Corporate worship is a holy, sacred, set apart activity in the earth. There is no other gathering in this temporal world that can replicate what uniquely happens when the saints of God gather to worship Him. In corporate worship God reveals, relocates and realigns. When we worship together, we are changed together. 

Worship is a covenantal act. It is our response to the on-going, faithful commands and covenantal love of the Lord God. He is looking for our worship; not because He needs it, but because He knows we do.  Worship is the remedy for our unceasing quest to find wholeness, fruitfulness and fulfillment.  Worship is the way we access and extend heaven on earth until the new heaven and the new earth.  

The Lord God of heaven and earth is a jealous God. In both the Old and New Testament, more than a dozen times, He refers to himself as jealous. The creator of all things has made all things for His beloved. But He will not stand for anything taking His place in our lives. He wants our deepest affections and surrender. He is The Jealous God. 

Humanity was created to live from and for the very goodness of God. God’s very goodness isn’t the quality or ability of an individual part; God’s very goodness refers to the completeness and wellness of the whole. We were created to live from and for relational wholeness and wellness — the very goodness of God. 

 All too often wounds of the heart atrophy our response to the Shepherd of our souls, causing us to miss the Provision, Protection, and Prosperity our Abba longs to supply. There are rituals and routines, sacred rhythms if you will, that are intended to align us with the rhythm of heaven so that our cadence and movement flow with and follow that of the Spirit, the One in Whom we live, move and have our being. As we journey through the 23rd Psalm with an eye on the Good Shepherd, may we encounter the deep healing that comes as we rest the weight of our lives on the Lover of our Soul. 

There are times, when God allows moments that bring us to the end of ourselves; times when we face odds and obstacles that we have no way of overcoming; times when we face enemies and assailants that have every intent on destroying us; times when we see our families, friends, and resources under attack with no way of rescue or relief. But those can be the very moments, when God is healing our hearts. Those can be the very moments when we are learning to trust again. Some heart wounds persist, because we refuse to trust God again and again.

Heart wounds are places of unprocessed pain, hurt and hardship affecting the way we see, feel, believe and behave. Some heart wounds go undetected because they’re caused by shared, socially acceptable and normalized events. There is a dimension of our heart healing and wholeness that only comes when we accept and embrace, It All Belongs to Him.  

There are times when heart wounds — places of unprocessed pain, hurt and hardship effecting the way we see, feel, believe and ultimately behave — are caused by despair  and disappointment over what God did or didn’t do. But God never intended on meeting our deepest needs with what could be found in this world. His plan has always been to give us a peace unlike anything in this world.  Scripture(s): • John 14:25-28 Slide(s):The vision of wholeness, which is the supreme will of the biblical God, is the outgrowth of a covenant of shalom. Where persons are not only bound to God but to one another in a caring, sharing, rejoicing community with nothing to make them afraid.   — Walter Bruggemann, PeaceGod created the world in a web of relationships that overflowed with forceful goodness. These relationships are far reaching: between humanity and God, between humanity and self, between genders, between humanity and the rest of creation, within families, between ethnic groups, and between nations.  These relationships were “very good” in the beginning.  — Lisa Harper, The Very Good Gospel9.22.2024 Message Takeaways  Some of our deepest hurts are tied to our deepest disappointments. We were created for a peace that can’t be found in this world.We’ve been restored and we are a part of His restoration plan.

When our hearts (soul and spirit) are wounded it hinders and corrupts our thoughts actions and motives. Oftentimes, what we describe as, “the way God made us”, is more accurately described as the way life has wounded us. But there is healing for our wounded hearts. God wants us to be made whole. God wants us to learn to live whole. Scripture(s): • Matthew 25:24-30 • Philippians 2:12, 13 • Proverbs 4:23

Kevin BrownSep 5, 2024, 6:30 PM (4 days ago)to Christopher, Deborah, Joy, Michael, Jill, Lee, meIntroduction:We live from the heart. It’s the innermost part of our being. We may think with our minds and act from our physical bodies, but we live from the heart. When our hearts are whole, healthy and pure we think and act as powerfully as we were designed. But when the heart is wounded, weighted down and broken it hinders and even corrupts our thoughts and actions. Oftentimes, what we describe as, “the way God made us”, would be more accurately described as the way life has wounded or broken us. But there is healing for our wounded and even broken hearts.  God wants us to not only be made whole; God wants us to learn to live whole. Scripture(s): (NKJV) • Matthew 25:14-30 • Psalm 34:19Slide:“If your concept of God is radically false, then the more devout you are, the worse it will be for you.” — Dany Akin, A Theology for the Church 9.8.2024 Message Takeaways1. God hasn’t given us all the same gifts but God has the same expectation for us all.2. We're concerned about what we experience but Jesus is more concerned about what we conclude.3. Disconnecting from our feelings is not an act of faith; it’s an act of avoidance.

The need for comfort reflects a deep-seated desire that drives people to seek environments that offer safety and peace. Comfort provides a sense of stability and emotional solace which is crucial for coping with life’s challenges and stresses. How does the church create that environment? 

We all experience it at some point in our lives, the pain of loss. But how we manage it is critical to our faithfulness to God. Discover the Kingdom keys to fully embracing your grief while receiving grace to keep growing through it, so God can get the glory out of it.

Society says leadership is about ruling or lording over one’s subordinates. However, true leadership requires that a leader is a servant first. That is often exhausting, especially when one is leading stubborn and foolish individuals. Therefore, to radically love these individuals, leaders must intercede on their behalf, as Jesus interceded for us on the cross. 

Loving each other well is part of the foundation of our rootedness in Radical Love. We cannot live radically through love without radically loving each other. The world will know our radical love through the radical love we show to one another. Jesus reminds us that the world will know what we show.

There will be traumas, tragedies, and excruciating transitions in our lives that God allows and authors — to get us to the places He’s pre-ordained and to make us into the people He’s pre-ordained. There’s pain in the plan, but because God has determined to stand with us there is no force in the heavenlies, in the cosmos, in the earth or beneath the earth that can stand against us. Our great call in this life is not to live trying to avoid pain but to remain inseparable from He who will not separate from us. 

The Lord is our keeper. He keeps us in distinct ways. He keeps some things from us. He keeps and protects us in the midst of some things. He keeps some things set aside and reserved for us. But we’re not naturally given to being kept. Too often we believe the lie we must keep or are capable of keeping ourselves. Being kept is the art of abiding in trust and dependence on the Lord God. We must learn to live kept lives. 

We began our journey of answering God’s call together on July 10th, 2011.  Our first service was held in the United Artists Movie Theater.  We ended up with standing room only in the 153 person theater, with people standing in the hallways. We started, not with a moment but with a movement towards His mission and we continue together on that journey today. 

We tend to believe forgiveness is for the benefit of those who’ve offended us, but forgiveness is more about us than them. Forgiveness is the way out of victimhood. No matter what others do or have done to us our future remains unchanged, as long as we stay in God’s hands by forgiving them completely. 

The words of Jeremiah and the words of Jesus seem to be in conflict. How can a good God, who plans to prosper us, not to harm us, to give us hope and a future also be the God who leaves us in a world so twisted it killed its Savior? Jesus, our High Priest knows the brokenness, depravity and violence of this world first-hand, yet he prays to the Father to keep us here and to keep us from the Evil one. As Jeremiah states, God has a plan. But as we’ve come to know first-hand — There’s Pain in the Plan.

Fatherhood has a unique role in creation. The role of the father is not better or more important than the role of the mother, but the role of the father is different and distinct from the role of the mother. Due to the fall of mankind, all of creation has suffered a father wound and all of creation is in need of healing for our father wounds. 

It’s true, the sovereign, radical loving God of creation causes all things to work together for the good. His plans and purposes for His creation will prevail. This doesn’t mean there won’t be afflictions, falls, temptations, traumas and tragedies along the way. It does mean, in spite of it all and in the face of it all, God is working it together for the good. In the end He prevails and in Him we prevail. He’s working it together for the good. 

Pits are the traumas, tragedies, and excruciating transitions in our lives that God providentially allows or authors to get us to the people, places and plans He’s pre-ordained and to make us into the person He’s pre-ordained.  Our direction and destiny often has much to do with not only what happens to us but how we rehearse and remember what’s happened.  If we are going to fulfill the fruitfulness God has intended in and through our lives we are going to have to grow in our understanding of pain and suffering.

We will all endure heartbreak in this life.  There are many ways our hearts can be broken, the death of loved ones, divorce, betrayal, job loss, financial ruin, health challenges, estrangements, inequities, and the death of a vision, to name a few. Losses can distort our hearts and keep us from the radical love God offers. God’s desire is to heal our broken hearts to expand our capacity to both receive and release His love.

Radical love is unlike storge love, it’s different from eros love and it goes beyond phileo love. Those loves are exclusively for family, our romantic interests and our closest friends. But radical love does not exclude anyone for anything. It willingly accepts all things, in order to make all things new. Radical love is all inclusive. 

"Her children rise up and call her blessed" - Proverbs 31:28We invite you to join us at The Perfecting Church on Sunday, May 12 at the 9 a.m. or 11 a.m. worship service as we celebrate and honor Mothers. We encourage you to arrive early to participate in a special breakfast prepared and served by the men of Perfect Experience. Create lasting memories with your family members by having a photo taken by a professional photographer. For those attending the 9 a.m service, photos will be taken from 8:00 to 8:45 am and after the service. For those attending the 11:00 a.m. worship service, photos will be taken after the service.  Also, all mothers who attend in person will receive a special gift.  We're eagerly waiting to worship and celebrate with you!

The seed of the Word of the Radical Love of God is being planted in our hearts. However, the soil of our hearts must be properly prepared and cultivated for the seed to take root and bring forth much fruit in our homes and our communities for the glory of God. 

“What is truth?”, asked Pontius Pilate the fifth governor of the Roman province of Judaea, as he presided over the trial and ultimately the crucifixion of Jesus. It’s a question worth asking in a world where truth is not absolute; truth is no longer black and white nor is it the same in everyone’s eyes. We live in a world where truth is subject to change. But radical love rejoices in the truth; it refuses to rejoice with evil, injustice or iniquity. Radical love is committed to truth and truth is committed to radical love. 

To know Jesus is to be in an on-going, life-transforming, life-transferring relationship with radical love.  Radical Love keeps no record of our wrongs and then empowers us to keep no record of wrongs. Radical Love is not simply something to be experienced, it’s something to be accessed daily. If we don’t access radical love daily, we will be redeemed from sin and death and still be dysfunctional in our everyday lives. Radical love teaches us to keep no record of wrongs.

Sometimes we can more clearly explain what something is by explaining what it’s not. Radical love ain’t rude. Rude is ill-mannered and disagreeable towards others. But rude is more than that, it’s also ill-mannered and disagreeable towards God. Rude wants what it wants, when it wants from God and everybody else. But those who walk in radical love are yielding their rights, seeing past themselves and learning to rest knowing God is fighting for them. 

God-Yahweh Elohim the covenant making promise keeping God, made a promise to mankind in the garden of Eden over 2,000 years ago. He promised He would crush the head of the serpent by the seed of a woman. Jesus was that seed and He has indeed crushed the government of satan in the earth and given us life and life more abundantly in Him and the government of His Kingdom. This morning we celebrate…He is Risen and we are restored.  

As Jesus descends from the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem, He knows it will be the last week of His life. On Palm Sunday He faces the painful reality that His greatest impact will be through His most difficult and lonely moments in this world. The mindset of radical love is more interested in God’s plans and purposes than our own promotion and preservation. Palm Sunday teaches us that obedient faithfulness to radical Love is what takes us to places we never imagined. 

Pride is a root which the enemy sows in our hearts to choke the fruitfulness of love in our lives. In our pride-filled American culture, we are called not to conform to this world, but to be hypervigilant to recognize and eliminate the weeds of pride from our hearts so we can bring forth fruit for the glory of the Kingdom of God.

The radically patient and kind love of God frees us from the disfiguring grip of jealousy and envy. Jealousy and envy are everywhere — the constant comparison, excessive competitiveness, passive-aggressive pettiness and celebrating the failures of the popular are the flavor of our day. And jealousy and envy make us all caricatures of ourselves, trapped in a race no one wins. Radical love is the thing that makes us free. It is not jealous. It is not envious. 

He who is holy is also long suffering. The God who’s love is patient is also the God who’s love is kind. His kindness is close to the top of the list when it comes to how God expresses His love to us. God’s kindness goes beyond the general, generic run of the mill acts of kindness. His kindness is unique, specific to our need and specific to His ability. Radical love is kind.  

Before the love of God is anything; the love of God love is patient. We’ve all received radical patience from the God who is love. When we experience and acknowledge God’s loving patience with us and extend it to others we are changed and we become change agents.  But when we receive God’s loving patience and refuse to extend it to others, we become hardened, isolated and imprisoned by our judgements.  

Jesus never intended for His radical act of love on the cross and His bodily resurrection three days later to end simply with us being born again. That was a part of His divine assignment but not the entire plan. It has always been God’s intent that His people would live drawing daily and continually from His radical love.  So many receive eternal life but never learn to live life daily drawing from His radical love.  We can not live like or love like God intended until we learn to live lives rooted in the radical love of God.  

Because life is not about what happens to us but about what and how we re-member, stories matter and this life is a battle for control of the narrative. The stories we tell set the course for our personal destiny and the legacy we leave. As we transition from the place of altars and memorials, may our hearts settle the question of who authors our story so that we may enter into the radical Love of God.

Now that we've learned what altars and memorials are, it's time to have an honest conversation about what it looks like to live it.We need to move beyond simply hearing and knowing, to living and applying the truth of what it is to remember and rehearse the way God intended.

The Passover and the last supper are undisputedly the greatest altars and memorials in all of creation. It’s with these altars and memorials, Yahweh Elohim, the covenant making God of creation, changes the identity and the destiny of a people. No altar and no memorial gives identity and destiny like the cross and communion that the Passover and its lambs foreshadow.  When we receive, remember and rehearse Jesus’ cross and communion we are changed for eternity and changed moment by moment. In Remembrance of Me.

God understands the importance and the power of our memories. Some things He does in our lives with the intent that we will not only know Him but that we never forget Him. He has literally made mankind and the unfolding of our lives in such a way that we not only know Him — but so that we Don’t Forget Him.

Altars are places in our hearts before they’re places in this world. Some of those altars — places of honor and worship — are erected to the Living God anchoring us in His love, peace and power. But there are also altars erected to lil gods, giving reverence and worship to people, places and practices that aren’t God at all. When we give lil gods the adoration and esteem that belongs to the living God, we invite chaos, disorder and destruction into our lives and this world. There are times when we will have to tear down to build up.

Altars are places where we offer up to God the things that consume us, control us and compete with His place in our lives. We also build altars as an act of worship because we realize God has kept us. Jacob is 97 years old before he builds an altar to God. In Jacob, we see the radical love of a God who presses us until we realize what He’s always known — we’ll never be home in ourselves or in Him until we build Him an altar.  

“Often in life we forget the things we should remember and remember the things we should forget.” — Unknown  It’s the stories we repeatedly tell ourselves and the experiences we continually rehearse that shape our way of seeing and being. As we step out of 2023 and over the threshold of 2024 we need to build some altars and establish some memorials to anchor us in the love of God. How we remember a thing has so much to do with how we enter a thing.  

The birth of Christ is the most radical act of Love the world has ever known. In an age of excess, empire and power — Yahweh Elohim, the covenant making God, carried out His plan of incarnation. By the womb of a virgin, He made a body for Himself, that He might offer Himself, to restore mankind to Himself.

Joy is rooted in who God is. It is not a fleeting feeling based on external circumstances. Possessions, accomplishments, even the people in our lives, may bring us intermittent feelings of joy. However, the source of all perpetual joy is Jesus.

Peace is God’s gift to the believer, birthing His shalom in thisfractured world. As we celebrate this Advent season, may we embrace the fullness of this Divine essential and our role as sharers of Peace in every space we are dispensed.

God has hopes for us collectively and individually. However, His hopes don’t always align with our dreams or plans. Submitting to His will even when it may cause us personal harm or difficulty is critical to the ultimate fulfillment of the Kingdom of God.