Giving Without an Audience
You'll hear why Jesus targets not the act of giving but the motive behind it, and walk away with a sharp question to ask yourself: when no one is watching, do you still give?
Preacher
75 sermons in the archive.
You'll hear why Jesus targets not the act of giving but the motive behind it, and walk away with a sharp question to ask yourself: when no one is watching, do you still give?
You'll hear what the single Greek word Jesus spoke from the cross actually meant to the people standing there, and why it means the guilt you carry has already been settled, not by anything you can do, but by what was finished that afternoon.
You'll examine the different kinds of blindness in John 9, from the disciples' rush to judgment to the Pharisees' refusal to accept what's right in front of them, and come away with a sharper question: what are you failing to see in the people around you?
You'll hear why the most spiritually significant moment in the disciples' lives ended with a command not to repeat the experience, but to listen, and what that means for anyone who has ever felt like their faith needs a bigger feeling to be real.
You'll hear why the hard, empty seasons of life are not detours from spiritual growth but the very conditions that make it possible, and walk away with a concrete practice to build intentional rest into the next six weeks.
You'll hear why welcoming the immigrant as a temporary guest falls short of what Jesus actually demanded, and what it looks like to treat a stranger as an irreplaceable member of your own body.
You'll work through a real question that Christians avoid: when Romans 13 says submit to governing authorities, and the government is actively harming vulnerable people, what are you actually supposed to do?
You'll hear how the Israelites' fear in the wilderness distorted their memory and led them to hoard what God gave freely, and what that pattern reveals about the fears that shape how we treat immigrants and strangers today.
You'll hear a direct challenge to the habit of sorting people into 'neighbors' and 'others,' and why Jesus identifies himself specifically with the people you'd least want at your door.
You'll hear why Jesus had no reason to be baptized yet stepped into the river anyway, and what his choice to identify with broken humanity means for the moments when you feel too far gone, too ordinary, or too weak to be of use to God.
You'll hear why repentance isn't just feeling sorry but actually turning around, and what it looks like to produce real fruit from that change rather than coasting on religious habit or family history.
You'll hear why Jesus's call to bless enemies, share possessions, and side with the poor isn't passive resignation but a radical, costly way of becoming fully human, and what that looks like for ordinary people today.
You'll come away with a clearer sense of what it actually means to have 'dominion' over the earth: not a license to exploit, but a calling to reflect God's own care back to creation.
You'll hear how the Bible's consistent call to care for migrants and refugees isn't a political position but a defining mark of what it means to follow Jesus, and what that asks of you personally, regardless of where you stand on border policy.
You'll hear why being theologically correct can still damage the people around you, and how Paul's ancient argument about meat sacrificed to idols draws a clear line between using knowledge as a weapon and using it as a gift.
You'll hear why the first Pentecost wasn't about collapsing differences into sameness, but about God reaching every person in the language their own soul already understood, and what that means for how faith comes to you.
You'll hear what baptism actually does beyond the water and the ceremony, and why Paul's claim in Romans 6 that you died and rose with Christ is meant to reorient your whole life, not just mark a milestone.
You'll see how Isaiah's vision of a sovereign, unshakeable God speaks directly to the moments when human leadership fails you, and what it means to respond to a king who cleanses rather than condemns.
You'll hear why the very thing you're trying to escape, the struggle, the limitation, the pain, might be the place where God's blessing actually arrives, and what Jacob's all-night wrestling match has to do with the hardships you're carrying right now.
You'll hear why Jesus placed people with disabilities at the center of his vision for God's kingdom, and what it means to build a community where belonging goes deeper than accessibility ramps and polite inclusion.
You'll hear why the same human blindness that kept first-century people from recognizing Jesus in person is still at work in you today, and what it looks like to actively receive rather than reject him in ordinary life.
You'll hear how Mary's willingness to accept an honor that came wrapped in social shame points to something God offers anyone: the chance to matter not because of status, but because of surrender.
You'll hear why Advent begins not with a manger scene but with cosmic upheaval, and what it looks like to wait for Christ's return with active, eyes-open hope rather than anxious dread or comfortable distraction.
You'll see how Solomon's story is less about spectacular moral collapse and more about a slow, incremental drift that began with a divided heart long before anyone noticed, and why that pattern is easy to miss in your own life.
You'll come away with a concrete sense of what it means to join your voice to the praise of the whole created world, and two practical questions about how you're actually living that out.
You'll hear what Jesus actually means when he says 'take up your cross' — not seeking out suffering, but being willing to let go of your own plans, reputation, and comfort when they pull against God's purposes.
You'll hear why Jesus refused to be only a problem-solver for immediate needs, and what it means that the same God who fed thousands in a field also came to satisfy the hunger that no meal, achievement, or relief can touch.
You'll hear teenagers fresh from a summer youth conference reflect honestly on what it means to truly rest, to step outside your comfort zone, and to let Psalm 23 become more than a familiar poem.
You'll learn what Jesus actually modeled when he was rejected by the people who knew him best, and how his instructions to the disciples offer a practical way to share your convictions without being crushed when they aren't received.
You'll hear why genuine worship isn't repetition but response, and how paying attention to what God is doing right now in your life can become the raw material for a song only you can sing.
You'll hear how two grieving followers failed to recognize the person walking right beside them, and what their blindness reveals about the ways Jesus quietly seeks people out before they think to look for him.
You'll hear how the final chapter of Lamentations transforms one-way grief into a genuine two-way conversation with God, and why being allowed to push back, argue, and even accuse God is a feature of faith rather than a failure of it.
You'll hear why the authority Jesus showed in a first-century synagogue is fundamentally different from every other kind of power you've encountered, and what it means that he used it to help someone who couldn't even ask for help.
You'll hear why not knowing when Jesus will return is actually the point, and what it looks like to live with urgency and hope when you can't calculate a deadline.
You'll see how religious leaders in Jesus' time turned faith into an unbearable burden, and what that means for the ways you influence the people around you, whether or not you think of yourself as a leader.
You'll see how Jesus spent his final days trying to recover the very people plotting his death, and what that stubborn, relentless pursuit means for the places in your own life where you've withheld fruit.
You'll hear why the workers who grumbled in this parable had a point by every human standard, and why that's exactly what makes God's generosity so disorienting and so freeing.
You'll hear a framework for what it actually means to submit to governing authorities as a Christian, including when obedience to government ends and resistance to it begins, drawn from Paul's Romans 13 alongside the stories of Nazi-era figures who defied unjust power at great personal cost.
You'll come away understanding why the Bible's talk of God's wrath isn't a contradiction of God's love, and what it means that Paul says God sometimes simply lets people have what they insist on.
You'll see how Thomas — far from being a failure of faith — models exactly what it looks like to bring your hardest questions to Jesus and find him already waiting there to meet you.
You'll hear why Paul's famous description of love in 1 Corinthians 13 is not just personal advice but a direct challenge to how the church as a whole treats the members of its own body who are being pushed to the margins.
You'll hear why Paul called his own impressive religious resume 'sewage,' and what that revaluation means for the ways you might be measuring your own worth or your church's health.
You'll hear an honest reckoning with why the church has lost its moral credibility, and a practical case for how ordinary obedience to Christ is what actually restores it, starting with you.
You'll hear why genuine humility isn't self-erasure but a deliberate choice to make space for others, and you'll be invited to name one specific place in your own life where that choice is actually available to you.
You'll hear how Paul, facing likely execution, could write with genuine calm and even joy, and what his example offers for the moments when your own life feels like it's coming apart.
You'll hear how Paul's opening lines to a divided church model something harder than it sounds: praying for specific people, including the ones who frustrate you, with genuine joy and thanks.
You'll hear why genuine prophetic courage has less to do with confidence in yourself and everything to do with trusting that God equips the people he calls, and what that means for the moments when you feel too small, too unqualified, or too afraid to speak up.
You'll hear how a woman labeled and discarded by her society became a key figure in Israel's story, and how a group of teenagers brought that same theme home from a week at summer camp: no matter your history, God sees you and can use you.
You'll hear a honest account of why baptism matters beyond ritual obligation, including what it means that God's action in baptism holds even when yours falls short.
You'll hear how one man's liberation from a legion of demons is a picture of what Christ does for every person trapped in brokenness, and Victoria Gilmore makes that concrete by describing her own years of being overwhelmed by bipolar disorder until scripture became the only thing that brought silence to the chaos.
You'll see how both brothers in this famous parable were lost in different ways, and how the real extravagance in the story belongs not to the wayward son but to the father who abandons all dignity to run toward him.
You'll see how the early church's debate over who belongs was really a struggle over who holds power, and what it looks like today when church culture protects insiders at the cost of the gospel.
You'll hear why the diversity within a church community isn't a problem to manage but a gift that makes the whole body function as God designed, and you'll be asked to consider which part of that body you actually are.
You'll discover why the shepherds were the first to hear the Christmas announcement, and what it means that the newborn Jesus was wrapped and laid exactly like the lambs those shepherds raised for sacrifice.
You'll hear how the God of Zephaniah is not a distant observer but one who breaks into ordinary life with judgment that aims at healing, and what it means that this same God sings over you with the kind of joy that cannot be contained.
You'll hear why Jesus refused to give a date for the end of the world, and what that refusal actually asks of you in the meantime: not fear, not indifference, but a specific kind of faithful, peaceful readiness.
You'll hear why Jesus let a genuinely good, wealthy man walk away, and what that moment reveals about the difference between trying to earn eternal life and actually trusting God with it.
You'll hear why Peter got the right answer about Jesus but still missed the point entirely, and what that gap between correct belief and costly commitment looks like in your own life.
You'll hear why Israel's collapse wasn't a sudden fall but a slow forgetting, and what it looks like when religious practice becomes hollow while the relationship behind it quietly disappears.
You'll hear why Jeremiah 29:11 means something harder and richer than it's usually made to mean, and what it looks like to trust God's goodness when he has led you into the very situation you'd most want to escape.
You'll hear why Nicodemus came to Jesus under cover of night, and what his mix of curiosity and shame has to do with the parts of yourself you're not sure God can actually forgive.
You'll hear why being part of Jesus's flock isn't passive, and how to tell the difference between a true call and an attack dressed up as one, whether from outside pressure or familiar voices you've long trusted.
You'll hear why sincere devotion to God always turns outward toward people who are hurting, and what it looks like when religious practice becomes a way of avoiding that responsibility rather than fulfilling it.
You'll see through the story of Naaman that the moment obedience actually costs you something is exactly the moment it matters most, and that going only partway is the same as not going at all.
You'll see how Jesus consistently slipped away from the noise before and after intense seasons of ministry, and what his habit of solitary prayer suggests about why your own connection to God might feel thin when life gets chaotic.
You'll trace how God disclosed himself—to a runaway slave, to a doubting patriarch, to an overwhelmed shepherd—through the specific names he chose, and discover what those names still say about what God is toward you right now.
You'll hear why the Greek word for 'torn' appears at both Jesus's baptism and the moment the temple curtain rips at the crucifixion, and what it means that God chose to break through rather than simply open a door.
You'll hear why the opening verses of John's Gospel are not just a poetic prologue but a claim that God has always chosen to move toward chaos rather than away from it, and what that means for the darkest places in your own life and in the lives of people you love.
You'll hear a preacher ask whether your commitment to God is genuine or just comfortable habit, and be invited to take an honest inventory of the areas of your life where you've been giving God a lukewarm 'I guess' instead of a whole-hearted yes.
You'll hear why God's compassion extends even to the people who have harmed you, and what it looks like to let that truth do its slow, honest work in you rather than forcing a forgiveness you're not ready for.
You'll hear why Paul's famous love chapter was written not for people celebrating love, but for a church weaponizing spiritual gifts against each other, and what that means for the times you stay quiet rather than act.
You'll see how the ancient debate over food sacrificed to idols is really a question about whether your spiritual confidence is helping or harming the people around you, and why love is the truer measure of maturity than knowledge.
You'll hear why the impulse to judge others (and yourself) is rooted in a mistaken sense of who you are, and how letting go of that role is less a sacrifice than a genuine relief.
You'll see how Paul, exhausted and culturally disoriented in Athens, found a way into genuine conversation with people whose beliefs were nothing like his own, and what that approach might look like for you when faith-sharing feels awkward or unwelcome.
You'll hear why the narrow gate in Jesus' teaching is not the finish line but the starting point, and what that means for anyone who feels like they have to get their life right before they can come to God.