Blue Oaks Church Weekend Services

This week we are continuing our series on worship; over the past few weeks, we have talked about our posture for worship and how our mood and our worship intertwine, but one element of our worship experience is missing. The action in worship. Some of us feel comfortable being expressive, allowing large actions to flow as we worship in song. Others feel more comfortable with a more reflective stance, allowing the Spirit to move in its gentle waves. Yet all The post Actionize Your Worship appeared first on Blue Oaks Church - Pleasanton, CA.

They sing that it is beginning to look like Christmas, but is it beginning to feel like Christmas? And what exactly are your normal Christmas feelings, your normal Christmas mood? If we were honest, we would say that our mood changes a lot during Christmas; we are filled with hope and joy but also frustration or annoyance. The beauty of the twinkling Christmas lights and the family fun of diners bring us warmth and love. But the stresses of the The post How to Be in a Great Mood appeared first on Blue Oaks Church - Pleasanton, CA.

Every week when we gather together as a church, we sing songs. Why do we do that? Why do we sing? And does what we sing have any importance to our day-to-day walk with God? Music is a part of every culture and has, for a long time, been a part of every culture. Music and our ability to sing and hear music are a part of what it means to be human. As long as there have been mothers The post Music of Christmas appeared first on Blue Oaks Church - Pleasanton, CA.

This week we are spending some time in Luke 1 to discover what happened before the Birth. When we celebrate Christmas, we tend to focus on Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. Yet God’s miracles started before the Christmas story. Elizabeth and Zechariah experienced one of these miracles, and from it, we get to see how God interacted before the Birth. Join us this week as we prepare ourselves for the Christmas season. The post Before The Birth appeared first on Blue Oaks Church - Pleasanton, CA.

Finding weapons is a theme in many biblical texts. Sometimes those weapons seem strange, such as when the Israelites were told to walk around and yell at the walls of Jericho, or when David used a small rock to slay a giant. This week we are exploring an effective and yet odd weapon for anger. With this weapon we can face any wall, any giant, and find success as we battle our anger with God’s help. The post The Ultimate Weapon Against Anger appeared first on Blue Oaks Church - Pleasanton, CA.

This week we are getting practical! Anger is often a part of our daily lives; we can grow angry when a coworker messes up a project, we can be angry at a spouse when they say something harmful, and we certainly know the anger when we see our kids making poor choices. Even though anger tends to be a part of our daily lives, our bodies are not made to live in a constant state of anger. Mismanaged anger puts The post Steps To Manage Anger appeared first on Blue Oaks Church - Pleasanton, CA.

What makes you angry? Perhaps it is something as slight as a stubbed toe or as serious as a betrayal by someone close to you. How long does your anger last? Does your anger appear and disappear in the blink of an eye, or does your anger burn in your mind for years? Over the next few weeks, we are going to be looking at anger, examining if anger is Biblical and how we walk with our anger. The easiest The post Anger Myths appeared first on Blue Oaks Church - Pleasanton, CA.

Join us for the last week of our series on one-word life-changers, Simple Words. Each week we’ve looked at one simple word that can actually change your life if you allow it to. We have explored what Yes and No mean and how Help and Sorry can change our actions and perception. This week we look at a tremendous word. It’s a word that can bring enormous freedom and meaning, but it’s the most countercultural word of this series, Enough. The post Enough appeared first on Blue Oaks Church - Pleasanton, CA.

Even though words may be simple, they aren’t always easy to say. This week, in Simple Words, we explore the word ‘sorry.’ Sorry is one of those words that, while simple, isn’t always easy to use. Sorry requires humility, vulnerability, and surrender, and too often, we find ways to avoid it. This week we are looking at the story of Ananias and Sapphira to learn not only how sorry is difficult, but what can go wrong when we refuse to The post Sorry appeared first on Blue Oaks Church - Pleasanton, CA.

Join us this week as we continue our series Simple Words, with a message on the word help. The truth is, we all have areas or things in our lives that we need help with, and yet it takes a lot more courage to say the word help than it does to hide, pretend, deny and act like we don’t need help. We all know we need help, but we don’t always know how to say the simple word, help. The post Help appeared first on Blue Oaks Church - Pleasanton, CA.

This week we are continuing our series Simple Words. Last week, we experienced the challenge of saying no, but saying yes also brings about new opportunities and challenges! We are often really good at and therefore used to saying yes. We say yes to spending time with our families and friends, yes to projects at work, and yes to new hobbies. Saying yes is easy in our day-to-day lives, but sometimes our ease with saying yes doesn’t actualize in our The post Yes appeared first on Blue Oaks Church - Pleasanton, CA.

This week we are launching into a new series, Simple Words. We all know that words hold power. We create in-group and out-group experiences through words, we have words that help us think about our favorite books or movies, and we feel emotions when words come to mind. Sometimes, the simplest of words can change the trajectory of your life. The word Help can begin the healing process for those struggling with addiction. The word Yes can open the door The post No appeared first on Blue Oaks Church - Pleasanton, CA.

Have you ever heard the line, loose lips sink ships? Many of us have, the phrase originated on propaganda posters during World War II, a sort of warning against saying the wrong thing to the wrong people. We could arguably use the same slogan when we talk about our propensity to lie; our own loose lips sink our ship, meaning that when our lies slip from our lips our truth sinks. This week we look at one dynamic, one problem, The post Truth Really Does Set Us Free appeared first on Blue Oaks Church - Pleasanton, CA.

This week in our “Confidence” teaching series, we look at what happens in Genesis 29-30, a story of when Jacob goes looking for love. Love is a core, basic human need, so even though the story of Jacob happened many years ago and took place in a drastically different culture, we still find bits of truth that help us understand what love is and how to define our love journey. The story is found in Genesis 29-30, and through the The post Looking For Love appeared first on Blue Oaks Church - Pleasanton, CA.

Where does your confidence come from? Do you have enough of it? Do you have too much? Over the next few weeks, we are diving into the character of Jacob to see what biblical confidence looks like and how we gain confidence in and through God. God wants us to be confident, not self-confident, but to have confidence in Him. The question we explore this week is, “How do I learn to live with authentic confidence?”. Next Steps This week The post Where We Gain Confidence appeared first on Blue Oaks Church - Pleasanton, CA.

All of us work; we all have a job or jobs that we fill our time and task lists with. And while our titles or job descriptions may differ, all our work includes some form of people-building. From parents who encourage kids to nurses who build up patients to CEOs who build up employees, we all edify others. Paul paints a beautiful picture of what it means to work in Ephesians 4. Drawing from the language used in architecture, Paul The post Tools For The People-Building Business appeared first on Blue Oaks Church - Pleasanton, CA.

How do you know if you are a Christian? It may seem like a simple question, but at times the answer can be hard to articulate. An inward faith and relationship with Jesus can, at times, be outwardly expressed through different practices. We call some of these practices ‘sacraments,’ and this week, we are exploring the sacrament of Baptism. There was a point in Jesus’ life where he was no longer known as a carpenter from Nazareth but as the The post Baptism August 2022 appeared first on Blue Oaks Church - Pleasanton, CA.

We all know that our work lives are an important aspect of our day-to-day, but what happens when our work morphs into our identity? Or, what happens when work becomes more of a burden than a blessing? At times, work can become such a cornerstone of our identity that it can move us into destructive habits and behaviors. This week we look at The 7 Deadly Sins of Work. We will examine our lives to see where work may be The post Seven Deadly Sins of Work appeared first on Blue Oaks Church - Pleasanton, CA.

This week we begin our series called Happy Monday. Your work is incredibly important to your life.; you define yourself in part by the job you do, you fantasize about what job is next, and you engage with or avoid people based on their jobs. Work defines us. What’s more than that is that your work is incredibly important to God. Work is kingdom ordained and kingdom oriented, meaning that our work carries purpose not only for us but as The post Ten Commandments of Work appeared first on Blue Oaks Church - Pleasanton, CA.

This week we conclude the Sermon on the Mount by looking at what Jesus teaches about the wise and foolish builders in Matthew 7:24-27. Everyone builds a house, and while it may not be a literal house, everyone is building a form of ‘house’ perhaps better described as character. Everyone is constructing a soul, badly or beautifully, on purpose or by accident, with God’s help or on your own. The house we build will, like our actual physical place of The post Wise and Foolish Builders appeared first on Blue Oaks Church - Pleasanton, CA.