Northplace Church Podcast

Palm Sunday is the beginning of what is known as Passion Week. It was on Palm Sunday around 2000 years ago, that Jesus was at the height of his popularity. Crowds were thronging to him, and as he rode into Jerusalem on the back of a borrowed colt, the crowd waved palm branches (which is where we get the name Palm Sunday) and declared: “Hosanna, Hosanna, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”These where not just shouts of affirmation to any other celebrity personality; these were messianic declarations. The people were publicly declaring that they believed he was the Messiah; the long waited One, the one spoken of by the prophets.The religious authorities had not only become jealous of his growing popularity and influence with the people, they thought his claim to be the Son of God was religious blasphemy and punishable by death. It was a loophole in their religious law that allowed them the opportunity to build a case against him; their jealousy and insecurities inspired them to devise murderous pl

Some people are stuck in the rut of the super-normal. They approach church like it’s their court ordered support group and they check in and check out with no expectations. We wouldn’t waste our life serving the local church or as Christians coming to the church on a regularly basis if we didn’t believe there was supernatural potential for life change every time we get together.Many of the people in your life, your friends, family, neighbors, peers are spiritually paralyzed or incapacitated. They may be paralyzed by fear or shame. They may be paralyzed by ignorance, they have now idea they even need him. For whatever ever reason, they are never going to come on their own, they may never meet Jesus without your loving consistent nudge.1. Everyone will spend eternity somewhere, and one day, someone will thank for not giving up on them.2. Don’t answer “no” for them.Don’t assume and don’t let your silence be the reason they don’t get to Jesus.3. We are accountable for the “ask” but not responsible for the answer.

The final 5 psalms, Psalm 146-150, all begin and end with same word in the Hebrew tongue: “Hallelujah,” which literally means “praise to the lord.” These are truly psalms and victorious praise, and they differ from most other psalms; you don’t find any disappointments or discouragement here. Many of the other psalms are open and honest about life's injustices and evils that leave the psalmist confused but determined to trust God in spite of what he doesn’t understand. But these last 5 are an emphatic closure to the whole book declaring to us that the bookend of our life should be defined by trusting praise. They are songs that celebrate victory - and sometimes - it’s a celebration for a victory that has not even happened yet. It’s a praise offered in advance, a praise for victory while the battle is still raging, a praise that is certain God will keep is word, a praise that is anchored in deep trust and surrender, a praise that is founded more on the sovereignty of God than it is on current circumstances

In 2 Timothy 1:8-9, Paul speaks 4 specific words over the life of Timothy; four words we believe are also applicable to us. He says, God has saved us. He has called us. He has purposed us. And he has graced us. He has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our own works, but according to his own purpose, through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Saved. Called. Purposed. Graced. Sandwiched between God’s salvation and grace is God’s calling and purpose. Calling is what you have in your hand. It’s what you do. Purpose is what you have in your heart. It's what you love.

Imminence, Urgency, Timing, and Opportunity. In life we need to:1. Live with Imminence2. Live with a Sense of Urgency 3. Understand Timing 4. Seize Opportunity

Change can be really hard, and at times we do the opposite of what we hoped we were going to do. The good news is God knew we would struggle with these things.Four Things That Christian Change Is:1 Change Is Gradual 2. Change Is Inevitable 3. Change Is Internal4. Change Is Symmetrical

Hope is more than a motivational thought or a fading daydream. It’s not a wishy-washy, vague, wait-and-see attitude, but an action we choose to take on purpose every day. We choose to trust God’s control and we choose trust in his promises regardless of what it looks like in our current circumstances. Like Jesus, we endure the present because of the “joy set before us.”

All throughout the Scripture, presence is a priority. God’s presence makes the difference.His presence is what sets us apart and presence should be our priority. We should live in a way that invites it. We should honor it, respect it, protect it, pursue it, crave it and long for it. AW Tozer, a pastor and writer from a previous generation, wrote a prayer that I have personalized in my own life. It says: “O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed.” This prayer captures the words of a heart with a deep yearning for God’s presence.

Most of have friendships, but to truly do life, walk through trials together, close enough to see blind spots; that takes more intimate relationships.

There is a difference in the general social interaction between people…and the supernatural relationship and community that is supposed to exist in a biblically functioning community. On the surface, they may look the same but one is natural, the other is supernatural; it’s incarnational. And because of that, Incarnational Community is counter-intuitive; it goes against the flow of what comes natural to us. When we understand what scripture says - what God expects for his people - it changes our whole perspective and thinking about relationshipsLiving incarnationally will help us transition:1. From Conversion to Community 2. From Association to Participation3. From Self-Righteousness to Compassion4. From Individualism to Fully Present5. From Drudgery to CelebrationOne another statements:1. Be at peace with one another (Mark 9:50)2.Be of the same mind with one another (Romans 12:16, 15:5)3. Accept one another (Romans 15:7)4. Be kind, tender-hearted, and forgiving to one another (Ephesians 4:32)5. Bear with and

This is Week 5 of "The Year of Here"If we start living like Jesus, letting him live his life through us, being Jesus with skin on, living incarnationally; then our world will see the glory of God in and through us just like John’s generation saw it in Christ Jesus.We’ve talked about incarnational worship and incarnational presence. We’ve spent some time talking about living the incarnational life, but today we're talking about Incarnational Compassion.Something pretty incredible as you study church history is that there is an incredible correlation between the church’s emphasis on the incarnation and its compassion. For example, during medieval times, there was a revival of focus on the incarnation; it’s not coincidental that during that same time the church’s influence on medicine and its development of Christ centered hospitals exploded.Beliefs impact behavior; and when you understand the incarnation, it changes they way you approach the Christian life.Visit our website for the video of this

This is Week 4 of "The Year of Here"What is the habitat for the dwelling of God’s presence? Where has God chosen to make his habitation?The church - not the building, but the people - when we come together corporately, collectively to worship, according Paul, we become a dwelling place or habitation for God by the Spirit.The place that God has chosen to dwell, the place that he has chosen to make his unique habitation is the collective worship of his people. When we come together each weekend to sing, lift our hands, exalt the name of Jesus; we are making this place the habitat of God. Our worship is the environment where God has chosen to dwell.This should to be game changer for us. It should change everything about the way we approach weekend worship experience at church.

Part 3 of "The Year of Here"Jesus didn’t just come to show us what God was like. He wasn’t just the Son of God. He was the Son of Man. He was human, He was flesh, and one of the primary reasons he put on skin was to show us how to truly be human. And this is God’s strategy of changing the world. When we are incarnational humans like we are supposed to be - embodying the presence of God like Jesus did - other people will see the glory of God through us. Honestly, that’s God’s strategy for changing the world. One person being transformed by God’s grace in such a way that they actually live it out. They flesh it out in such a way that others see the glory of God through their lives and are drawn to Christ. They are transformed and the whole thing starts over, covering the earth with transformed lives.

We have come out of the Christmas season this year, doing something a little different. Instead of taking our conversations a completely different direction, we decided to dive deeper into the incarnation of Jesus. The message of the incarnation is that God has become a man; that he has come here to be with us. It’s about his presence. We want to know what that looks like in our lives in a practical sense. What does that mean for me Tuesday morning at work, or at soccer practice Thursday night; or at our family’s table when we finally get a chance to sit down and have a meal together. This is a year where we want to learn how to practice the presence of God; to be carriers of the presence of God. We want to learn how to literally “flesh” out our faith.Jesus made the announcement that he had come to establish his kingdom in the world; it is a new and different way of living life. So what does it look like to live as he commanded, now that the kingdom of God is here on earth. Before he left, Jesus made a remark

The word "Here” became a key word in our Christmas conversations and the manger became the central image in explaining the Incarnation - how got God “here”. But as we were praying through the Christmas and Advent theme…we had this sense that it wasn’t the end of the conversation but the beginning of the conversation. That 2019 was supposed to be The Year of “Here”2019 "The Year of Here,” will be a year where Northplace falls in love with the dwelling presence of God in our corporate gatherings. But it will also be a year where we learn what it means to practice the presence of God in every dimension of our personal lives. If God has come - If he is here and he dwells in me - how will that change my professional life, my home life, my everyday life?We desperately need to answer the question: Does the incarnation have any relevance in my life now that Christmas has come and gone? The answer is a resounding YES! 

When we search for change in the wrong places it often makes things worse.‭‭Mark‬ ‭5:24-34‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Christmas Eve is the crescendo of the Story of God. The driving passion of his heart from the very beginning of the bible up until now, is to have a close personal relationship us. He wants to be with us. He wants to dwell among us. If you search the scriptures, you will see God compassionately and continually trying to break into the disinterested hearts of sinful people.  He doesn’t give up on us. He just keeps chasing, he keeps pursuing and he keeps arranging circumstances, events, and people in our lives that keep pointing us back to his love. There is nothing he wants more than a close relationship with you. That’s the very reason why there is a Christmas. He couldn’t stand the distance. He had to get close. He was not going to let the distance in our relationship with him be his fault. He was going to do everything in his power to be near to give us every chance to now. So the God of the universe left the splendor of heaven, robed himself in human frailty and broke into our world as a baby in a manger 2

What does it mean to live an incarnational life?When God comes to dwell among his people, he comes with a purpose. His presence doesn’t fill our lives and his presence doesn’t fill our corporate worship experiences so that we can sit, soak and sour. This is the mistake a lot of us make that truly value the presence of God. We become so focused on the presence of God; worship in the presence, soak in the presence, celebrate the presence, and all of that’s fine, but if we never understand the purpose of the presence, we end up becoming an inward focused click that’s always coming to the church to “get a blessing” and never doing anything with it. God didn’t fill this place with his glory last weekend so we would get goosebumps and walk out talking about how we “had church.” He filled this place with his presence to mobilize us outside these walls to BE the church, to live it out and be agents of change in our world. 

The Garden of Eden was the fulfillment of the heart of God; a place to give his love to us without restraint, but sin ruined all that. It severed the relationship and brought distance between a sinful man and a holy God. He could have thrown us away. He could have started over. He could have chalked it up as a failed experiment, but he didn’t. He loved us. He pursed us. He came searching for Adam and Eve to restore that severed relationship. There is omnipresence and then there is his tangible, felt, incarnational presence. God is everywhere all the time, but people are not always aware of his presence. Corporate worship is preparing room, preparing our hearts, making us aware. And when the collective conversation is holy holy holy, He comes, Emanuel “God with us”.

On this first weekend of Advent, grasping the rich theology behind the Christmas story, will bring us nearer to God’s presence, reframe our perspective, and infuse our hearts with an otherworldly joy that will undergird the next several weeks of our celebrations. It will literally change the way we do the holidays this year and we hope moving forward throughout our lives.