Woodland Hills Church

In the Old Testament, a name is more than what someone is called. It points deeper to his or her character. In the first message of our More Than a Name Christmas series, Greg explores the context of Isaiah 9 and what it meant for Jesus to be prophesied as a Wonderful Counselor.

We are designed by God to love nature, not just to live in it. This is seen in the fact that God often meets us through nature, as such encounters encourage our souls and enliven our bodies. Therefore, in a world that has little room for nature, we must adopt tactics that will open us up to God through nature.

God created us to live in love for others, however, we fall short of this reality. In this sermon, David explores three barriers to loving others: religion, political affiliations and hurry. Addressing these three barriers will not only change your experience of love with others, but also it will change how you love God.

One of the four directions of love is to love yourself. But not the old self that you inherited from the world. Rather, we are to love the self that God meant us to be. So today we look back on the old self we were before, and we remember the new self we are now in Christ.

This weekend we continue our study of how attachment theory can be used as a descriptive tool for our connections in relationships with others as well as how we connect with God. How we have connected with others, both positively and negatively, is usually a good approximation for how we think of and connect with God. Some of this appears to be genetic, some a product of the nurture we received, and some a product of our own free will. In this message, we explore the role of free will in our development of healthy, secure connection as well as what healing looks like for someone who has formed unhealthy attachment mechanisms with themselves, others, and God.

In this sermon, Shawna sits down with Kevin as he explains, more in depth, Attachment Theory: How we experience love, and our relationships with God and others, through a pattern of attachment developed in us as a child. Understanding this can help us see both our natural tendencies in relationships, as well as areas in which we need to experience God's healing.

God is love, and our job is to receive and replicate that love. This means that it is crucial that we rightly perceive what God's love actually looks like, something that some find challenging in the midst of creation that is overrun by violence. How then do we reconcile the nature of God's love when nature itself seems to point to anything but love?

Two sermons in one today: Part 1: How does children's reliance on technology affect their ability to use their imaginations? And part 2: Looking at the Botham Jean "hug felt around the world" and how we might be stuck in a silo and not even know it.

As we continue our Interface series, this week Osheta explores how a Kingdom minded person can engage with social media as a peacemaker and avoid the pits of binary either-or thinking. The medium and anonymity of online life creates a temptation to leave behind self-control and humility in exchange for judgment and unsolicited advice. In this message, we look at 5 principles that can help keep us grounded in love as we engage in social media.

Social media can control our lives, forming our minds and our actions without our even knowing that it's happening. While there is great benefit to social media, we must also recognize it's dangers and develop a plan to live differently. Otherwise, we will end up looking like we aren't part of God's kingdom.