River of Life Church - St Joseph

This week we continue our prayer series talking about the Prayer of Jabez. This is a popular passage in scripture where Jabez prays that God would bless him, expand his territory, be with him, and protect him. At first this prayer can seem like a selfish thing to pray, but when you really look into the biblical definition of being blessed you will see that this is centered on God and his kingdom advancing. With God as the one how pours out his will in our lives, we should be praying for blessing every day. 
This was also a family service with kids as a part of the message.

Starting this week and continuing over the next few weeks we will be diving into different scriptural prayer plans you can use to enhance your prayer life. This week we start that process by looking at the Lord's Prayer and what Jesus taught on on how to pray. The Lord's Prayer is an outline for prayer for us that can guide us through effective ways to pray and also teaches us powerful truths about how we view God and faith. 

This week we continue our series on prayer by talking about what a healthy prayer life looks like. We focus in on the three different levels of prayer that we can have with God and how all are useful at times. We also stretch into the four P's of prayer that are aspects of a healthy prayer life: priority, place, plan, and power. If you have ever wanted a practical game plan for a healthy prayer life, this is the message for you!

This week we begin our fall focus series, Pray First. This Sunday was Back to Church Sunday for us as well, so this message includes a heavy salvation focus while talking about the immense power that prayer can have in our lives. Prayer is relational communication with the God of the universe who is revealed to us as our Father. Every time we pray we step into the presence of Almighty God. If we truly believe that, prayer should be our first response rather than our last resort. 

This week is a standalone sermon based off of the declaration of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel 3. When faced with possible death at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, the three of them refused to compromise their faith by bowing to a false idol; instead, they declared that "even if" God did not rescue them, they would stay faithful to him! This is a strong reminder that God has called us to have "Even If" Faith that says, "No matter what, I will serve the Lord." Pastor Tyler discusses this idea and how to avoid living with "Only If" Faith that puts false stipulations on our relationship with God. 

This week we hear from a guest speaker: Sterling Steen. Sterling is the Next Steps Pastor at Bridgeview Church in Big Lake, MN. Part of his role at the church is to be the head of their discipleship systems and in this sermon, Sterling brings a great framework for understanding discipleship. The call of Christian discipleship is truly become like Christ rather than seeming good on the outside. He offers in-depth understanding of the topic as well as practical advice for engaging in discipleship. 

This week was Family Sunday at our location, so we took a week off from our Story of the Bible series and instead got to hear from Sephra our Kids Pastor! She brings a great word about how kids are a vital part of the mission of God because they were vital to Jesus. She challenges all of us to consider our mindsets when it comes to children and how we are all called to help bring kids closer to Jesus. 

Our series about the story of the Bible continues on going over the major theme of the entire New Testament: what is the Church and what does it mean to be the Church in belief and practice? This is vitally important to us today because this it the age of history that we are living in today. Followers of Jesus all around the world ARE the Church, so we should all understand what that means and what it entails. We cover that idea for a bit, and then move to why being a part of the Church is vital for your faith. 

This week we move our series to the New Testament and talk about how Jesus is the answer to the entire story of the Bible. Before Jesus, the Old Testament ends with a hopeful look towards the future but everything is left unfinished. Then, in the New Testament, Jesus comes and fulfills the incredible promises of God. Everything Jesus does heals, fixes, and restores the story of history so that all of creation is ready when Jesus moves to defeat sin. We end with the idea that Jesus can also renew our stories. 

Have you ever wondered what in the world was going on in the Old Testament prophetic books? Then this sermon is for you. This week we continue our series, Story of the Bible, and we finish out the story of the Old Testament by covering the prophetic books. These books have beautiful truths about who God is, what he wants to do in our world, and how he relates to us, but they can be notoriously difficult to read. We spend this sermon talking about how to read the prophetic books and what we can learn from them today. *We also use the audio from a video made by the Bible Project. You can find that original video here: youtube.com/watch?v=edcqUu_BtN0&pp=ygUdYmlibGUgcHJvamVjdCBwcm9waGV0aWMgYm9va3M%3D