Woodland Hills Church

In the second week of our Overwhelmed series Greg unpacks the topic of shame. We begin by looking at the origin of shame in Genesis 3; what shame is and where it comes from. Next we look at how God defeats shame on the cross and welcomes us to live shame-free lives through His unconditional love. 

This initial sermon in our Overwhelmed series was a foundational message about the root of everything that holds us back. God has designed us to have power over our brain and our thought life and it is our responsibility to be disciples of our brain. We must fight against the cultural lies of our world by daily renewing our mind by focusing on who God says we are. Here is a link for the video that we played before the teaching. 

Sometimes time doesn’t feel like such a gift. In fact if we’re not living in right relatedness with how God intended us to function, it can feel much more like a burden. Throughout history technology innovations have made false promises about giving more time back to their users, but in fact we have as many distractions as ever to keep us from living the simple, undistracted, others oriented life God calls us to. In this message we explore what can be done to take back control of how we’re living our life and spending our time so we don’t fall in to temptations that lead to getting our life from how busy we are.

God lovingly entrusts us with money, possessions, and resources. As followers of Christ we are called to surrender all our gifts to the Lordship of Christ. Because God is an other-oriented God who lovingly pours out blessings, and we are made in His image, then we too should be people who use our resources to bless others.

This weekend we honor the memory and life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a message from Dennis Edwards and Greg Boyd. King dedicated his life to the pursuit of the one new humanity inaugurated in the life of Jesus and this sermon focuses on King’s commitment to justice, peace and love.

Everything that we have is a gift from God that we have been entrusted with. But these gifts are meant to be given away.

This weekend service recognized our teaching pastor and dear friend, Seth McCoy, as he gave his last sermon here. Seth and his family will be transitioning from Woodland Hills to serve God’s Kingdom in another capacity. We celebrate and thank the McCoy family for serving, loving and participating in our larger Woodland Hills family. In this sermon, Seth discusses his affection for Woodland Hills and for the process of following your calling through three lenses: A telescope, a microscope and a rearview mirror.

Jesus is the Light of the world, and this Light has always been at work within us, whether or not we've been aware of it. Once we surrender to that Light, we find ourselves swept up into the greatest love story of all time!

Keeping the Light. Throughout the biblical narrative, we see that Jesus is the light of the world. And that light is shared with humanity in order that we may shine the light. In the Old Testament, Israel was called to be the light to other nations. With the Incarnation, Jesus came as the light of the world. And today, the family of God is to bear witness to the light of the world. Greg shares with us how we are blessed to be conduits of light, to shine and share the light.

In this third week of our Across the Universe series we are reminded that the counter-cultural beauty of the Christmas story is in the reality that the God who created the vast expanses of the universe became small and vulnerable. While it is often the case that we marvel at what is grand and big, the message at Christmas is that oftentimes the most profound experiences of God are in the seemingly mundane moments of life. Our call is to be a people who remember and remind others that the God of the universe does not only go half way for us, and so we should go all the way in love for others.