Woodland Hills Church - High Quality Audio

Is prayer really that important? Does it really play a purpose in the grand scheme of things? If we believe the Scriptures to be true, it seems that prayer is “insanely” important – so much that we are to pray with “shameless audacity.” Some get bogged down with the idea of prayer because they see it as a religious ritual that is too complex and difficult to do in our regular lives. Yet the reality is that prayer is basically talking with God in an ordinary way about our ordinary lives.

Every day we confront choices that reflect and form our character. Will we live for ourselves, or for the Kingdom? God wants us to be trustworthy for Kingdom service and it’s true that he tests us to refine our character, but he doesn’t tempt anyone. If that’s true, why does Jesus teach us to pray, “lead us not into temptation?”

Is the good news of Jesus Christ really as good in your mind as it was in the mind of Jesus? God's dream for humanity is far more amazing than most of us realize. He wants to “marry” us, to invite us into his family and walk in radical love with us.

In the next part of the Lord's Prayer, Jesus teaches that prayer is about daily dependence on God to meet our needs, even though most people in our self-sufficient world do not think this way. We also discover the crucial role that forgiveness plays in our lives and the surprising freedom it can bring.

One of the first phrases in the Lord’s Prayer is “hallowed be your name,” and most of us have prayed it countless times. But what does it even mean? What are we asking God to do, and how does this prayer relate to how we live our lives as Kingdom people?

Christ's entrance into our world is both great and small. Jesus is the Son of God, a great and holy king. Yet he enters the world without much attention – in a small stable as a small child. Strangely, that “smallness” adds to his greatness. We ponder that “smallness” during our Christmas Eve service.

Christmas is a time of celebration and hope! The birth of Jesus celebrates the coming of the promised Messiah. God loved us so much that he gave the gift of His only Son, Jesus, to redeem and bring us back into relationship with Him. As we celebrate the coming of Jesus, we also expectantly await Christ’s return.

Prayer is one of the most important aspects of our lives as Kingdom people. So why is it something we struggle with so much? Jesus used the Lord’s Prayer to teach his disciples when they asked him how they should pray. Perhaps surprisingly, his example is very different than the way many of us pray today. If we started from scratch, what kind of prayer life could we have if we followed this example from Jesus?

It’s easy to both love and hate the Christmas season. On one hand, it’s a sacred time when we remember and celebrate Christ’s birth. But on the other, our culture has made it into a frenzy of consumerism and materialism. In the Lord’s Prayer we find all the basics of what it looks like to follow Jesus. What can we learn from this example that will help us keep our Kingdom priorities during the craziness of the Christmas season?

We are one-of-a-kind revolutionaries with inner greatness meant to glorify God. He has a unique calling for each of us – something that he’s given us special gifts and passion for – and we’ll never be truly fulfilled until we follow it! But too often our God-given beauty gets caged in culturally conditioned lies about why we can’t do the extraordinary things we’re meant to do. God is calling Kingdom people to unleash the beauty he’s built into each of us!

God warns us to preserve sex for marriage, but why is it such a big deal? Our culture tells us that sex is recreational, but from God’s perspective whenever two people engage in sexual intercourse, they are sealing a sacred covenant that was meant to never be broken. God cares about our sex lives because he cares about the covenants we make with each other. As Kingdom people, we’re called to revolt against the corruption of our culture and be examples of his beautiful design for sexuality.

Luke’s story of Mary and Martha is very relevant for our culture: like Martha, we are obsessed with working and producing, even in the church! It’s clear that Mary’s “better way” revolts against simply “doing” and prioritizes a relationship with Christ. When that’s in place, the kingdom will naturally flow from us. But the opposite is not true. We’ll never get a relationship with Jesus by focusing on what we do. Greg also ties this important lesson to marriages.

Living in love for all people is one of the greatest challenges we face as Christians. Today, as in Jesus’ time, we often ask theoretical questions to justify ourselves and to limit who we love. In this message we’re challenged to ask how we self-sacrificially love and learn from those around us, including “outcasts” in our life. One crucial way to revolt against the systems of this world is to serve and be blessed by people who are judged by others.

The Revolting Beauty series continues as we are brought face to face with the very heart of God and the center of the Kingdom: namely, Jesus' teaching on self-sacrificial love. In this sermon we learn about the four types of love, and the importance of living in such a way that God's agape-love flows to and through us. Finally, Greg helps us consider some of the areas in our culture that we will naturally “revolt” against if we are walking in the “relational way” of God's self-sacrificial love.

Our modern, Western way of thinking can easily blind us to the reality of the spiritual world. We are called to revolt against this cultural tendency by waking up both to God’s constant presence in our lives and to the spiritual war around us. We also learn that Jesus has given his church authority over demonic powers in this world, and that no matter what we experience in this life, our hope and joy is rooted in the love of God!

Like Jesus' first disciples, we will be constantly confronted by anti-Kingdom values – in our case things like individualism, independence, and self-sufficiency. But Jesus' alternative Kingdom vision is very straightforward. As we reach out to the world around us, we're simply called to depend upon God and his community, enter into authentic relationships, act like Jesus, and then explain why.

In this first sermon of the Revolting Beauty series, we learn two aspects of how we are to stand out and revolt against our culture. First, no matter how “together” our lives are, God wants us to be part of what he is doing in the world. Second, allegiance to the Kingdom of God means that we may have to give up things that are good and normal in our culture. We need to consider even our most firmly rooted values: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Greatness in the Kingdom of God is never measured like it is in our Western culture. Instead of seeking power and control the way our society does, Jesus taught that “...whoever is least among you all is the greatest.” This has tremendous ramifications for how we minister to the people around us, and tells us a great deal about how God wants us to help spread his Kingdom.

What we know to be true often doesn't change us profoundly, but our experiences always leave a lasting impact. Each of us has a place within where we can meet the Lord during worship. When we practice the habit of vividly picturing Jesus during prayer and worship, this experience allows us to take on his glory and we're transformed more and more into his likeness.

God delights in the praises of His people. The manner in which we worship is not important. God is only concerned with our hearts and desire to worship. There are many ways to express our love for God through praise and worship, and it is in this diversity that we see the full beauty of our God.