Mountain Ridge Church

Are you connecting to God? Are you connecting to yourself and understanding how you feel? Are you connecting to others?

Are you feeling frantic about today, worried about tomorrow, and does that leave you feeling spiritually empty? There is an answer. But before I give it to you, I must something on the front end. It will require radical trust in God. It will require radical surrender to God. And, you will need to make a radical change in your life.

How are you handling grief and loss in your own life? Are you stuffing your emotions? Are you ignoring this stuff or are you turning towards the pain, and growing and maturing through it?

God didn’t come to make your life an American success story. He came to forgive you, heal you and walk with you as you walk through the mess of life.

Do you see history repeating itself? Do you see any behavioral patterns from the past impacting the present for me there? Our family history lives inside us all... even those of us who just don’t want to go backwards so we can move forward.

Do you own a car? Have you ever had the engine light go on? Your engine light is telling you that you need to pay attention to your engine. If you ignore it, you are ignoring reality and bigger problems are coming. Your emotions are the exact same. They are God’s way of telling you that you need to check your heart.

You can live opposite of the ways of this world. You can live a life that is centered on Jesus. A life that is deliberate, intentional, and full of the kind of love that only comes from a relationship with Him! This happens as we begin to work on both our Spiritual health and our emotional health.

A part time job helps you make ends meet but you really don’t want to be there – right? Today we talk about what happens when we treat following Christ like a part time job.

In the absence of love, selfishness rules. Tit-for-tat living, measuring each other, secret agendas, and rankings always leads to broken relationships.

Do you feel stuck?

Think about what life would look like if your first view wasn’t about you, but was seen through the eyes of the Gospel. Would your life look any different?

Our worship, our prayer, and our church should be real… and our challenge as people inside the church community is to let our guards down and allow God’s truth in regardless of how challenging or uncomfortable that can be.

Each of us has a gift from God that we are to be using so that we can help others, whether that’s physically, emotionally, or spiritually. But where does your gift fit?

Paul is driving home this idea that you words don’t matter as much as your actions. Sure, you can tell everyone what an amazing Christian you are, but in the end your actions and how you live is what really matters.

When you face temptation, God knows you can handle it, and you can handle it…but…it doesn’t mean that we don’t have things to do in the process to protect ourselves from our sinful cravings and temptations.

In Christ, we have freedom. There are a few topics that the Bible doesn't address; we call these grey areas. But what happens when our freedom comes before love of others?

Do you believe there is a connection between your relationship with God and how you view sex?

Dealing with sin isn’t fun. It’s like grabbing a porcupine with no gloves. Nobody wants to do it. But the reason we do it is because we love the person.

Paul is WITH them in the mess to lead them by how he is living out of that mess to Jesus! This is where so many Christians struggle, because they aren’t holding onto their own redemption story… they lose sight of the fact that we are all sinners!

When you help others experience grace, that’s when God will empower you. What would you do with your free gift?