The River Church Sermons

Promise Meets Famine

Promise meets famine. God made a life changing promise to Abram, Abram took a big faith risk, and then life got rough. "No way to put food on the table for your family" rough. What happens next in this story is not unlike many of our realities. A big, ugly collision between calling, hope, faith, the promises of God, and life in a hard, broken world. I've been wrestling with this for a while. And while I don't have many answers, I've been thinking we could look at the text and sit in the tension together. I'll show up if you do?

The Story and The Step

I'll never forget his words. A group of fellow ministry leaders and I huddled around a professor at the United States Air Force Academy for a seminar on leadership. Summarizing his research on effective leadership, he put it simply: "Every person needs an unsafe cause to live for and a safe community to live with." This is the precise invitation for followers of Jesus that we see in the first text of our summer teaching series through the life of Abraham. Join us this Sunday as we learn from Genesis 12:1-9 and begin looking at the life of "Dangerous Faith" in the life of Abraham.

The Heights of Heaven's Love

We conclude our journey through Romans 8 by stepping into one of the most breathtaking passages in all of Scripture. In Romans 8:31–39, Paul lifts our eyes above the noise, anxiety, and pressure of everyday life and anchors us in three life-changing truths: God is for you, Christ has justified you, and nothing can separate you from His love. We’ll explore the staggering depth of God’s affection for His people and discover how the these truths give us the perspective and endurance for the realities of everyday life.

Do All Things Work Together for Good? That is the Question.

Let's discuss one of the most, maybe the most misunderstood and misused verse in all the Bible. The other one is God helps those who help themselves which isn’t even the Bible. But, here it is, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good...” Oh, there’s more, “...to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” Please don’t use this verse with anyone who has suffered the loss of a loved one. What I mean by that is if you get a chance to sit with someone suffering, maybe know it, pray over it, keep it in your mind, believe it, but maybe start a little softer. They often need comfort. They need to be seen and heard. They need to be free to process, to feel what they are going through with its full impact, to talk about it, to grieve. Good? Now back to the verse. This verse is smack dab in our scriptures for a reason. We cannot deny that. It’s God’s word to us. This verse is Paul’s conclusion to a long conversation about how the Holy Spirit helps us in our struggles, our suffering, and our hardships. So what does it mean? I suggest we have the wrong perspective and that’s why we struggle with what Paul is saying. Reflect on this quote for a bit and then let’s discuss. ‘None of the good things of this present life can be relied on. They are shortlived. The things we see, though made by the creative Logos and the wisdom that transcends all wisdom, are always changing, now one way and now another, born upward and then downward. That is why it seems we are being played with. Before something can be laid hold of it flees and escapes our grasp. Yet there is purpose in all this, for when we reflect on the instability and fickleness of such things, we are led to seek refuge in the enduring things that are to come. For if life always went well, would we not become so attached to our present state, even though we know it will not last, and by deception become enslaved to pleasure? In the end we would think that our present life is the best and noblest, and forget that, being made in the image of God, we are destined for higher things.’ — Maximus the Confessor ‘the Cosmic Mystery of Christ’

Our Helper

Anyone who has tried to communicate across a language or cultural barrier knows the frustration of being lost in translation. A misunderstood word, an accidental cultural faux pas—it can be funny after the fact if all ends well, but it’s painfully awkward in the moment. Romans 8:26-27 takes us to a beautiful promise of God for us in the midst of life’s suffering and heartache: the Holy Spirit both identifies with the mess, fragility, and vulnerability of our cries of heartache and transforms them into prayers before our Father. Nothing is lost in translation with God. Join us as we look at Romans 8:26-27 and learn about our helper in a fallen world.