Woodland Hills Church

This message is the fifth sermon in the series. It lays the foundation for identifying, understanding, and utilizing spiritual gifts.

In this fourth message of the God in Us series we explore what it means that the light of the world has taken up residence in us. Throughout scripture we see the theme of darkness and light battling back and forth. In Genesis we read of the Spirit hovering over the darkness and bringing order to the chaos, light to the darkness. In the gospel of John, Jesus calls himself the light of the world, and promises his followers will have the Holy Spirit in them if he goes away. So what does it mean to have the light of the world living inside us?

God makes amazing promises over the kind of life we can live through the power of the Holy Spirit. This power will flow out of us like a river of living water. But we frequently experience a distance between the kind of full life that God promised and the kind of life we live now, don’t we? So how can the distance of this gap begin to close? Paul tells us, one of the key ways in which we can do this is through the practice of being transformed by the renewing of our mind. The primary place in which The Holy Spirit meets with us is in our minds, and we, through the power of the Spirit, can choose our thoughts, we can set our minds on things that are above.

This weekend's sermon is a response to the recent police/black lives matter conflicts from Baton Rouge, Dallas and here in Saint Paul. We took a break from our current 'God In Us' series to talk about this together.

This second sermon in our God in Us series focused on the broad question of, “Who is the Spirit?” This message focuses on three characteristics of the Holy Spirit: The Holy Spirit is God, The Holy Spirit is personal and the Holy Spirit is distinct in nature. Greg emphasized that the main role of the Spirit is to show us clearly the person of Jesus and help us to recognize God when we would have no other way of recognizing Him. The Holy Spirit is working to remove the veil in our mind and can do this through our imagination.

We began our new Holy Spirit series by hearing stories from Rob & Fred, friends of Greg's and podrishioners from a house church network in Philadelphia. They shared about what it looks like for them to choose to live in the flow of the Holy Spirit on a day to day basis.

We held a Q&A night to wrap up our Flesh and Blood sermon series. In the final sermon of that series we examined how racial reconciliation is a vital part of the gospel message. To further discuss this we asked Dennis Edwards, the Senior Pastor of Sanctuary Covenant Church, to join Greg for this Q&A on a Jesus-way of addressing racial issues within the church.

In this, the final part of the Flesh & Blood series, we examine how racial reconciliation is a vital part of the gospel message. To be a Jesus-follower is to be one who seeks peace-making and is always striving towards reconciliation. We discover that we are only able to achieve reconciliation to the degree that we are willing to learn about perspectives that differ from our own.

In this, the third message in our Flesh and Blood series, we focus on Jacob's story in Genesis. His story is a great illustration of how we build walls inside ourselves, and it brings to light who we are really protecting ourselves from.

Jesus caused a stir in his community when he read the words from Isaiah 61 in his synagogue and announced their fulfillment through his own life and ministry. It’s no surprise; these words outline a powerful declaration of the Spirit of God at work. This sermon explores what happens for us everyday 21st Century believers as we embrace Isaiah 61. When the Spirit moves we are transformed; we become rescued and redeemed people that renew and rebuild communities.