City Central Church Podcast

This week, Pastor Chris started our Christmas Peace series. During the Christmas season, most people are looking for peace but instead experience stress and hurry. God offers us a heart-level, lasting peace the world cannot give. Through a relationship with Jesus, we have peace with God, ourselves, and those around us.

This week, Pastor Chris continued in our mini-series about how God’s generosity towards us compels us to live generously. It is easy to think we are aligned with God’s heart, but a good look at our willingness to live generously may show we are misaligned. Pastor Chris shared some ways we can see if your generosity is reflecting God’s generosity toward us.

This week Pastor Chris and an elder, Eric Jones, tag-teamed our morning service teaching about living generously. While the world tells us to hold on our earthly possessions, our time and our money, God tells us to live generously and in turn, be blessed. The believer’s motivation for living generously is out of the overflow of God’s generosity toward to us.

Our annual Summit where we hear about where we have been, where we are now, and where God is taking us in the future!

This week, Pastor Chris finished up our Freedom in Christ series teaching on the power of the tongue. Our words are often an indicator of our heart condition and have the power to bring about positive or negative shifts in our life and the lives of others. We want to be a people whose hearts are healthy and whose words bring life, propelling others toward their calling and identity in Christ.

This week, Pastor Chris continued in our series Freedom in Christ. He taught that if we want to be great in the kingdom of God, we must walk in humility. As believers, we have a choice to live a life of pride and arrogance, or a life submitted to the Lord and poured out for the service of others. Choosing humility is the key to greatness.

This week’s sermon was a continuation in our Freedom in Christ series. Pastor Chris taught from the story of Joseph, who experienced many injustices yet kept his heart right before the Lord. We all experience injustice in our life and must take care to watch over our heart, forgiving those who hurt us and uprooting all bitterness. 

This week, Pastor Chris continued in our series Freedom in Christ. In church culture today, we like to explain away or ignore our pain. However, pain is an inevitable part of life and Jesus wants to shoulder it with us. The invitation of God is to walk with Him through our pain or invite Him into it so He can heal us.

This week, Pastor Chris continued in our series Freedom in Christ. We learned about the battle of the mind and how our thoughts directly affect our lives and our ability to walk in the freedom God has for us. We must pay close attention to our thoughts, holding fast to God’s truth and quickly rejecting the enemy’s lies.

This week Pastor Chris continued in our series, Freedom in Christ, in which he brought a two-fold message: we as Believers have been given authority in Christ to extend the kingdom of God and it is imperative to live fully in that authority. We must be aware that fear, anxiety and the illusion of control are not holding us back living in our full authority.

Darrin Miller continued in our sermon series, Freedom in Christ, equipping us to withstand the spiritual battle going on around us. To walk in Jesus’ victory, we must know our enemy and his schemes, as well as the weapons we must use to overcome him.

This week, Chris began a new series called Freedom is Christ. Jesus offers freedom for every believer and yet blind spots can so easily form in our lives that hold us back from all that God has for us. These blind spots come in many forms- negative thinking, heaviness of heart, anxiety and more. Today’s sermon was about being aware of the spiritual realm and learning to battle for our freedom from a place of Christ’s victory.

This week our Community Life Director, Casey Mock, shared how life groups are critical to our growth as we walk with the Lord. We believe our inheritance is a sense of belonging and growth, no matter your past experiences surrounding community, and life group is where that happens. It is in community that we go deep in the Word of God running after the fullness of God what He has for us. Several friends joined Casey in sharing about various City Central life groups and their experiences.

This week Pastor Chris continued in our mini-series about financial stewardship, exhorting us to handle God’s resources His way. The Bible provides clear instructions for tithing so that we can know how to live as obedient and faithful stewards. Chris shared how the human heart is prone to wander, and that the tithe is a test of our spiritual health. Like the Israelites, we can lose our direction and live outside of God’s will for our lives. The question of whether we tithe ultimately comes down to a question of whether we will trust God.

This week, Pastor Chris began a new mini-series on financial stewardship. In His earthly ministry, Jesus spoke more about money than He did heaven and hell combined. How we manage our money reflects our hearts and our spiritual health, and our management will determine the rewards we receive in Heaven. Who do you believe your money belong to? Do you consider yourself an owner or a steward of your finances? As Christ’s followers, we have a responsibility to manage what we’ve been entrusted with God’s way and for His glory.

In this week’s youth takeover service, youth pastor Stephanie Kram preached a powerful message about how to overcome fear of man. God’s word says that fear can become a snare for us, but that we will be kept safe when we trust in God. Jesus came to set us free of all sin that keeps us captive, including all areas related to fear and insecurity. Stephanie shared the reality that a healthy fear of God will cause us to lose an unhealthy fear of anything else. 

This week, Darrin Miller highlighted a portion of City Central’s heart and mission to reach the lost. Darrin reminded us that we were each lost before Christ found us, and that our mission as Christ’s ambassadors is to actively seek the lost with the heart of Christ. We are not called to have mere knowledge of the Word, but to practice the Word as agents of reconciliation. Darrin urged us to search our hearts and challenge our perspective on the poor and needy, since they are our fellow image bearers of Christ.

This week, Pastor Chris brought our Healthy Church series to a close with a powerful word on the impact of Christ’s resurrection on our daily lives. In the Corinthian church, a sect of people called the Epicureans did not believe in the afterlife, leading to lifestyles of gluttony and self-gratification. Are you living like them, as if God is not in control and as if this world is your home? The resurrection of Christ means that we will be raised with him, and this truth gives us everlasting vision, peace, and hope.

This week Pastor Chris continued in our Healthy Church series, seeking to Biblically define what it means to be a Christian. There are many ways an individual can respond to the Gospel: they can reject it, simply know about it, or they can open their heart to receive and commit to it. Chris exhorted us to stand in the Gospel, even when the forces of the enemy rage against us. He shared about the wide road that leads to destruction and the narrow road that leads to eternal life. Taking the narrow road means that we leave everything aside, including our terms of what we think the Christian life is, and choose to follow, surrender to, and live for Jesus.

This week we continued in our series through 1 Corinthians, learning about Christ’s heart for His church. Like a groom towards a bride, Jesus pursues us with fondness, love, and affection. As Christ’s church, we have been called out of darkness and into His light and His family. Chris shared how the love of Jesus toward the church is a giving, restoring, cleansing, healing, sanctifying, and transforming love. As His children, we respond to this love by building His church and His kingdom on Earth.