Broadcasts

Most people think that surrender to Jesus means giving up our freedom. But when you surrender to Jesus and lean on him, it leads to freedom and abundance! Pastor J.D. continues in this message to show us how Jesus is a Good Shepherd who proved his commitment to us on the cross and now promises to use everything he lets into the pasture of our lives for good.

Doors and gates are things that we likely don’t give much thought to until they are in need of repair—and while the truth is that they are usually constructed to keep people or animals out, they can also certainly be opened to let them in. In this week’s message from John 10, Pastor J.D. explains perhaps the most overlooked of Jesus’ “I Am” statements: “I am the door.”

Jesus said in John 8:12 that those who follow him will not walk in darkness, which means that our lives will radiate with his light. In this message, Pastor J.D. continues to share how to look to the light of Jesus to be saved and then live in a way that glows with the knowledge that you belong to Jesus and Jesus belongs to you.

No matter what side of the “daylight saving time” debate we find ourselves on, we all have to at least acknowledge that light is essential for life, for a myriad of reasons. So Jesus’ declaration that he is “the light of the world” was truly a bold claim.

If we were to trace some of our worst choices, our bad habits, our addictions, and even some of our emotional problems back to their source, we would find a deep and unsatisfied spiritual hunger.

As humans, one of our most basic needs is food—when we don’t have it, we experience discomfort, irritability, or even sickness or death. And yet, as unbearable as physical hunger can be, it is our spiritual hunger that we often neglect to address, to our own detriment. As we begin a series looking at the seven “I am” statements made by Jesus in the Gospel of John, this message from Pastor J.D. explores the first of these, from John 6. Jesus’ claim to be the “bread of life” is a truth that we so desperately need in a world full of people who seek to satisfy their spiritual hunger with anything but Jesus.

Our emotions function like smoke from a fire—and just like you can follow a trail of smoke to figure out what’s on fire in your house, you can follow the trail of your emotions to figure out what is on fire in your heart. Pastor J.D. concludes with the emotion of shame.

We’re in the final couple of days of our series on difficult emotions titled, “Smoke from a Fire.” Or, to change the analogy—each of these emotions—depression, anxiety, anger, envy, and now “shame”—functions like warning lights on the dashboard of our hearts, indicating what is going on in the engine of our souls.

Sociologists say that envy seems to be a bigger problem for our generation than any before us, because social media seems designed to play on it! But when we look at other people’s lives on social media, we are seeing a filtered image. Pastor J.D. concludes his message on the difficult emotion of envy.