LifeJourney Church: Sermon Archive
The audio archive of sermons from LifeJourney Church
We all have a tendency to do it. Often it’s easier to stuff our feelings inside and present a false front to the world. We say what we think people want to hear instead of what we really feel — and little by little the gap between our ‘true self’ and our ‘public self’ grows, with all the stress that brings.
This sermon explores a classic Bible story that shows a better way.
People from around the globe say we Americans are over-the top in our obsession with work. Are we? Am I? Do I have a healthy work/life balance?
Based on her career as a hospice nurse, Bonnie Ware has written a book entitled The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. In her book, Ware describes the most common regrets express by her patients as they look back over life.
This Sunday launches a new sermon series exploring those “top five regrets” through the lens of the Bible. This series will give us a great opportunity, as we move into the New Year, to evaluate our own lives and make changes now, so we can live life to the fullest.
Life comes at us quickly! No time to think! So we tend to operate on automatic pilot, allowing events to sweep us along.
But here we are at the turn of a New Year — a great time to stop, think, evaluate, and plan.
Create a little time in your schedule to pause, worship, hear a sermon of encouragement, and equip yourself with some ideas and resources that will help you live the New Year more reflectively.
Christmas Eve Service with Brent Walsh and Julie Walsh.
Have you seen that TV commercial where the clerk says to the customer, “Have a super-sparkly day!” Many Christians engage in a similar kind of over-the-top happy-talk. To someone who is downcast, they might say something like, “Don’t you worry. The Lord will provide. Everything will be ok.”
But will it? Should a thoughtful believer embrace such pious platitudes? We’ll wrestle with these questions, using the end of Matthew’s Christmas story to guide us.
Christmas is the season of gift giving. But many of us don’t feel we have a lot to give — both literally and metaphorically. Most of us don’t feel gifted or powerful or wealthy. What gift can we give? How can we play a meaningful role in the divine drama of life unfolding around us?
For insight, again this week we’ll look to the story of the magi, continuing our journey with them, learning from their experience.
Picture it. Magi from the East arrived in Jerusalem saying they had seen a star heralding the birth of the long-awaited Messiah. In response, the Scriptures say that “all of Jerusalem was frightened.”
But why? Why would God’s people be afraid that something wonderful was happening in their time? As we explore this, we might just learn something very important about how fear operates in our lives.
With this sermon we begin a brand new Christmas Season series. We’ll begin by digging deep into the story of the star that appeared at Jesus’ birth and the Wise Men who followed the star. Who were these Wise Men, what did they really see, and why did they associate the star with the birth of a King in Israel?
The history behind this story is fascinating — but the spiritual lessons that emerge are even more powerful.
The journey to Bethlehem is rendered so idyllically on Christmas cards — Joseph leading the way, Mary sitting serenely (sidesaddle!) on the donkey.
But have you ever considered what it really was like? There was physical hardship, certainly, with the lack of paved roads and roadside rest stops. Even more difficult, though, was the journey that Joseph and Mary had to take to accept this unbelievable situation they found themselves in.
This sermon looks at the journey Mary and Joseph took from the first announcement by the angel to the appearance of the baby — and draws wisdom we can use in our own hard journeys.
Many of us tend to be idealists, romantics even. We find a new church and it seems so wonderful, and we’re convinced we’ve found the perfect spiritual family. Then something bad happens and we’re shattered and push away. Alone again. . . .
But it doesn’t have to be like that. This sermon looks at the brilliant way the earliest Christians dealt with conflict. Their approach will help us not just at church, but in the workplace and with our families.
Most of us are introverted. Most of us are cautious. Most of us are really reluctant to open ourselves to church community. “What if something goes wrong? What if I get hurt? What they want more from me than I can give?” So we go it alone and end up spiritually anemic.
This sermon takes a look at how some of the earliest followers of Jesus built community together, and explore why that made such a powerful difference for them.
Many of us grew up learning God that way. We were handed a tidy box called “religious observance” and told, “God wants you to live in this box.” But the box smothered our souls and we found ourselves wondering, “Is this really the way to God?”
This sermon re-traces the steps of a spiritual seeker who found his way out of the box and shows us how we can do the same.
