Woodland Hills Church

This third sermon in our Love. Walk. Do. series focuses on the importance of doing justice. There is always a danger in attempting to find solutions to justice issues with the political system where all solutions are ambiguous in nature. We are called to actively DO justice in our church and communities as a sign-post of the beautiful Kingdom of God because all of humanity has unsurpassable worth.

We all want a place at the top. A place of prominence and authority. From the story of Esau and Jacob, to James and John, to me and to you, the desire for a place at the top can frequently be seen. But for Jesus, a position at the “top of the Kingdom” can only be found through humility.

In this first message of the Love. Walk. Do. sermon series, Greg tackles the first portion of the prophet Micah’s depiction of what God requires of us – to love mercy. Loving mercy means loving it when people don’t get the negative consequences they deserve. If justice is about collecting a debt, then loving mercy is about hating debt collecting. In a very counter cultural depiction of the Kingdom of God, Greg examines how we can’t truly love mercy until we realize the extent to which we depend on it from God.

A popular view of faith is as an absence of doubt. But Greg shows us why this view not only is a barrier to new believers, but is also a dangerous way of doing faith.

Jesus commanded His followers to love, and He commanded us not to judge. Yet the Christians of today are known outside of the Church as arrogant, judgmental, and intolerant. What is wrong with this picture?! In this message, Greg shares three ideas on how we, who say we follow Jesus, can truly become the humble, serving, loving people that the Church is supposed to be.

This Easter we heard from Greg Boyd on how the resurrection confirms that Jesus is the true revelation of God. Jesus is the exact representation of God and the truth is that the mercy of God triumphs over judgment. It is our task to align or re-align our picture of God with the person of Jesus seen in the resurrection.

In this sixth and last installment of the Everyday Influence series, Seth explores the positive ripple effect of us sharing the impact Jesus has had on our life. We don’t share the good news for a variety of reasons, but the promise of scripture is that if we show up and share, God will provide the power to our words that has the potential to change hearts. We don’t have to be perfect; in fact that’s part of the good news. Our story, infused with the power of the Holy Spirit, is enough.

For the fifth installment of our Everyday Influence series, Sandra shares her own life example of being stuck in a “box” of self-proclaimed righteousness, and how she realized that we are all in the same box: the big box of “screw-ups.” It is within this big box that Jesus dwells, and does his great work.

We can all struggle to hear and obey God at times – but why? Is it that we’re not listening well? Or that we’re afraid that we might not like what we hear? We’re not alone in those realities – even Jesus’ disciples found themselves there, hiding from others and living in fear. But when they received the Holy Spirit, they had supernatural help to overcome their fears – and so do we! The truth is, we shouldn’t be afraid of what will happen if we listen to the Holy Spirit, we should be afraid of what we’ll miss out on if we don’t!

In this third installment of the Everyday Influence evangelism series, Greg shares how the real good news is meant to impact all of our relationships, especially with those that don’t know Jesus. We were created with an innermost need and desire for significance and value that only God can satisfy. We were also born into an environment filled with lies and deception about how that desire is to be satisfied. Our call to share the good news starts with our experience of the good news. Greg shares how listening and learning are just as important in evangelizing as speaking and sharing. As the saying goes, no one cares how much you know until they know how much you care.