AT CAROLS IN THE PARK

It’s the best time of year! What better way to celebrate the birth of Christ than by singing loud for all to hear. 

This Sunday at 6pm, we’ll gather in the heart of French Park to sing carols, spread Christmas cheer, and welcome our neighbors into a night of community. We’ll serve up some hot chocolate, enjoy sweet treats, and extend an invitation for our neighbors to join us at church on Christmas Eve.

Here’s how you can get involved:

1. Invite Santa Ana neighbors, family, and friends to an evening Christmas festivities! We’ve got songs to sing, cookies to eat, and the joys of the season to share with them! You can send out the digital invite linked here.

2. Along with extending an invitation, consider ways you’d like to get involved, either with setup, being part of the choir, or bringing a batch of cookies. Sign-up here.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: POST-CAROLS CHANGE OF PLANS

We’ve canceled the Christmas party that was set to take place right after caroling. The holiday season is filled with many good things, but it sure is a busy time! We’re moving to take an item off the schedule this time around. But by no means is this meant to cut our celebration short! Instead, it will allow us to linger in the park, continue conversations over hot cocoa, spend a few more unhurried moments together, and get home for a good night’s sleep as a new week kicks off.

JAMES 2:1-13

God is after a people who demonstrate their obedience by the way they treat his people. One evidence that we're "doers of the word, and not hearers only" is how we treat those in need. If we help those who cannot help themselves. Our willingness to love our neighbor regardless of what he or she can do for us. James challenges us to “show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory” (2:1). Why does he need to tell us this? Because we’re prone play favorites, be taken in by outward impressiveness, gravitate to those who are most like us, and invest in relationships we can get something out of. But how did the Lord of glory treat us? He had nothing to gain by choosing us, but he did so anyway. He was rich, but became poor for our sake. He saw us dressed in the “shabby clothing” of our sin, gave us his righteous robes, and offered us a seat at his table. We've been saved by Christ's sacrificial love for neighbors who couldn't do anything to help themselves. He gave himself for our everlasting good, so that we would give ourselves for the good of those around us - no matter who they are.

LISTEN TO THE SERMON HERE

CELEBRATE NEW LIFE IN CHRIST

This Sunday, we have the privilege of witnessing men and women publicly identify with Jesus Christ as they profess their faith in his sacrificial death and victorious resurrection. They’ll do this through their baptism. That sacrament and means of grace through which we confess with our mouths what we’ve believed in our hearts. Demonstrating outwardly what was true of us inwardly from the moment we believed. Signifying our union with Jesus in his dying and rising. Marking the end of our old life in sin and commemorating our entrance into a new life with Christ and his people - which carries on forever.

BAPTISM IMMEDIATELY AFTER SERVICE THIS SUNDAY AT THE CUNNINGHAM HOME

Join us at the Cunningham home immediately after church this Sunday (12/1) to celebrate the baptism of new believers and have a hot dog lunch. If you’re interested in being baptized or have questions about baptism, please contact one of our pastors.

THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE GRACE OF GOD

In the Book of James, the message of the gospel is not so much what he’s looking at but what he’s looking through as he challenges his readers to receive God’s wisdom and press it into action. He assumes that when he tells us to “be doers of the word, and not hearers only,” (James 1:22) that we know WHY. But what if we’re still wondering? If that’s you, the Apostle Paul makes it abundantly clear in Titus 2:11-14. We should be obedient doers of the word because all God has done for us! Because “the grace of God has appeared” in the coming of Christ to do for us what we could never do for ourselves (2:11). Saving us from sin and making us new. Shaping and strengthening us to live more and more like the new people God has made us to be, “training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age” (2:12). Setting our hopes on that day when grace appears again and we behold the Savior, do nothing but live godly lives, do good works, and enjoy God’s people for the rest of forever (2:13-14). We obey because God has forgiven our disobedient undoing of our past, fuels us with power to live in the present, and promises us a future that is blessed and sure.

LISTEN TO THE SERMON HERE

NOT HEARERS ONLY

The train that is the Book of James keeps on chugging and churning along the way to spiritual wholeness. So far in our journey, we’ve left the station on the way to wisdom, traversed through the valley of trials, and now we come to a scenic lookout point that arrests our attention. In 1:19-20, James offers us a panoramic view of the landscape we’ll be covering throughout the remainder of the journey, a frame for reading the rest of the book. Along with this, he provides a broad-stroke portrait of what it looks like to live the wise Christian life: “be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger" (1:19). It’s a picture of wisdom in action. A theology that comes into our heads, takes root in our heart, and comes out our fingertips. This is the burden of what follows in 1:21-27. God is not after “arm-chair theologians” who are always consuming information and taking in content but never getting in the game of actually pursuing holiness. He’s after those who are “doers of the word, and not hearers only” (1:22). On the path of wisdom, faithful hearing of God’s word always travels side by side with the obedient doing of what we’ve heard.

LISTEN TO THE SERMON HERE

BAPTISM SUNDAY, DECEMBER 1

Join us at the Cunningham home immediately after church on Sunday, 12/1 to celebrate the baptism of new believers and enjoy a hotdog lunch.

WHAT IS BAPTISM?

Baptism is one of the sweetest moments in the life of the church. It’s a visible portrayal of the effects of the gospel in a person. A means of grace given to us in order to participate in God’s promise of new life in Christ.

All those who believe in Christ are called to publicly identify with him and profess their faith in his sacrificial death and victorious resurrection through baptism. This is the moment where we confess with our mouth what we've believed in our heart (Rom 10:9-10). Signify our union with Jesus Christ in his dying and rising. Mark the end of our old way of life. And demonstrate our entrance into a new way of life lived out together in a new people, as we’re are added to his body - the Church.

Want to be baptized? Have questions about baptism? Talk to a member of the pastoral team. They’d be happy to tell you more about this sacrament and celebrate the saving work of God in your life.

HAPPY IS THE ONE WHO UNDERSTANDS WHAT GOD IS UP TO IN THEIR TRIALS

After exhorting us to ask God for wisdom (1:5-11), James reveals the wisdom we need most in the midst of trials in 1:12-18. More than anything, we need to understand what God is and is not doing through the trials that we face. He's testing our faith and love in order to strip away lesser loves and increase our affection for him (1:12). He's not in any way tempting us after cheaper loves which take us down a path to death (1:13-15). Because everything he gives is good (1:16-17) and what God bears in us is life (1:18). By his gracious will, he's "brought us forth by the word of truth," the gospel, "that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures." Since God has already made us new, we can respond to trials as the new people that we are. Even more, since the "firstfruits" of the new creation has already begun to blossom in us, we can be confident that God will bring us into the full harvest to come - when we "receive the crown of life." As Christians, we happily persevere until that day, trusting that the end of all our trials is the blessed outcome of beholding the Lord of glory with our own two eyes.

LISTEN TO THE SERMON HERE

ASK GOD WHO GIVES GENEROUSLY

All of us experience a gap between where we are and where we want to be. We want to be spiritually whole. We long for our lives in this world to “work.” Last week in James 1:1-4, we learned that the trials we endure are designed by God to get us to where we want to go. If trials are the vehicles, then wisdom is the way to wholeness. James 1:5-11, contains the first mention of “wisdom” in the letter and highlights our need to turn away from our own understanding and acknowledge God in all the various ways that will be examined throughout the rest of the book. And to get this wisdom, all we have to do is ask. And ask we can and ask we should. Because the foolish sinners that we are have become beloved sons and daughters before our God and Father through our faith in Christ the Son. Because God is rich with wisdom and ready to give it away without reservation. Because the wealth of this wisdom is a treasure no one can take from the "lowly," and remains the prize of prizes even to the one with plenty. Believe God has what we lack. Believe God will listen and answer. Be confident and ask away!

LISTEN TO THE SERMON HERE

JAMES 1:1-4

This Sunday, we began our sermon series in the Book of James. A letter written to one of the earliest expressions of the New Testament Church, which contains timeless wisdom from God. One that comes to us today in order to bridge the gap between who we are now and where we want to be. To lead us down the path of spiritual wholeness. To make our lives in God’s world “work” the way we long for them to do so. James kicks things off by squaring with the reality that some way or another, all of us are going through it. Facing trials of various kinds. Finding life to be filled with hard things. Into this unpleasant experience, James proclaims the good news that these trials are not obstacles to who and where we want to be, but the vehicles God uses to get us there. Through faith in the Savior who was tested, tried, and ran the race with perfect endurance before us, we have confidence that God will get us through the hard things we face. What’s more, that he’s purposing every hard thing to bring about a good thing.

LISTEN TO THE SERMON HERE

FOLLOWING THE PATH OF WISDOM

This past Sunday, we bridged the gap between where we've been in Isaiah and where we're headed in the Book of James. We've been called to live in God's world, God's way, time and time again. But living in the world in this way is not our default setting. All of us are prone to go our own way and lean upon our own understanding. Even as believers, we still fight against this reflex. Into this struggle, the Book of Proverbs comes to us as a practical guide to living well in this world. But far from being a simple instruction manual, a collection of life hacks, or some "if you do A, you will always get B" system of cause and effect dependent upon our own efforts and works to realize, Proverbs is so much more. Because the wisdom we need to live in this world can only be received by the God who made it. The foundation for truly understanding who we are and how we should live flows from a personal relationship with the One who created the heavens and the earth and recreates us after his likeness in Christ. Or, as Solomon says, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" (Prov 1:7).

LISTEN TO THE SERMON HERE