Hope Lake Country

Why is the world as broken as it is? Sin. But sin is not merely an action. It’s a power in our lives. It wants to command and dominate our lives. In this message, we’ll see how God liberates us from our layers of slavery so we are free to serve God.

As human beings, we desire security, satisfaction and significance. There are any number of ways people try to meet these needs. In Romans, Paul describes the flesh (sinful nature) as a dependency on anything other than Jesus as the ultimate source to meet our needs. Some evidence of the flesh might be seen as negative (worry, pride, worry), or some evidence of the flesh may be seen as positive (independent, self-reliant, success). But all works of the flesh brings death. It builds a wall between us and God. God can see through the wall, but it keeps us from seeing him. The works of the flesh keep us from having open relationships with God and others. In this message, Paul will show us how to tear down the walls that the flesh builds between us and God and replace them with the work of the Spirit.

All children need a sense of identity. They need to know who they are in this world. So do their parents. If you don’t get your identity from God, you are likely getting it from your children or your accomplishments. Parents who represent God to their children strive to ground them in their identity as children of God. We’ll wrap up this series by showing how to ground your children in their identity and purpose in Christ.

One of the metaphors for sin in the Bible is leprosy. That’s because it slowly devours us and we are numb to the reality of the damage it causes. This Sunday we’ll look at how sin quietly consumes us. In this message, we’ll discover how to be healed from the decay of sin.

The Role of Rules Every parent relies on something to grow and mature their children’s character. Most parents assume the only tool they have to mature their kids is rules. Rules can effectively and temporarily modify behavior. But they can also be helpful in encouraging your children to lie when they break them. Rules have no ability to create the lasting change in your child that every parent longs for. This is why parents are called to live and teach grace to their children. It’s only when we are first parented by our Father in heaven that we can truly parent with grace.

Sin hides behind masks. This Sunday we’re going to discover that in our lives, we are often the ones who put the mask over our sins. Self-deception is one of the most destructive behaviors for anybody. Until you learn how to see self-deception, you will never be free from the power of your sin.

After Eden, God commanded his creation to spread out over the world. Man decided to build an identity and find purpose apart from God. They thought that they could get to eternal life by going up. But in the story, the only way God could help them was that he had to come down. Today, we still seek to build a life for ourselves apart from God. The result is always chaos.

Parenting mistakes begin when parents don’t understand what they have been called to do. As a result, many parents behave as if they were owners of their children. While this mindset isn’t inherently selfish or evil, it leads parents away from God’s purpose for parenting. God intended for parents to understand that they are ambassadors.

What’s wrong with us? What’s wrong with the human race? Why is there evil? The answer we find in the Bible isn’t simply that we have “sin.” Instead, the problem is an estimation problem. We underestimate the nature, the power and the influence of sin. This Sunday, we’ll start a six week series to help you unmask the sin hidden in your life. This is the first step to living and feeling peace and freedom in our hearts.

Sin hides behind masks. This Sunday we’re going to discover that in our lives, we are often the ones who put the mask over our sins. Self-deception is one of the most destructive behaviors for anybody. Until you learn how to see self-deception, you will never be free from the power of your sin.

There’s still something keeping you back from your best year ever. Odds are that you probably know what it is. As we wrap up this series, we’ll discover how to target and eliminate the habits and sins that are keeping your from your best year ever.

We live at an exhausting pace. To make it worse, we are so distracted that it is hard to rest. The pace and speed of our lives leave us teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, exhaustion, stress and anxiety. While we’re tempted to blame society, you should really blame your priorities. Your priorities today will influence your effectiveness tomorrow. If you want to have your best year ever, it begins when you prioritize your spiritual, emotional, physical and financial health today so you can enjoy better health tomorrow and your best year ever.

We all make mistakes and we learn from them. Except when we don’t learn. One of the reasons why we default to the law of average is because we never evaluate the thinking that shaped our decision making process in the past. If you’re going to have your best year ever, one of the questions you need to learn how to answer is “What was I thinking?” When you learn how to think the way God thinks, your path to your best year ever will become clear.

When you look back at your last year, or last several years, you might notice that history repeats itself. It especially seems like the bad history repeats itself. If you want to stop your past from repeating itself, you have to take responsibility for the sin in your past because you can’t blame your way into your best year ever. We’ll learn how to drop the baggage from last year and move forward with God

Many times (actually, most of the time) life is uninspiring. While we would like more out of work and out of family, we seem to default to the law of average. Why? Because we get too focused on “what” we do every day. Whenever you focus exclusively on what you do, you will revert to average. That’s why God doesn’t tell us to center our lives around “what.” He tells us to center our lives around “why.” This Sunday, we’ll discover that knowing God’s “why” will set you up for your best year ever.

Light of the World

Our annual celebration of Christmas seems to promise more than it delivers. It’s because we often miss the substance of Christmas as we focus more on the lights and wrapping paper. In this message, we’ll discover that the problem isn’t that we set our hopes to high for Christmas. We set them too low. We’ll show how Christians who lived before the first Christmas set their hopes for the first Christmas properly.

Our world was helpless to save itself. We were hell bent on personal destruction, unable and unwilling to understand how we are at the root of all of our problems in life. The story of Christmas is an intervention story. God had to intervene into history and into our lives to give us a new and living hope.

Many churches are known by what they are against. At Hope, we want to be known by what we are for. We are for Jesus. We are for changing lives and eternities. And we are for Lake Country. Since we are for Lake Country, our annual Christmas Offering unleashes a wave of generosity in our community. In this message, we’ll talk about how we’re making this our biggest Christmas Offering yet.