in tune if we want to serve well in God's kingdom.

Eric Liddell refused to run his best event at the 1924 Olympics because the heats fell on a Sunday, then went on to win gold in the 400 meters, an event he'd barely trained for, setting a new world record in the process. Pastor Mark Addis opens a message on spiritual fitness with that story, asking what it costs us to honor our faith instead of compromising for our own glory.

As a teenager, Pastor Mark Addis trained for years to become a British Army helicopter pilot, running fitness courses, working with an elite reconnaissance unit, only to fail the final medical exam because he needed corrective lenses. He opens New Hope's new Fit to Serve series with that story, on what it means to prepare ourselves, not just spiritually, but in every area of life, for whatever God has called us to do.

Aren't all religions basically the same? Pastor Tim Rolen closes the To Boldly Go series in Acts 17:16-34, where Paul stands in a city full of idols and finds a way in. The answer turns on one word no other faith offers.

There are nearly 5,800 handwritten Greek manuscript copies of the New Testament Gospels, compared to 643 for Homer's Iliad, the next-best-preserved work of ancient literature. Pastor Mark Addis lays out the historical case, inside and outside the Bible, for whether Jesus of Nazareth actually lived, died, and rose again.

Nick Vujicic was born with no arms and no legs, and spent years of his childhood wondering what he'd done wrong to deserve it, until, at fifteen, he read the story of a man born blind in John 9 and realized his life wasn't a punishment but a platform. On Father's Day, Pastor Mark Addis tackles one of the hardest questions in the Christian faith: how can a loving God allow suffering?

Isaac Newton once had a detailed model of the solar system built and displayed it in his home just to make a point to a skeptical friend: when the friend asked who built it, Newton insisted it had simply appeared by accident, then asked how, if that was absurd, the real solar system could have appeared by chance. Pastor Mark Addis opens New Hope's new apologetics series with that story to ask whether the Bible itself can be trusted as a reliable, historically accurate document.

Can God be good and still allow terrible things? This message opens the apologetics half of the To Boldly Go series with that question, working through John 3:1-15 and 2 Corinthians 10:4-5. It discusses school shootings and a child's death. Taught by Pastor Kyle Relph.

How do you make sharing your faith part of ordinary life? This message turns evangelism from an event into a habit, works through Matthew 5:14-16 and 1 Peter 2:9, and ends with a gospel outline you can draw on a napkin. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

Why do so many Christians never talk about their faith? In a Billy Graham Association survey, more than half said the reason is fear. This message works through 2 Timothy 1:7-8 and 1 Peter 3:15 and takes those fears apart one at a time. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

What does evangelism actually look like for an ordinary person? This opening message in the To Boldly Go series clears away four wrong assumptions about sharing your faith and works through Matthew 28:19-20 and Acts 8:26-39. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

Why would a prophet be furious that his preaching worked? Jonah 4 ends the book with God's own question, asked twice, and never answered. This message follows that question through Jonah's anger and into the parable of the unmerciful servant in Matthew 18:21-35. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

Can you come back to God after running as far as you can go? Jonah 3 answers with a prophet handed the same command a second time and a city that repents. This message also walks the steps of repentance in Psalm 51:1-15. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

Jonah prays from inside the fish, quoting the Psalms from memory, and never once confesses what he did. This message reads Jonah 2:1-10 twice, first at face value and then closely, and asks what an honest return to God actually looks like. Taught by Pastor Kyle Relph.

Why would a prophet run in the opposite direction? This first message in the Jonah series reads chapter one as a downward spiral and asks what it takes to hit bottom. Working from Jonah 1:1-17 and the sign of Jonah in Matthew 12:38-41. Taught by Pastor Tim Rolen.

How do you keep going when you already know what is waiting for you? Paul sailed for Jerusalem with the Spirit warning him at every stop that prison was coming. This message closes the Paul's Second Mission series in Acts 20:7-38 and Acts 21:10-14. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

What happens when the gospel starts costing people money? In Ephesus the silversmiths worked it out fast, and the city went up in a riot. This message reads Acts 19:23-41 and then turns the question on the idols we keep now. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

What happens to the people you send out? Paul goes back through the churches he planted, and a gifted preacher named Apollos gets corrected in somebody's living room. This message reads Acts 18:18-28 and turns it into a lesson on giving and taking criticism. Taught by Pastor Kyle Relph.

How do you share your faith in a hostile room? Paul preached in a free city, a town that fact checked him, and a marketplace holding thirty thousand gods, and got run out of two of them. This message reads Acts 17 and argues that what carries you through is maturity. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

Paul and Silas were beaten, locked in stocks and singing hymns at midnight when the earthquake hit. This message reads Acts 16:16-40 and asks four questions about being wronged, standing up, the chains we put on ourselves, and never wasting a chance to glorify God. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

How do you tell the difference between a closed door and a wrong turn? Twice the Spirit stopped Paul from going where he intended, and the detour became the gospel's arrival in Europe. This message reads Acts 16:1-10 and 2 Timothy 3:16-17. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

Two apostles had a fight sharp enough to end their partnership, and Scripture records it without tidying it up. This message reads Acts 15:36-41 and asks what to do when believers cannot agree, closing on Paul's appeal in 1 Corinthians 1:10. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

Nobody in Acts sends themselves. This message reads Acts 15:1-34, where a dispute goes to Jerusalem and comes back as a letter, and asks what separates a church that commissions people from one that simply lets them go. Taught by Pastor Kyle Relph.

Three point four billion people, roughly 42 percent of everyone alive, are considered unreached by the gospel. This message closes the Unleashed series by walking through the six places New Hope supports and asking where an ordinary person fits. Built on Matthew 28:19-20 and Acts 1:8. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

Your mission field is the street you already live on. This message in the Unleashed series works through Mark 12:30-31 and the hardest lines of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:43-48, and lands on hospitality as something you chase rather than wait for. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

The building is not the church. This message opens the Unleashed series by asking what a church is actually for, then turns to John 15:1-8, where fruit is not something you produce by trying harder but something that follows from staying attached. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

Climbing Mount Rainier, Pastor Ethan Smith once crossed deep glacier crevasses on nothing but long metal ladders bridging the gap, until a warm year widened the gaps too far for the ladders to reach. On Youth Takeover Sunday, he uses that image for what Jesus did on the cross: bridging a gap no human effort could cross on its own.

What does a church look like when its faith actually moves? This Thanksgiving message walks through a year of ministry at New Hope, from the food pantry to student camps, and grounds all of it in Galatians 5:13-14. Preached by Pastor Mark Addis.

Matt and Shelley Actis left Clovis with four young daughters and no clear picture of what they were walking into. Fourteen years later, five in Colombia and the rest in Uganda, they came home to show the church what those years built. The New Hope team that visited them in May answers questions at the end.

What does a lifetime of obedience actually produce? Mike Cousineau of 1040 Initiative reports on the work in the Ivory Coast, and traces a line from five missionaries killed in 1956 to the village his own mother left 51 years ago.

How do you know where God actually wants you? This missionary profile tells the story of Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, and the men who died with them in Ecuador, then turns to 1 Corinthians 3:5-7 and the question of your own assigned task. Taught by Pastor Kyle Relph.

What if one convert was the whole point? This missionary profile follows David Livingstone from a Scottish cotton mill to the African bush, where the one conversion ever credited to him changed a region. Built on Matthew 28:19 and Mark 10:28-30. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

Why does the resurrection have to be personal? This Easter message reads John 10:1-18 and 27-30, where Jesus calls himself the gate and the good shepherd, and argues the whole arrangement is one to one rather than corporate. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

Who was Patrick, once you strip out the shamrocks and the snakes? A British teenager trafficked into slavery in Ireland, who escaped, and then went back to the people who took him. This message reads that life through Romans 12:12 and Colossians 3:13. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

Christmas is over, the new year has not started, and Jesus has left instructions for the gap. This message works through the Upper Room Discourse in John 14, 15 and 17, and asks how to live between the promise and the return. Taught by Pastor Kyle Relph.

Advent is a season of waiting, and this is the morning the waiting ends. This Christmas Eve message reads Matthew 2:1-12 and 1 Peter 1:3-7, asking why men who were not Jewish travelled nine hundred miles to worship a Jewish child. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

The Christmas story told from Joseph's side, by a man who was about to quietly end an engagement. This message reads Matthew 1:18-25 and then follows the pattern forward through Acts 9:1-19 and a run of people whose lives turned over completely. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

A newspaper editor read the telegram announcing the first powered flight and threw it away. This Christmas message reads Micah 5:2-5 and Luke 2:8-11, and asks what we are actually looking for in December, and what we will find. Taught by Pastor Tim Rolen.

Somewhere between two and four hundred prophecies about Jesus were fulfilled in one lifetime. This message opens the Christmas series by tracing the breadcrumb trail from Genesis through Isaiah 9:6-7 and Micah 5:2 to a stable in Bethlehem. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

Most of us keep faith in one compartment and open it when we need it. This final message in the James series reads James 5:13-20 and argues the whole point is the opposite, prayer poured over everything like syrup on a waffle. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

James tells suffering people to be patient, which is not the answer anyone in pain wants. This message reads James 5:7-12 and takes the command seriously, including the moment patience quietly curdles into apathy. Taught by Pastor Kyle Relph.

James turns on the rich in six blistering verses, and then the message spends most of its time on what he is not saying. This reads James 5:1-6 alongside the rich young ruler in Matthew 19:16-26, and lands on an open hand. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

There are two ways to play God, James says. Sit in judgment on your brother, or make plans for a tomorrow you were never promised. This message reads James 4:11-17 and takes both seriously. Taught by Pastor Tim Rolen.

What causes fights and quarrels among you? James asks it of his own congregation, not the world outside. This message reads James 4:1-12 and traces the conflict back to two causes before laying out the cure. Taught by Pastor Tim Rolen.

We have more information available than any generation in history and no more wisdom for it. This message reads James 3:13-18, separates the two kinds of wisdom James names, and works through the six marks of the heavenly one. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

Two ounces of muscle and mucous membrane, and James says no one can tame it. This message reads James 3:1-12 through the six word pictures James uses, and ends with a five letter test to run before you speak. Taught by Pastor Tim Rolen.

Telling a hungry person to keep warm and eat well is not faith, it is a sentence. This message reads James 2:14-26 and then turns to the lukewarm church of Revelation 3:14-22, where the water problem is a real one. Taught by Pastor Kyle Relph.

Two visitors arrive at church the same morning. One parks a Ferrari, the other walks up the driveway in torn clothes. This message reads James 2:1-13 on favoritism, and argues it is not a bad habit but a sin the Bible names. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

James refuses to let anyone blame God for temptation, or Satan either. This message reads James 1:12-27 and traces the sin cycle one stage at a time, then offers three guardrails. Taught by Pastor Tim Rolen.

Consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds. It is one of the hardest sentences in the New Testament, and this message opens the James series by taking it at face value. Reading James 1:1-12. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

You can read every book about flying and still not be able to land a plane. This closing message in The Word of God series is about the gap between knowing Scripture and applying it, working from Luke 24:13-32 and James 1:22-25. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

Do snakes actually eat dust? Are there two creation accounts? Why does Stephen's arithmetic not add up? This message takes the apparent contradictions in Scripture one at a time and does the research out loud. Anchored in 2 Timothy 3:16-17. Taught by Pastor Kyle Relph.

Two weeks of theology about the Bible, and this one is the practical session: how to actually study it. Which study Bible, which tools, three questions to ask a passage, and why context is the thing people skip. Taught by Pastor Tim Rolen.

Sixty six books, fifteen hundred years, and one thread running through all of it. This message maps how the Bible is put together, why context changes everything, and then traces the scarlet thread from Genesis 3:21 to John 1:29. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

The Bible has been the best selling book every single year for 501 years running. This message opens The Word of God series by asking what makes it different from every other book, working from 2 Timothy 3:16-17 and Romans 10:13-17. Taught by Pastor Tim Rolen.

The Lord's Prayer takes twenty seconds to say and contains almost everything prayer is for. This message works through Matthew 6:9-13 line by line, then follows forgiveness into the parable in Matthew 18:21-35. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

Jesus said do not pray like the hypocrites, then told his disciples where to stand and what not to say. This message reads Matthew 6:5-13 and finishes on Mount Carmel, where Elijah made an impossible thing harder on purpose. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

How do you pray when you have no idea where to begin? In week two of Connecting Through Prayer, Pastor Mark Addis works through Psalm 19, Psalm 95 and Psalm 57 to show what a prayer of adoration and a prayer of thanksgiving actually sound like.

What actually happens when we pray? Opening a four-week series on prayer, Pastor Kyle Relph starts with the plainest definition he can give, then works through Mark 11, Luke 18 and Philippians 4 to show why prayer changes the person praying more than it changes God.

What does a man say when he knows the executioner is days away? Pastor Tim Rolen closes the Timothy series in 2 Timothy 4:1-8, Paul's last letter from a Roman death row, and asks what our own final words of first importance would be.

What does a faith that looks solid from the outside and turns out to be hollow inside actually look like? On Father's Day 2023, Pastor Mark Addis works through 2 Timothy 3:1-9, where Paul's list of terrible times in the last days turns out to describe people sitting inside the church.

Why do so few Christians ever get past attending church into actually being discipled? Working from 2 Timothy 2:14-19, Pastor Tim Rolen names three benefits most believers have never been told about, and draws the line between God's acceptance and God's approval.

Where does the strength to keep going as a Christian actually come from? In 2 Timothy 2:1-7, Pastor Mark Addis works through Paul's command to be strong in grace, and the four callings he hands his protege: teacher, soldier, athlete and farmer.

What do you say to someone whose passion for their calling is starting to go out? In 2 Timothy 1, Pastor Kyle Relph works through Paul's letter from a Roman prison to a young pastor who is discouraged, intimidated, and close to quitting.

Who is actually influencing your life the most? In 1 Timothy 6, Pastor Mark Addis closes the letter with Paul's warning about false teachers, the love of money, and contentment, and asks whether Christ is really the top influencer in our lives.

Who is the church actually responsible for? On Mother's Day 2023, Pastor Mark Addis works through 1 Timothy 5, where Paul tells a young pastor how to treat older men and women, and who counts as a widow the church must care for.

How do you tell truth from the confident lie standing next to it? Pastor Kyle Relph works through 1 Timothy 4:1-16 verse by verse, drawing out the what, the why, and the how of Paul's charge to a young leader: watch your life and doctrine closely.

What should a church look for in the people it follows? Pastor Tim Rolen preaches 1 Timothy 3:1-16, the first pastor's manual ever written, and lands on the ancient hymn Paul quotes at the end of it: the mystery of godliness, and the person at the center.

Where does Paul tell a young pastor to start? Not with strategy. Pastor Mark Addis works through 1 Timothy 2:1-15, where prayer comes first of all, and then takes on the half of the chapter most sermons quietly skip.

Can anyone be too far gone? Pastor Tim Rolen opens the Timothy series in 1 Timothy 1:1-17, where Paul calls himself the worst of sinners, and draws out what that means for anyone convinced their own past has disqualified them.

Everyone talks about Friday and Sunday. What about Saturday? Pastor Mark Addis closes the God Is series on Easter with Psalm 62:1-8 and 1 Peter 1:9-12, on the day when hope looked dead and the disciples worshipped anyway.

Is God only faithful when he answers the way we asked? Pastor Tim Rolen preaches God Is Faithful from Proverbs 3:5-6 and Lamentations 3:22-23 on Palm Sunday, a service that also carries nine baptisms across two hours.

The world says love is love. Scripture says something far more demanding. Pastor Kyle Relph works through 1 John 4:7-21 and 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, sorting four Greek words the Bible uses for love and asking what changes in a person who has actually met God.

Why do bad things happen to good people, and good things to bad ones? Pastor Mark Addis takes on the justice of God from Genesis 18:25 and Romans 3:25-26, and reaches an uncomfortable conclusion: justice is not actually what any of us should be asking for.

If God is wise, why are you in the situation you are in? Pastor Mark Addis works through Job 28 and James 3:15-17, and lands on a claim most of us resist: the circumstances you are in right now are not plan B.

What does it actually mean to call God sovereign? Pastor Mark Addis builds the case from Isaiah 44:6-8, the prophecies of Daniel, and fourteen chapters of Joseph's life, where what his brothers meant for evil turned out to be the saving of a nation.

What are we actually saying when we call God holy? Pastor Kyle Relph traces the word through Exodus 19:6, Isaiah 6:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:9, and finds something stranger than moral perfection: a purity that spreads the wrong way, toward us.

Is God good all the time, or only when things go your way? Pastor Tim Rolen opens the God Is series on Psalm 23:6 and Psalm 34:8, arguing that this one belief shapes how a person survives everything else.

Most of us formed a picture of God as children, and never went back to check it. Pastor Mark Addis opens the God Is series by working through the names God gives himself, from Yahweh to Abba, and what each one says about his character.

What actually changes when the Holy Spirit takes up residence in an ordinary person? Pastor Tim Rolen works through Acts 1:4-8 and Galatians 5:16-26, on the fruit that grows from a root we cannot manufacture.

Ask a room what the Holy Spirit is and you have already gone wrong, Pastor Tim Rolen says. Not what. Who. He gives the congregation standing permission to correct anyone who gets it wrong, including him.

Why can't we just do discipleship on our own? Pastor Kyle Relph works through John 14:26 and Galatians 5:22-25 to make the case that the Holy Spirit is not an assistant we call in when we get stuck, but the whole reason any of it works.

Who is the Holy Spirit, and why does it matter to an ordinary Christian? Pastor Mark Addis opens A Spirit Filled Life by tracing the Spirit from the second verse of Genesis through the judges and David, then into what Jesus promised in John 14:15-26.

Who did Jesus actually pick? Pastor Mark Addis works through the twelve named in Matthew 10:2-4, what became of each of them, and why Acts 4:13 says the thing that astonished Jerusalem was how unremarkable they were.

What does a church actually need to stay healthy? Pastor Mark Addis opens the year on Acts 2:42, the four things the first believers devoted themselves to, and why letting any one of them go flat is like driving at speed on an underinflated tyre.

Twelve years in Medellín, a city that was once the murder capital of the world. This missions Sunday is a first-hand report from the field, closing on Matthew 28:18-20, Acts 1:8 and Luke 10:1 and the question of where each of us fits. Shared by Missionary Rebekah Slick.

Most people can tell you the day they came to faith. Fewer can tell you what happened after. This mid-year message reads the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30 and argues the second half of the story is the part that matters. Taught by Pastor Mark Addis.

A Christmas morning conversation between two pastors that becomes something else entirely. Tim Rolen and Mark Addis trade Christmas memories, read Max Lucado on why God chose a barnyard, and then Pastor Tim hands over the Bible he preached his first sermon from.

The first Christians did not celebrate Christmas at all. Pastor Tim Rolen asks why in 2 Timothy 1:8-10 and Titus 2:11-14, and finds that they were not ignoring the birth. They simply refused to cut the life of Jesus into pieces.

Five people were told Jesus was coming, and every one of them reacted differently. Pastor Mark Addis works through Luke 1:26-38, Matthew 1:18-25 and Luke 2:8-14, from Mary's yes to Herod's plot, and asks which reaction is ours.

The Christmas story does not begin in Matthew. Pastor Tim Rolen opens the Love Came Down series in the Old Testament, from Isaiah 53:3-5 to Micah 5:2, on promises made centuries before anyone could have arranged to keep them.

Why do weeks go by without us saying thank you to God? Pastor Mark Addis closes the Psalms of Thanksgiving series in Psalm 111, follows it into Job 28, and lands on a Hebrew word for ponder that literally means to visit often.

When did you last genuinely thank God for something? Pastor Kyle Relph works through Psalm 100 and the seven commands packed into its five verses, then tells the story of the two days he was certain he could not provide for his family.

What does the strength of a mountain have to do with gratitude? Pastor Mark Addis preaches Psalm 95, on a God whose hands hold both the depths of the earth and the peaks, and on the difference between Thanksgiving and thanks living.

David wrote Psalm 34 hiding in a cave, hunted, surrounded by everyone in debt or distress who had nowhere else to go. Pastor Tim Rolen reads it as what it is: not a prayer to God but a word to the people in the cave with him.

Thirty years after two churches voted to become one, Pastor Mark Addis closes the anniversary series in Luke 19:1-10. A wealthy tax collector up a tree, and a man who stopped walking, looked up, and used his name.

Nobody decides not to make a difference. We just default, and the moment passes. Pastor Tim Rolen opens the 30th anniversary series in 2 Peter 1:2-9 and James 1:2-4, on the difference between a choice and a default.

What actually changes after someone is saved? Pastor Mark Addis closes the Road to Salvation series on Romans 8:1, then spends the message on the most violent opponent the early church had, and what happened to him on a road to Damascus.

Pastor Tim Rolen opens by admitting the sermon title is wrong. You cannot gain salvation. Romans 10:1-13 says it is received, not earned, and the word at the centre of it is one a lot of people have quietly retired.

God is love, and God also hates. Pastor Tim Rolen preaches Romans 6:23 and Proverbs 6:16-19 on the two eternal destinations, and argues that a generation of preachers has left one half of that out.

Most of us quietly believe God loves us more on our good weeks. Pastor Mark Addis works through Romans 5:8, John 3:16 and 1 Corinthians 13, and takes apart the idea that anything we do moves his love up or down.

Nobody wants a sermon series that opens on sin. Pastor Mark Addis starts the Road to Salvation there anyway, with Romans 3:23, and points out that Paul did not put a period at the end of it.

Most of us have said some version of I would give more if I could. Pastor Mark Addis closes the Rainy Days series on the thing that makes generosity possible in the first place: margin.

After more than fifty years of preaching, Pastor Tim Rolen says he has never once preached on planning a legacy. He does here, and by the end he decides the sermon title was wrong.

Sixty-one percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and so do thirty percent of people earning over $250,000. Pastor Andrew Lynch argues the problem was never the size of the paycheck.

Pastor Mark Addis's father visited from England and started taking photographs inside a party supply store. Not of the family. Of the shelves. That is where this message on consumerism starts.

Which piece of leather shapes more of your decisions, your wallet or your Bible? Pastor Tim Rolen opens the Rainy Days series on that question and comes back to it at the end.

Three farmers pray for rain and a stranger tells them they are wasting their time. Asked what he would do instead, he says he would have brought an umbrella. That is where Pastor Tim Rolen closes fifteen weeks on Abraham.

Abraham sends his most trusted servant five hundred miles to find his son a wife. The servant asks God for a sign, and the sign he picks is a woman who will water ten camels. Pastor Mark Addis works out what that actually cost her.

Trappers in southeast Asia catch monkeys with a buried pot and a narrow mouth. The monkey reaches in, grabs the fruit, and its closed fist will not come back out. It could let go at any moment. It never does.

A Canadian schoolteacher once spent eighteen months counting every promise in the Bible. He found 8,810. Pastor Mark Addis uses that as the way into the six verses where God finally keeps the one he made to Abraham.

The original plan was to skip the back half of Genesis 19. Pastor Tim Rolen decided partway through last week's service that skipping it would be cowardly, and preaches it instead.

Nip it in the bud is a phrase about stopping something while it is still small. Pastor Andrew Lynch opens with the years Europe's leaders spent not doing that in the 1930s, and then turns to Genesis 19.

Abraham talks God down from fifty to ten. Pastor Mark Addis uses that negotiation to ask a plainer question: when we bring God a request, what are the ways he can answer it?

New runners all make the same mistake. They start too fast, and the coach yells pace yourself. Then, near the end, the same coach yells finish strong. Pastor Tim Rolen says that second shout is what God is saying to a ninety year old woman named Sarah.

A nine year old plants a cherry tree, then discovers it will be years before it fruits. Meanwhile the two fifteen foot trees already in the garden turn out to be cherry trees too. Pastor Andrew Lynch uses that to open Genesis 17 and the thirteen years of silence hidden between two verses.

Sarah has waited ten years in Canaan for a promise that has not moved. So she stops waiting. Pastor Mark Addis works through Genesis 16 and what it cost, then asks the harder question underneath it: how long are you willing to wait on God?

Sprinkle pepper on a dish of water and it floats. Touch it with a drop of soap and every fleck flees to the edges. Pastor Andrew Lynch runs the experiment on stage, then says the pepper is our fears and doubts, and God's promises are the soap.

Pastor Tim Rolen read Genesis 14 the day before a long drive and thought it might be the dullest chapter in the Bible outside Leviticus. Then he asked God to pull something out of it, and got six things and one very good question.

Pastor Andrew Lynch once built an entire desk before discovering that the pre-drilled holes were facing the floor. He had got step one wrong, so he got to build it twice. Abram, in Genesis 13, has to walk his mistake back the whole way too.

Abram does everything right. He leaves home when God says leave, arrives where God sends him, and builds two altars. Then a famine hits the land God gave him, and he walks out of it. Pastor Mark Addis works through the first of Abraham's warts.

A man on a 747 over Brazil is told three engines have failed and the fourth is going. He braces, prays, and survives. Afterwards, dazed in the airport, he asks himself what his last thoughts had been. Relationships. Pastor Mark Addis closes 1 Thessalonians there.

Every kid who was ever left home alone knows the drill. Freedom, junk food, whatever is on television, and then a glance at the clock and a frantic sprint to put everything back before Mum walks in. Pastor Andrew Lynch says we do the same thing with Jesus.

What actually happens to believers who die before Christ returns? In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Pastor Tim Rolen works through the passage Paul wrote to a church anxious about exactly that question, and finds three reasons for hope and three sounds to listen for.

A hospital director explains the admissions test. Fill a bathtub, hand the person a teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket, and ask them to empty it. A normal person picks the bucket, says the visitor. No, says the director. A normal person pulls the plug.

A little girl asks her mother why some of her hair has gone white. Every time you misbehave, says the mother, I get one. The girl thinks about this, then asks why all of Grandma's hair is white. Pastor Andrew Lynch opens 1 Thessalonians 3 on the subject of families.

A pretest at a New England high school asked students what an epistle was. One answered: the wives of the apostles. Pastor Tim Rolen uses that to ask a harder question. If Paul wrote back to this church, would he compliment us on what we do with his letter?

Two hunters. One collapses. His friend calls 911 and says my friend is dead, what do I do. The operator says first let's make sure he's actually dead. There is a pause, then a gunshot, then: okay, now what? Pastor Mark Addis says that question is the whole of 1 Thessalonians 2.

Tiger Woods set out to teach his son golf. What the cameras caught at the PNC Championship was something else: a twelve year old who had picked up his father's walk, his swing, the way he lifts his cap. Nobody taught him that. Pastor Andrew Lynch says imitation is central to the Christian life.

Ready or not, here I come. Everyone who ever played hide and seek knows the sentence and what it meant. Pastor Tim Rolen opens a series on 1 Thessalonians by pointing out that life, death and the return of Christ all announce themselves the same way.

The American Psychological Association takes fifty-nine words to define embarrassment, a feeling anybody recognises in half a second. Pastor Andrew Lynch starts there, and works towards a plainer claim: our emotions are part of what God called good.

Candid Camera once left children alone in a room with a plate of cookies, one of them noticeably bigger than the rest. Every single child took the big one. Pastor Tim Rolen uses that to open the subject nobody else in the series wanted.

Time is the fire in which we burn. It is a line from a poem, borrowed by a Star Trek villain, and Pastor Mark Addis says it is accurate but only half the picture. In the hands of someone following Christ, time stops being a predator and becomes a resource.

A one-man band is an oxymoron and a genuinely impressive sight. Pastor Andrew Lynch shows one, then says it is exactly what a church should not look like.

In one survey, half the people asked said doing their taxes was less complicated than working out how to eat a healthy meal. Pastor Mark Addis opens a series on stewardship with the part of it nobody expects: the body.

Small groups sounds like the easiest subject a church can preach on. Korrie Gallardo points out it sits on the same shelf as diet, exercise and budgeting, the things everybody knows and almost nobody does.

Pastor Tim Rolen spent three weeks trying to talk God out of this Easter sermon. He wanted to preach the cross and the empty tomb. What he kept being handed instead was an instruction: invite everybody to supper.

Hold a fast food photograph next to the actual burger and you have the gap between expectation and reality. Pastor Andrew Lynch opens Palm Sunday there, then shows a crowd doing the same thing to a king.

What are you holding onto when everything falls apart? Come explore twelve promises from God that can anchor your life to something stronger than your circumstances.

What if the darkness you're living in isn't meant to stay hidden? Jesus came to shine a light on who we really are, so we could become who we're meant to be.

How dark was the world Jesus was actually born into? Pastor Mark Addis works back through the four hundred silent years, Roman rule, and a fractured Israel to show what the people of Isaiah 9:2 were walking through, and why Hebrews 11:1 asks us to get comfortable in the dark.

When the soldiers came for Jesus at the garden gate, all eleven disciples ran. Days later they were locked in a room, afraid. A few years after that, people in other cities were saying these men have turned the world upside down. Pastor Tim Rolen closes a thirteen week series on that change.

Two brothers fell out, and one hired a carpenter to build a fence so he would never have to look at the other's land again. The carpenter built a bridge instead. Pastor Tim Rolen asks whether we are building bridges or barriers.

Nobody thought to fetch David for the feast. He was the eighth son, out with the sheep, doing the job no one wanted. The prophet who had come to anoint a king refused to sit down until somebody went and got him.

Somebody once described a leafy Christian: a branch covered in healthy green growth with no fruit on it at all. Pastor Mark Addis answers the question every new believer asks, which is now what, in one word.

Say the word worship and most people think of singing. Pastor Andrew Lynch asks the obvious follow-up: what about the people who do not sing? Can they not worship God?

"Dear God, so far today I've done all right. I haven't gossiped or lost my temper. But in a few minutes I'm going to get out of bed, and from then on I'm probably going to need a lot of help. Amen." Pastor Tim Rolen asks why we said amen before our feet hit the floor.

A man reads the Bible cover to cover, gets as far as Genesis, and quits. Old King James, tricky names, very old language. Pastor Mark Addis starts there and gives five keys for reading it a better way, then three things to do with what you find.

A man climbs the outside of a downtown building in front of a crowd. Near the top he reaches for something jutting from the wall, closes his hand on it, and falls. What he was holding was a spider's web. Pastor Tim Rolen asks what you are holding onto.

The barn is finished. Before the sermon, New Hope stops to give thanks, name the people who built it, and dedicate the building. Then Pastor Andrew Lynch asks what a child watching a father come home from work has to do with following Jesus.

Stand on the floor of a forest and you see trees. Get above it and you see the forest itself, its shape and its size. Pastor Andrew Lynch takes the whole Bible at that altitude, from creation to Christ, in one message.

A family fills a house with so much trash that they move next door and start again. Pastor Mark Addis uses that to explain the difference between a fresh start and a new birth, and why Jesus told Nicodemus he needed the second one.

A sergeant in the Highland Regiment tells the story of the private he tormented. One rainy night the man came in soaked from sentry duty and knelt to pray, so the sergeant threw his boots and hit him twice in the head. He never moved. He kept praying. Pastor Tim Rolen on what stands in our way.

Two brothers argue over who gets the first pancake. Their mother says Jesus would let his brother have it, so the older one turns to the younger and says, Ryan, you be Jesus today. Pastor Tim Rolen opens a thirteen-week series on what it means to be a disciple.

An army on foot does not beat an army with nine hundred iron chariots. That is the setup in Judges 4, and the outcome runs through two women neither side would have picked: Deborah, who is judging Israel under a palm tree, and Jael, who owns a tent and a hammer.

Eighty-three percent of Christians come to faith by the age of fourteen. After that the odds drop off a cliff. Pastor Mark Addis had a different sermon planned, then watched a week of Vacation Bible School and changed his mind.

Jeremiah has said everything God told him to say and nobody has listened. So he complains, and the answer he gets is not comfort. If running against men on foot has worn you out, how will you compete with horses? Pastor Mark Addis on a verse that refuses to coddle anyone.

Two men find the same thing by opposite routes. One is plowing a field he does not own and his blade strikes something that does not sound like a rock. The other has spent his working life hunting for exactly this. Both sell everything they have. Pastor Andrew Lynch on the two shortest parables Jesus told.

Pastor Andrew Lynch has a friend who grows thousand-pound pumpkins in his front yard. One year Andrew tried it himself, put seeds in the ground and watered them, and got vines, leaves, one small green pumpkin, and nothing else. The difference was the soil.

In 2000 Netflix was strapped for cash and offered to sell itself to Blockbuster for fifty million dollars. Blockbuster said no. Pastor Andrew Lynch uses the most expensive missed opportunity in business history to open a parable about a far more serious one.

An African impala can clear ten feet in the air and thirty feet across. Put one in a three-foot-walled enclosure and it stays there, because it will not jump when it cannot see where its feet will land. Pastor Tim Rolen on faith, and on a generation standing at the same river twice.

Moses is dead and Joshua has to take his place. Pastor Tim Rolen says it must have felt like Barney Fife being asked to replace Charlton Heston. What God says to him first is be strong, be courageous, do not be discouraged, which tells you exactly how Joshua was feeling.

Twelve men go into the promised land. All twelve come back saying the land is good. Ten of them add that the people are giants and we looked like grasshoppers. The majority wins, and a nation spends forty years in a desert. Pastor Tim Rolen on what fear costs.

Twelve spies see the same land. Ten say the cities are fortified and we cannot do this. Two say the Lord is with us, do not be afraid. Forty years later Israel is back at the same river with the same choice. Pastor Tim Rolen walks the whole road that got them there.

A missionary finds a village dying of disease with a hospital just across the river. The people will not enter the water. He wades in, swims across, and stands on the far bank waving, and only then do they follow. Pastor Tim Rolen opens a five-week series on the decisions people make at a riverbank.

A sheep wanders off. A coin gets misplaced. Neither of them chose it. The third story in Luke 15 is different, because the son picked the distance himself and went as far as he could get. Pastor Andrew Lynch on why the riches of repentance beat the sweetness of sin.

Pastor Andrew Lynch once lost his son in a Walmart. From his side of the store nothing was wrong, he could see the boy the whole time. From his son's side the world had ended. That gap is the point of two of the shortest stories Jesus ever told.

Jude uses a word for contend that Greek writers used for athletes straining against each other. Pastor Mark Addis finishes the shortest letter in the New Testament, and the closing instructions read like a checklist: build, pray, keep, show mercy.

A hidden reef sits just under the surface where nothing warns you it is there, and it opens the hull of a ship that sails straight over it. That is Jude's picture of a false teacher, and Pastor Mark Addis spends a morning on why the danger is always the one already inside.

A village chief who does not follow Christ sends a delegation with a message: thank you for investing in our children, you can hear them singing in the streets now. Missionary Mike Cousineau brings New Hope an update from Ivory Coast.

Matt and Shelly Actis grew up outside the church. Getting to church every Sunday was the first hard step. Then a prayer they call dangerous: is this all there is to my faith? Twenty years later they are training pastors in Uganda. This is the whole journey, told in one morning.

One event without the other means nothing. No crucifixion, and the resurrection is unnecessary. No resurrection, and the crucifixion is one more Roman execution and Friday was never good. Pastor Tim Rolen preaches both, and does not soften the first one.

A survey once asked Christian readers to name their biggest struggles. Materialism came first, pride second. Pastor Tim Rolen's point is not the list. It is that the same list from people who claim no faith would look almost identical.

A developer offered ten new homes a storm shelter as an option. Nine buyers took it. The tenth couple, both in their late seventies, put in a hot tub instead. Pastor Tim Rolen on what that says about priorities, and about a word in Colossians 1.

Nobody climbs Everest in one push. There are four base camps on the way up, and the point of each is to stop, breathe, and let your body catch up with where you already are. Pastor Tim Rolen calls this one a lighten-up Sunday.

David wrote that he lifts his eyes to the hills, and his help comes from the Lord who made them. Pastor Tim Rolen builds an entire message on a question that follows from it: which hill are you actually looking at?

David wrote that he lifts his eyes to the hills, and his help comes from the Lord who made them. Pastor Tim Rolen builds an entire message on a question that follows from it: which hill are you actually looking at?

In 1996 a sudden storm caught climbers high on Everest and eight people died. Nobody starts that climb without knowing they might. Pastor Tim Rolen says Calvary is the harder mountain, and that Jesus was equally plain about what happens to anyone who follows him up it.

Golgotha means the place of the skull, and the hill still looks like one. Pastor Tim Rolen shows a photograph of it and says plainly: this is not Glacier, there is no view worth the walk, and it is the most important climb any of us will make.

Jesus does not go to Jerusalem to recruit. He walks along a lakeshore in a region nobody thought much of and picks four working fishermen. Pastor Andrew Lynch, preaching at New Hope for the first time, on what that says about who God calls.

A family of six and their dog in Utah have been watched two billion times. Kylie Jenner charges more per post than most people earn in a decade. Pastor Mark Addis starts 2021 by taking the word influencer seriously, then asks who the influencers of the Bible were.

Blind skiers run slalom. A sighted skier goes ahead calling the turns, and the racer commits to a voice they cannot check. Pastor Tim Rolen sets that beside Israel at the Jordan, one generation that turned back and one that walked in.

In 2010 everything Roy Rogers owned went under the hammer. Trigger sold for more than a quarter million. So did the Pontiac. Pastor Tim Rolen uses an auction catalogue to make a point about worth: value is whatever someone is willing to pay, and Jesus outbid.

Howard Hughes owned airlines, studios and casinos, and died alone in a hotel suite with fingernails inches long, terrified of dying. Roy Rogers ended every programme singing about happy trails. Pastor Tim Rolen sets the two men beside Psalm 37 and asks which trail we are on.

Seven weeks preparing to preach Calvary, and one word kept turning up on Pastor Tim Rolen's evening walks: inconvenient. It was inconvenient to walk instead of having ice cream. So how convenient, he asks, was any of what happened on that hill?

Palm Sunday is remembered as a parade. Pastor Tim Rolen points out that the grand marshal was crying. Luke is the only gospel that records it, and what Jesus said through the tears was that the city did not know what would bring it peace.

A man sells his farm to go looking for diamonds, wanders Africa for years, and dies broke. The man who bought the farm finds a stone in the creek. It turns out to be the Kimberley mine. Pastor Tim Rolen asks how many believers do exactly that with the cross.

Why would God answer a prayer three times with no, and leave the thorn where it was? This message works through 2 Corinthians 11 and 12, where Paul boasts about the one thing nobody boasts about, and asks what it takes to accept a no from God.

A boy loses his left arm in a car accident and takes up judo. His coach teaches him one move and nothing else for months. He wins the tournament with it, and afterwards the coach explains: the only defence against that throw is to grab your opponent's left arm.

A brick does not care whether you build a house with it or throw it through a window. Pastor Mark Addis opens a six-part midweek study on stewardship by getting money out of the way early, because money is only one resource and not the most interesting one.

A boy nobody in his class liked spent weeks making a valentine for every one of them. His mother baked cookies for the walk home she was dreading. He came through the door glowing and said: not one. I didn't forget a single one.

No man's land was the strip between the trenches where an army could neither advance nor retreat. Pastor Mark Addis uses it for the place a believer gets stuck, and reads Philippians 3 on what it takes to keep moving.

God went silent for four hundred years, and then broke that silence with an angel standing beside an altar. Pastor Tim Rolen reads Luke 1 and Luke 2 and asks what a couple who kept serving through the silence has to teach us about a hard year.

Paul tells the Corinthians to flee from idolatry and then says he is speaking to sensible people, so they can judge it for themselves. Pastor Tim Rolen takes that as the Advent question: what would a repurposed life actually look like?

How do you face the dark valleys of life? This message from Luke 22 shows what Jesus did in the garden of Gethsemane, and three ways prayer lifts us to higher ground, where the enemy of our soul is defeated.

On the night before the cross Jesus told his disciples to pray so they would not fall into temptation, and then went a stone's throw away and prayed himself until his sweat fell like blood. Pastor Tim Rolen reads Luke 22 and draws out what suffering does and does not mean. The service closes with baptisms.

Why did Jesus choose a garden on a hillside as the place to face the night before the cross, and what was actually in the cup he asked to have taken away? A message from Luke 22 on what a mountain garden is for.

What gives Jesus the right to demand that anyone listen to him? A Veterans Sunday service where the message from Luke 9 works through the witnesses that back the claim, from the prophets to the people whose lives changed. Preached by Pastor Tim Rolen.

What happens to a believer after death, and what does the Mount of Transfiguration have to do with the answer? This message works through Luke 9 and 1 Thessalonians 4 and lands on why Moses and Elijah were the two men standing there. Preached by Pastor Tim Rolen.

Why does anyone get a mountaintop moment with God, and why are we never allowed to stay there? This message works through the Transfiguration in Luke 9 and lands on the point of the whole series: we are transfixed on the mountain so we can be transformed for the valley.

What is the most jaw-dropping thing you have ever seen, and what would it take for God to top it? This message counts the seven people present at the Transfiguration in Luke 9 and asks what each of them is there to teach us.

God says exactly one thing out of the cloud on the Mount of Transfiguration, and it is a command: listen to him. This message opens the series on that mountain by laying Luke 9 alongside Hebrews 1 and asking who is actually worth listening to.

One prophet, eight hundred and fifty on the other side, no fire allowed, and then twelve jars of water poured over the offering to make it harder still. This message walks through the showdown on Mount Carmel and asks what it means that God is absolutely reliable.

Scripture keeps putting its turning points in low places rather than high ones. Pastor Tim Rolen walks the valleys of the Bible on a Mother's Day nobody could spend together, and asks what Abraham's choices at Hebron and Bethel have to do with ours.

Three things quietly keep people off the mountain and out of any real closeness with God, and none of them look like sin. This message names them as busyness, complacency and comfort, working from the leper of Luke 5 and the habit Jesus kept of withdrawing alone to pray.

Six times in one chapter Jesus says you have heard that it was said, and then raises the standard rather than relaxing it. Pastor Mark Addis works through the hardest stretch of the Sermon on the Mount and what it does to the idea that we are basically doing fine.

A lighthouse built on rock and out of rock stood for more than a century where every previous one had been swept away. Pastor Mark Addis uses it to read the end of the Sermon on the Mount, where two houses face the same storm and only the foundation differs.

Luke drops one curious sentence at the end of the leper's healing: Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. This message builds on that word often, and asks how a desolate place becomes a holy one.

Elijah wins the greatest showdown in the Old Testament and is suicidal under a bush by the next chapter. This message works through 1 Kings 19 and asks what to do with a heart that collapses right after a victory.

Elijah faced down a king, a false god and four hundred and fifty prophets without flinching, then ran for his life over one threatening message. This message traces how a bold man forgets what he already knows, and what God does about it.

Elijah soaks the altar three times before he asks God for fire, then prays seven times for rain and is told there is nothing to see six of them. This message works through 1 Kings 18 and draws six timeless principles about prayer out of it.

God sends Elijah to a brook that should not exist in a drought, feeds him by scavengers, and then dries the brook up. This message works through 1 Kings 17 and asks what to do on the day the thing you were counting on runs dry.

Elijah asks Israel one question on Mount Carmel before any fire falls, and the saddest sentence in the chapter is the answer: the people said nothing. This message is about that question and why indecision is itself a decision.

God asked Abraham for the one thing he had waited twenty five years to receive. Pastor Tim Rolen reads Genesis 22 on Mount Moriah and traces how much of it reads like a rehearsal for something that happened on another hill.

Caleb picked out a mountain at forty and asked for it at eighty five, and in between he watched a whole generation die in the desert for a decision they made in one afternoon. Pastor Tim Rolen opens the Mountain Moments series with Numbers 14 and Joshua 14.

What changed when Easter did not end on Saturday? This Easter 2020 message follows Peter, the women at the tomb and the disciples through Matthew 16, Matthew 28 and Acts 1 to show the reversal the resurrection brought, and the one it can bring to a life.

Paul says the treasure is carried in jars of clay, and gives the reason plainly: so that it is obvious the power belongs to God and not to us. A Palm Sunday message preached to an empty room about what makes a cracked container valuable.

No weapon forged against you will prevail. That promise gets read on the second Sunday of the shutdown, alongside Paul's account of being hard pressed on every side and not crushed, and a long illustration drawn from a wrestling mat.

This was the first Sunday New Hope could not gather, and the message does not pretend otherwise. Pastor Tim Rolen answers the fear directly from Deuteronomy 31, Romans 8 and Philippians 4, and makes the case that a believer is not alone, not abandoned, and need not be afraid.

David lost his position, his wife, his advisor, his closest friend and finally his self respect, and Psalm 142 is what came out of that cave. Pastor Mark Addis closes the Road to Recovery series on why God lets pain into a life and what he expects us to do with it afterward.

How do you keep from sliding back into old habits once you have started to heal? The seventh Road to Recovery message looks at how relapse happens and at the daily time with God that guards against it, built on Mark 14:38.

We keep hauling around the things we say we want rid of, because they have become comfortable. Pastor Tim Rolen preaches the fifth Road to Recovery message on why willpower keeps failing and what has to change first.

Guilt kept private does not stay quiet. The fourth Road to Recovery message works through the step nobody looks forward to, openly examining and confessing our faults to God, to ourselves and to another person, and why the third part of that is the part that heals.

How do you move from stuck to starting over? Matthew 11 invites the weary to come to Jesus, and Pastor Tim Rolen teaches the third step of recovery: consciously choose to commit your life and will to Christ's care and control.

David wrote that God had kept a record of his tears, and that God knew how foolish he had been. Pastor Tim Rolen builds the second Road to Recovery message on the fact that nothing about us is off the record, and that this is good news rather than bad.

How does the road to recovery begin? Isaiah 57:18 promises that God heals, leads and comforts, and Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that the first step is admitting we are not God.

What makes a church more than a crowd? On VBS Sunday, this message opens Philippians 1:1-11 and Paul's love for the church at Philippi, then looks at humility and unity, and why grace always comes before peace.

What does Christmas show us about God? Philippians 2:5-11 points to his grace, his gifts and his glory, and Pastor Tim Rolen asks whether our attitude looks like the attitude of Christ.

Is there a Christmas story in Galatians and Philippians? Galatians 4:4-7 and Philippians 2:5-11 show why Jesus came, and Pastor Tim Rolen teaches three things about the arrival of the Savior.

What does baptism mean, and why did Jesus make it one of his last commands? This Baptism Sunday message works through Matthew 28:18-20, 1 Peter 3:21 and Romans 6:4 to show baptism as a public picture of a heart God has already changed.

Why does God chase people who run from Him? The Book of Jonah shows a prophet fleeing to Tarshish and a God who pursues him through a storm, a huge fish and a second chance. Pastor Mark Addis teaches Jonah 1-3.

How do you keep your joy when life pushes back? Working through Philippians 1:27-30, this message shows why believers need steady habits, need to stand together as one, and can face opposition without fear, because we know how the story ends.

How do you live when life takes a hard turn? Philippians 1:27-30 calls believers to conduct themselves in a manner worthy of the gospel, whatever happens. Pastor Tim Rolen looks at three key words in Paul's challenge: only, worthy and conduct.

What can hard times do for a person of faith? Philippians 1:12-21 shows how Paul's chains grew his character, and how adversity purifies our motives and sharpens our focus on Christ.

Can hard times make your faith stronger? In Philippians 1:12-21, Paul shows how adversity builds spiritual character through the prayers of friends, the Holy Spirit and a determined focus on Christ. Pastor Tim Rolen teaches the message.

What can a circus musical teach us about love? Setting The Greatest Showman beside Deuteronomy 6 and 8 and Romans 13:8-10, this message looks at the pull of wealth and success, the love that welcomes people others shut out, and the love of God no success can replace.

Where does courage come from when life gets hard? Philippians 1:12-21 shows how Paul's chains gave other believers boldness, and how hardship tests the motives of everyone around us, in a message from Pastor Tim Rolen.

How do you face hard times and keep your joy? Philippians 1:12-26 shows how Paul's time in prison advanced the gospel, and why God does not waste the adversity he allows.

Is spiritual growth complicated? Working through Paul's prayer in Philippians 1:9-11, this message shows that growth is simple but not easy, and names four ways Paul prayed a church would grow: in love, in discernment, in sincerity and in how we live.

What is the secret of being content when life is not going your way? Paul wrote Philippians 4:10-23 in chains, and this message works through how he learned to be content in any and every situation.

Where does a grieving church find peace? This Father's Day message walks through John 14, where Jesus speaks to troubled hearts on the night before the cross and leaves his friends with a peace the world cannot give.

What does friendship have to do with spiritual warfare? Drawing on Ephesians 6:10-18 and John 15:7-15, this message argues that deep friendship is a command rather than a luxury, and that the enemy works hardest to keep us isolated.

What does the writing on the wall in Daniel 5 say to a nation today? This Memorial Day message pairs a short word on joy from Romans 15:13 with a look at the four things Babylon lost before it fell.

Where does lasting cheerfulness come from? This Joy & Laughter message works from Proverbs 15:15, Philippians 4:8-9 and Proverbs 15:30 to show that real joy is not positive thinking but the life of God living in us.

Can a Christian feel anxious or depressed? This Joy & Laughter message starts from Proverbs 12:25 and follows Moses, Joshua, Elijah, Job and Jonah through their lowest moments to show the way back.

Is laughter really biblical? This Joy & Laughter message works through Proverbs 15:13 and Proverbs 14:30 to show how joy in the heart should reach the face, and why what happens inside us shapes the body.

Can laughter be good for the soul? The first message in the Joy & Laughter series reads Proverbs 17:22 as a prescription from the Great Physician: loosen up, and stop carrying weight God never meant us to carry.

How do you stay steady when trouble shakes your faith? Pastor Tim Rolen teaches from 1 John 2:12-14 and 2 Corinthians 4:7-10 that fear fades because of who is with us, not because we grew braver.

What does it mean to reflect the light of Jesus? John 1:6-18 shows John the Baptist as a witness who was not the light but pointed others to it, and this message asks what we reflect back to the Son.

Who will stand in the gap? From Ezekiel 22:30 and the prayer of Nehemiah 1, Pastor Mark Addis teaches that God is still looking for willing hearts to step into the broken places around us, and that he equips the people who do.

What does God say to someone who feels like a failure? In Haggai 2:20-23, told in the voice of Zerubbabel, the discouraged governor God called his signet ring, Pastor Tim Rolen shows how God reverses a family curse and why he wins in the end.

Can God give you a fresh start after you have drifted from him? From Haggai 2:10-19, Pastor Tim Rolen traces a timeline of restoration, from past sin through discipline and repentance to the blessing God promised before the harvest came in.

Is God's call only for pastors and missionaries? From Haggai 1:1-15, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that the call of God is on us all, prince, priest and people alike, and that each of us is to give careful thought to our ways and obey.

What happens when God's people leave his work half done? From Haggai 1:1-15, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches God's call to consider your ways: the neglect of a people who stopped building, their need, and the newness that came when they obeyed.

How do you reach the high places of faith when you live in a low place? From Habakkuk 3:17-19, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that God is our strength and makes our feet like hinds' feet, and what we must do to climb with him.

How do you keep your faith in every season of life? From Habakkuk 3 and Ecclesiastes 3, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches yet faith, the choice to trust God in good times and bad, as the prophet Habakkuk did.

How do you choose between faith and self-sufficiency when life is uncertain? From Habakkuk 2, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches five benefits of following God's direction, five warnings against ignoring it, and why the righteous live by faith.

How do you hear God when life is loud? From Habakkuk 2:1-3, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches four steps to receive his guidance: withdraw from the noise, wait quietly and patiently, watch and listen, and write down what he says.

Why does God seem silent when we pray? From Habakkuk 1, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches the three struggles in the prophet's first prayer: unanswered prayer, unchecked evil in society, and an answer from God nobody expected.

What does it mean to live by faith when life makes no sense? In this overview of Habakkuk, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that the righteous live by faith, and gives five things faith believes about God, from Habakkuk 3 and Romans 8.

How do you stop comparing yourself to everyone else? In this message from John 21, Luke 18 and 1 Corinthians 9, Pastor Mark Addis shows why comparison ruins good things and how to stay in your own lane with your eyes on Jesus.

What does it mean when God winks at you? With Proverbs 16:9 and Psalm 37:4, Pastor Tim Rolen shows how the unplanned coincidences of life can be God getting your attention, and why you should not miss them.

How do you keep your heart healthy? In this last message of Enemies of the Heart, Pastor Tim Rolen reviews guilt, anger, greed and jealousy, names the habit that beats each one, and turns to lust, from Jeremiah 17, Ezekiel 36 and Ephesians 4.

How do we raise children with healthy hearts? From Proverbs 4:23, Pastor Tim Rolen shows parents why our example teaches more than our words, and how simple questions help children guard their own hearts.

What really causes the fights in our families, jobs and churches? From James 4, Pastor Tim Rolen shows that every quarrel traces back to desires we cannot satisfy, and why the answer is to bring them to God.

How do you overcome greed? From the parable of the rich fool in Luke 12:13-21, Pastor Tim Rolen shows how greed hides behind saving and security, and how the habit of generosity breaks its hold.

How do you stop anger from running your life? From Matthew 5:20-24 and Romans 12, Pastor Steve Brown shows how anger grows from silent to spoken, and gives four steps from anger to reconciliation.

Does confessing your sins change you, or only make you feel better? From Luke 19:1-10 and Matthew 5:23-24, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that real confession leads to restitution and a changed life.

Why do we confess the same sins again and again without changing? From 1 John 1:9 and Numbers 5:6-7, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that confession is a habit meant to change us, not just ease our guilt.

What do greed and jealousy do to the heart? From Jeremiah 17:9 and Luke 12:15, Pastor Tim Rolen shows how greed hides behind saving and planning, and how jealousy is a quiet grudge against God.

How do guilt and anger damage the heart? From Jeremiah 17:9 and Romans 8:1, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that guilt says "I owe you," anger says "you owe me," and only Christ's finished work pays the debt.

How do old hurts and hidden shame shape the way we live and love? In Jeremiah 17:9 and Matthew 15, Pastor Tim Rolen shows how wounds lodged in the heart come out in our words and relationships, and introduces four enemies of the heart.

Why do we say and do things we swear we never meant? From Matthew 15:1-20, Pastor Tim Rolen shows that our words and actions come from the heart, and that lasting change starts by admitting we need a new one.

How is your heart really doing? In the first message of Enemies of the Heart, Pastor Tim Rolen opens Jeremiah 17:9 and shows why we watch our behavior but not our hearts, and how God promises a new heart (Ezekiel 36).

How do you beat jealousy? From Hebrews 4, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that jealousy rests on the lie that God owes us, and that the habit of celebrating other people's success guards the heart.

How do you forgive someone who may never say sorry? From Matthew 18:21-35 and Ephesians 4:31-32, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that forgiveness is a decision to cancel a debt, and gives four steps to finish the cycle.

Why is forgiveness the cure for anger? On Baptism Sunday, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches from Ephesians 4:31-32 and Matthew 18:21-35 that forgiving means canceling a debt, just as Christ forgave us.

Why does life come in seasons, and what is God doing in the one you are in? From Ecclesiastes 3:1-11, Pastor Mark Addis teaches that every season has a struggle, is shaped by what we say about it, and holds a strength we can seize.

Want New Year's resolutions that actually last? From Proverbs 3, Pastor Tim Rolen walks through the directives of the wisest man who ever lived, from love and faithfulness to wisdom, discipline and freedom from fear.

How do you stop living in fear? From Psalm 56, Isaiah 41:10 and 2 Timothy 1:7, Pastor Mark Addis names the one fear worth having, the fear of God, and three ways to face the rest: scripture, seeking God and trusting him with the outcome.

What is the Great Commission, and is it for everyone? From Matthew 28, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that every believer is a missionary, and that Jesus sends us with all authority and the promise to be with us always.

What does it mean to love one another the way Jesus loves us? From 1 John 4:7-12 and John 13, Korrie Gallardo shows how Jesus loves with compassion, companionship and commitment, and how his people can love the same way.

What drains a Christian's passion for God, and how do you get it back? From Mark 12:30 and Romans 12:11, Pastor Tim Rolen names seven passion killers, from an unbalanced schedule to an undernourished spirit, and shows how to keep the fire going.

Why should ordinary Christians share their faith? From Acts 2, Romans 10 and the story of Andrew in John 1, 6 and 12, Pastor Tim Rolen shows how one shoe salesman's courage reached millions, and how each of us can bring others to Jesus.

How do you make a real fresh start in a new year? On New Year's Day, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches from John 3:30 and Galatians 2:20 that the answer is less of me and more of Jesus, and spells out five steps for starting again.

How do you praise God with your whole life? From Psalm 144:9, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that we are made to be a human harp of ten strings, with eyes, ears, hands, feet, tongue and mind tuned to praise the God who trains our hands for battle.

What do you do when it feels like no one cares? From Psalm 142, prayed while David hid in a cave, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches David's condition, his cry and his confidence, and how to pray what we know about God rather than what we feel.

Can we really know God, and how well does he know us? From Psalm 139, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that knowing about God is not the same as knowing him, and that the God who sees the worst moments of our lives still loves us and invites us to follow.

Have we lost the art of saying thank you? From Psalm 136, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that gratitude starts with the feast God provides in Christ, grows in the family he gathers, and ends in thanks to the good giver whose love endures forever.

What do you do with a dream come true? From Psalm 126, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that the joy of what God has done should send us out to sow, because those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy.

What works when life doesn't? From Psalm 119, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that God's Word is enough for sorrow, trouble and hard choices, and shows how it gives wisdom, insight and understanding.

How can a young person keep a pure life? From Psalm 119:9-16, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that direction, not intention, determines destination, and shows how to seek God fully, stay inside his boundaries and be intentional with his word.

What is your source of authority for the choices you make? From Psalm 119:1-8, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches the value of obedience: seek God with your whole heart, keep his word and walk in his ways.

What do you win when you walk with God through life? From Psalm 116, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches how David's cry of "Lord, save me" leads to rest, honest words, a grateful life and a death God calls precious.

What does the Bible say about building a godly family? In Psalms 127 and 128, Pastor Mark Addis finds a four-part blueprint for the home: build it on the Lord, raise children with intention, lead by example, and look for blessings that last.

Why does the shortest chapter in the Bible carry such a big message? Psalm 117 calls every nation to praise God for his love and faithfulness, and Pastor Tim Rolen shows why worship, not missions, is the goal that sends the church to the world.

How do you worship God when you keep forgetting what he has done? From Psalm 103, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches five benefits we must never forget and why real worship ends in obedience.

How do you honor God when you worship? From Psalm 103, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that worship begins with a choice to bless the Lord and to stop forgetting his benefits, starting with forgiveness.

How do you worship with all you've got, the best you can? From Psalm 100, Pastor Tim Rolen shows seven commands for a thankful life and why gratitude, not entitlement, should shape how we live and worship.

What does God ask of us when he calls us to worship? Psalm 95 sounds a three-part summons to rejoice, to bow in reverence, and to respond in obedience, and Pastor Tim Rolen shows why worship follows God's terms, not ours.

How do you face a short life with an eternal God? From Psalm 90, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches how Moses prayed after forty years in the wilderness, and why slow, steady thought on Scripture comes before prayer.

What story does your life tell? From Psalm 90, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that every life is a story still being written, and that it reads well when God is its author, its hero and its purpose.

What stands in the way of renewal in our churches and our nation? Psalm 85 teaches that restoration starts with me, then us, then the nation, and Pastor Tim Rolen asks what keeps revival from coming.

What does it take for revival to reach a cold heart and a troubled nation? From Psalm 85 and Jeremiah 18, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that we do not get revival by seeking revival, only by seeking God.

What do you do when discouragement makes you doubt that God cares? From Psalm 77, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches how David moved from despair to praise by deciding to remember who God is and what he has done.

How do you find satisfaction when life falls apart? From Psalm 63 and John 7, Pastor Tim Rolen shows five decisions David made in the wilderness and how Jesus invites the thirsty to come to him and drink.

What do you do when people who should be on your side turn against you? Psalm 54 shows David betrayed and calling on God, and Pastor Tim Rolen shows how to trade revenge for forgiveness.

Where do you go when you are afraid? Psalm 46 says God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble, and this message gives six ways to trust him when the valley is long.

What does it mean to wait on the Lord when the wicked seem to win? From Psalm 37, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches David's advice: do not fret, trust and obey, wait and walk in God's ways, and keep Jesus at the center.

Why do the wicked seem to do well while good people struggle? From Psalm 37:1-9, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches David's warning against fretting and the first precepts that keep us trusting God.

How do you stay unafraid when enemies and uncertainty press in? From Psalm 27, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that David met his fear by fixing his faith on the Lord, and by making worship the one thing he sought.

How do you face loneliness and mistreatment without growing bitter? Psalm 26 shows David opening his whole life to God's examination, and Pastor Tim Rolen finds twelve marks of a heart for God.

What does Psalm 23 mean when it says "you are with me" in the valley? Pastor Tim Rolen follows the shepherd from Psalm 23 through John 10 and 11 to Palm Sunday, and shows why he is closest in the darkest places.

What do you do with guilt you cannot shake? From Psalm 32, Pastor Mark Addis shows how David went from groaning silence to the joy of being forgiven, and gives four steps for confessing and letting go.

Who is your shepherd, and what does he do for you? From Psalm 23, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that David saw himself as a sheep in the Lord's care, and that the Shepherd provides, gives peace and leads us in right paths.

What does it mean to say the Lord is my shepherd? From Psalm 23, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that David's first sentence sets the theme of the whole psalm: God is, and he is personally mine.

What does Psalm 23 say about my past, present and future? In this message on Psalms 22 through 24, Pastor Tim Rolen shows how one shepherd answers all three and why memorized Scripture keeps your head above water.

What do you do when God seems silent? From Psalm 19, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that the heavens declare God's glory and his Word shows his grace, and that the answer to silence is to look up and then look in.

Who may dwell with God, and what does it mean to abide in him? From Psalm 15, this message on honesty and integrity shows why we hide from God and from each other, and why the answer is closeness with him, not a checklist.

What do you do with sorrow when God seems silent? Psalm 13 shows David bringing his feelings honestly to God and then choosing to remember God's goodness, and this message asks why we downplay our emotions.

How do you know you matter to God when you feel overlooked? Psalm 8 shows how much God values you, and Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that praise, which leaves self out, is the heart of the less more lifestyle.

How do you pray when you feel worn down by discouragement and hurtful words? From Psalm 5, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches David's morning prayer: bring God a specific request, remember who he is, and watch for his answer.

How do you make the most of your walk with God? From Psalm 1, Pastor Tim Rolen shows three directions to look: around at what shapes you, inside at who you are becoming, and ahead to how you will be judged.

What did Jesus leave his followers to do? From John 20:19-22 and Matthew 28:16-20, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches the Great Commission as the living declaration of the risen Jesus: a great authority, a great command to go, and a great promise of his presence and peace.

What would make Jesus weep over our city? From Luke 19:28-41, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that Jesus wept over Jerusalem and still rode on into it, and calls the church to carry him into the parts of Clovis and Fresno that only we can reach.

Why does the church matter, and how can you make a difference through it? From Hebrews 10:19-25, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that Jesus left his church behind on purpose, as a place to begin, become, belong, benefit and be engaged.

How do you make a difference in your own family? From Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches us to love people the way they need to be loved, to show grace when it is least deserved, and to give rather than demand at home.

What does it look like to make a difference with your life? Opening Make a Difference month, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches from 2 Corinthians 3:3, John 10:10 and Ephesians 5:15-16 that our lives are a translation of Scripture, and calls us to choose the adventure of following Jesus.

How do you make a new year different from the last one? In this message on John 3:29-30 and Galatians 2:20, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches a less more lifestyle: less of me, more of Christ.

What makes Christmas more than a holiday? From John 3:16 and the Christmas story, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that God's gift of Jesus is offered to the whole world, and that it becomes yours when you take it personally.

Why are we so thankful on paper and so ungrateful in real life? From Psalm 100, Pastor Tim Rolen names three enemies of gratitude, selfishness, discouragement and guilt, and gives five commands for a thankful heart.

Why do so few people say thank you to God? In Luke 17:11-19, ten men are healed of leprosy and only one comes back, and Pastor Tim Rolen shows what set the grateful man apart.

How do you stop comparing yourself to other people? This message from Acts 9 and the parable of the talents says to celebrate what God gave others and use what he gave you. Pastor Tim Rolen closes The Comparison Trap.

How do you stop comparing yourself to other people? In the second message of The Comparison Trap, from Psalm 139 and Romans 8, Pastor Tim Rolen says our worth comes from what God says about us: planned, known and wanted.

Why does comparing yourself to other people never leave you satisfied? In the first message of The Comparison Trap, from 1 Samuel 16, Pastor Tim Rolen shows that people measure by appearance while God looks at the heart.

Is what I did wrong a mistake or a sin, and does it matter? This message from Genesis 3, Matthew 5 and Romans 5 explains why calling sin a mistake keeps us from the Savior, with Pastor Tim Rolen.

Is it a sin or just a mistake, and why does the difference matter? This message from Romans 3, Romans 6 and Galatians 5 shows why calling our wrongs mistakes keeps us from the Savior, with Pastor Tim Rolen.

Is sex only physical, or does it shape who we become? This message on 1 Corinthians 6 explains why God gave intimacy boundaries and why running from sexual immorality protects us, with Pastor Tim Rolen.

Why does God allow pain, and can anyone explain it? This message on Romans 8 connects three big dots, the beginning, the meantime and the end, to give suffering a context that holds, with Pastor Tim Rolen.

Does God care how we treat the rules we disagree with? This message on Romans 13 explains why our response to authority at work, school and home reflects our response to God, with Pastor Tim Rolen.

How do we spot the lies that twist our thinking? From John 8 and Ephesians 6, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that an unseen spiritual world shapes the visible one, and that a small twist in the truth can lead us far from where we meant to go.

What is real humility, and why does it matter for a Christian? From Philippians 2, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that humility means valuing others above ourselves, as Jesus did through Palm Sunday week. Chapter 30 of the Believe series.

How can you be gentle when life leaves you tense? From Philippians 4 and Proverbs 15, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that gentleness is strength under control, and shows three ways to live it. Chapter 29 of the Believe series.

What does faithfulness look like in daily life? From Proverbs 3 and Hebrews 11, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that faithfulness is a trust and dependability the Spirit grows in us, shown first to God and then to the people around us. Week 28 of the Believe series.

How do you do the right thing in every relationship, even with enemies? From 1 Thessalonians 5, Romans 12 and Luke 6, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that kindness and goodness are fruit of the Spirit that grow from a pure heart, not random acts.

How can you get your life under control? From Titus 2 and Romans 8, Pastor Tim Rolen shows that self-control comes from yielding to God's grace, not from trying harder. Week 24 of the Believe series.

What does biblical love look like? From 1 John 4 and Galatians 5, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that God's agape love is unconditional, sacrificial and forgiving, and that the Spirit makes that love possible in us.

How can I share my faith with someone? From Ephesians 6 and 2 Corinthians 5, Pastor Tim Rolen tells his own story, then shows why every believer is Christ's ambassador. Week twenty of the Believe series.

What does the manger tell us about Jesus? From Luke 2:12, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that God's sign at Christmas was a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger, a sign of his humanity, helplessness and humility.

How do you get ready for Christmas? Mark 1:1-8 shows John the Baptist preparing the way for Jesus, and Pastor Tim Rolen says every believer is called to do the same, starting with repentance.

When does Jesus become real to a person? Using Luke 5 and a survey of the congregation, Pastor Tim Rolen shows how Jesus met a fisherman, a man everyone avoided, a man's friends and a tax collector, and how he meets people today.

How do you find hope in a dark season? From John 13 and 1 Peter 5, Pastor Tim Rolen shares what God taught him in a hard month and what he most wants New Hope to remember: honor the past, strengthen the present, prepare for the future.

What are spiritual gifts, and how do you find yours? From 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that Jesus is God's gift to the world and that the Spirit gives every believer gifts to use together.

Do you need church to follow Jesus? From Acts 2 and Acts 9, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that biblical community is how God builds believers up and sends them out, and why a small group matters.

What does total surrender to God look like? From Romans 12 and Luke 9, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches the difference between commitment and surrender, and why delayed obedience is disobedience. Chapter 15 of the Believe series.

What does it mean to live for one thing? From Matthew 6, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that seeking God's kingdom first frees us from worry and makes work, family and hobbies places where Christ shows. Week 14 of the Believe series.

Why should you study the Bible? From Matthew 4, Acts 17 and Hebrews 4:12, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that Scripture changes us from the inside, and shows how the Bereans received it, searched it and acted on it.

What is prayer for, and how do we pray like Jesus? From Matthew 6 and Psalm 66, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that prayer changes our hearts more than it changes God's mind, and walks through seven things the model prayer teaches us to pray on the basis of.

Does heaven change how we live today? From John 14, Revelation 5 and Jude, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches what the Bible says about heaven, hell and Christ's return, and three ways a view of eternity changes our hope, our love and our witness.

What does it mean that everything you own belongs to God? From Psalm 24, Malachi 3 and 2 Corinthians 9, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that God wants all of us, and that he moves us from owner to manager of what he gives.

What does it mean to show compassion? From Luke 10 and Psalm 82, Pastor Tim Rolen defines compassion as love with an attitude and shows how the Good Samaritan lived it. Week eight of the Believe series.

How does God see humanity, and what are we to do about it? From John 3, Romans 1 and Romans 3, this message in the Believe study teaches that God loves every person, that all need Jesus, and why we are called to tell others the good news.

What is the church for? From John 14 and 1 Corinthians 12, Pastor Tim Rolen teaches that the church is God's primary way to do his work on earth, and that every believer has a part. Week six of the Believe series.

Who am I, really? From John 1 and Romans 8, Pastor Tim Rolen shows what God says about every believer: a child, an heir, a new creation. Week five of the Believe series on our identity in Christ.

Can you trust the Bible? From 2 Timothy 3, Pastor Tim Rolen explains why the Bible is inspired, authoritative and unfailing, and what it means to let it guide what we believe and do. Week four of the Believe series.