Waterbrooke Christian Church

Over the next couple of Sundays, as we lead up to Christmas, we are going to focus on the praise that happens surrounding the announcement and the arrival of the Messiah. This week, we will look at Mary’s praise. Next week, we will look at Zechariah’s. Then, on the 22nd, Dr. Brian Thomas will focus on the praise of the angels and shepherds in Luke 2.   One of the most beautiful experiences that we can have in life is watching a young person who has been truly captivated by Jesus and the hope of the gospel. Mary, the mother of our Savior, is a young person who has been thrust into the living story of the saving plan of God for humanity. Mary will carry the Christ. What is beautiful is that Mary not only believes the message of the angel, but she explodes with delight in her God and Savior. Her trust in God far exceeds all the potential complications that this role might place on an engaged yet unmarried girl in her Jewish culture. She believes that her God is good; that her God is gracious; that her God is fai

One of the most powerful statements that someone can ever say to us is “I am with you.” It is infinitely more powerful when that person is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. In this passage that we are studying today (Acts 18:1-17), the Lord Jesus appears to Saul at Corinth in a dream and tells him: “‘Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you...’”.  This is exactly what Christ said to the disciples at the end of Matthew’s gospel when Jesus gives the great commission. He ends by saying “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” On Thanksgiving weekend, we give thanks for the comfort and courage that comes from the promise of Christ’s presence in our lives. November 30 is the first day of Advent. Over the next several Sundays leading up to Christmas, we will celebrate the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here’s the great news. He came the first time in order to show us by His life and death and resurrection, that He would never ever leave us alone. He is with us! The Christmas

This Sunday, we studied the apostle Paul’s encounter with the major philosophers of his day in Athens. He encounters a myriad of Greek religious and philosophical ideas. How does he effectively engage them with the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our study will be taken from Acts 17:16-33 and it is entitled “Now is the Appointed Time.” I don’t know if you have ever thought about the question, “If you could live at any point in history and any place in history, where would you choose?”  We often can have a rather romantic notion of some time in history when we thought the world was a more beautiful, or a more exciting, or more noble time in which to live. We think that our times are the hardest for Christians and the mission of Christ. The doctrine of God’s providence teaches us that God has chosen and appointed the very times and the places for each and all of our lives. That’s what Paul proclaims in Athens. We are living in exactly the right time and the right place for God to do His good work in us and thr

This Sunday, we studied Acts 17:1-15. In this section, Luke makes a clear distinction between the Jews in Thessalonica who heard Paul reasoning from the Scriptures and the Jews from Berea. He writes, “Now these Jews (the Bereans) were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were true.”  Our message this week is called “Receiving the Word with Eagerness.” Do you receive God’s Word with eagerness? There is probably no greater indication of a person’s deep love for Christ than their delight in the Word of God. People who fall in love with Jesus recognize that the subject of all Scripture is the Lord Jesus Christ. To know Christ and to grow in Christ requires continually feeding on the riches of God’s Word. Like a lover who pours over every word that their loved one writes to them in a note or a letter, the true believer pours over the Word of God to learn more of the beauty, the wisdom, and the splendor of Jesus Chri

This sermon was taken from our passage of Scripture that we are studying this week in Acts 16:16-40. In Acts 16:30, a Philippian jailer cries out to Paul and Silas, “What must I do to be saved?”  It’s a desperate cry that comes from someone who suddenly has an acute awareness that he cannot save himself. He thinks that his life is over. Yet, it is about to just begin.  As we study this passage of Scripture this week, you will notice that every person in this passage is trying to save themselves except two – Paul and Silas. This in a sense is like one of those “Where is Waldo?” pictures. It’s busy and chaotic. There is a lot going on. In a “Where is Waldo” picture, if you have seen one, you will know that in the picture there are hundreds of people doing all kinds of things, but somewhere in the middle, is Waldo. Waldo originally was called “Wally” and the idea was that a “Wally” was a dim-witted person. Somewhere in the middle of a world of ordinary people doing ordinary things, there is a Waldo doing somethi

Proverbs 16:9 says this: “The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.”  One of the great encouragements for us as believers is to know that God is providentially orchestrating all the events of our lives for His glory and for our good. Ultimately, that’s good to know, although it is not always easy to embrace. Faithfulness to God and his mission requires that we as Christians hold our plans loosely and be prepared for unexpected and often sudden changes in the direction of our lives and our ministries. This may happen on a grand scale when some large-scale political or economic change happens that redirects a Christian’s location or vocation. It may include a job transfer or a significant health change.  It can also happen on a small scale in just daily disruptions to what we had planned for our day or our week.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote “We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. God will be constantly crossing our paths and canceling our plans by sending us p

In Matthew 28:18-20, Matthew writes, “And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’” The command of Jesus to make disciples contains the heavenly call to go deep and to go wide. The mission of the church is wide. It can’t be much wider. Jesus says “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” That’s as wide as it gets. The mission is deep “Go and make disciples, baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” That’s deep. There is a difference between teaching them a few things and teaching them “all that I have commanded you.” There is a difference between teaching them to comprehend all that I have commanded you and teaching them “to

This Sunday, studied one of the most important moments in the entire book of Acts. It is the very first church council that was ever held to establish clarity around the gospel. Regularly in the New Testament, controversies arose about whether or not Gentile Christians had to become adherents to the Old Testament regulations of circumcision, Sabbath keeping, and the commands of the Law of Moses. Understandably, Jewish believers, with a rich history of God relating to them through the Law of Moses, could not conceive of life without the Law. Today, many believers still practice Sabbath-keeping or following the Jewish calendar events of Yom Kippur or the Passover. They believe that there is something significant or special to those traditions. The problem, of course, is that there is an enormous difference between saying that you MAY choose to celebrate, remember, or practice Old Testament practices and saying that you MUST do this. The Law of Moses has never justified anyone but Jesus. Salvation has never been

This Sunday, studied Acts 13:13-52. The apostle Paul is invited to give a message of encouragement at the synagogue in Antioch in Pisidia. What makes this sermon especially noteworthy is that Paul is speaking immediately after something very disappointing happens to his missionary team. Sometimes God calls on us to encourage others when we aren’t feeling so encouraged ourselves. In His kindness, God positions us to share with others the very truths our own souls desperately need. He is so wise and He is so kind. If you need a word of encouragement (and who doesn’t), this message is a great reminder that God is faithful even when we are not. Our hope rests not in our perfection or performance but in God’s unfailing and unrelenting faithfulness.

This Sunday, our sermon was entitled Victory Over Darkness. It is a common experience for missionaries moving into unreached people groups to discover rather quickly that one of the great challenges to the advance of the gospel is spiritual warfare. My wife, MariAnne, works for a mission agency that provides resources for the under-resourced churches around the world. One of the churches that her ministry serves meets under a tree in a remote village in Malawi. That community was under the strong influence of a village shaman or witchdoctor for many years. Now, it is under the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. What we all need to realize is that when the sharing Christ, we are always facing a spiritual battle. This isn’t just for remote and unreached peoples. As the apostle Paul reminds the church at Ephesus, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly p

This Sunday, we returned to our study of the book of Acts, Luke’s second volume in the New Testament. As we return to the book of Acts, I want to remind you of a key truth this morning. Luke is recording for us the activity of the Triune God in advancing His mission through his church. This is not merely the story of a remarkable human religious movement. Luke does not want us to read the book of Acts as a biography of a human missionary movement. This is the sovereign hand of the Triune God fulfilling His promises in all of the Scriptures to bring the nations to Himself through His Son.    Acts is a record of the unstoppable mission of God to reach the nations with the gospel. This is why New Testament scholar, Alan Thompson entitles his commentary on Acts, “The Acts of the Risen Lord Jesus: Luke’s Account of God’s Unfolding Plan." He writes, “Luke is drawing attention to the continued outworking of God’s saving purposes specifically in the inaugurated kingdom of God through the reign of the Lord Jesus . . .

As most of you know, we have been studying the doctrine of the Love of God over the summer months. Last Sunday, we studied Jesus’ exhortation to “abide” His love. This week we are going to study Jude’s exhortation in Jude 17-25, “Keep yourselves in the love of God.” You might think it sounds strange, but the reality is that it is a real battle to keep ourselves living in, learning about, and growing in the love of God. In the classic hymn, Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, author Robert Robinson describes what so many of us feel in our hearts: “Prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.” Jude would tweak that and say, “Prone to leave the God who loves me.” Come this Sunday morning, as we consider how to collectively keep ourselves in the love of God. We need to fight the battle together.  We have Teen Challenge with us, and it is going to be a great time of seeing the power of Christ in the lives of His people. Super looking forward to it. There is a lunch after the second service.  Next

This Sunday, we studied the call of Jesus in John 15:1-17 to abide in him. The Lord says these words in John 15:9, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love.” One of the great challenges that we continually face as Christians is not drifting carelessly from a deep, abiding relationship with Jesus Christ. MariAnne and I were just in Florida with three of our grandchildren. One day, we were at the beach and we were all in the water when suddenly there were flashing lights and sirens. A rescue jeep went flying past on the sand. A rescue boat with flashing lights when flying past us in the water. They were headed to a location about a quarter mile down from us. Someone was in distress. One of the common things that happens down there, or relatively common, is that people get caught in riptides. They are playing in the water, having fun, and then suddenly they realize that they have been and are being pulled out into the deep. Drifting into spiritual danger is a constant for every Christ

Diego De La Vega shared the message from Ephesians 2:10. You can preview the text of the message below: And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of work

This Sunday, we studied the final scene in the gospel of John where Jesus talks very personally with Simon Peter. Simon’s journey in discipleship has been a roller coaster, to say the least, because His expectations around what following and loving Jesus needs major adjustments. I would suggest that this is true for any disciple of Jesus. We love Jesus, but we don’t know how to love Jesus. Our faith is genuine, but it is immature.  This Sunday’s message from John 21:15-23 is called, Loving Jesus Jesus’ Way. Jesus' final words to Simon Peter are not simply corrective; they are enormously gracious and re-directive. Peter had just recently denied His relationship with Jesus three times before the crucifixion. Yet, here is Christ fully committed and completely compassionate – calling Simon to love Jesus, Jesus’ way. If your faith is genuine and your love for Christ is sincere, this passage will help adjust your expectations to the expectations of Jesus.   Join us Sundays at 9 & 11A, as we learn to love the On

This Sunday morning, we continued our study of the doctrine of God’s love. Our text will be one of the most well-known passages on love in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13. The message is entitled, The More Excellent Way. 1 Corinthians was written by the apostle Paul to a congregation that desperately needed to mature in love. Though they were genuine Christians, the community was riddled with divisiveness, spiritual pride, moral compromise, and selfishness. The two letters to the Corinthians show us how to shepherd people towards true gospel- rooted community. Last weekend, as we celebrated the grand opening of our new ministry hub, I made the point that one of the core aims of our church family is to learn how to really be the family of God. We want to be a community where people can genuinely experience the grace and love of God within the fellowship of God’s people. 1 Corinthians 13 is very helpful in shaping how we understand fostering the love of Christ within our lives as Christ’s people together. It provid

This Sunday, we will be celebrating the Grand Opening of our new ministry hub. Our sermon text will be Ephesians 3:14-21. The message is entitled: God’s Love for Waterbrooke Church.  One of the questions that someone might ask us is, “Why build this ministry hub?” The answer is rooted in one of the great truths of the New Testament. God’s purpose in the sending of His Son into the world was for His kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven. For the apostle Paul, one of the earth-shaking discoveries that he had to make as a former self-righteous religious zealot was that God was making a people for Himself out of all the broken families and divided nations of this shattered world. As I write this, I am in Northern Ireland, where people still live in separated communities between Protestants and Catholics, and still have walls up between Irish Republicans and British Loyalists. The church exists to glorify God by going on the adventure of discovering in community how broad and long and high and deep is the lo

Our sermon title for this Sunday was “Let Brotherly Love Continue”. We will be studying Hebrews 13:1-8. We will see that brotherly love is something that requires vigilant tending. One of the great challenges facing Christians is not just sustaining but expanding one’s love for your brothers and your love as a brother or sister in Christ in a world that is increasingly critical, intolerant, and shrinking in its love for others.   The late Francis Schaeffer once wrote: “Through the centuries, men have displayed many different symbols to show that they are Christians. They have worn marks in the lapels of their coats, hung chains about their necks, even had special haircuts. . . . But there is a much better sign. . . . It is a universal mark that is to last through all ages of the church until Jesus comes back.” Schaeffer was speaking of brotherly love. He also wrote, “Evangelism is a calling, but not the first calling. Building congregations is a calling, but not the first calling. A Christian’s first call is

Our sermon passage for this week was Romans 8:18-25 with the message called: “God’s Love Through His Creation”. As we have been studying the biblical doctrine of God’s love, one of the texts that always pops up as a favorite is Romans 8. Paul talks about how Christians are able to live in a world that is hostile and heart-breaking and yet not lose hope. What sustains Christians is God’s unfailing love. Paul concludes Romans 8 by declaring with absolute confidence that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Sometimes, it is excruciatingly difficult to live in this broken and groaning world. In our passage this week, Paul will describe both creation and Christians as groaning for glory. It seems that every week we hear in the news of horrific stories of people suffering through natural disasters. Last week’s flashfloods in Texas hill county are a case in point. This Sunday, we will see that God’s love is greater than all our groaning. This world is destined for bet

Happy Independence Day weekend, church family! The fourth of July weekend is all about celebrating freedom. As citizens, we celebrate our freedom from tyranny and oppression. One of the most famous lines that I am sure many of you know is this one: “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” This has been attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but it was originally stated by John Philpott Curran in 1790. Think about that: The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. As Christians, we have been granted incredible freedom in Christ. We have been granted freedom from guilt and from condemnation. We have been delivered from the power of sin, Satan, and death. Yet, here is the reminder that we all need. Freedom requires vigilance. The apostle Paul gives this exhortation in Galatians 5:13, “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” The way that we fight for the enjoyment of the freedom that we have receive in Christ is by de