Hope Lake Country

When you’re in the middle of a mess, your emotions can easily get the better of you and make your mess even messier. In this message, we’ll learn that there will be a day in your future when this mess is nothing more than a story to tell. And the part of the story that will matter the most is how you responded to the mess you found yourself in. If you decide to trust God and follow Jesus, he’ll write an ending to the story that you’ll be glad to tell.

Many people assume Christian life is all about avoiding messes. But if you dumb Christianity down to being all about avoiding trouble, then your faith will be all about your performance. This way of thinking, ironically, sets you up for another kind of mess. In this message, we'll learn that following Jesus is better than just avoiding the messes in life.

Jesus doesn’t condemn us for the messes we've made. He forgives us! But he doesn’t want us to sit there in our mess. Jesus taught that the way out of our messes isn’t to believe our way out but to follow him. When we follow Jesus, we follow him out of our mess and into a life of flourishing.

It’s easy to look down on others who are a “mess” and judge them. But what if we’re looking at the wrong standard if we’re always comparing our lives to the lives of others. What if we’re all mess in need of the same thing?

When God refuses to act the way that Jonah expects God to act, he isn’t just frustrated with God. He’s furious with God. Yet in the most unexpected ending to this story, God hammers home the theme—the theme that God is unrelenting in his grace for sinners. He is a God who is patient, a God who weeps, and a God who is filled with compassion.

By this point in the Jonah story, God should be done with everyone. Not only should he be out of patience for Nineveh, but he should also be out of patience for Jonah. But when Jonah finally reluctantly obeys God, he seems to take delight in the bluntness of his message of wrath for the people. In this message, we’ll find out why the results of Jonah’s preaching were so stunning. Particularly to Jonah.

“Grace” is the unrelenting love of God for people who don't deserve it. Yet for many people, grace is still an abstraction. And it's not the life-changing force it can be. In this message, we will discover that grace is a strange thing, and it shows up in unexpected ways. We’ll also find out how God’s grace can become even more amazing and transformative in our lives.

The Jonah story ends so abruptly that it feels as if someone tore a page out of the Bible. While the story of Jonah is complete, the story of grace was not yet complete. In this message, we’ll discover exactly what role Jonah played in the story of God’s grace. And we’ll see how that story was fulfilled on Easter morning.

Jonah was running from God. And he was running from him for an interesting reason—he was running from him because he found the mercy of God to be troubling. But why? How can God’s relentless mercy for people who do not deserve it be so troubling?

Jonah is one of the most well-known stories from the Bible… thanks, in part, to Pinocchio. And it’s often dismissed as a fable or mythology. But even a casual reading reveals this story has much less to do with a big fish than it does the complex struggles of humanity—the same struggles we're still facing today. As we begin this series, we'll start to uncover where God is during life's storms.

Raising children is one of life’s greatest challenges. And because your kids’ ages are always changing, the unique challenges are always changing along with them. In this message, we’ll give practical advice on handling all of the key stages of parenting in a way that is stage appropriate.

As parents, the days are long but the years are short. Even while kids are still young, parents are shaping the trajectory of their kid’s lives. And their direction isn’t shaped much by the big vacation to Disney Land. Instead, it's the little things—it's the daily family routines that make all the difference for a child’s future. In this message, we’ll discover how to improve the daily grind, shaping your family's future for the better.

One of the most destructive things we can do for children is to fail to help them learn to respect clear and appropriate boundaries. The violation begins with parents who don’t have clear boundaries in their own lives. In this message, we’ll learn how parents can “let their yes be yes” and raise healthy kids who observe and maintain healthy boundaries in life.

Somewhere along the line, we picked up the idea that kids are supposed to be the focus of our lives. The problem is that kid-centered parenting causes problems for everyone, beginning with the kids. That’s because child-centered parenting produces self-centered children. This week, we’ll discover why children thrive in homes where they are not first, but third in the priority list.

All of us have a family portrait that portrays the perfect family. Everyone is smiling and appearing happy to be together. But everyday life doesn’t look like a family portrait. As we begin this series, we’ll talk about how to hang on to the ideal version of your family while embracing the reality of your current situation.

Becoming a solution-oriented person means saying “no” to yourself and “yes” to a purpose bigger than you. The essence of becoming a better person is not self-improvement, but self-denial. If you really want to live, you have to die to yourself first.

Just because we turned our calendar over into a new year doesn’t make anything easier. Our good intentions to become a better person can still backslide into old behaviors and habits. But why does this happen? Because changing our behavior doesn’t begin with changing what we do or how we do it—it begins by changing the way we think. Our lives move in the direction of our strongest thoughts.

We all believe exercise is good for us. You can’t be in shape without it. But that means you have to get off the couch and do it. One thing that makes it easier is an accountability partner. Accountability goes beyond helping you. It helps improve someone else’s life, too. The same is true of faith. If we’re going to be solution-oriented people, we need Christian community. We’re better together.

Most resolutions are nothing more than self-absorbed desires. “What can I do to make myself a better person?” As we begin a new year, we’ll learn a much better question that will help us actually become better people.

Do you ever wonder if it's really possible that God loves you? That kind of wonder can make faith feel childish and irrational. But two thousand years ago, God did something dramatic: he sent his only Son into the world to demonstrate his love... for you. So, if you've ever wondered about faith, consider the wonder of Christmas.